History VideoGame / ShinMegamiTenseiIIINocturne

* CherryTapping: Whereas in many games an enemy's MP is a magical unending font, here it's possible to use Drain spells (most notably, Daisoujou's Meditation) to ''completely'' drain an enemy's MP reserves. The end result is the computer wasting press turn after press turn on useless actions. For instance, doing this on [[BonusBoss Trumpeter]] means he can't use his OHKO skill ''at all'', [[VictoryByEndurance making his fight ridiculously easy]]. Likewise, focusing on draining Ongyo-Ki, while just breaking his buffs and shattering his illusions will render him a sitting duck. Buffing Daisoujou's Meditation with Makakaja will accelerate the process, making things that much easier.

* StartOfDarkness: [[spoiler:For Isamu, it's an unused scene when, at Kabukicho Prison, he studies the Amala Drum in his cell and catches a message from Yuko to the Demi-Fiend, asking to be rescued from her imprisonment at the Obelisk. It was the catalyst that drove Isamu into a HeroicBSOD, driving home just how powerless he truly was and refusing contact with the Demi-Fiend, leading to the eventual birth of the Reason of Musubi]]. [[spoiler:For Chiaki, it was her ill-thought assault on Sakahagi, a far deadlier foe and one she was not ready to deal with. She lost an arm during the encounter; the despair she generated managed to attract the dying spirit of Gozu-Tennoh, who acted as her FalseFriend in an attempt to create a worthy successor and foil of the Reason of Shijima. This culminated in the recreation of the Reason of Yosuga under Baal Avatar, and the massacre of the Manikins.]]

* GameplayAndStorySegregation: Following up from the Sakahagi example above, he apparently used up all his power trying to summon a demon, which translates to his embarrassingly low MP count. Not once does the player ever come across such an issue when summoning demons in battle.

* LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: Inverted. At the beginning of the game, magic skills are far more common and potent than physical skills, and their ability to get you more turns by exploiting elemental weaknesses make magic-oriented characters more powerful. However, magic starts to scale down in the latter half of the game and strength-based attacks continue to grow, making more physically-oriented fighters superior; it doesn't help that many late-game bosses have no weaknesses so fishing for crits is your best bet at getting extra Press Turns. [[spoiler:It gets to the point where the TrueFinalBoss can ''only'' be seriously damaged with physical attacks, making magic even more redundant.]]

** There's two vending machines in the real world (one in the station, one in the hospital) and if you purchase drinks from both of them you get the "Beverage Buff" achievement in the Remaster. You can only get it before the Conception takes place, otherwise, you'll need a new playthrough for it.

** The map is the triangle button, while the menu is the square button. In other series, you might expect the menu to be on the triangle with the map perhaps on the start or select buttons.

As the legendary Demi-Fiend, you have the power to decide the fate of the Vortex World. Will you side with one of the emerging armies to help make their idea of a perfect world a reality? Or will you [[KillEmAll destroy them all]] and [[EndOfTheWorldSpecial take the power of creation into your own two hands]]?

* GuideDangIt: Double whammy since not only is it difficult to know where you're supposed to be going, but the actual guide is very little help. Fortunately, as ever, Gamefaqs has a great guide.

* GuideDangIt: Double whammy since not only is it difficult to know where you're supposed to be going, but the actual guide is very little help.

* EverythingsBetterWithSpinning: The Amala Drums.

* StartOfDarkness: [[spoiler:For Isamu, it's an unused scene when, at Kabukicho Prison, he studies the Amala Drum in his cell and catches a message from Yuko to the Demi-Fiend, asking to be rescued from her imprisonment at the Obelisk. It was the catalyst that drove Isamu into a HeroicBSOD, driving home just how powerless he truly was and refusing contact with the Demi-Fiend, leading to the eventual birth of the Reason of Musubi]]. [[spoiler:For Chiaki, it was her ill-thought assault on Sakahagi, a far deadlier foe and one she was not ready to deal with. She lost an arm during the encounter; the despair she generated managed to attract the dying spirit of Gozu-Tennoh, who acted as her PoisonousFriend in an attempt to create a worthy successor and foil of the Reason of Shijima. This culminated in the recreation of the Reason of Yosuga under Baal Avatar, and the massacre of the Manikins.]]

