Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remastered tips and tricks: Recruit, fuse, and evolve demons and grow your power

Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remaster brings the 2003 PlayStation 2 RPG to the Nintendo Switch. You'll play a high school student who's one of just a handful of humans to survive the apocalypse, and you'll need to master your new demonic powers and recruit other demons to find your place in the strange new world. Here are some tips to making your adventures a little easier.

If you're looking for other classic games to play, check out the best remakes and remasters on Nintendo Switch.

You'll need to build up a party of demons by recruiting them. Any random encounter can turn into a negotiation, but you'll need to give the demons things to earn their trust. Make sure to keep plenty of money, Life Stones, and Beads around that you can offer up. Even if the demon doesn't join you, they might give you an item or just leave the fight. Just remember you need to be the same level or higher for a demon to join you. Also other demons might get annoyed you're talking to their allies and interrupt by attacking you, so you should knock out all but one demon before initiating negotiations.

You'll want to make regular visits to the Cathedral of Shadows to fuse the demons you've recruited into new types, often allowing them to level up. The new demons will inherit skills from the ones that you fused them with so you can choose some of your favorites to keep. You'll want to carefully consider these decisions in order to build teams that can take advantage of the elemental weaknesses of your enemies and help you recruit more demon allies.

If you want to complete your Demon Compendium, you should be aware that not all demons can be recruited or fused — some must be evolved like Pokémon. You can use the item Divining Water to tell if a demon is capable of evolving. When one is close to hitting the right level to evolve, you will see a message saying changes are visible on their body.

Your character is imbued with Magatama, which effectively takes the place of equipment in the game. The Magatama you're using will change your core stats, provide you with different powers as you level up, and determine what types of attacks you're strong or weak against. You'll gain access to new Magatama as you progress through the game, so make sure to experiment with them to help you face different foes.

Periodically your Magatama will act up and you can choose whether to let it or not. This is a gamble, since letting it run wild can result in your full party being healed but can also hit you with a nasty debuff. You should stock up on items to remove debuffs since it's often more efficient than packing lots of healing items.

The post-apocalyptic world of Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remastered is dominated by Kagutsuchi, a celestial object whose power waxes and wanes like the moon. Several mechanics in the game are based on the phase of Kagutsuchi. When it's full, demons will be more aggressive and less likely to negotiate or let you run from a battle. You'll also be able to sacrifice extra demons at the Cathedral of Shadows to increase the power of the demons you're fusing. The fuller Kagutsuchi is, the more damage demons will do in battle and the higher the likelihood is that you'll get a rare item from a treasure chest. During a new Kagutsuchi, demons are more likely to cooperate and join your team.

There are three difficulties in Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remastered: Merciful, Normal, and Hard. You can change between them at any point, which is particularly useful if you're having a tough time or just want to reduce the need to grind. In Merciful difficulty, you'll take less damage, earn XP and money faster, and deal more damage, making it particularly convenient when you want to level up quickly, need money to pick up some key items, or just want to save time while backtracking through a dungeon.

You have the power

These Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remastered tips and tricks should help you survive the game's harsh post-apocalyptic world. If you have any questions that we didn't cover, let us know in the comments section!