Lunar Knights

"Very short, very simple, very replayable, but doesn't take you beyond the moon."

Story
7/10

Welcome to the land of Lunar Knights, a sequal to the beloved boktai series. You start out in a world taken over by vampires as the dark swordsman, Lucian, with a talking flying cat named Nero who aids you along your way. As the game progresses you gain control of another character, Aaron a solar gun wielding marksman and his flying sunflower friend.

The story is pretty straight forward, fight vampires to free the human race and help lucian get revenge against the vampire who wronged him. There aren't any real twists that will surprise you in the game or any twists, in all reality the game takes about 15 hours to beat, even if you're taking your time with it.

So all in all the story isn't the best thing since sliced bread, still good, but not as good as sliced bread *drools* mmmmmm bread.......

Gameplay and mechanics
8/10

Lunar Knights starts out with your standard hack n' slash fighting, but eventually you are given the ability to shoot n' dash with various weapons and weapon upgrades. Upgrading your weapons allows you to perform charged attacks and more attacks in a combo, as well as making your attacks stronger. These upgrades are performed while you visit an alchemist and his android assistant and give them junk(junk items).

In the game you are aided by petite creatures (who seemingly hover behind you at all times), known as terrenials. The reason for the terrenials is that they give you elemental boosts to your attacks to match your enemies weakness (light, dark, fire, ice, earth, and wind), can perform certain abilities when you blow in the microphone, and most importantly, these little guys give you trance attacks, which are your souped attacks in this game.

Trance attacks are based off of your trance meter, which is a bunch of little squares that fill up as you fight enemies. When you've attacked enough times, you gain access to a trance attack by tapping on the trance icon on the touch screen. When you're in a trance attack, follow the instructions that your terrenial gives you (blow in the mic, circle the enemy with stylus, etc.) or if you're using either toasty(the flower) or nero(the cat) you fuse together and basically become a super version of your character for a limited amount of time(makes the game way easy).

You are given three base stats, Vitality (health), Spirit (energy for the gun and elemental attacks), and Skill (Attack power). Since the game is an Adventure RPG, you gain experience and level up as you defeat monsters. When you gain a level you are given stat points and are allowed to allocate them into whatever stat you want to boost.

All in all, the gameplay is better than sliced bread.

Sound
6/10

The voice acting is awful and everyone seems to echo as they talk.

The music is jazzy and fine.

The sound effects are alright.

There could've been better work on the VA, but other than that it's fine.

Overall
7/10
The game's fine, made well, full of many a replay hour and a New Game + feature that will make you happy. I'd tell you to rent it first.......but I don't think you can rent DS games...........so uh.......borrow a friends.........play it......if you like it.......buy it.......I wouldn't recommend it as an impulse buy.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/20/07