why you don't like nocturne? i loved nocturne,it was a classic rpg,you explore dungeon,you level up and being the first game atlus made on ps2 it also meant,it had no recycled content!
the press turn system gives you an advantage but it doesn't make you win as soon as you hit the weakspot of something like in persona 3/4,your team also constantly change,you try to do the best you can with the stuff you have (tough i admit that fighting matador without using otome is really too hard)
the story didn't do much for me but it's enjoyable and fairly original,on contrast persona 3 deals with a "monster of the week (pardon! month)" plot and persona 4 with "guy to rescue of the week (month!)" and also feeds you bits of it,every 3/4 hour you spent talking to boring guys who tries to hit on their teacher
bosses in nocturne can put up a fight tough ultimately the one who wins the battle is the one that is more buffed/less debuffed this make some fight a breeze but luckily the later bosses either learns to use anti-buff/anti-debuff skills or come with their own buff/debuff so the bosses turn into a buff tug of war
there are only two thing i really dislike about nocturne,the first is the sokoban minigame that is forced upon the player to get some extra skills,i mean i have gone trough this kind of shit thanks to final fantasy x but dude we are talking about fucking sokoban... the worst game ever,you just can't force this on the player...
the second thing is this particular bit of the game,you have to clear 3 dungeon,problem is these 3 dungeon have like a gazillion of dead end,each time you take the wrong way? back to the beginning! WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! seriously it's a horrible horrible horrible idea made with the only intent to frustate the player to death
Well, I guess I should change my statement. It's not that it's antiquated...SMT1/2/if are still awesome and they have similar gameplay. It's just that the game itself isn't VERY GOOD.
Persona 2, however. Is fuck amazing. Need to play IS translation sometime.
persona 2 is good indeed,tough it is quite easy to mop the floor with the enemies if you use your good fusion spells,tough usualy i just level up until i'm higher level than the monster of the current dungeon and then just cast estoma and never bother with combat again for the rest of the dungeon