Alright now I saw SMT: Lucifer's Call a while back in my local EB and although the thought of playing as Dante from DMC in a RPG sounded good in theory, the fact that Capcom had nothing to do with it kinda turned me off. I mean, since when do Ubisoft do RPG's? So I never really thought much of it...

Untill Flame mentioned it in LC. (Actually, I think Athrun spoke of it in passing as well, he said it was really good.)

So the other day, I found it again. $30? No game worth $30 can be bad right? (Keep in mind a new release game can cost up to $110 over here...)

So I'm playing it now, with my 360 KIA and taking a Suikoden 5 break for a while, and I'm thinking....What in the hell has he gotten me into? I really have no idea whats going on. The manual, which did explain the battle system very well, didn't really cover everything.

I mean, what exactly does the Kagutsuhchi do? And the Magatama? When they go all angry and stuff inside me, what should I do? And why do my Pokemon (yes Pokemon, because thats what this is, Pokemon on crack) keep showing 'signs of change'?

Flame also said this is part of a series. How many are there? Are they stand alone games? I hope so, because I'm not sure if I will be lucky enough to find the others...

Any help would be great.

Cheers.

Well, if you really want to know and have a lot of free time, you can check Hardcore Gaming 101´s feature

http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/megaten/megaten.htm

Now to explain how to play SMT Nocturne/Lucifer´s call, thats going to take a while and you will probably wont understand. But for the hell of it, when the magatama goes nuts, just go with it, there is about 3 to 10 ratio of it harming you, most of the time it heals you.

Signs of change mean that the demon will evolve soon, it actually means that it will evolve (i.e. become a new more powerful demon) in three levels.

Kagutushi or however the thing is spelled, well its kinda early for you to bother with it.

Also if you want to find more SMT games, good luck, the first one released in english was Persona for the psx. Anything before it its in japanese, of course there is always patching.

Dante, I highly suggests looking through this topic. It should have all the answers for you, if you rad all the posts.

http://www.rpgdreamersforum.com/index.php?...;hl=shin+megami

SMT is a very confusing game at first, but once you get the hang of the basics, it'll come naturally.
Though you'll still need to worry about which skills you should keep and which to get rid of. Oh and never get rid of the first pixie you get in the game. You meet her at the hospital. Towards the end if you kept her she will transform into one of the best creatures in the game.

The Kagutushi I think only matters when you fuse monsters. I think it also determines which enemies you can face in soem areas. Oh and if you fight enemies when it's at it's highest, enemies will be berserked and never listen to you if you try to negotiate. At the lowest you some times face elemental enemies. Which arre good for fusing.

Anyway, look into a FAQ. I wouldn't normally say that about a game, but there's just too much that can and will go wrong if you don''t.

Magatama can some times give you a stats increase during Level up. Basically it's liek gaining two level ups at once. It's totally random though, so find out which ones give the status boost, and save right before you level up. Reset if you don't get it. You can get a stat boost for every level up, but it takes patience. But most of the Magatama don't give a status boost.
Just watch out so you don't learn a skill too soon, one that might be more useful later in the game, and you haqve to throw it away. Always think two steps ahead.

Another quick advice, once you learn Charge, don't ever get rid of it. Or else you'll never manage to build a physically strong character.

Err...thanks Hicks, that helped....

OK, I get the feeling I'm totally going to screw this up without a guide, I'm thinking...GameFAQ? Which sucks because I hate using them, the last time I did was to get 100% in FFX-2...stop laughing.

Although it's nice to see other people here had trouble with this game, I'll no doubt be asking for help at some point or another, I'm glad Raz, yourself and everyone is around to help, I'ma need it...

Also, is it possible to rename Dante? Not the main guy Dante, but DMC Dante. From what I read, he joins your party further down the track right? That could get confusing...

I dont think so. And dont worry about Dante or at least dont get your hopes up, you are looking to get him near the end, well not quite the end but at least about 70 percent into it and it depends on a prolonged sidequest which you can fulfill little by little, like say you can start it early on but you can complete it until later on the game with a couple visits distributed along the entire game. I dont think its even a sidequest, i would call it a parallel game path.

About getting a guide, yeah definetely, get two, but dont get ahead of things, just use it when you reach something that has proven difficult after many tries. Although SMT Nocturne's story is not Xenogears caliber, its still a nice tale, way better than any final fantasy but then again to one up FF in the story department is not that hard.

