Thank you Gratesca for sending us this game to review!

Noctuary is the latest visual novel and action role-playing game (RPG) hybrid from Chinese developer Gratesca. While there is a fair amount of combat, probably 75% of the game time is reading written text, with the rest action. The action is quite intense, with an interesting combination of top-down action and almost bullet-heck style gameplay. The visual novel aspects of the game are as common to the genre, with backgrounds and characters on the screen, with text on the bottom. Many but not all scenes are voice acted; you can choose Cantonese or Mandarin for voiceovers. I chose Cantonese for my playthrough. The visual novel sections only have a handful of choices available, mostly related to seeing the endings.

You play the roles of the dual protagonists, Fancia Dream and Alina Nightsong. They are Illuminators, which is the primary species of light-bearing intelligent life. All Illuminators are born from the dreams of plants, and can live extremely long lives if they manage to avoid being killed by Darkritters or any other means (accidents, etc.). Illuminators have their own light, and actually glow in the dark. They live in a place called Inlixaland, which is the domain of Illuminators. Inlixaland is naturally dark, except for the light of the most powerful Illuminator, Inlixa Solar. She glows so brightly that she is considered a deity, and the land is named after her. She replicates the day while awake, and the night while she sleeps.

Fancia and Alina are partners who wish to become Arborangers together. Arborangers are a group of Illuminators tasked with protecting normal citizens from Darkritters and other threats, and use weapons called Illumiarms. Each Arboranger has their own, and it allows them to channel their light energy into offensive attacks that they can use to help others.

Darkritters are the Illuminator's counterparts, and are creatures made of darkness. They feed on light, and are known to attack Illuminators who are out at night or are far from the protection of a Beacon. Beacons are the central hubs of Illuminator civilization; there are several which are visited throughout your adventures.

Despite not yet being Arborangers, Fancia and Alina decide to take on an official mission to search in the forest for a newborn Illuminator, despite not yet being qualified to do so. Newborns are usually smaller and child-like, but are larger and more mature than a human infant. They discover an Illuminator that they think might be the newborn they are looking for, and attempt to bring her back to where they live, Rosecrown Beacon. They are rescued after running into a large swarm of Darkritters, but thankfully everyone survives.

It turns out that one they rescues is actually Lumina Fullmoon, a mysterious woman who has lost her memory. After training to become Arborangers, Fancia and Alina are tasked to explore Inlixaland in the hopes of learning more about Lumina, and to help her gain her memories back.

If I go too much farther into the story, I feel like I'll start treading into spoiler territory. But what I will say is that their time with Lumina starts off innocent enough, and much of the early part of the story is simple and silly hijinks where you get to learn about those you love most in Rosecrown Beacon, then later go to Main Beacon (where the sun, or Inlixa's light originates), and other more remote Beacons. You also learn about the governing structures, the Sages, and so on. All throughout, you form relationships, and this process grows Fancia's secret power, the Blessing Flower. Making relationships and deepening friendships allows Fancia to unlock Blessings, which allows her to significantly alter how she handles battle.

Battles are shown from a top-down view, and combat has quite a bit happening at once, which is part of what makes the game so challenging. Fancia offers ranged attacks, while Alina is better at close-range damage. Each character can choose one of three forms to switch between at any time, though I found that most of the time, the second form did the most consistent damage for both characters, as they hit the most times, which often could trigger bonuses easier. Each also has what is called a Light Boost skill, that uses up a meter that is recharged when doing damage to the enemy. On top of this, there are aspects that are introduced far later, like team skills and elemental shields. The main thing though is that action is fast-paced and intense, with enemies sometimes coming from all directions, and switching between stances and characters is simple to do with a press of a button. If you go down, your partner can revive you, which restores a good chunk of her hit points as well, so managing this well can be key to survival, as you need all the health and power you can get.

There are three main ways to get more powerful, other than purely player skill. The first is perhaps the most straightforward; you earn Photons when completing certain main quest missions, usually after a difficult battle. These points can be spent to increase Perks, which directly increases your attack power, hit points, speed, and so on. It's pretty important to spend these wisely, though the game is quite generous, as you can reset them at any time without penalty.

The second and third ways are related. The Blessing Flower can have many Blessings to choose from, which you gain by improving your relationships with characters in the game world. Each Blessing can have an impact, sometimes subtle, other times dramatic. But in order to equip them, you need the other half, Flower Dew. As you collect Dew drops from various side quests, eventually you increase your Flower level. Even at max there aren't enough to equip everything, so making a carefully selected build is really important. With that said, certain combinations make you nearly unstoppable, as long as you play right.

Until that happens though, battles can be quite challenging. After a while you get used to normal Darkritters, and those battles aren't too bad, as long as you keep your wits about you and don't let them kill you too quickly. But until that time, I found the game difficult up front, then it got easier for a while. At around the mid point, the difficulty consistently starts to get more difficult, and certain bosses need you to pay serious attention if you have any hope of surviving. Or, you can take advantage of the assist features.

