Some of my followers already know I'm a huge fan of Atlus and their games, Shin Megami Tensei is one of, if not my top, favorite franchise of games. I finally sat down to play Nocturne for the first time just before the Remaster was announced, and I'm excited for my second play-through for the HD edition. So I sit here before you today and say this as a long-time fan of Atlus, one who has been on board since the release of Persona 3 on the PS2, Atlus are a bunch of shameless whores.
Lets' talk about what comes with the Deluxe edition of Nocturne. The very first thing to note is the Maniax DLC which gives you Dante instead of Raidou. Looking into it, this is just a reskin and for fans of DMC or people who wanted Dante because he was in the version of Nocturne that came out in the west. The differences between using the two are rather unnoteworthy.
The other two things that come out with the Deluxe edition are DLC areas that make it easy to get money and experience. These DLC's are just there to make the game easier. The problem with this is the game already has an easy mode that is free to download. The paid DLC the game offers with its deluxe edition is rendered almost entirely moot. The only advantage it gives you is it lets you do a full completion faster. If you are paying for and using the DLC to make the game easier, just don't play on hard mode or switch to merciful. Its only practical function is a minor convenience for completionists. Even if you just want to make buying things on hard easier since Hard mode triples Item costs, making buying certain Magatsu a pain, you can now change difficulty mid-game. You can just change difficulty, buy the item cheaper, than change back. You can bypass the hard mode costs entirely for free, no need to pay the extra money.
I don't think anyone could make an argument that this is legitimately ten dollars of value. But the extra cherry on top that makes all this sort of insulting isn't there, but the fact you got access to the game early if you bought the Deluxe edition. The game was done, it was ready to go, and they know the SMT fanbase is a pretty damn dedicated one. It doesn't feel like all this content was added to make the extra money spent worth the value, it feels like it was added just to try to squeeze some extra money out of the game because they knew a lot of people would pay just to get access to the game a little bit sooner. I've affectionately called Atlus Shameless whores in the past because they do tend to milk their franchises as much as they possibly can, just see all the anime adaptations, spin-offs, and other odd things Persona related that have come out. But in the case of the Deluxe Edition of Nocturne, this just feels like they've been taking a few too many notes from EA in trying to nickel and dime their consumers.
I do not want to see these kinds of practices continue. I am having fun with the remaster, but I encourage everyone to never touch this game's DLC or Deluxe Edition (Especially not the DLC, which would run you 25$ if you bought it each individually instead of getting it all in the bundle). This is just not okay, and if people keep buying things like this we can expect it to keep happening, and to keep getting worse.