 |
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| Knights in the Nightmare (DS) by Mischief Maker 02/16/2010, 12:20am PST | ||||
 |
 |
|||
| I don't know if it's a comment on the lack of imagination in videogame developers these last several years, or a comment on the laziness of professional video game reviewers, but Knights in the Nightmare is one of the most original games I've played in a long time and its failure to fit neatly into a genre slot has left the reviewers baffled, hedging their bets with 7/10 scores and describing it as "one of the most complex SRPGs of all time."
KitN most certainly is not the most complex SRPG of all time. To be fair, the game itself shares some of the blame for this misconception because it has the worst tutorial since the original Final Fantasy Tactics, with over 100 topics spread across 3 different tutorial sections, each only a sentence or two describing a single game mechanic in limbo. It's so confusing, Atlus released a 4-part supplemental tutorial on Youtube. The big secret to understanding this game is that while it does have aspects of SRPGs and Shmups, like the box says, there is a third unlikely genre that casts a much longer shadow over the game: Football Management. KitN is currently my favorite game on the DS. The premise is that erstaz-King-Arthur was murdered, a portal to hell was opened in his castle, and demons are running amok through the countryside, killing knights and commoner alike. You play the disembodied ghost of erstaz-Arthur, gathering a posse of dead knights and fighting his way back to his castle. Gameplay-wise it's like football management with story segments bookending each game. Between games you do the equivalent of training and trading players (distribute exp, fuse souls) and maintaining equipment (fusing and powering up weapons). Each game consists of a specific number of turns. Before each turn you see the playfield and the enemy placement, pick your players, and plan your tactics. But actually pulling off the tactics successfully requires you to succeed in a reflex-based action segment. Each game is a match of around 7 turns between your knights and a team of 9 to 25 monsters. The lifebars for all the monsters are arranged in a matrix at the bottom of the screen, but you only fight a random selection of 3-5 monsters per turn. Winning the match requires killing enough monsters to make a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal line of dead monster lifebars across the matrix, which in story terms is cutting a hole big enough in the enemy ranks to break through. In the action segments, your ghost is represented by a floating hitbox called "the Wisp" and controlled by the stylus. Enemy monsters can detect you, but the only way they can hurt you is by shooting magic bullets at you. You can't hurt monsters directly, but thanks to their bloodthirsty rampage, there are ghosts of recently killed knights all over the place. Grabbing a weapon and dragging it over to a Knight's silhouette gives them their bodies back temporarily and charges up an area attack at the cost of time and MP. Instead of a lifebar, you have a timer that is decreased when charging up knight attacks, or getting hit by an enemy bullet. A turn ends when the timer runs out, or all the monsters onscreen are killed. But there is more to a match than just killing the monsters. There are objects scattered all over the stage like candlesticks and rocks that, castlevania-style, contain weapons and "Key items" (mementos of a dead knight's life, like a wedding ring or a bottle of booze). Knights will only join you permanently if you have their key item and drag it to them during a turn. Since you are limited to 4 items of any type at a time, you might "punt" one turn by just stocking key items and no weapons, then converting the unused time into MP. Also, later in the game the knights on the battlefield start in bad locations and only 2 types of knights can actually move. So you might spend one turn with a duelist knight doing nothing more than jumping up to a high platform, and the next turn replacing that duelist with a now ideally situated archer. Even the character development has more in common with football games than RPGs. All your knights have a limited amount of vitality that drains with every attack they make. Experience gained is put in a pool that you distribute between matches. Relying excessively on one super-fighter will quickly and permanently kill that knight. If you do want a super-knight, you can bench a promising rookie for several matches and pump all your experience into him until he's strong enough to use a high-level weapon you've been saving, then bring him out to wreak some havok in a boss fight. The art design is beautiful. The whole game takes place at night, but instead of a greyed out color palette, the lit spots on the screen are awash with saturated primary colors, like a scene out of the movie "Suspiria." Weapon effects are flashy and impressive, but don't overstay their welcome like a Final Fantasy game. Special mention must be given to the ridiculously ornate armor every single knight in the game wears. It's like the Society for Creative Anachronism visiting Rio for Carnival. My personal favorite is one chick who just wears a blue bikini with enourmous shoulder plates that go above her ears, arm plates, and gauntlets that scrape the ground. No doubt Yahtzee would have a coniption after seeing that these knights showed up to the Apocalypse wearing that! The plot is told, Memento-style, in flash forwards and flashbacks. Usually the flashbacks are watching the Knights you just recruited dying or about to be killed. Maybe it's a cheap trick, but it does make the story more interesting than the last few jRPGs I've played. I'm a few bosses into the game and the plot has already taken a couple truly dark turns. I'm cautiously optimistic that it won't pull a "Disgaea" and suddenly drop its dark premise to start preaching to me about the importance of love. It's weird, it's dark, it's beautiful, it's the most original game in the DS library. No doubt this will be high on future lists of underappreciated gems. Highly recommended! (I'll hunt down some screenshots and captions tomorrow!) |
||||
 |
 |
|||
|
Knights in the Nightmare (DS) by 02/16/2010, 12:20am PST  Re: Knights in the Nightmare (DS) by 02/16/2010, 12:37am PST BDR should have written this NT by 02/16/2010, 6:46am PST Not for this site (he doesn't have the time). NT by 02/16/2010, 8:54am PST *throws party for 20,000th post* NT by 02/16/2010, 10:01am PST FINAL DRAFT WITH (hopefully unbroken) PICTURES LINKED by 02/16/2010, 10:21am PST |
