HOLY HELL, I have been meaning to get to reviewing this game, but the distractions, the work, the everything REALLY takes a toll after a while. So I said, NO, Nocturne Rebirth must be reviewed, I was going to do this like... last month, so now I'm going to do it.

HELLO!! Jaymonius here with yet another review of a game, this time it is Nocturne: Rebirth for RPG Maker XP. Made by Cogwheel, translated by eplipswich.

HOLY HELL, Nocturne: Rebirth, what can I say what hasn't been said about this game? This game is really big on the RPG Making community, for it's amazing graphics, battle system, deepish story. But most of the enthusiasts usually remember this game for the battle system as 60-70% of us who originally played this in japanese had no clue on what the hell the characters were saying, but thanks to eplipswich, we finally got to understand what was going on. But even if we didn't understand what was going on, we had a PRETTY good idea what was going on thanks to the facial expressions and the actions of the game. Well, enough blathering, let's begin looking through, shall we?

I am warning you right now, I am going to be spoiling a bit of this game, so if you haven't beat Nocturne Rebirth, I would suggest avoiding reading this review until you have done so.

Story: 4/5
So, our story here begins with a mysterious man who looks like Yuri Lowell. This guy runs into a common girl who is being chased by bandits, and he shoo's em' away with relative ease, y'know, main character thing, it's his job. Eternally grateful for Yuri's help, the girl offers to have him stay at the local village and stay the night in repayment for helping her, but you see, unbeknownst to her, this guy is actually a MUTHA FUCKIN' VAMPIRE! Nowhere close to Alucard mind you, but still a MUTHA FUCKIN' VAMPIRE! And his goals? He wants to hunt humans, but it almost always seems like some other force or something else prevents him from gorging on the sweet human flesh of the humans of this certain settlement.

I'm sure we will all know where this will go even after 10-20 minutes into the game, that this anti-hero of sorts who acts he's all badass and wants to kill humans will reform and turn into a hero for the people. It's been done plenty of times, no one is stranger to the trope. But in regards to how the plot goes in regards to Yuri, er I mean, Reviel. There are definitely some interesting moments, some that may even shock some of you.

But to me, the story is definitely a great read, but there is just one thing I feel it holds it back, but this is really a translation issue. It's how it was presented. This is a game where you would expect people like Reviel, Khaos, Edith to talk in a more shakespearean dialog. Whenever I'm seeing some of those characters saying stuff like "How dumb." or "Screw you!" I just cringe a little, that is not something you'd expect a noble vampire to talk, well, maybe with the exception to that vampire story boss John whats-his-face.

But for characters like the three I mentioned? No. They should sound like noble vampires, not modern age collage students or something. A great example of amazing dialog would be Odin Sphere, the game had such amazing writing, that's the kind of writing and personality that should have been shown on those characters.

But don't get wrong here, the dialog for Luna was a lot more believable, same with the village characters, they were shown more accurately. So, there is not much complaint in regards to them.

I recall having a conversation with a couple people about this as well, they just shuddered when they were reading Reviel's lines, same with some of the other characters. I would heavily looking back and rewording some of the dialog for when you decide to update the game later on.

Oh yes, and let's not also forget the naming of the characters, I know most of us didn't have as much complaints, like I didn't mind Edith's translation name, but the two that really stuck out that bothered me a lot was Khaos and Shylphiel, those two names... you should have stuck with Chaos and Sylphiel, because that is how the names were presented on the Japanese version. I know you may say it's the way the Japanese pronounce the names, but the English speaking community would sooner want to call them by the names they were originally given and pronounce them in a way the English community would pronounce them.

Gameplay: 4/5
What!? Not a 5/5 how can this be!? WELL, let me be frank, the game is good. REALLY good. This time it's a little more on how the game flow was. You see, the game is pretty simple in terms of progression, you have your map and you can choose a majority of your destinations, however, most of the destinations you may go to will have a "Brave Clear" (I'll get into this in a moment.), some levels are higher than others, what would make you think there would be some non-linearity in the game immediately gets thrown out the window when you wanna go to the water dungeon, but the enemies are far too difficult, so you have to go to another dungeon that has a lower brave clear. It is a little misleading, and I would've loved to do the water dungeon first because I just absolutely love the BGM in the dungeon.

The second major complaint I had, and I'm sure many others had complained about this as well, but the item drop rate. Holy hell man, I can't count how many times I wanted to get this certain item, or that certain item. Just so I could make some of the weapons and armor I could use.

However, most of the complaints I have about that get thrown out the window because of the ZOMG GREAT BATTLE SYSTEM! I'm sure almost everyone including myself have gushed over how fluid the animations are, and how balanced the game is. But don't get me wrong. This game will test you. And this game will FUCK your shit up. I am not kidding. I can imagine how many of us who played this game in japanese had trouble on the infamous Wind Guardian boss. He was like the noob trap for players of this game. I need not tell you of this Let's play I saw of a japanese player fighting that boss, it took him 4-5 videos just to beat the guy! Yeah. I know. Crazy. But you see, this is the great thing about this game. It's hard, but it's a fun hard, you see.

