Nights of Azure combines beautiful storytelling with dungeoncrawling combat to bring you an astounding masterpiece. Or close to it. Maybe more on the spectrum of okay more so than masterpiece, but it definitely wasn't bad by any means. Though it did have some flaws that I will discuss. I'll break the game down into several segments, consisting of story, gameplay, quality, and replayability, and judge the game on all of these criteria.
Story:
800 years ago, the First Saint of the world fought the Eternal Lord of Night. Though the Saint succeeded in defeating her foe, the Eternal Lord of Night's blood spilled over the world, which came to be known by man as Blue Blood. This Blue Blood turned men into horrible demons which ravaged the night. Thus, humans could not leave their homes after the night. Every one-hundred years, a Saint is selected to contain the Eternal Lord of Night's blood within them as a vessel. Jump forward 800 years, in the 17th Century, on a fictional island known as Ruswal, which sits north of current day Finland, where the presence of the Eternal Lord of Night's power is the strongest. We follow Arnice, a Knight in service of a mysterious organization called the Curia, which monitors Arnice as she becomes a Holy Knight and swears to protect the Saint she is tasked to protect. She doesn't know of who it is, until she docks and meets her friend, Lilysse, who took up the role of this current century's Saint. The two of them were friends long before the story starts, and Arnice now must protect her friend from the Eternal Lord of Night.
The story of Nights of Azure is the absolute best part of the game. As you progress through the game, you'll get to see Arnice's and Lilysse's friendship bloom into something more, or, depending on the choices you can make in the game, you can be a total douche to Lilysse. But also as you progress through the story, Lilysse learns that in order to stop the Eternal Lord of Night from completely covering this world in complete night, where demons can roam around freely, she must sacrifice herself, as tradition every 100 years. Arnice is opposed to this because it's her best friend and, entirely, is too selfish to let her go.
The plot ultimately comes down to the prospect: Do you let friendship sink in and save one person, while sacrificing the entire world, or let her sacrifice herself to save the world? By building up that relationship between Arnice and Lilysse, it forces the game to make that decision which, morally, has no right path. You give up one to save the other. There's no right choice. But along the way, the game forces you to feel for Lilysse's plight at being the Saint dedicated to restoring the balance of the world.
And the choices you make throughout the game dictate which path you can go. So unlike 99% of most games nowadays, your choices ACTUALLY MATTER. How about that?
You'll meet new characters along the way, including Lloyd, a traveling "merchant" that came to Ruswal in order to build a fortune, Professor Alucard, who ultimately is a douche and wants the world to die so he can accelerate his process and study demons more. This is one part of the game I didn't really like: Professor Alucard and Lloyd serve as comedic relief in between tense scenarios, but it....really doesn't work out that well. Professor Alucard's running jokes become old and Lloyd just ends up looking like a greedy scumbag more often than not.
Aside from the comedic relief, I really enjoyed Arnice and Lilysse's relationship. It's not really uncommon nowadays to see two girls liking each other, or saying "I love you" in traditional media, but it's always a refresher from the typical romance plots. And the audience knows Arnice and Lilysse are in love, the game even says so.
Even still, it's a story best experienced for yourself, so if you don't want to read ahead, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS BELOW. THIS IS IN BIG BOLD LETTERS TO TELL YOU. THIS IS A DISCLAIMER AND YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Overall, the story was pretty solid, even if the random tidbits of comedic relief didn't really suit the game's dark and serious atmosphere.
Overall: 8.5/10.
Gameplay:
Unfortunately, this is where most of the game is....lackluster.
Before I start, I will say, there are immense issues with controllers on the PC Version of this game, which is what I ended up playing on. I don't know if it was because I was using a PS4 controller, but the trigger buttons didn't work on my version, which included two necessary mechanics to having fun with the game, Transformation and Servan Deck Switch. Both of which I'll go over later, but there are glaring issues with mapping buttons to the triggers that don't necessarily work. And I've tried, believe me. I tried assigning my buttons hundreds of times, with no success. The game just will not map my trigger buttons to anything.
Nights of Azure in and of itself is basically...I'd say 50% Visual Novel, 50% Dungeoncrawler. And when I saw Dungeoncrawler, I mean CRAWLER. Near the end of the game, I had to do so many runs of the game just to try and level up so I could be on par with the final boss. It really got tedious and boring for a little bit while I did was try and hit things with my giant ass sword.
