Knights in the Nightmare

So, Knights in the Nightmare.  This game is something else.  It’s definitely something I’ve never played before.  A mixture of a bullet hell game and a strategy RPG with a bit of chess mixed in.  And, to top it all off, there’s so many missable items and characters, it gets extremely frustrating.

Also, like chess, it’s easy to learn but hard to master.

The meat and potatoes of the game is a pure strategy game.  You have monsters that move on a grid like board, objects ont he board that can be destroyed, and NPC’s/PC’s that do things (give items or attack).  However, none of these can be controlled directly.  You control the wisp.  The enemies shoot attacks at the wisp, not at the characters.  If the wisp is hit, you lose time (starts at sixty).  Once your time hits zero, it’s turn over.  You have X amount of turns to finish each stage (easy it’s 26, normal it’s 6, I don’t know past that as I haven’t beat the game yet).  As the wisp, not only do you dodge bullets, but you also activate your characters, the attackers.  By activating them, you can attack the monsters on the board.  Normal attacks do nothing and that’s where items come into play.  Each item has a durability, and each time you put an item into your slot (four slots total), you lose a durability point.  Once it reaches zero, you’re boned on that item.  However, you can use an item infinitely per turn, so you only lose one point per turn.  To use an item, you drag your wisp over the item and then to the character that can use it (each class can use a specific class of item depending on the phase (more about this later)).  The item then does a special attack and you do massive damage to the NPC, as long as it’s in the attacks path.

As you can imagine, it gets hectic.  While dodging bullets and activating attacks, you also have to worry about your character (Knights) vitality.  If it reaches zero, they disappear forever.  So, you have to level your knights up (in easy mode,t his is pointless.  You lose .1 vitality for each attack, .5 for each special attack) in order to regain your vitality.  Each time you activate your Knight, your timer decreases until the attack is charged.

And that’s the gist of how you play the game.  It’s very basic yet very… hectic and overwhelming.  You have a lot going on all at once, and on harder difficulties (normal, even), the enemies attacks are a lot more frequent, home in on your wisp a lot quicker, and the screen can be crowded.

The presentation of the game is amazing.  It’s got a very noir feel to it, not your typical wide eyed small mouth anime game.  It’s very gritty.  And, to top it off, the characters are pretty nasty.  At least the bad ones.  The story is presented in a very non-linear, sometimes confusing manner (even the creators were confused by it).

I would have more to report about the game, but I’m not very far.  I will continue to update about this game, as it supposedly can have upwards of 200 hours worth of gameplay.  It’s very hardcore and worth the time/money spent on it.

Good luck on finding it, though.  It’s popular in a niche crowd and hard to find.