Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne
- You will die a lot, save all you can
- You can only recruit demons that are your level or below. You can't talk to some, like blobs, without special skills.
- Some demons will evolve when they have learned all thier skills. Some demons can only be gained through evolution.
- Know your weaknesses. No amount of grinding will save you from a boss if you leave yourself weak to its attacks.
- Always try to fight bosses on New Kagutsuchi, they will be at thier weakest.
- Buffs and debuffs actually matter. Sukukaja/Fog breath will give you the most bang for your buck.
- You can only learn a skill once. If you choose to get rid of one, you can'y get it back. Plan early on if you want to be a melee powerhouse or a caster. Always have at least one healing spell to back up your healing demon.
- The Amala network is an optional dungeon. If you finish it before going into final dungeon though it will lock you into a certain ending.
- Keep Focus, especially if you're planning on getting the aforementioned ending involving the Amala network. It is probably the most important physical skill in the game.
- Your main character's best skills are physical.
- The best magatama in the game gives you +10 to all your stats, if you want to plan accordingly.
- Keep the pixie you get at the very beginning of the game. I think that you can fuse her into other stuff, so long as you keep that other stuff. Just make sure you remember what she ends up as.
- The hardest part of Hard difficulty are the first few non-random fights. Don't be too discouraged if you die over and over again to these. They just suck.
- Get something that nulls force for Matador. Seriously.
- Never ever ever EVER not have the following skills in your party: Fog Breath, War Cry, and (and to a lesser degree) Taunt. Other buffs will work too but Fog Breath and War Cry can make lots of fights ridiculously easy and Taunt can make a high defense enemy more managable as long as you have a few kunda debuffs to drop his damage.
- Abuse -kaja buffs and -kunda debuffs whenever possible. You can get 1k hits off on bosses just by buffing and debuffing for a few turns before going balls out on damage.
- Your main character also should have Focus and a decent physical ability.
- Make a decent plan for how you want your character to develop because once you forget a skill you're not getting it back. Don't be afraid to pigeonhole him. You can almost always fuse/recruit a demon to fill in any gaps in your party.
- Horde SP items, they're useful but don't stretch real far.
- It's not as hard as you think it will be.
- Try to have a dedicated healer with Mana Refill or Mana Drain. It will make the dungeons much, much easier.
- Hama and Mudo are useless - skills that deal Light and Dark-based damage (NOT instant kills) are not.
- Remember that the main character can only learn each skill once. Try to give him at least an elemental spell, something to refill MP, and possibly Focus + the physical attack of your choice. My typical boss-destroying strategy was to fully buff the MC and fully debuff the boss, Focus, and then use Divine Shot. Bam, 1500+ damage in one blow.
- On that note, use buffs and debuffs as much as possible.
- You can change the moveset of a soon-to-be-fused monster by canceling out of the fusion screen and re-selecting its parents.
- Really, just pay attention to what you're doing.
- You will receive a Pixie early on. Never get rid of her. You can fuse her with other things, but never sacrifice or dismiss her. Ever.
- There are like six endings, you poor bastard.
- Fog Breath is a useful skill. Also for maximum cheese fuse monsters with both Dark Might and Bright Might and challenge bosses only on new and full moons. This makes any boss who isn't void to physical a cake walk because you're getting 8 turns to wail on him. Taking down some of ultra hard optional bosses in the Amala network and the fiends turn into cake walks with this strategy. Though it's obsolete once your demons get Debilitate and you become a powerhouse damage dealer.
- Make your dude into a physical attacker. It is slow to start since Phys skills suck at the beginning, but the best skills in the game are based on Physical attacks.
- Never forget Focus. 5 MP is a better loss than an additional 20%+ of your HP.
- The best magatama in the game gives you +10 to all your stats, so don't go above that from stat increases.
- The demifiend has an innate 50% resistance against light and dark attacks. This is very little comfort.
- 5 hours or so into the game you'll fight a boss called Matador. Unless you've been grinding for hours on end, this guy will brutally rape you without mercy when you first fight him. For God's sake make sure you and as much of your party as possible has wind resistance.
Skills
For anyone starting Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, here's a few skills you may not want to give up on your hero:
Analyze - This one is obvious, but know that you'll eventually get an item to replace it. So, don't worry about it taking up a skill slot for the entire game.
Tornado - For the time that you get it in the game, it'll be your best magic option in many situations. It does medium damage, which is great for that part of the game, and can hit a single enemy more than once (Excellent for bosses, of course). Just make sure you keep track of what may null it. I remember a horse-like demon that reflected it. Wasn't pretty.
Focus - Don't be an idiot and drop this like I did. Yes, magic is much more useful than physical attacks in the beginning of the game - almost everything has a weakness and you can't really depend on criticals. But, when you get near end game, you'll gain access to absurdly powerful physical attacks and even a fire elemental attack that Focus can modify. Critical hits from focused HP-using attacks will make you really fucking strong. Plus, you'll get Pierce - a skill that lets you bypass physical resistance with your attacks and basically makes physical attacks the strongest option for any demon that has it (Yeah, you can put Focus on Pierce on demons too, just know that you'll still have better skills to use it on than them). It all combines to make focused physical attacks really effective. You won't get another chance to put Focus on your hero, so never give this up!
Fog Breath/Warcry - These skills work like Sukunda and Tarunda, which decrease enemy evasion/accuracy and physical/magical power respectively. The difference is that these skills are twice as potent, making them powerful abilities to have on your hero. Note that as you can still only decrease an enemy's stats to the same amount as you would the regular -unda skills, it'll just take less turns.