By now, most people probably know that Lunar Knights is not an all-new IP for the Nintendo DS, but actually one more chapter in the Boktai series, which originally appeared on the Game Boy Advance. Don’t feel bad if you didn’t know that – Konami doesn’t want you to. In the Boktai games, you played as a vampire hunter, using a solar sensor to charge your Gun Del Sol and eradicate them. Unfortunately for the Boktai series, even with a number of interesting concepts and several attempts at refining those concepts (Lunar Knights would have been to fourth title in the series), the games just didn’t sell well. For various reasons, despite my own interest, I never got around to try any of the titles, so I’m as much to blame as anybody. However, perhaps the biggest factor in Boktai’s failure was the very gimmick that made it stand out so much from Konami’s similar franchise (that is to say, Castlevania) in the first place. Realizing that the solar sensor may very well have been the nail in Boktai’s coffin – or, if you prefer, stake through the heart – they made moves to make people forget all about that with the next game in the series. The sensor was scrapped, the name was changed, and the game jumped platforms from the GBA to NDS, but at its core, the game is still Boktai.
Similar to how most of The Legend of Zelda games take place in Hyrule, this game is considered to take place in the same world as past Boktai games, just in a different time. In the future, a technical marvel known as the paraSOL, an Environmental Manipulation System, allows mankind to alter the planet’s weather at will. But, when it falls into the wrong hands, a group of ancient vampires called the Dark Tribe use it to create a world without sunlight...and a dystopia under their control. For the living, a choice is offered: live in the forbidden city as a slave, slowly be drained by the vampires, or live in the outside world, a place of uncertainty where you could be hunted down and killed at any moment. However, the vampires are not unopposed, and the Guild is a group of gunslingers that harness the power of the sun to try and defeat the undead at every turn. Aaron is one such gunslinger, though he is younger than the others and more impulsive. Ruled by his emotions and the memory of his dead father, he hasn’t yet been able to get Knight, his father’s gun, to work when the game starts. However, Aaron is only half the heroic team you play as, with the other being Lucian, a famous but oh-so-mysterious swordsman bent on revenge. Along the way, the two will be helped by a number of quirky characters including the Terrennials, elemental avatars that are willing to grant our heroes special powers and more control over the climate on their quest to restore the natural balance. All in all, the story is quite involved and intriguing, but I’m sad to say though that all of this is a bit wasted in Lunar Knights.
The problem with Lunar Knights is not that it isn’t entertaining - because it actually has quite an interesting story, as I hopefully made clear above - it’s just that the pacing is off. I mean, one minute you’re fighting a boss or whipping through space, using all your skills and cunning to survive, and the next you’re plodding through a massive level with all the excitement of a Sunday afternoon stroll through the park. Of course, that’s not to say you won’t be doing anything but walking from Point A to Point B during those sections, because you’ll be fighting off monsters every step of the way and occasionally you’ll even have to avoid a trap or solve a puzzle. However, after getting so pumped up by the encounters at the end of each level, it is something of a letdown to start a new one. Now, at this point you may be wondering how navigating a dungeon filled with puzzles and monsters to try and reach the boss is any different from, say, The Legend of Zelda or, heck, almost any other game out there? The answer is, of course, it’s not really. You see, while the essential ingredients of your average game are there, this game almost completely negates them thanks to two factors (or, well, maybe just one, as they kind of go hand-in-hand).
First and foremost, Lunar Knights uses an isometric point-of-view, and as anybody who has read even a sampling of my past reviews knows, I can’t stand that. I don’t like it with an analog stick. I like it even less with a D-pad. I would not play it in a box. I would not play it with a fox...unless I’m writing a review. I do not like that isometric point-of-view! Mind you, on the Nintendo DS, the viewpoint wouldn’t be all that bad, or at least not any worse than it is on a game with analog control. But, instead of offering stylus control of character movement, developers almost always seem to stick us with the D-pad, which makes the game difficult to control. So, with that out of the way, what’s the second part? Well, that would be the main characters’ speed...or lack there of. When I mentioned plodding through levels earlier, I literally meant that your character slowly walks through each section, and not with the slow, measured steps of a game like Metal Gear Solid (to which this game shares a pedigree in Hideo Kojima), but with a snail crawl-like pace. Fortunately, that pace can be changed by dashing; unfortunately, dashing drains your energy, which, given the erratic nature of recharge points and the night and day cycle of the game, you may not have a chance to fill up again before you need it, something we’ll get into later. But, worst of all, your characters’ speed isn’t just limited to their movement.
Combat in this game has several, seemingly simple parts that I’m sad to say come together with all the grace of colliding trains. First off, certain factors will constantly change throughout the game; in addition to leveling up your characters and applying the experience to skills of your choosing, there are also a handful of weapons for each character, which can be upgraded by collecting certain ingredients and paying a small fee. Now, Lucian, as I mentioned, is a swordfighter, while Aaron is a gunslinger. For me, with his ability to lock-on from a distance and attack while (mostly) out of harm’s range, Aaron seemed like a smart choice...except that he cannot attack without solar energy. Lucian, on the other hand, does not require energy to attack, unless it is with a Terrennial, and he also seemed a bit stronger and quicker, but that last part may have been his own undoing. As I attacked with him, I often found him going into a combo, which would knock back my opponent most of the time. Normally, such a thing would be considered good, it does after all appear in a number of titles (including the hallowed LoZ series), but I found that the enemies weren’t stunned for very long and often attacked before I could really do anything again, often resulting in a sort of cheap shot despite my best attempts to avoid it.
Posted: 2007-04-14 11:38:59 PST