Every time I lost against a boss, I wasn't as much pissed than I was, "shit, well, I just gotta readjust my strategy."

See, in spite of all the amazing cool stuff the battle system shows, the numbers aren't high. I mean, By the end of the game, you'll be lucky if Reviel has over 300 -400 HP. This game isn't set on high numbers like most people are so used to seeing, like the FF games, Tales games, and Disgaea games. I can give the creator props for that.

But here's the thing, remember the Brave Clear thing I mentioned, now this part is what really separates the hardcore players from the casuals, most people would ignore the brave clear and just plow through the game, the real gamers would go for the brave clear. You see, if you beat a boss at the level the "Brave Clear" says, you will get an extra item for your efforts.

This is what I consider the hard mode of the game, as you can't go any higher than what the Brave Clear wants, and this can get REALLY stressful on some of the bosses, the most infamous for this would definitely be Ristill. She probably made a lot of players wanna smash their keyboards, especially when trying to get the Brave Clear, but when you beat her, you just do a fist pump. Be all like "Fuck yeah! Take that!"

What else can I say? The puzzles in the game, some of them were a bit annoying, but once again, they are solvable with not much problems. But there was one thing that did stand out which I thought was a nice though. If you're having problems with the puzzle, you can just force your way through some of the puzzles by sacrificing some EXP and then you can move on. See, that's pretty cool. But I would rather see the puzzles completed, but it's nice for those impatient people who don't like going through puzzles.

What else? The familiar system, oh god the familiar system, and amazing addition to the game, it's like playing the SMT games all over again. My only real gripe is that once you clear the lower level areas and find stronger familiars to use, the other familiars just become obsolete and just get discarded. If only there was a way to fuse the older monsters to create stronger familiars, that way you're not wasting hours trying to find the core for said familiar. It'd save a LOT more time.

Graphics: 4.5/5
What!? Graphics not perfect either, explain yourself monius! Alright, I will! This is also part of the translators part, but also a part on the creators part as well. It's a nitpick, but it can also get a little distracting at times as well. While most of the graphics are spot on in terms of battle sprites, and most of the character sprites.

It's the monster overworld sprites that is definitely out of place, like I can somewhat understand if the overworld sprites were mostly used as monster icons to determine what type of monster you would face, hell, Saga Frontier did that exact same thing too. If you touched a flying monster, you'd fight a flying based enemy in battle for sure. But they could've at least try and have some of the monsters match the sprites, like some of the bosses REALLY don't match the overworld sprites. If they're bosses, they should've at least sprited a facing down version of them, since most of the bosses are facing down anyway.

My second issue, once again is in the dialog part. Not the tranlsation, but how the text boxes are. In the original the sizes were fine, but when they were translated, they got BIGGER in lots of the dialog. I mean, it's REALLY distracting after a while, and it makes it look ugly. I mean, you could've made an extra text box to accommodate that size so it can be a little smaller.

Music and Sound: 4.5/5
Now I know what you're thinking, why isn't this perfect either? Well, let me explain myself. The music in Nocturne Rebirth is beyond amazing. A lot of the japanese websites like Foceal, H/Mix Gallery, Trial, Ku-bo, they helped bring this game to life. But after a while, you start noticing something with a lot of these japanese games. There were a few tracks on this game I heard elsewhere, I couldn't put it together at first, but then I realized that some of the tracks were from Seraphic Blue. And once you start hearing some of these themes over and over again, it starts to devalue the game and music as a whole.

The final boss theme, Final Cross, was used in this game and another game called Demon King Chronicle. And don't get me started on the overusage of H/Mix Gallery and Pressence of Music, but once again, that is merely a nitpick, but after a while, you start to notice it, annnd yeah. There's really not much I can really say after that.

Let me add though my favorite themes were the boss theme, almost every dungeon theme, and the final boss theme. (Final Cross.)

Overall: 4/5
This game is great. It made its impact on a lot of the RM community, so much so that some random schmuck took its resources and made this other game called... Kingdom of Belial (I think that's the name.) That's how great of an impact this game had on the game making community as a whole.

And of course, we have to give credit to eplipswich as well. After you translated Seraphic Blue, and hearing you were going to translate this, I was giddy as fuck. And while I did enjoy playing this game in English, I feel you should really look back at the dialog and put a little more oomph to some of the characters to not make them sound like a 10 year old.

The thing is too, your translation of Seraphic Blue, the way you portrayed the characters in that game was spot on, but this game requires a little more clever dialog, if you get what I'm saying.

PROS
Amazing Battle System
Amazing Artwork
Great Music
The game is translated!
Fair Challenge

CONS
The translation of some of the characters.
Grinding for items.

Final Note: Be sure to play eplipswich's translation of Seraphic Blue, the game is darker and WAAAY harder than Nocturne: Rebirth, and I am definitely looking forward to when the new Hat World finally gets finished, that one will be fun to play.

THERE, DONE!