* EvilVersusEvil: By the end of the game, the only major character left standing who can unquestionably be called good is [[spoiler:a Freedom-aligned Demi-fiend. Chiaki is a vicious social Darwinist who wants to purge the weak, Isamu murders Hijiri in cold blood and would create a world of absolute isolationism, Hijiri himself becomes obsessed with power and knowledge and is implied to have been willing to commit the exact same crimes Isamu did had he been given the chance, Hikawa and even Takao are willing to blow up the universe to create their new world, Kagutsuchi wants to keep resetting this world (and countless others) until at least one is populated with mindless slaves of God, Lucifer's solution to the whole crisis is to destroy the system and potentially everything else along, a Demi-fiend aligned with any of the three Reasons or with Lucifer is willing to commit the same crimes as they are, and a Demi-fiend aligned with nobody is a DirtyCoward too weak-willed to see any vision for the world through.]]

* EarnYourHappyEnding: [[spoiler:The Freedom ending]].

*** Musubi: [[spoiler:A world of total isolation]].
*** Yosuga: [[spoiler:A world where the weak are slaughtered and the strong rule]].
*** Shijima: [[spoiler:A world of unchanging stillness and silence]].

*** Freedom: [[spoiler:Bring back the old world]].
*** Demon: [[spoiler:Try to create your own world, but fail, leaving the Vortex World unchanged, or possibly like the Vortex World the way it is intentionally]].
*** True Demon: [[spoiler:Destroy the world [[DeaderThanDead even worse]] and become the new Demon King and lead the forces of darkness to battle God]].

** In the other main games, there's usually a fair number of human [=NPCs=] in spite of a recent apocalypse or other dire circumstances. Here, there are ''less than ten humans'' in the entire game world.

** Noah [[BarrierChangeBoss swaps his defenses throughout the fight]], so you need to regularly determine what he's weak against. Unfortunately, his defense is always a reflect, so you can't use Pierce to cheese through it.

* RestartTheWorld: Hikawa triggers the Conception with the intent of building a new world in accordance with his philosophy, [[WorldOfSilence 'Shijima']]; whether or not he succeeds is up to the player.

* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: Raidou Kuzunoha the 14th in the Chronicle Edition is identical to Dante of the Maniax version in pretty much every way, with one major improvement: he learns the pierce skill that Dante's lack of restricted him to AwesomeButImpractical territory. Not to mention his slightly-improved versions of Dante's attacks with new animations and better stats. Although the fact that he has Pierce is indeed a huge bonus, as it was the lack of it that made Dante near-useless in the final battle.

* TalkingIsAFreeAction: ''[[AvertedTrope No]]''. While it ''is'' possible to convince monsters to drop the attack, if the attempt fails by any reason, you ''will'' lose the Press Turn. If negotiations go terribly south their turn begins immediately.

** The Amala Drums are your main means of quick-travel throughout the Vortex World. Other examples include several parts of the Fourth Kalpa and the final stretch in the Tower of Kagutsuchi.

* TraumaInn: The Fountain of Healing.

* TwoHeadedCoin: [[VideoGame/DevilMayCry Dante's]] makes an appearance in his {{cameo}}.

** The limited edition of ''Devil Summoner: Raidō Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon'' includes a new version, ''Chronicle Edition'', in which Raidou replaces Dante. [[NoExportForYou It was only released in Japan]] because Sony shot down the idea of porting that edition to the UsefulNotes/PlayStationPortable for Western audiences early on in the update process.

* LostInTranslation: Several, particularly the Japanese names for demon races (for example, the {{True Final Boss}}'s race would be better translated as "[[spoiler:Great Demon King]]" but is localized as the much simpler "[[spoiler:Devil"). However, a prominently misleading case is "アマラ宇宙" localized as Amala Universe; while it ''is'' technically a correct translation, Amala is an expanse which contains ''multiple'' universes (billions in fact, according to the Lady In Black), so a more accurate translation would be "Amala Cosmos" or "Amala Space".

* LostInTranslation: Several, particularly the Japanese words for the demon races (for example, Lucifer's race in Japanese would have been better translated as "Great Demon King" but is instead localized as the much simpler "Devil"). However, one of the most misleading is "アマラ宇宙" or Amala Universe; while it ''is'' technically a correct translation, the Amala contains ''multiple'' universes (billions in fact, according to the Lady In Black), so a more accurate translation would be "Amala Cosmos" or "Amala Space".

