YMMV / Nocturne (RPG Maker)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Khaos's exact reasons for being reluctant to enact his plans aren't stated, but one possible reason is that saving his human companion will result in Shylphiel being Ret-Gone. This is implied when he reminds her of the consequences of helping him.
• Awesome Boss: The powered up version of the Superboss is balanced specifically for a max level party. While they're certainly powerful and have a cheap auto-revive barrier, your side can finally cut loose now that there's no Brave Clear condition to worry about.
• Breather Boss:
  • Hypnosis certainly counts despite familiar usage being disabled for his fight. You'll most likely have sources of fire resistance from the much harder Ristill fight, rendering most of his attacks moot.
  • The Pain boss that Luna and Shylphiel have to fight is basically a slightly stronger version of the first boss and is obviously far easier than the previous bosses. Shylphiel outright tells Luna a basic strategy to beat it right at the very start of battle.
• Difficulty Spike: After Luna officially joins the party, the party can finally go up to four active members. Unfortunately, the bosses become a lot harder to compensate for the advantage of an extra healer.
• Evil Is Cool: The three vampire Ancestors, Reviel, Ristill, and Khaos, intend to slaughter the village of Algiz, perform dangerous Maxwell experiments on unsuspecting victims, and destroy and remake the timeline respectively. They also have their own distinctive fighting styles and the latter two have their own challenging boss mechanics, making them cool despite their evil.
• Fake Difficulty: The very low random drop rate can make it difficult to obtain gear that works well against specific bosses, as well as to get materials for level reset books. Otherwise, it'd be far easier to No-Sell most bosses' elemental attacks and status ailments.
• Funny Moments:
  • As a form of Black Comedy, Reviel is actually baffled that his coincidental encounters with thieves and lower-ranked vampires causes the villagers to mistaken him for a hero because his enemies also coincidentally happened to be attacking them. He isn't even seriously trying to earn their trust, they just give it to him as he stays completely nonchalant and silent about the situation. Though it becomes more heartwarming when Luna keeps insisting that he's still good deep down, despite learning the truth.
  • Ristill has one during her Big Damn Heroes moment. Khaos reminds her that she already lost to him earlier, to which she responds that his power wasn't enough to break her heart. That line was so full of Narm that Khaos couldn't come up with a response.
  • The Hopeless Boss Fight from Minto comes out of nowhere and the enemies are basically invincible versions of the weakest random encounters in the game. Losing to these three Killer Rabbits is more amusing than frustrating.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Phoenix Feathers allow the wearer to consume the feather to auto-revive with all their buffs intact, which is useful when used in combination with Luna's buffs, especially the curses that lower defense.
  • With enough physical resistance gear, Reviel and Luna can equip their best weapons without suffering HP drain.
  • Most of the Evil Eye skills miss regardless if enemies are vulnerable to the status ailment, but a maxed out Eye of Illusion skill is guaranteed to inflict all ailments (except poison and death) that the enemies are vulnerable to. It won't work on the second round of the Superboss, but it's still a great skill for a low MP cost and 20 SCT.
  • The Meditation sorcery makes it far easier to use caster type familiars in battles of attrition, since most of them don't have MP regen by default.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Those who played the other game that eplipswich translated, Seraphic Blue, noticed that Khaos has the same name as the Straw Nihilist ideology that the villains subscribe to. Nocturne's Khaos indeed turns out to be nihilistic to the point of killing himself in the ending, making him an unintentional example of Meaningful Name.
  • The villagers' Shipper on Deck tendencies toward Reviel and Luna are harder to find amusing after he chokes her.
• Love to Hate: Before his Heel–Face Turn, despite his Jerkass moments, Reviel was an entertaining Villain Protagonist for nonchalantly beating the crap out of minor villains and being a fun playable character to control.
• Narm:
  • Khaos's casting animating ends with him bending down dramatically, to the point where it looks like he fell down on his face.
  • Some of Reviel's nihilistic rants are overly poetic and hard to take seriously.
• Narm Charm:
  • The Almighty Jackson Boer line is hard to take seriously, but it also makes Reviel's beatdown on him much more entertaining and establishes the pecking order among vampires.
  • Reviel can easily remind players of overpowered OCs from fanfictions, but he's still fun to use to in battle and to customize.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • While the Almighty Jackson Boer deserved his beatdown, his face portrait is updated to be very bloody and cut up. Not only does he bleed pinkish blood, the tip of his ear looks like it's about to fall off.
  • Given the sheer power difference between the two, Reviel choking Luna is very unsettling and serves to remind players that despite his Kick the Dog moments with the bandits and Boer, Reviel is still a Villain Protagonist.
  • Idith temporarily becomes Ax-Crazy during her second boss battle, complete with a Nightmare Face. Her rant about her own murderous intentions doesn't help. Even Reviel is disturbed at her sudden change in demeanor and her willingness to risk losing herself to the Maxwell.
• Nintendo Hard: Thanks to the Rare Random Drop system, it can be difficult for players to equip against the bosses' elements and status effects. Main characters can overcome this with the right passive skills, but familiars need either accessories or sorceries to deal with anything they don't innately resist by default. The game becomes much harder if players try to go through a Brave Clear challenge, which leaves less room for error in allocating skills. Additionally, the player characters' HP don't grow as quickly as in other RPGs, so it's still possible to struggle regardless of being overleveled or not. Healing in battle is also fairly difficult due to the fact that you can only have 9 of each item and the fact that non-regen means of healing are usually weaker and more expensive MP-wise.