Other than that, hang in there, if you find the game a bit hard dont worry, everybody that has played it knows its a hard game but possible to beat and fun, at least i found it to be one damn addicting game. I would spend hours just leveling up so that i could fuse new demons and then level them up so that i could fuse them again and again, then i was quickly lost and had to figure out what the hell was i supposed to do before starting to exploit fusions.

Finally, you know that pixie you got at the begining, your first demon? dont lose her, you can let her evolve but dont kick her out. You can fuse her but you'll have to keep track of her family tree (i.e. always have the fused demon, and then always have whatever demon you get by fusing that one, and so on) and that might a bit hard to do. Trust me its worth it.

Actually I would use the guide to look forward. But I wouldn't look at story related bosses or scenes. But I would definitely keep an eye on what skills you can learn from which Magatama. At what level, and where you aquire the Magatama.

The reason is that you may actually aquire a skill that is almost useless to you at this point in the game, but very very useful later in the game. The game is basically set up with difficulty surrounding the skills you learn, more or less. Many bosses require specific strategies to be defeated.
Also in this game you can only carry 8 skills at a time. It's like Pokemon. You have to lose the other skills that don't fit in. And you lose them forever.

Now for example imagine that you have a good balance in skills. You basically want to keep them all, because a boss that has extremely high evade is coming up and you need fogbreath to lower his evede and accuracy. But then you Level up, and the Magatama offers you to learn a strong Lightning spell, or discard it. The problem now is that you don't have anything you want to give up from your current setup. And you only really need this lightning skill against a boss thats coming up in about 3 - 4 hours.
What you could have done was to focus on another Magatama instead and save the lughtning skill for when you need it.
You also need a guide to know which Megatama give you stat boosts. Those are increadibly useful.

Also, check out your monsters evolution pattern in a guide. Thatw ay you'll know if it's worth leveling up some of your monsters to a certain level and having them evolve.
Then again, this isn't neccesary. it only makes things easier, and on second thought I liked being surprised when my monster started evolving.
But... you will definitely need an Evolution guide later when fusing stronger monsters. Some times you need to fuse like 8 times to get a certain monster. And that may include evolving it in between.

Kagutisuchi- or phases of the internal sun- don't have a big effect on the game... you can't recruit demons when the moon is full.
also, some demons have skills that revolve around the Kagutisuchi- Dark/Light Might increases their strength during that phase.

also, fusing Demons during a Full cycle results in an unstable/predictible fusion.

Your magatama- or demonic parasites- all give you specific stat boosts and abilities, of which will be useful against some bosses, and when you 'master' a magatama you could learn a useful ability- like Mediaharon (full heal, party)

some demons evolve- they let you know when they 'shown signs of change', but some take along time to evolve... a Lilim will show signs of change aroung late teens/early 20's-but it can't evovle to a Lilith until you are level 60 or higher because of the strength of the demon itself.

Nocturne/Lucifer's Call is a difficult game.
try to find the Digital Devil Saga games....

There you are Raz, you liked the first SMT topic, I made you new one to fawn over lol.

Alright, I've made it to the club (again!) knocked off that cat...thing inside, what now? What do I need to know for starters? Just some noob hints please ha ha.

Are you talking about Loki's room? You're not too far behind me... I've just gone through the great underpass of Ginza...

Fusing is annoying me a little bit... It's the loss of skills more than anything. Also, how comes when I fuse most monsters together they have 3 skills carry over but on others they only have 2? I've checked and both the monsters I want to fuse have more than 3 skills...

I hope there is a guide that tells you what monsters learn what skills... I could really do with a monster that not only hits very hard but also has stat changing skills... As I said, I'll probably start again soon now I understand how the whole game works... but maybe I won't need to... I'll be glad when I get my new memory card for xmas so I can have more than one save game file...

The only reason to start over would be if you screw up your main character really. The monsters are replacable.

Some times fewer skilsl carry over, other times more of them do. There are several factors involved, but mainly it's random. You'll have to back out to the main menu while inside the fusion tower and then try again and you'll get a new result. (I hope you already knew this)

But I think it's something like only two skills from each monster carries over. So you can't move 3 skills from Monster A and one skill from monster B. But actually I think that's possible too. It has to do with the new monster you're trying to breed. Some monsters simply refuse to learn certain skills, while others adapt them easily. But I think even those that won't learn them easily can, if you keep trying.

There is a 100% way to carry over skills, and that's by fusing two elements together. The result will be something that you can fuse with any monster, and the skills will carry over as well as give the monster a stat boost. But I think only three skills carry over at the most, so if you want more you'll have to repeat teh process and reset until you replace the skills you no longer want to have.