Knights in the Nightmare

Post by **MrPopo** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 4:59 pm

Wow. I think this is one of the most unique games I've ever played. Sting has already shown their ability to innovate on a genre with Yggdra Union, and now they've done it again. Want a one sentance description? FFT meets bullet hell.

I'm not going to go into the myriad of details involving progressing through the game. I'm just going to touch upon the most engaging part, the combat. You control the wisp using the touch screen. The map is a grid based environment, with several enemies moving along preset paths and one or more knights in fixed positions. The knights can rotate in one of two directions based upon their class, and a couple can change their position as part of attacking. The knights are what actually carry out attacks. To attack, you move the wisp over the knight and charge up an attack. You can charge up a more powerful attack by first dragging a weapon from your stock on the right side over the knight. The longer you charge an attack the more damage it does and the greater attack range it does.

When you damage an enemy several gems will fly out. Killing an enemy will make items fly out. You can pick these up using your wisp before they drop off the bottom of the screen. The gems fill up your MP gauge, which is used in weapon attacks. Weapon attacks are the only ones that do any serious damage, but the regular attacks also are good for getitng gems.

At the beginning of a round you are given a 60 second timer. However, this will only count down when you charge an attack. You can spend as much time as you want flying around. There is one other thing that will remove time from the timer. The various enemies have several bullet-hell style attacks that remove time when they hit your wisp. So while you are directing your knights to attack you also need to avoid enemy attacks. To further add to the bullet-hell mechanics, you can gain bonus experience by coming close to the bullets without hitting them.

The final mechanic is the Law/Chaos mechanics. Similar to Ikaruga or Silhouette Mirage, the field can be in either Law or Chaos mode. Your knights will have different attack ranges in the different modes. For example, the knight attacks in a 1x4 line in Law and a 3x2 block in Chaos. Additionally, the more you attack in Law or Chaos mode the more the fog that blankets the screen lifts. The fog doesn't really obstruct your vision, but when the fog lifts you gain far less jewels from attacks. Without the jewels you won't be able to use your weapon attacks and defeat enemies. So you need to switch up the field in order to keep attacking. But, as mentioned, your attack ranges change when you change the field, and you will need to carefully plan out which knights you are going to use to avoid being caught in a situation where you have no MP and can't gain any more jewels due to enemies being out of range.

Knights in the Nightmare is a very active game that keeps you on your toes. You keep moving around your wisp between the weapons and your knights, aiming attacks and dodging bullets, and collecting gems and items to keep things going. The story, however, is a little obtuse and is told in bits and pieces.

Here's a gameplay video that is fairly confusing, but it's what the game becomes as you get into it. The outlines are your inactive knights. When you drag the wisp over them they fill in and start charging an attack. You can see the charge bar on the right. When an attack hits the enemies you can see the gems and items spew out. In between attacks you can see the four equipped weapons on the right. Each class can only use a specific weapon type, and most weapons can only be used in either Law or Chaos, which requires proper management. You can see the wisp drag a weapon from the bar onto a knight and you can see the more impressive (damage-wise) attacks come out. All the while the wisp has to dodge the enemy bullets.

Post by **Dakinggamer87** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 5:41 pm

I heard great things about this DS RPG will definitely need to go hands-on with it...

Post by **MrPopo** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 6:43 pm

I don't know if it's still up, but they did have a playable demo on the Nintendo Channel. It only lets you do the tutorials, which means you don't get to put together all the elements, but you do get to try out all the pieces.

Post by **xzeronature** » Sat Jun 06, 2009 7:23 pm

This game looks sweet. Wish I knew about it b4 hand so I could of pre-ordered it and got the limited edition version. Guess I'll have to spend the extra few bucks and snag it on ebay.

Post by **fingersmaloy** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 12:11 pm

Anyone else playing this? It's about damn time somebody crossed Shining Force with Asteroids with Bingo and wrapped it in fantastical anime-themed sensibilities. It's been on the top of IGN's annual "Ideas We'd Like to See" list since like 1997.

Also if anyone could tell me what the hell is going on that'd be interesting too.

Post by **MrPopo** » Wed Nov 04, 2009 12:33 pm

I went ahead and merged this with the existing post, though I don't blame you for not seeing it. I haven't had a chance to play it in a while (got distracted by a bunch of other games) but the game was always a blast. I think I'm about 20-25 missions in and I'm starting to get a vague idea of what the story is.