Knights In The Nightmare proves to me that it's always possible to have too much happening in a game at one time. Die-hard fans of the SRPG genre will find a lot to enjoy here, but with so many confusing gameplay mechanics at play it can feel like a chore sometimes. If you take the time to learn the ropes, however, there's still a solid adventure waiting to be had.

You play as the dead Lion Heart King, whose soul has been imprisoned in an urn since his untimely death during the war. A young woman in armor destroys the urn, however, and sets your soul free. With no memory of your former life or what is happening around you, will you be able to learn the truth surrounding your death and help put a stop to evil once and for all?

The narrative flow of Knights In The Nightmare is a mess to start with, as scenes jump in time all over the place, taking you from the present as a wisp (a floating dead soul ball) to the past when your assassination first happened. The story is so confusing to begin with that it's a good thing the game had me save into a corner and thus needed me to restart the whole game after four hours of play. If I hadn't restarted over and viewed the opening of the story with a clearer mind, I would've detested what the story brings to the table. The story isn't amazing, but there are some nice moments, and when you're finally able to see how everything pieces together and know in what point of time each part happens, it becomes much easier to understand and appreciate.

Typical Screen

Trying to describe the gameplay of Knights In The Nightmare to you in a quick manner is tricky and about as daunting as trying to get me to tell you what the secret of life is. It's so daunting to start that just reading the manual isn't even good enough, as you need to play through yet another tutorial just to understand the ropes; I can't think of a game that ever featured a tutorial as long as the one this game provides.

You play as a wisp, though that basically entails you being a cursor to represent your stylus. As your wisp goes into battle, you'll be presented a game board with various squares used to represent where you can place knights, where NPCs will be, the placement of objects, and the starting point and path that a creature will travel. It's your job to equip yourself with items, drag them to the knight that can use them, charge the ability up and in the direction you want to attack, and then unleashing it once the enemy is in striking distance. You'll also need to dodge enemy attacks, since every hit takes time away from you, and each turn only gives you a handful of seconds to make moves.

Players will always be given several Nameless knights that you can use, but once a battle is over they're gone for good. Each level will often present to you at least one named knight, who you can convince to join your side for good. In order to get the knight to join your party, you must first obtain the proper key item made directly for that knight. You receive key items by smashing environmental objects and dragging your wisp over the item. When a level comes up that features the name of a character tied to that object, you equip it in battle and then drag it over them. Once the battle is finished the knight will be yours and join you forever…or until he dies (permanent death sucks).

Each knight's life is tied to their vitality number, which diminishes as skills are used in battle. If a knight is out on the field when their number reaches zero, they'll die and disappear into oblivion, never to return again. There are several ways to keep favorite knights alive, such as using gained experience to raise their level and thus add a bit to their vitality, or you can take another knight in your service and sacrifice their spirit to join the other character. Sacrificing a life so that their soul can transfer to another character is a great way to improve them, but it's a bit heartbreaking when not all the knights are so willing to sacrifice their life for the greater good. Some of the knights are all too happy to do whatever is needed of them, but some are actually quite depressed that you want to kill them so another may live.

After you get a troop of knights to do your bidding, it's time to put them on the grid that is the game's levels. For the most part, once a character is placed they'll never move from that spot, and often they'll never look in more than two directions. Direction pointing is especially important, as characters can often only look in special directions, meaning if you place them wrong, they'll literally be no help at all as they won't be facing the right direction to attack (learning this the hard way is annoying). There are a few classes that can be moved, which is more important for setting up later classes on subsequent turns than using them right away. Once the knights are set it's time to equip the items you're going to carry into battle, which are pre-assigned to special classes (an archer won't be able to use an axe, for example).

In order to use items you'll first need magic, which comes by way of crystals that fly from the enemy when you attack them with a skill or regular attack. The amount of crystals you get per attack is determined by the fog on the screen, which dissipates as you fight in that state (either Law or Chaos). If you need more crystals you need to move to the other state, but be mindful that not all items work in the same state, so a Lawful item won't be accessible in the Chaos state, though some items can indeed be used in both. Once you have enough magic to power a move, you drag your wisp over the item, drag the selected item to the character that can use the item, point in the direction you can attack, and then wait until it's charged.

Ice Blast

Killing all the enemies on screen isn't enough, however, as that is but one turn in a series that you can do (the number changes depending on the scene). The real way to complete a level is to match kills up like a game of Bingo in either a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line. After each turn you're able to select enemies based on a revolving slot machine-esque reel, so you can see what enemies go where, make a strategy as to what line you want to try and complete, and then work towards accomplishing that goal.

There is the gist of the game, but far from it all. You can level-up outside the game to earn experience and items that count towards your regular story mode game. You can fuse items to give them a longer durability, strengthen them by using special materials, and break items down. There are elemental effects, special conditions for moving, and much more.

My biggest problem with the game is the fact that though there's so much depth behind the combat, it never really feels like you're doing anything different from one level to the next, besides fighting some different enemies and needing to come up with a new strategy. It's just a bit redundant the fact that you get some story, fight, get some more story, level up, and then repeat the process. Another problem is that the characters and attacks enemies use are so large that they take a bulk of the screen up, and it's not like there's a lot of space there to begin with. Knights and the equipment tray are so closely bunched together, it's all too common to accidentally select an item you didn't want, or inadvertently activate a knight because they're standing right beside the tray. Also, the text for the story scrolls by way too fast, so if you blink it you'll miss; it's not like I'm an incompetent reader either – it's just quick.

Graphically the game has a nice look to it and the character portraits look pretty nice despite the fact they look the same out on the field. The effects are pretty sparkly too, but the game is overall so dark it's often hard to see things properly. The levels don't look that much differently from each other and overall the game's level of detail is too compressed for the screen it's trying to broadcast the action on. The music and sound effects are great, however, so that's a solid element of the technical package.

There were moments of Knights In The Nightmare that I really enjoyed, but the game is just too convoluted and features hard to initially grasp gameplay, hard to navigate menus, touch screen controls that are a bit iffy, and several other fairly large problems. I do enjoy the game at times, but there's just too many problems hampering what's otherwise a solid experience when everything does come together properly.

Score

Purchase from the link above to help support The Hachiko