Played this for a couple of hours and I've gotta say it is an incredible game. It has an amazing art style and Undertale-like story. The music is absolutely fantastic and the game feels fluid and crisp when it comes to the rhythm timing. The actual combat is genius and makes it much more rewarding than just a simple rhythm game. Even when playing on the hardest difficulty it was so awesome to finally beat that enemy and move on to the next. This game will appeal to many RPG and Rhythm gamers alike and I can't wait for the full release!

This is... beautiful.

Prelude is a pretty short one, but it has a good story and great dialogues, and this world has a totally incredible atmosphere.

Yes, it's a rhythm game with a plot. This may be odd to hear, but you can play it no matter rhythm player you are or not, but of course, if you are - there's a Zen difficulty special for you! And it has some cool rhythm charts to offer.

This is something that I was waiting for last several years. Nocturne is the worth one, I hope to see full game in the future.

Honestly, I can't believe this is free. The quality is THAT good. It's only a taste of what the overall game will be, but it's already enough to leave a mark on even veteran gamers. The settings are created with so much detail, the story is intriguing, the characters feel real, and the gameplay keeps you on your toes and manages to evade that dreaded repetitive feel with a wide range of original tracks. It manages to retain some difficulty but is not impossible to overcome, and the different settings for difficulty help add some replay value. I'm really looking forward to what comes next.

So far i've fell in love with this game.It has given me an undertale vibe tbh,and honestly,the fighting system is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD!The story seems really interesting and the characters are unique and good.The game sure has potential.I hope to see it become one of the best rpg games of the year

Gameplay is super fun and has a great level of challenge even on only the third hardest difficulty. Each enemy feels like a genuine battle and not just something you nonchalantly complete and then move on.

Music is great as well, and varied enough to keep it interesting. A lot of very "grand" sounds that add a lot to the experience.

Story is intriguing and has enough mysteries to keep me engaged.

Very excited to see more.

Lovely game

the bad :
- The random battle sequence is a waste of time if you S or FC on your first try so why bother playing it again?
- The audio latency on keysounded part. Better off with non-keysound. Or do something about the audio API.
- Map is too big with little to explore.

Still recommend it though.

It's pretty darn good! A cool little RPG where the main gimmick is that, instead of using attacks and such during battles, you play a Guitar Hero-esqe (Or, moreso, a Frets on Fire-esqe) minigame to the tune of the battle music. Generally, the mechanic works pretty well! Having to play to the music during fights means that you're always engaged in fights, and is a downright ingenious way of keeping grinding against enemies from getting stale. I'm also a really big fan of all the difficulty options to choose from (even if some seem downright impossible even in the early game), which makes it seem like this game's going to have a lot of replayability in the future. It's not very long, but for the price of free, it's worth at least checking out. I don't feel like it's necessary to go too much more into detail review-wise, so I'm recommending this now. Play it.

So then, why is this review still going? Well, as far as I'm able to tell, Nocturne: Prelude is meant to be (more or less) a demo for the full game. And, while I think the game is definitely worth your time for free, it's rough around the edges in ways that make me anxious as to whether or not this can hold up as a commercial project. With the fact that the game isn't quite finished yet in mind, I'd like to take a moment to talk about the things that bothered me in this game, and how they could be improved. If you're just looking to play the game, you don't have to read this, I've already said it's good. This is moreso for the developer, on the slim off-chance that they find this review.

With that in mind, here's a few gripes (This may seem like a lot, but it's less than it looks):

* Sound. This was something I noticed really quickly. While the game has some pretty good music (as it should), a lot of sound effects seem strangely absent. Clicking to the next dialogue box has sound, but the dialogue actually creeping into the box doesn't. There's no footstep/walking sound. When you "flip" something, it just fades from one music track to another. This might sound (ha) like a weird gripe, but it's really jarring for so many expected sound effects to just be so... absent. Also, while the music is good, it didn't always seem to fit: there were multiple times, in this demo alone, where I thought to myself "Hey, the mood just shifted, why is the same music track playing?" It's not the biggest issue, but again, once I noticed it, it felt really strange for the rest of the game.

* Perspective. Outside of the battles, everything just feels a little too zoomed out. The player isn't very large on-screen, even though he should be the focal point (This might be due to how open the level design is, but it still feels kind of strange). It's another thing where it's difficult to explain how it feels weird without playing it, but still. I personally like the areas being a bit larger, making them feel like they were once heavily populated, but if things had to be pushed a bit closer together for a more zoomed-in camera to work, I think it would be worth it. Also, this is only really tangentally related, but the dialogue box feels too small and cramped, with the character portraits pushed right up next to the text. It also looks a little strange in general, but that's a nitpick more than anything.