* TheMultiverse: Notable for being the first of the mainline Shin Megami Tensei-titled game which properly develops the concept instead of vaguely mentioning its existence. As the player ventures through the Labyrinth of Amala, the Lady In Black eventually explains the Vortex World is only a single world in the vast river known as the Amala Universe (a fairly misleading translation - see LostInTranslation above), and whatever happens to this Vortex World does not affect billions of other universes outside of it. However, as previous games have implied (particularly ''VideoGame/MegamiTenseiII'' and ''VideoGame/LastBible'') the Amala is ''a'' multiverse (a group of universes), and not ''the'' multiverse (the entirety of ''Shin Megami Tensei'' franchise). Future games would later reinforce this by showing there are groups of universes unrelated to the Amala (particularly ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'' and especially ''[[VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIVApocalypse Apocalypse]]'').

* CreepyGood: Aradia, like all Neutral path representatives, genuinely wants to help humanity, but she's a lot more selfish than most of the others in the series and being a [[spoiler:half-formed goddess from another planet]] her morality is [[BlueAndOrangeMorality very alien]].
* CrossoverCosmology: As in all ''Shin Megami Tensei'' games, you can forge a party of many different gods from many different pantheons.

* LostInTranslation: Several, particularly the Japanese words for the demon races (for example, Lucifer's race in Japanese would have been better translated as "Great Demon King" but is instead localized as the much simpler "Devil"). However, one of the most misleading is "アマラ宇宙" or Amala Universe; while it ''is'' technically a correct translation, the Amala is a vast macrocosm with ''multiple'' universes (billions in fact, according to the Lady In Black) within it, so a better translation would have been "Amala Space" or "Amala Cosmos".

** Mot sometimes takes the above-mentioned cheat skills to [[UpToEleven its logical conclusion]]: at any time, it can begin to chain-cast "Beast Eye" while spamming Megidolaon and/or Makakaja, over and over and over. And then you die. (Found [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=IT&hl=it&v=x5yjAjTibT8 here]])

* NiceHat:
** Isamu. It's even lampshaded in-universe where one of the manikins talks about Isamu for a bit and finishes off with "...That hat bugs me". Isamu is so associated with a hat to the point [[spoiler:the ''Conception God'' acting as his Demonic Sponsor, Noah, also has a hat]]!
** Hijiri has one, but almost never puts it on his head.

* AbandonedHospitalAwakening: Not ten minutes into the game, you got implanted with a parasite that burrowed through your eye by an entity implied to be Chaos incarnate, slipping in and out of lucidity, before waking up to find yourself a demonic HalfHumanHybrid in the aforementioned AbandonedHospital implied to serve as the base of an ApocalypseCult. You wake up in the morgue, by the way.

** The Fiend dimension is probably the first one you will find, and you will enter it at least 9 times if you want to defeat all of them. Being a red, barren strip of land under an eternally raging sky.

* CanonName: The main character is called Naoki Kashima in the radio plays based on the game. But the games he cameos in and most people in general just call him Demifiend (Hitoshura in Japanese).

* KillTheOnesYouLove: Most prevalent in any of the non-Reason endings, [[spoiler:where you put down Noah and Baal Avatar to prevent Isamu and Chiaki respectively from enacting their mad idea of paradise. However, you still have to go at least against one of them even when you agree with one of them.]]

* LastDayOfNormalcy: it begins with 3 {{Ordinary High School Student}}s from Tokyo going to visit their favorite teacher in hospital... only to discover the hospital [[AbandonedHospital completely devoid of patients or medical personnel]], and is actually the base of operations for an ApocalypseCult. The cult leader completes a ritual that triggers TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, and as the chaos unfolds, [[PlayerCharacter one of the teens]] meets a mysterious young boy, who "gifts" him with a parasite called a Magatama that burrows into his body and turns him into a demon...

* OnlyGoodPeopleMayPass: There're three doors in the Third Kalpa of the Labyrinth of Amala which only let you through if you are on a different section of the morality meter that was based on what Magatamas (power-up items) you had mastered thus far in the game: Light, Neutral, and Dark.