Lunar Knights

"Kojima should stick to the Metal Gear series"

Kojima Productions is mainly known for producing the critically acclaimed Metal Gear series, which is without a doubt one of the finest examples of gaming in the industry. However, Kojima Productions is also responsible for a lesser known series called Boktai, which originated on the Game Boy Advance. Lunar Knights is a spiritual successor to the Boktai games, and some might even call it a direct sequel.

Even though I've played a lot of GBA games in my life, I never did try the Boktai games, due to the light sensor that forced you to play the game indoors or outdoors. It just seemed like a stupid feature to me, so I never bothered with the Boktai games. Lunar Knights removes the obtrusive solar sensor as a required feature, but also allows purists to insert a Boktai game into the GBA slot of the DS for classic Boktai style gaming.

Having now played Lunar Knights, I can say that I'm very glad that I skipped the Boktai games. It seems that the solar sensor would be quite a hindrance. Lunar Knights does have some interesting ideas, but it won't be receiving the accolades that the Metal Gear series gets any time soon.

Lunar Knights is a tale about two inverse vampire hunters that partner up to take out a race of vampires that are threatening the safety of the planet. The first vampire hunter is Lucian. Lucian is a dark swordsman that is hell bent on exterminating every vampire in existence. Aaron, the second vampire hunter, is an aspiring gunslinger who uses the power of the sun to fuel his guns. Lucian and Aaron cross paths through some unlikely circumstances, and they end up joining forces, regardless of Lucian's disdain.

You will first play an introductory mission with both Lucian and Aaron separately, but once they are together, you can switch between them in real time. Switching between them becomes important, since each character can only recharge their energy when they are in certain environments. Lucian can charge his energy when he is in the darkness, and Aaron can charge his energy when he is in the sunlight. You can also use restorative items to recharge your energy as well.

Before I tell you about what energy does, I should probably explain the flow of the game a bit. Lunar Knights is a dungeon crawler type action RPG game. You will mainly be going around and either slashing or shooting enemies to progress in the story or solve a myriad of side quests and puzzles. The game is played from a top down perspective.

Okay, back to what your energy does for you. Energy is basically magic points, but it's a little deeper than that. First off, your energy will not recharge automatically when it's not in use. You will need to press a button to recharge your energy, but the catch is that you can only do it in environments that provide the proper settings. Lucian needs to be in a dark environment to recharge, and Aaron needs the sun overhead. If either of them are in a dungeon, they need to find a skylight to recharge. Aaron needs sunlight in order to fire his guns, so if he runs out of energy, he's stuck with only his shield for defense, until he can recharge. Lucian is a little more easy going. His sword does not require dark energy to swing, but he and Aaron both require energy to run, which I found to be incredibly stupid.

Running around a dungeon is a quick way to deplete your energy meter, and once it's gone, you are stuck walking around the dungeon at a snail's pace, which will happen quite often. There is one way to stop this from happening, and that is to walk around at a snail's pace from the get go, but seriously who wants to do that. I understand this game is supposed to be about managing your resources and all, but not being able to run without energy is beyond idiotic.

Well, I'm kind of getting into the gamplay, so I'll stop here and get to my review.

Graphics 6/10

Lunar Knights is cut from a pretty small mold. Don't expect to see anything too surprising after the first few hours of play. The dungeons are basic and uninspired and the regular enemies are poorly designed. The worst part about the enemies is the extreme amount of palette swaps for the enemies. By the time I got to the second area of the game I was already seeing reused enemies. There's really no excuse for this.

There are some anime cut scenes that play during some of the pivotal moments of the game which looked pretty nice. Aside from the cut scenes, the graphics in Lunar Knights are rather disappointing.

Sounds and Music 7/10

The music in Lunar Knights is deservedly one of the best parts of the game. There is a wide array of tracks in the game. Most of them are Jazz inspired tunes that keep the pace of the game going very well. There are also some variations in the music which switch the background music to more mellow tracks and then break into some rock music, which I thought was a nice touch.

