I started playing Nocturne this weekend. I put in ~12 hours. Pretty good gameplay so far, but not much revealed storywise.

The first megaten game that I played was Persona 3 FES. I really liked P3 (so much so that I bought the PSP version) and would recommend it to everybody who likes RPGs. Since both games are set in the same world(?), the monsters and spells are the same which makes things very familiar.

I find Nocturne to be a little harder than P3, especially during the boss battles. In addition to knowing the enemies' strengths and weaknesses you have to put together a party that will not be weak. I had trouble getting past Matador and Thor. I had "Game Over" multiple times due to not being able to collect or fuse demons that wouldn't be susceptible to the boss' attacks. The game punishes you for missed attacks and rewards you for critical hits and striking their weakness. So your party of four (main character + 3 other demons) gets 1 turn each (4 turns total; you control all the action unlike P3). The punishment is if you miss you lose an extra turn in addition to the turn you just used. The reward is an extra turn for each critical hit or weakness. This works great if I can exploit it, but sucks big time if the enemy is hitting my weaknesses.

I think that if I had played Nocturne before playing P3, I would have quit out of frustration. It took me a while in P3 to learn to let go of the weaker Personas that I had been leveling up and begin fusing them to make stronger ones.

The demon negotiations in Nocturne are interesting and frustrating at the same time. I like this method of recruitment, but I hate giving them money & items to only have the negotiations fail.

UPDATE 4/11/2011
I've played about 20 hours now. This game is awesome. I don't know how it is that I never heard of this game when it originally came out, but I am glad I was able to buy it later on.

The press turn system is unique (at least to me). I like trying to take advantage of it. I fought hell biker, and he was giving me hell (I had to restart a couple of times). First he was hitting my weakness with fire, so I put in the magatama for strong to fire, weak to force. Turns out he uses both fire and force attacks; kicked my ass harder and faster this time. The trick wasn't which magatama I used but using a demon that drained force. By doing that I put an immediate end to all of Hell Biker's press turns.

I've also been using the -aja and -unda type spells on the longer battles or more difficult opponents. They work pretty well by helping to minimize the opponent's attack damage or increasing my attack damage.

I'm through the part where the prison is at. I kind of got lost solving the puzzle with the inverted prison and using the spoon, but I eventually found the way out. At least I got some grinding while wandering around.

I do have a question about the skills the main character picks up from the magatama. Is there any I should be going out of my to get or must keep skills? I only get 8 and it seems like I am discarding the new one I just got. I am definitely thinking of keeping War Cry and Fog Breath.

My second question is where should I being put my extra point from leveling up? So far I piled them into strength, so I have been doing a fair amount of damage with physical attacks. But I have noticed that with the stronger spells that require more MP cause me to run out of MP quickly; therefore I started putting a few points into Magic. Should I being spreading these points around evenly? Or putting them primarily into certain areas? Or are there any that could be avoided (such as Luck)?

UPDATE 4/19/2011

I've put about 35 hours in so far. The turn based combat is great. I fully recommend this game for anybody who likes traditional RPGs.

My wife has put the brakes on me playing this M rated game due to my 1 year old son. It is hard for me to argue when the box says M due to extreme violence. I am now restricted to played E rated games in my son's presence. It looks like I won't get to finish this game anytime soon . What do the other CAG Dads do?

UPDATE 7/20/2011

Final gameplay notes for 7/16/11
I finished Nocturne with 99 hours put into it.

I leveled up to 96 and used Seraph Metatron, Deity Mithra, and Fiend The Harlot. Why those ones you ask? Because Metatron had the skill debilitate, Mithra and The Harlot I fused with the skills pierce and focus. Those skills were absolutely necessary for me to defeat Lucifer. I tried taking on the end boss with demons that did not have those skills, and after a several turns I got my ass handed to me. So it was off to the Amala Network to buy the Vile Girimelkha demon with the pierce, focus, and might skills.

The PDF ~400 page guide I found came in very handy for this type of info. Otherwise I just might have given up on this game at the end boss or never even got this ending because I would have missed some of the required activities

This game is one of the best turn based JRPGs that I have played. I would love to play it again, but other games in my PS2 backlog beckon...