• One-Scene Wonder: The almighty Jackson Boer had a surprisingly memorable appearance for his blustering over his newfound vampirism, only to be used to demonstrate Reviel's Limit Break.
• Player Punch: Some players are disturbed when they accidentally step on the fish in Laguz Lake's cave. Of course, the fish were already doomed the moment the water level drained.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Unlike the main player characters, Familiars don't use the skill tree system and instead have a traditional leveling system, which means level reset books don't refund their EXP. For that matter, the synthesis cost of level reset books makes it hard to rectify bad skill builds.
  • Splitting the tutorial between the in-menu manual and a trio of mercenary Non Player Characters is not a good design choice, especially when the final part of the game locks the player out of talking to the latter for the rest of the run.
  • Familiars come with skills at set levels, which cannot be increased even if they're given the Sorcery for that skill.
• Signature Scene: The CG after Luna's Heroic Sacrifice is one for this game, since it is both the Darkest Hour and the point where Reviel makes a Heel–Face Turn.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The first few segments of the game starts out very slow due to the long tour of Algiz and Cryptic Conversations about Reviel's background. The plot picks up after Ristill and Idith target Reviel, resulting in Reviel's true nature being exposed to Luna and putting a rift between the two in terms of ideology.
• Solo-Character Run: The developer actually accounted for solo attempts by including the Falling Star formation, which is a formation that only affects Reviel solo, in contrast to other formations that only work with two or more characters. While it's possible to solo most bosses within Brave Clear level, it's extremely difficult to pull off unless you get lucky with drops early on or are on a New Game Plus run.
• Surprise Difficulty: This game qualifies less for its graphics (though no enemy has a horrifying appearance by JRPG standards and some are quite cute) and more for the outward appearance of its battle system. At first glance, the battle system makes the game look like a typical ATB experience that won't be too different from early Final Fantasy games or "cookie-cutter" RPG Maker games. This turns out not to be the case due to how the game adds several unusual mechanics and reinvents some of the traditional RPG mechanics, forcing experienced RPG players to adapt and learn. Additionally, the protagonist is considered a powerful vampire in the story, but the party will still struggle against bosses due to how healing is balanced so that slow HP regeneration is easy while instant HP recovery is difficult, making it hard to stay alive in long battles.
• That One Attack:
  • Any attack that inflicts Curse certainly counts, since this status effect cuts the victim's Max HP in half and won't go away through any means except waiting it out. Worse yet, letting the character die won't cause the effect to disappear. If you're doing a solo run, you'll have to drag out the battle trying to keep Reviel alive while the curse is active.
  • The Time crystal boss and Khaos have Overclock, which gives them a buff that allows them a 50% chance of consecutive actions.
  • Main has a spell, Motivator, that can inflict bind to keep a character from acting. Worse yet, the conditions for curing it are pretty much the reverse of Curse in that it will only expire upon death and not with time.
  • Main also has Fire Raiment, which can deal MP damage. In a game where MP runs out quickly and has no means of recovery other than Meditation, this can seriously wreck a party member's utility.
  • Any AOE-based delay attack can count, especially if the boss is faster or can land critical hits. The only good news is that some familiars can use such attacks, which helps in regular fights and Wolfpack Boss fights.
  • The Overdrive buff is used by a few bosses, which increases their attack and speed while lowering their defenses. If you were barely surviving the boss before this buff was used, this could result in a Total Party Kill.
  • Any instant death ability is this due to how familiars cannot be revived without Phoenix Feathers.
• That One Boss: Ristill qualifies in the Rebirth version due to her insane speed, a decent variety of elements, a Limit Break, and the ability to inflict Curse. Unlike the Final Boss, there's no way to block her Curse infliction at all. Every boss between her and the Final Boss is difficult, but still easier to manage in comparison.
• That One Puzzle: The final dungeon's ruin area has a puzzle that requires the player to hit three crystals within the span of a few seconds, with little room for wasted movements. Fortunately, the door that it unlocks can be opened with EXP.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Surprisingly, the characters never discuss the potential dangers of Khaos's plan to alter time and space. The danger is implied to be there, since Khaos was reluctant to enact the plan in the first place, but the party only rejects it for moral reasons.
  • Luna's training session with Roshule could have been used to explain some of the more complex mechanics of the game, such as the skill learning system, critical hits, formations, changing weapons in battle, etc. Due to her lack of combat experience, she would have been a good subject for combat tutorials. Instead, the majority of the training is offscreen and the tutorials are instead relegated to the Manual submenu.
• Useless Useful Spell: Ristill as a Guest-Star Party Member has Hell Bind, but the only enemies that she's playable against are immune to Curse.
• Wake-Up Call Boss:
  • Unlike the first Maxwell, the Wind Guardian requires the player to at least understand basic tactics in the game, like guarding, learning new skills to level up, and interrupting spells. It's still far easier than most of the following bosses though, since it lacks status ailment skills.
  • Idith is the first boss to have a melee Limit Break, which has no casting time like spell Limit Breaks. She also has skills with higher than normal crit rates, which allows her to get her turn faster.
• Warmup Boss: The Maxwell boss in the first dungeon can be beaten without summoning extra familiars or learning new skills, though learning how to use these features will certainly make the boss easier.