Nintendo DS Reviews Archive

Atlus just seems to have a knack for creating great DS games. And not just great – innovative, too. Super Robot Taisen OG Saga Endless Frontier, Dokapon Journey, The Dark spire, and Luminous Arc 2 are among some of their most recent DS games – not to mention various popular franchises they have on other platforms. Knights in the nightmare is their newest DS offering, and though the game’s release was not heralded in advance, it has arrived with a particularly loud Bang.

The premise of the game is basically this: You are a small glowing spirit, called a Wisp, and you’ve suddenly attained consciousness. You have no memories of anything prior to your awakening. All you feel is a strong pull towards Aventheim castle, a mighty stronghold across the lake. A mysterious woman clad in armor appears, stating that the two of you are going to need each other’s help to achieve mutually beneficial goals. But just because you’re an intangible ball of light doesn’t mean you’re defenseless – oh no. Inherent within you is the power to return fallen soldiers from the grave, to fight at your side with a variety of especially nasty magical weapons. With your legion of the dead carving a path through all opposition you meet, you head towards mysterious Aventheim castle, where your destiny awaits.

This initial series of events is nothing particularly new or exciting, I’ll grant – but it’s delivered in a very compelling way. Right before each battle, the plot advances in real time, and after each battle, you become privy to flashbacks of events leading up to what is continually referred to as “The tragedy of Aventheim Castle”. The game’s a bit obtuse with the flashbacks, and it takes about twenty missions before you can actually begin to piece together specific events. However, these cutscenes have a neat tendency to show how your allies came to be deceased in the first place. These deaths run the gamut of manners in which they die – some of your allies heroically sacrifice themselves to buy the others time, and others are shown to be sniveling cowards. It’s a small touch, but I enjoyed it. The only grievance with this multiple cutscene setup is that it sometimes drags things out a bit, and makes you lose your sense of immersion.

The gameplay is where all the innovation comes out to play. The entire combat system is controlled via the touch screen. Why, you ask? Because there are not enough buttons to encapsulate all the things you will need to do. Not well, anyways. The battles are set up in a grid, and you have several soldiers whom can attack. To have an ally attack, you must use an weapon on them, and have them charge for a short time, then release when you want to attack. Weapons have varying elements and attack patterns, depending on their type, and what phase you are in. I’ll get into phases in just a bit, but suffice it to say that Warriors generally attack in front of themselves, and Wizards and assassins have far more eclectic attack patterns. Now, depending on the unit’s class, they can only face certain directions. For instance, a warrior faces left-up diagonally, and right-up diagonally. A Hermit (which is essentially an assassin class) faces the opposite directions, attacking from the back of the grid. Most units are unable to move across the grid, instead relying on the large areas of effect of their magical weapons. The exceptions are the Duelist, and the Knight, who can each use certain attacks as a form of locomotion to move across the board. The duelist can only face two directions, however, so they’ll fast run out of options and find themselves at the edge of the map where their attacks are useless. You have sixty seconds to kill the enemies, but that time only counts down when you’re charging a weapon, or you take damage. In addition, you have to attack enemies to gain MP, so you ca use the items to do some damage. A standard attack without a weapon attached does practically no damage, but it gets you gems, which get you MP. If you have no MP, and the enemies aren’t dropping gems, you have to do a phase change. The game has two phases – Law and Chaos. Each mode affects the range and damage of your weapons. Some weapons can be used in both phases, but many can only be used in one. Switching phases is simple, you go to small icon in the corner of the screen, and spin the C or the L to the top position. Having to juggle phases means that your characters can end up sitting still while you frantically try to collect gems. Good thing they can’t really die.
Which brings me to a key point: The characters in the game have no HP. They don’t take damage from enemy attacks – only the wisp does. You see, while you’ve been zooming around the screen, the enemies have been volleying all of their attacks at the wisp. That’s right – that goblin swinging his club has been doing his level best to brain an intangible wisp. But more disturbing even than that is the he’s doing a fairly good job of it. Each attack from an enemy creates bullets of varying shape, size, and speed. If these bullets hit you, you lose time on the clock. For most enemies, this can be 3 to 8 seconds, but damage from bosses can be in excess of 18 seconds. Now, every battle has multiple rounds, so losing all the time doesn’t mean game over, but if you manage to not clear the battle in time, you’ll have to retry.

These are the basic elements of the combat system – the bare essentials. There’s a lot more to learn in the game, so you’re going to want to hit the tutorial mode up for sure. It’s a rich – if convoluted system, and it makes no excuses for itself. Beginners and casual gamers beware: this game is not meant for you. Seasoned strategy gamers, this game is a challenge, no doubt – but well worth it.

The graphics are great. The whole game is done in the anime style that Atlus seems to be so fond of, with visual effects that pop. The character sprites have very little animation, however, but you seldom have time to watch the characters move, for fear of taking a bullet up the arse.

The sound is phenomenal. The music is well done, in particular – in fact, Atlus felt so good about the music, that they give you a CD with the soundtrack to the game whenever you purchase the game. There’s little voice acting to speak of, except for battle cries and the like. These little snippets sound great though, and the sound effects are brilliant. With the amount going on in the game, there can be quite a few sounds coming at you, but it still manages to not get muddled. It’s like an organized cacophony.

All in all, Knights in the Nightmare is a very solid offering. It’s a brand new combat system that’s so fresh and unique that it practically demands to have sequels. Not only that, but this game is BIG. I’ve sunk quite a bit of time into it, and I haven’t yet seen all there is to see. I heartily recommend this game to anyone who thinks themselves good at strategy games. This game will take your for a ride.