Knights in the Nightmare Review
People usually complain nowadays that games are too simplistic, yet when developers try and shake things up a bit, they are deemed “too complicated” or “unnecessary changes”. In comes Knights In the Nightmare, a game that doesn't sugar-coat what it is: an overcomplicated, hard to get into and a hard to grasp storyline early on. This game may be for those who’ll take their time to understand the mechanics, but for others, it’s probably not for you.
Knights In The Nightmare has you taking control of a wisp: a sort of ball of moving light. You travel through the lands while trying to track down a mysterious woman who you seem to remember vaguely. Along your journey, enemies will try and stop you from trying to reach your goals. This is where the all important game mechanic comes in. As you venture through the lands, you will hear stories of how some Knights met their fate. It's during these moments that their spirits still lurk around the area. And being a wisp, you have the ability to control these spirits to fight off your enemies.
At first look, you will see a standard grid-based map with the enemies, objects and spirits placed around. Your first impression will probably be that this is a strategy type game where you’ll be ordering your units to move from square to square and telling them who to attack. But the fight takes place in real time, meaning the enemies will move around the map and try to attack you. And by you I mean the wisp, not the Knights. The enemies’ attacks will disperse all around the map, which is very reminiscent of Bullet Hell from the Shoot Em Up games. You must use your stylus to move the wisp around and dodge the attacks while planning your own attacks. And how do you do that? Well that's where the Knights come in.
On the upper right corner of the screen you will see a 5 square box with weapons in them. Each weapon is unique to each of the seven classes that are available and are also unique with the attack pattern that they have. Using the stylus, you choose a weapon and drag it down to one of the Knights so that he can equip it and use his skill attacks. But the Knights can't move around the map, so what you must do is keep the stylus touching the screen so that your Knight can charge up their attack. Once charged up, a certain amount of squares on the grid will be highlighted, indicating where the attack will hit. You then have to wait until an enemy comes to one of them for you to let go of the touch screen, at which point your Knight will attack and cause massive damage to the enemy. Unfortunately, these skill attacks cost MP, and the way you go about getting more of it is by using your stylus to collect gems that come out of each object and enemy as you hit them. You can also do a standard, non-charged attack but it won't kill the enemy. So if you’re down on MP, then a standard attack would be the only way to get more.
Winning a match doesn't just consist of you defeating all enemies, because there has to be a bit of a balance. Generally, maps are small because you can't move your Knights around and you have to win somehow. But as you defeat more and more enemies, a bar on the bottom left of your screen with blank slots fills up. So the way you go about beating the stage is by filling in a certain section of those slots in a vertical pattern, almost like Bingo.
You are given a time limit of one minute per round and must beat the stage before you reach a specified limit of rounds. Time is depleted by either charging up your Knights skill attacks or by being damaged by an enemies attack. Though the time that decreases for your skill attack is capped for only a few seconds, so you can keep waiting until enemies get in range for you to unleash your attack. However, it's not the same for the enemy attacks. As long as you’re getting hit by one of those bullets, your time will decrease. You can opt to forfeit the round and get either experience points to level up your knights or MP for your the next round. Once a round ends, you are presented with three slot machines that hold different monsters in each. So you randomly get to pick which enemies you will face in the next round, which also involves your kill count slot.
There is a bunch more to the game but these are more or less the essential mechanics. It's kind of hard to classify what genre this game would go under, but if I had to choose, I'd say it's like a Tower Defence game. However, instead of building up more and more cannons to attack the enemy, you have a set amount of cannons and you must actively choose which cannon to use and choose where to shoot. At its core, all you’re doing in Knights in the Nightmare is choosing your Knights, loading them up with a weapon and waiting until the enemy gets into range for you to attack. However, there are still a lot of different variables going on that change things up. But if you can wrap your head around that core concept, then you’ve probably got the basics down.
As you progress through the story, enemies get harder and harder to defeat and there is always a constant form of Bullet Hell as you try and pick a weapon and drag it back to your Knight while dodging all of the bullets. Like most touch-based games, there are some issues with the sensitivity. You see, once you hover over a character it will automatically initiate a standard attack. Also, once you hover over a weapon you want to choose, it will automatically pick that weapon out of the box. So there is no direct way to confirm what action you’re doing other than dragging the stylus over the character or item. The problems occur when you try to do all this in one fluid movement. At times, you'll get the right weapon you want but depending on how you move from there, you may automatically choose another weapon, at which point you have to drag the stylus back and choose the proper one you wanted. You may also inadvertently initiate a regular attack with one of the characters that are on the map while going to the weapon box, and then you can't choose a new weapon because your knight must attack. It's a bit of a small problem at first, but once things get real hectic it becomes quite an annoyance to get a weapon, drag it to your knight only to find out it's a weapon that they can't equip, and then you must go back to the weapon box, but you hover over a knight who actually can equip it and it initiates their attack. All while you’re trying to dodge all the bullets coming your way.
One other thing to note: the tutorial, though not mandatory, is highly recommended to do before starting your adventure. And while it does teach you the mechanics of the game, it doesn't properly give context as to why you would need to do that in the game. For example, to recruit other Knights into your party you must hit objects, which will randomly draw a special item at times. You are then told to give the corresponding item to a knight that is on a map. At first I had no clue as to exactly why that would matter or why I would need to hit random objects. But it is later seen that each item is almost a memory fragment for the corresponding knight, which will make them join your team for some odd reason. It should also be noted that the tutorial is a rather long process that involves many steps. I myself just chose to learn the basics and forget the other forty or so tutorial stages because each was long and drawn out.
The story itself is rather good. It is told through both flash backs and present time for the player to get an understanding as to how things came about and where they’re headed. It'll take some time for you to really get a grasp on what's going on, and for the most part, you’re just led on in a linear experience. It isn't until later on that you start to forge your own choices, which affect how the game progresses and leads to multiple endings. The storytelling is, truthfully, up its own ass and doesn't really care that it is. It doesn't spell things out for you and to get a full grasp of things, you just have to accept that and bear through it all. But in the end you'll find that there is indeed a rather interesting story going on.
Knights in the Nightmare isn't for everyone, that is a fact. And the ones that can bear through it will find a game that they will enjoy. While the game itself is rather long and has multiple endings, along with two different perspectives to play, it almost seems to relish in the fact that it is different and adds a whole bunch of mechanics to make it even more complicated. Just by looking at this game it's easy to see someone being intimidated by the tutorial alone. They could have toned it down, but chose to hit a market that was going to buy this game regardless.