You could say that the assist features are there for those who prefer visual novels over action games, or simply find the default too much to handle, but either way I'm really glad they are there. The default is 'Action Mode', which is the toughest difficulty. The other preset is 'Story Mode', which increases your health and damage dramatically. It makes the game a lot easier, but you can still die. If that's not enough, you can use 'Custom Mode', where you can choose which assists you want. If you turn everything on you basically can't die, which can be fun, but certain endings actually require you to fail to see them, so you may need to turn them off at that time.

There are several endings, and thankfully the game respects your time enough such that if you beat the game, it unlocks a new mode via the clear saves that makes it much easier to see the rest. The game has a ton of content, with fifty eight main and ninety four side missions. It took me a bit over forty hours to complete the game and see every ending. I actually got all achievements as well.

In case it wasn't obvious, I really enjoyed this game. What really drew me in up front is the absolutely incredible art, in both quality and style, as well as the nothing short of fantastic music. The voice acting, while not always present, is really well done; despite not being used to how Cantonese sounds, the personality and emotions of each character still clearly comes through.

The first chapter or two is a bit more slice-of-life, and the story moves slowly during this time. But it does do a good job of really helping you get to know the world and characters. Some people may be put off by the slow start and silly chit-chat of this section, but later on the central conflicts really come through and the payoff is worth it, at least for me.

From a technical standpoint, the game runs really well. I played almost sixty percent of the game on Linux, as I was too lazy to reboot into Windows when it ran so well there. It ran flawlessly on both; as long as your system handles Steam's Proton well, it should run this game well. It also plays flawlessly on Steam Deck, but some of the text, especially on the map screen, can be a bit small, and benefit from the Deck's magnifying feature. Thankfully, none of the main text of the story is affected by this. The game plays fine with keyboard and mouse or controller, but I played almost entirely with a controller. It supports controller icons for Xbox or DualShock/DualSense controllers.

I did run into a tiny bug that only the most sharp-eyed would notice. If you have a screen with a very high DPI, it might offer you a lower resolution. I ran into this only on one computer, my GPD Win Max 2, which has a 2560x1600 screen that is 10.1" large, so it has a very high DPI. In Windows 11, I could not choose a resolution higher than 1920x1080, despite the screen supporting more. In Linux, if I had the display scaling at 1.0, I could choose the full 2560x1440 resolution. If I had display scaling set higher, then it would offer me 1280x720 as my resolution option. Strange, but not a huge problem, since I had a workaround. My desktop that has a 4K display had no trouble playing at that size, and my laptop and its 1080p screen also gave me the native resolution, so it's just the super-high DPI of my handheld computer that gave me trouble. I doubt most people would even run into this.

Morally, Noctuary has some issues, but not terrible given what is common in this type of game. (All-female cast games, especially visual novels, can sometimes be filled with over-the-top nudity and/or obvious same-sex flirtation.) There is fantasy violence, and the world is a dangerous place where Darkritters are almost always a threat. There is talk of suicide. There is no visible blood, as Illuminators return to light when they die. Weapons and other aspects of the world are powered by light and/or souls, so spiritual energies and mysticism is present to some extent. A couple of characters and quests rely on divination. Magic-like effects are present in the world and are used by enemies and the player. As previously mentioned, Inlixa is considered a deity to the Illuminators.

Some characters drink alcohol, and the player can as well. There are also other drugs present in the game, as well as quests involving them. Curse words are present but rare, and relatively minor, mostly involving words like 'd*mn', 'h*ll', and 'p*ss'. Most females are reasonably dressed, though skirts can tend a bit short. There are notable exceptions, with some women exposing cleavage, and one goes as far as showing the side of her breast. Since there are only females and no males or any reproduction at all as far as I can tell for Illuminators, there is no sexual content. Some of the relationships are hinted at to be quite close, or even devoted to each other, but I do not think it crosses the line towards inappropriate.

Noctuary is a really neat and obscure English word. It's the opposite of diary; while a diary is a written log of what happened during the day, a noctuary is a written log of what happened at night. Given the nature of the story, this title is quite apropos. If you haven't figured it out yet, Noctuary really surprised me, in a good way. I often find myself playing visual novels during wintertime, and this year it somehow has happened again. But this one really hit home. The incredible art, amazing music (that is offered for free on Steam as DLC - over four hours of music!), really good voice acting, and interesting story all really grew on me. If you're not a fan of visual novels or story-heavy games, this might not be for you. The action segments are fun, but I ended up using assists after a while, because I wanted to see more of the story, and those battles were stopping me from doing so! As someone who loves a good story, Noctuary came out of nowhere and kept me up far too late way too often. I'm going to be keeping a closer eye on this developer in the future; they truly impressed me here, and if you enjoy visual novels with solid combat, then take a close look at Noctuary. I doubt you'll be disappointed!