While there probably won’t be anything on Nintendo’s other console to catch my attention for another week, the Nintendo DS has no lack of entertaining new software these days. Though it was released many weeks ago, I recently decided to pick up Lunar Knights to pass the time on a recent business trip, and I’ve been very satisfied thus far.
Lunar Knights is the sequel to Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hands, the GameBoy Advance title that holds the distinction of being the only game that required direct sunlight to play. The name of the game was and still is vampire hunting, and vampires must be cleansed using direct sunlight to prevent reincarnation. Luckily this time Kojima Productions decided to ditch the solar sensor for the DS outing (though you can still use a Boktai cartridge to enhance your Lunar Knights experience), and this new story revolves around not only a sun-driven protagonist but also a mysterious vampire hunter who draws his power from the moon.
Like its predecessor, Lunar Knights employs an isometric perspective, so it is far more common to move along diagonals than along the basic directions of the control pad. The control setup can be altered to remap up on the control pad to “up and right” or “up and left,” but this proved to be too confusing for me most of the time. The only real difficulty with the default controls is that I inadvertently run when trying to move in diagonals (which wouldn’t be a problem if it didn’t consume precious energy) and then have trouble running at diagonals when I want to do so. I’m also not keen on using the R shoulder button to lock on to targets since that quickly leads to hand cramps, but it’s something I’ll eventually master.
The most enjoyable part of the Lunar Knights experience so far has been the variety of gameplay. Though the main characters Lucian and Aaron have the same controls, their methods of fighting are fundamentally different. Lucian is limited to melee attacks which need not consume energy, while Aaron must use a terennial (a sprite-like elemental follower) at all times for his ranged attacks, consuming energy at all times. For this reason, while it may be tempting to fire on all enemies from afar with Aaron’s collection of solar guns, his energy will be rapidly depleted in this case, making him useless for offense. Lucian, on the other hand, can continue to slice away with his sword with or without a terennial, but the trade off is that he must place himself in harm’s way to do battle effectively. A typical stage will see the characters fighting through a dungeon to the vampire boss, who will be encased in a casket upon defeat. The game then remarkably switches to a touch-screen-only shooting affair where the casket is flown into outer space to be purified by a concentrated solar beam from a satellite in orbit around the planet. These shooting stages are a welcome break from dungeon-crawling and can provide a good bit of challenge to boot.
With crisp graphics, upbeat music, challenging dungeons, and varied gameplay, Lunar Knights will easily satisfy fans of dungeon-crawling adventures with RPG-style elements.