Anyways, the field screen is pretty basic. You have Arnice's HP and SP, which is used to do Special Attacks, and among other things, summon the servants that are listed in the bottom-right corner. Servans are a mechanic kind of like helpers in combat, and by pressing RB plus the button correlating to that Servan, you can Summon it. There are many different types of Servans you can obtain, from sword-wielding dinosaurs to golden statues of lions to metal bombers. I think there are a total of 30 different types of Servans you can get in the game, so there are definitely options. Servans themselves are half-demon apparitions that have come into contact with Blue Blood, and have rightfully turned into Demons, but retain the memories of when they were still human, so they cannot become fully demonized. They help Arnice in her fight by putting down fields of protection, paralyzing enemies, healing other party members and Arnice, and managing crowd control. Eventually, the party I settled on was an Alraune, a Servan who can heal the entire group, Wolf, which deals massive amounts of damage, Arachne, who can tank and crowd control, and Bisque, a mechanical doll that lays down a protective field around Arnice whenever she is knocked down, and can push enemies away with her special attack.
The Servan mechanic itself is pretty in-depth, which is one of the parts I like about the game. You can have a wide assortment of different Servans that basically change altogether how you engage foes, and tackle situations. Servans can also affect your Transformation, with a mechanic called Transformation Rites. It actually matters how your Servans are lined up in combat, because having one Servan in front of the other can completely change your Transformation. Right now, since Alraune is the leader of the Servan Group, I have special access to a Transformation called "Phantom Form". The leader always gets a 2x bonus to their Transformation Rites. But if I were to put Wolf as the leader, I would get another transformation differently called "Rabbit Form", so it actually matters how you set up your party.
By the way, Phantom Form is the best.
Although you don't get Transformation until about roughly 3 hours in, Phantom Form quickly becomes a necessity for combat, as level spikes and difficulty spikes will make your Servans die quickly, and if you don't have a dedicated healer, you'll be struggling to keep your Servan's health and SP up unless you have Phantom Form. Which is one thing I quite disliked about the game: it's difficulty spikes. There's a lot of difference between Level 4 and Level 5, and even more so to Level 6. So you always need to make sure you're up to date, by constantly grinding dungeons for Blue Blood dropped off of enemies.
How you get new Servans is through finding Fetishes in Dungeons. Yes, I said fetishes. You filthy people.
By expending the Blood you find in dungeons, you can materialize new Fetishes into Servans. However, one thing I also didn't like is you also need Blood to level up Arnice. So it becomes a point of...yep, you guessed it, going into dungeons and grinding for more Blood.
The rest of combat is...boring. And sometimes wonky in some of the ways it works. For example, Lock-On. The camera turns too slowly to face the target you are locked on to, which in some situations is incredibly bad. And also, you can't turn the camera while locked on because turning the camera makes you switch your locked on target. Which...is fundamentally a bad design when you're trying to constantly find your target because you locked onto something that moves around at 9,000 miles per hour.
Boss design looks cool. You can fight a giant circus-themed Carousel.
I wish I was kidding.
No, but really, I think the boss designs are some of the best parts of the game. You can fight a bunch of dragons, sure, but wouldn't you rather fight a giant circus themed Carousel who has a giant cannon in the middle of its chest?
And yes, bosses drop significantly more EXP (which is used to level up Servans) and Blood, so it's easily the fastest way to grind for Blood. But still not really an efficient way to do it. Which is sad, because the difficulty spikes are so bad and it takes so long to grind for levels that sometimes its not even worth it. As you can see, my Servans are two levels above where I am because the ratio of EXP that you get from enemies and the Blood you get for Leveling up Arnice is so much in favor of the Servans.
There is an equipment system in the game, however, it only lets you equip up to 4 items, and even then, you have to build up Arnice with Skill Points, which you can get from doing Daytime Activities.
One major thing I have about combat in the game, is you do absolutely no damage. Like, at all. You only do 20 damage per attack while your Servans can miraculously deal 200 damage in bursts. Against Level 7+ enemies, they just become literal sponges and laugh at you while you try to attack them. So unfortunately, in order to make any progress in the game in terms of how much damage you do, you have to get ATK boosting items, but most ATK boosting items come with a penalty or some other negative that make it not worth using. For example: Glass Blade. An item that gives you an enormous boost to ATK but the instant you get hit, you die. Like, who would ever use that? And it's not just that, another ATK boosting item can lower your HP and SP altogether. So, yes, there are some glaring problems with how much raw damage you can do without ultimately sacrificing something else entirely. Same for DEF.