* Gameplay. Overall, as I said, I think the gameplay is pretty good. It makes fights fun and less boring. However, while it didn't bore me, there were still a lot of elements that made me fear that, in a full-length title, it could get old fast. Not gaining experience or having a level-up system is already pretty weird in an RPG, but piling random encounters on top of that is even worse. While I enjoyed the fights, having random encounters that you can't run away from, last at least 30-60 seconds a battle, and might not even give you any rewards for winning seems like a losing combination in the long-run. Personally, I'd recommend a Persona-esqe system, where the enemies exist in the overworld, and can simply be avoided by walking away from them, but I'm no game designer. Oh, and while I'm on the topic of gameplay, I wish there was more of an effect to hitting notes during battles, both visually (a bit punchier, maybe synced to the temp if you're feeling spicy) and phonically.

* Graphics. Graphics are hard as hell to make, and Nocturne's style isn't bad (and isn't the focal point), so I'm just going to make a quick mention of a few small things and move on: there's a few flat-color floors that I wish had more detail, and I with the main character had some more fluid moving animation (like a different anim for sprinting, one for starting a sprint, etc). I'd also recommend having some more unique animations/art for character moments (There's a scene where a character asks to hold your hand, why not have them actually holding hands? It would be cute), as I think this would make them more effective, but I get if that stuff is hard to do.

* Story. I think the world of Nocturne makes for a really interesting backdrop for a really cool story. Since I can't make too many conclusions yet, I'll just say that I hope more time is dedicated to slowing down, and fleshing out the characters/world more. I'll touch more on this in the next section.

* Pacing. This is definitely my biggest gripe, by a long shot: this game is just too damn fast-paced, in almost every sense. Dialogue boxes fill at a speed so fast that it makes me question whether or not I'm leaning on a key that's speeding it up. There's also no variance in speed of dialogue, and few-to-no events that break it up (like a sound effect, or a character playing an animation), making it feel like the characters are trying to compete to get their lines out as quickly as they possibly can, regardless of context or mood.
And then there's the story's pacing, which is it's own bag of worms. While not exactly "bad", it moves way, way too fast, with zero downtime between any plot events.

Here's an example: Close to the beginning of the game, you meet a tag-along that sticks with you for the rest of the demo, while simultaneously also discovering an ability you now mysteriously have. After meeting him, you tell him about this person you met earlier, Angel. He tells you to take him to see them, so you go back to find that they aren't there. Your tag-along then recommends that you go see a friend of his. So, you make your way to the friend he's talking about, who explains some of what's going on, what your mysterious power is, and how it works, before sending you on your "main quest".
With this being an RPG, you'd think this entire sequence would take roughly an hour (if not more), wherein your tag-along would tell you small tidbits about the world, or about themselves, or ask you some questions, as both you and them are fleshed out a bit as characters on the way to see these people. Hell, the moment you get your big quest and go on your merry way, you'd expect the demo to end.
But no. This all happens in the span of about 5-10 minutes, and you'll be spending half of that time in battle. The entire demo suffers from this - if this problem stretches throughout the entire commercial game (which, going off of this demo, I am really afraid that it might), I feel that it might singlehandedly pull the whole thing down.

I have a few more gripes (Like how the camera pans in cutscenes are really strangely jerky, or how the tag-along's lowercase speech quirk doesn't entirely fit his personality, at least as far as I know him), but I'll leave it at that for now. I know this is a lot, but I want you to understand that this comes from a place of love: I think this game's got a really strong base to it, that just needs a bit more time in the oven. Hopefully, however, these problems will be at least somewhat fixed when the full game finally launches. Lord knows I'll be looking forward to it.

So... when's the entire game coming out?

Girlfriend walks in: "What are you playing?"
Me: "It's a rhythm game where [insert game's plot]"
Girlfriend: "That sounds depressing as ----."
Me: "Yeaah..."

Despite the heavy subject matter the game deals with which would trigger anyone who has the slightest bit of thanatophobia, I'm recommending the game because of its good music, world design, writing, and gameplay. I've always been bad at rhythm games, but the easy difficulty setting was manageable for me.

Will the full game ever come out? Hopefully.

it was a really good RPG. the Rhythm combat was better than i expected and possesed a diffrent challenge to the game that i didnt expect.
i suggest anyone trys it out.
I would buy it if it gets a full release