Lunar Knights throws some voice acting into the mix as well, but it's pretty bad overall. During the cut scenes is when you hear most of the voice work, but almost all of the NPCs have a quick little one liner that they will say before you talk to them. It may seem cool at first, but it actually can get rather annoying since they keep saying the same thing over and over again every time you talk to them.

Story 5/10

The story in Lunar Knights is okay, but nothing special. A race of vampires is threatening the safety of mankind, and it's up to the vampire hunters to stop them. The vampires have constructed a Parasol, that blocks out the sun, so they can move around freely at all hours of the day.

So in order to keep things consistent with the story, when you beat a vampire boss, you can't simply take him down. After he is defeated, you must get in your spaceship, fly him to a purification system in outer space, and cleanse them at a purification system? Sound stupid? That's because it is. The story attempts to merge futuristic technology with a vampire storyline and it just feels forced and too over the top.

The story is told via anime cut scenes that look pretty decent, but the problem is that very few of the characters have anything interesting to say. Aside from the boss confrontations, I found little to enjoy about the story in Lunar Knights.

Gameplay 4/10

Vampire games like Castlevania have been able to stay fresh by having excellent gameplay, but the gameplay in Lunar Knights is without a doubt the worst part of the game. Lunar Knights factors in a lot of different gameplay mechanics, but everything about the game ends up feeling like a chore.

Enemies drop items quite frequently, and it will not take long for your small inventory to get filled up. Once this happens, you can't pick up any more items, and you'll find yourself using items that you would not normally use, just so you can pick up the new items. Speaking of the inventory, similar items do not stack, and most of the restorative items have a time limit, meaning they will expire if you leave them in your inventory for too long. If they expire then they are gone for good. Fighting your inventory in Lunar Knights is half the battle.

The actual gameplay itself is rather basic but forces many unnecessary stipulations onto you. It forces you to play the game a certain way, even though you are seemingly given a wide range of ways to play the game.

Another terrible part of the game is the spaceship travel. When you defeat a boss vampire, you need to fly them to the space station for purification. This is done via a small mini game that has you dragging your spaceship around the screen with the stylus. You tap the stylus on your enemies to fire at them. Not being able to control your ship and shoot at the same time causes the ship battles to be very tricky, and I'm not sure why they didn't allow you to control the ship with the d-pad, it would have made so much sense.

As if the gameplay isn't bad enough, the horribly broken and unrestrained Trance gauge throws the balance of the game way off. You have a Trance gauge under your life and energy bar, which allows you to go into Trance mode and launch some brutal attacks. The problem with this is that it makes you too powerful. Using the Trance mode lets you take down bosses in a matter of seconds, which kills any of the fun you might have had with the boss battles.

I could seriously talk about the poor game design and execution in this game for a long time. I could talk about how the game has quite possibly the worst menu system I've seen in recent memory, I could talk about the inconsistent and pointless questing system, or I could talk about the boring and mundane gameplay some more, but I think it's clear where I stand on this game.

Most aspects of Lunar Knights are somewhat passable, but the gameplay is just pathetic and it ruins the experience time and time again. I had to force myself to play this game because I just didn't enjoy it very much.

Longevity and Re-Playability 4/10

Lunar Knights is a short game that can be finished in under 10 hours if you plow through the main story. There are some side missions to partake in, but they are not very exciting and often reward you with a single restorative item or a single junk part that you can use to upgrade your weapons.

Upon completing the game, there's really no reason to suffer through it again. Heck it's even tough to get through the first time since the gameplay is so poorly balanced and broken.

Conclusion

If you see Kojima as a despot that can do no wrong, then you might want to give Lunar Knights a try. It has a unique presentation that can be interesting, but the awful gameplay drags the game into oblivion and will force you to look elsewhere for entertainment.

If you want to play a good DS vampire game, stick with one of the DS Castlevania games. All three are infinitely better than Lunar Knights.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 09/01/09

Game Release: Lunar Knights (US, 02/06/07)