There's also a Side Quest option available for those of you who want to waste your time. No really, they are a waste of time because the Side Quests in this game don't give anything meaningful or worthwhile. They're just literally a waste of time. Same with Side Scenarios, pictured above. These are literally only meant for progress in the game, and they do nothing beneficial for you overall. No EXP, no Blood, no Libra (the money in the game), no nothing. Not even affection for dear Lilysse. It's literally just a waste of time to try and do everything because there's no benefit to doing it.
So just stick to killing bosses. Like this guy here. Poor Spider is gonna crushed underneath his foot sooner or later.
So unfortunately, the gameplay isn't as great as the storyline. Which is a shame. I hear they are trying to rework and revamp some of the features in Nights of Azure 2. Hopefully, the first step is that you start to deal more damage and fix the lock-on mechanic so that you can freely rotate the camera while still being locked on to a singular target.
Overall: 6/10.
Quality:
The mature theme of the game is ruined ultimately by tidbits of comedic relief that really don't belong in the game. The gameplay elements don't really work, blend together, or have a consistent theme. It honestly feels like the title was rushed to publish which happens with the majority of games nowadays. And actually, I think Nights of Azure was rushed, if I remember correctly. But still, it is a game by Koei TECMO, and being a longtime fan of their work, I really still enjoy the works that they have been putting out this year. Nioh, Atelier Sophie, Nights of Azure, Dynasty Warriors: Godseekers are all games to count on their list. So while it sucks that this game couldn't be at its best, its still somewhat of a decent effort.
The game graphically is okay. It reminds me a bit of a Tales game, which is also probably why I enjoyed playing through the story so much. Just the way everyone's characters are modeled and how they behave during cutscenes really reminds me of the most recent Tales game (not Berseria, but Zestiria). There's plenty of stuff to look at, like Concept Arts, music which you can jam out to, and you can listen to the VAs from the characters ramble on in Japanese. Perfect dream for all you people who listen to Japanese out there.
Also, speaking of music, the OST from this game is AMAZING. There isn't a single song I disliked from the entire soundtrack. Which is really saying something. In fact, I'm listening to one of my favorite boss themes while I'm typing this review simply because I enjoy the track so much.
If you're ever having any doubts as to if you don't like the soundtrack or not, just listen to this piece for a few minutes, and get back to me.
Overall, fairly good execution of the game, but not wonderful or exhilarating. It's just.....good.
Overall: 7/10.
Replayability:
So, obviously, like I said before during the Story breakdown of the game, your choices actually dictate which path you go along. If you are in favor of saving Lilysse and make the correct choices, you can potentially go for the True Ending of the story. If you don't, you'll get the Neutral ending (which is the worst ending ever). And depending on the choices you make, some characters will appear in the story, and some won't even appear at all. I'm gonna try and work for the True Ending and see if it changes my outlook on the multiple choice path in the game to see if it even matters.
But yes, there is tons of replayability. As with most games nowadays, after completing the game, you can make a new Save file with all of your progress and continue from where you left off, but before you had beaten the final boss of the game. And there's still so much of the game I haven't even explored or caught onto yet. For example, there's a Transformation named "Nightmare Form" which I have no idea how to get. I'm also not even Level 10 yet, the game's maximum Level Cap. I only beat the game at Level 9. I still have two more Servans I have to find in the world. And I managed to cram all this within 24 hours of playtime (if I'm remembering my save time correctly.)
So yes. Lots of replayability.
Replayability: 8.5/10.
Now, it's time for the final wrap-up. In this section, I'll detail if this game is truly one for you, and if you should decide to play it or not.
Would I recommend this game?:
Honestly, if you like story more than gameplay, go for it. But if you value gameplay over story, give this one a pass. I only stuck around because I like story more than gameplay. The gameplay drowns out the best parts of the story, and the gameplay proves only as a barrier to really enjoying the story.
There are some good parts in the game, but there are also some bad parts, and parts that I honestly really really really despise. But overall, it's good. Not great, not terrible. Just....good.
Overall rating of the game: 7.5/10. A good game. But ONLY for the story.
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