Preview: Nocturne
It’s been a good while since I’ve played a rhythm game. And when I say a good while I mean…since the days when Osu was popular. Despite that, I still hold a special place for these types of games in my heart, so when I heard that a studio was mixing RPG and rhythm game elements together, I just had to give it a try.
The game in question is called Nocturne, and it is being developed and published by Pracy Studios for release sometime in 2025.
Nocturne starts you off as Karma, a young girl who was recently uploaded to the afterlife. That’s right, you heard correctly. Karma comes from a world where when you die your mind gets uploaded to the cloud and you are able to interact with past loved ones and even those who are still alive, a la Black Mirror.
Karma is initially greeted by an “angel” in Maya, the virtual world that hosts the minds of those who’ve died. However, things take a turn when she steps outside and meets Kimothy. Kimothy is a young boy who happens to be exploring when Karma arrives, and not only does he introduce her to the dangerous creatures who now inhabit Maya, but he also informs her that the system has been down for over 1000 years and her being new is unheard of and an actual anomaly.
What follows is a series of events that put Karma at the center of what’s seemingly a crumbling world in need of repair. Not only is she shown to have the ability to heal the world’s corruption (a state that is causing things in the world to spazz out and die) but she’s also on the hunt for her brother.
The demo is pretty short so there is only a brief introduction of the plot and its characters, but the quick development of the relationship between Karma and Kimothy and the interesting side characters like Satoru and Yako were enough to stimulate wanting to do a full playthrough when the game releases. I’m really looking forward to seeing just how the games’ mysteries will be brought to life and resolved.
Now, I mentioned above that I was excited that the fighting in Nocturne is presented as a rhythm game, but if I’m being honest this was extinguished pretty quickly and actually left me quite worried.
In Nocturne, you fight as Karma. She has the ability to not only heal the world’s corruption but is also pretty decent in a fight. The issue I had with the combat system is that every fight is a song you have to play through. They can range from 30 seconds to a minute and similar enemies have the same song, so things can get pretty repetitive pretty quickly.
The good news is you can speed this up by pressing the spacebar when your gauge fills up and landing crits. But despite this aspect of the gameplay, it still felt like fights took forever and the songs themselves started to become boring to play through.
It doesn’t help that while the game encourages you to sneak around to avoid fighting, if you’re detected at all you pretty much have to fight as Karma cannot outrun most of the world’s creatures. Maybe this will be fixed in the full game and she’ll become faster, but in the demo, I just stopped trying to outrun them after a while.
The one interesting change came during the demo’s boss fight as it presented some new mechanics, but I’m worried that outside of these, grinding in this game could come to feel like a chore.
Visually, Nocturne is OK. The sprites feel a little low quality and like they could use some polish, but the backdrops have a lot of potential so I am hoping once the full game releases it’ll look much nicer.
Being that it’s a rhythm game, the audio is where Nocturne really shines. I liked a lot of the music presented throughout the demo. The songs were catchy and appropriate. The only gripe I had is that after listening to the same ones over and over again, I kind of wanted to turn the music off, and that is not a good feeling to have after only an hour and a half of playtime.
However, I do look forward to listening to the rest of the soundtrack, as the boss fight music especially got me hyped up for what else Pracy Studios might have in store.
Overall, I am really glad I got to try out Nocturne. It’s not every day you see an RPG mixed with a rhythm game, and it was nice to go back to a genre I haven’t visited in a while. I would be lying if I said I am not concerned about the game’s lack of polish, and its potential for becoming tedious if the battle system isn’t tweaked, but I think if Pracy Studios can nail these fixes before release, it’ll be something worth playing through.
After all, the story and characters seem super promising, and the music is good! I look forward to playing through the full game in the future.
Review copy provided by Pracy Studios for PC. Screenshots courtesy of reviewer. Featured Image provided by Pracy Studios.