Lunar Knights

"Come rain or shine, the sun is still in your hands"

Once upon a time, a great man decided to create a brand new action-adventure game that employed the use of one of our planet's natural resources - the sun. The name of that man is Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear Solid fame, and the title of that game is Boktai. It was a dungeon-crawling, puzzle-laden quest of good versus vampires. The use of the solar sensor built into the game cartridge allowed the player to harness the power of sunlight to charge up their vampire-killing firearm in-game. It was an interesting gimmick, but if you lived in a part of the world where the sun just didn't show much, it was difficult to make progress. The Boktai games were limited by the natural environment you were playing in, and as such they never made it as big as they deserved.

Enter Lunar Knights.

Visuals - 8
Sound & Music - 8
Gameplay - 8
Controls - A
Longevity - B (10+ hours)
Replayability - B
Difficulty - Medium

Grooviness - 9
VERDICT - 7.5

Sunlight!
Lunar Knights ditches the Boktai name (as well as most of the puzzle elements), but it is essentially the 4th title in this handheld series. (Part 3 never saw the light of day, so to speak.) This time there is no solar sensor, with the climate being purely determined by the game itself. There are 2 different characters that you will have to use together to conquer the vampires this time around (reminding anyone of Portrait of Ruin, also developed by Konami?), and in keeping with the new emphasis on bucket-loads of action, there are some space-shooting levels which make use of the DS's touch-screen capabilities.

With Kojima Productions at the helm, there was never any doubt that this package would look impressive, and oh boy does it look good. Lunar Knights starts up with an impressive CG animation depicting the heroes and the villains in a series of scenarios to whet your appetite. Throughout the 10 hour adventure (when run through at a normal pace) there are many of these animations at key points, and they all look great, sound great, and add a lot of atmosphere to the highly animated tale.

The in-game perspective is an isometric one, with the directional buttons able to be mapped to up=up or up=up/left or up/right, depending on your personal preference; all schemes work very well. The 2D sprites all look very pretty and full of colour. However, the overall look does not make much of a leap above what was seen on the GBA's previous 3 outings; this is quite disappointing in light of the excellent production values elsewhere. The space-shooting sequences are modelled in 3D, but they still look rather simple and they only make up a very small part of the already short game.

But who really needs the sun these days?
The premise is your usual 'bad guys take over the world which you must save' deal, with the vampires pretty much owning the humans due to their new-found technologies: the paraSOL which controls the weather, and casket-armour which protects against sunlight. As Aaron, a young gunslinger who wields the power of the sun, and Lucian, a mysterious swordsman who fights with the power of darkness, you need to bring down the blood-suckers by going through a series of action-orientated dungeon-crawls.

Each dungeon is a simple, relatively linear affair with the aim to reach the end whereby a story sequence or boss fight will initiate. Just like in the Boktai games the use of the elements will help you take down the many enemies you will encounter. But unlike the progenitor trilogy, Lunar Knights is a whole lot of hack'n'slashing with hardly any puzzles to break the ice now and again. That's not to say that it is worse for worse; it's still a fun game, but it will disappoint fans of the previous games. With the stealth element reduced to a few compulsory sections, and the fact that Lucian, not requiring any energy to actually use his weapon (unlike Aaron), has become the new lead, Lunar Knights actually feels more like a spin-off from the original idea.

"Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you"
The climate system was MEANT to play a big part in this game. As you get further into the story, you will be able to change the weather to your fancy, be it warm subtropical temperatures or cold & frosty like down here in the South Island of New Zealand where I'm currently at. This will affect the terrain you come across in each and every dungeon. If you can't cross a fallen path, make it rain to flood the area and elevate the platform.

The problem with the system is that you don't just simply change the weather with a flick of the wrist; you have to exit the dungeon you are currently in, go talk someone into changing it for you, and then re-track your steps (along with all the enemy encounters). Luckily it is not mandatory to make use of the climate system to make progress in most cases; its use is geared towards finding alternate paths to find secret items and/or enemies.

The current weather will also affect the power of the elementals that follow you. If the outlook is fairly gusty, you can be sure that the wind elemental will provide a serious 'oomph' to your attacks. If an elemental accompanies you in there preferred environment, they may shine at times. This is your cue to blow into the mic to command them to carry out their special attack. With the ice elemental for example, you can freeze enemies in their tracks. Nice idea, but why the big hassle? Not only must the weather be perfect (which as I said requires you to completely exit a dungeon to change), but you have to blow too? With Lucian's sword able to tear apart most creeps you come across, why bother?

A game of NOT-so-epic proportions
Lunar Knights is one of those games that will pick you up as soon as you pick it up. It makes a great first impression, with the excellent animated sequences, amusing voiceovers, driving, jazzed-up brass beats, and easy-to-get-into action all contributing to a big splash. As you hit the 3 hour mark, then the 6, and then the 9, the game slowly builds up, but it never seems to reach that breaking point. Once the 10 hours are up, you won't feel like you have accomplished very much.

The space-shooting sequences feel tacked on, but they are still a fun diversion from the dungeon-crawling. Too bad there are so few of them. Late in the game there will come the time when you will have to do some mindless levelling or item-hunting just so that you won't die after 3-4 hits from the final bosses. Given that the game is very fast-paced until then, this was something else that brought me down to earth. The final showdown isn't even that impressive as well; heck this game needed more boss battles (the ones there are great, if a little cheapened by 'trance-cheese').

Upon completion, you may go through the game again with all your items and stats intact (i.e. New Game +). You can tackle the hard difficulty setting, finish up sidequests, own all the space missions (only 5) and bosses (only a few more than 5), obtain all the titles, weapons etc. and beat the bonus dungeon that is the Epilogue Tower. There is also a multiplayer deathmatch mode playable via single or multi-card play. Sounds like a lot of stuff, but the main game, the crux of it all, is still a short-lived experience that isn't as fun on consecutive replays. Y,Y,Y.

In closing, Lunar Knights is still a great portable action-adventure title worthy of your hard-earned cash. Visually it hasn't departed far from its predecessors, and gameplay-wise it may have drifted off INTO the beaten path, but the complete package reeks of high quality and it's a nice little quest for anyone wanting a fix of 2D action right now. And this time you don't have to play outside under those harmful UV rays - for good health!

7.5/10 - An average action-adventure masked by stellar production values

Don't forget to check out the awesome looking official site at http://www.konami.jp/gs/game/lunar_knights/ - Why Django & Sabata (DS) was changed to Aaron & Lucian (AL?) is beyond me.

My Score System – a score of 7 from me denotes a good, solid game. Excellence earns a higher grade, whilst 4-6 reflects a below average product; glitchy, unplayable games deserve less.

25/02/07

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/26/07