Well I've been playing this yesterday and today so here are a few first impressions.
I'm going to start with what may be seen as negatives first, because that's just the kind of guy I am. Some of these might not actually be negative depending on your point of view but here goes. Lunar Knights, as a Boktai game, is yet another series that made the leap from GBA to DS for no real reason other than the DS is the next system up. This could be a GBA game. Is that a problem? Nope, not for the game itself. It just brings home once again that the GBA may have been killed off far too early.
But it has lost the solar sensor in the move. Now some people will see this as a negative (innovation=everything?) but, actually, I see this as a positive. The solar sensor idea for Boktai was a great gimmick but for some of us rendered the games almost unplayable. If you work during the day or don't live in an area with a lot of sunlight or don't fancy playing outdoors, Boktai was useless. Not so with Lunar Knights. No solar sensor equals much more freedom to play. A positive in my view. I have heard you can attach a GBA Boktai cart if you want to play with a solar sensor but it hasn't been mentioned in-game and I haven't read the rather meaty instructions.
And yet, it suffers from a common DSism that I wish developers would just stop doing - they have a 'blow' mechanism. For whistling. Yep, to attract monsters in this, you have to blow into the microphone, which is supposed to simulate whistling. Now, I know that the microphone can pick up sound. Nintendogs showed that (Nintendogs and Elektroplankton - are they the only games that actually use the microphone for anything other than blowing?). So why blowing represents whistling, rather than actual whistling representing whistling, is a mystery to me. Any more immersive than hitting a button to knock on a wall? No. Just offputting to those of us who play while commuting. Adds nothing.
There is one other DS-related negative that I have to say I didn't see coming at all - the d-pad on the Lite is pox for an isometric game. The Lite d-pad is very loose in comparison with its closest neighbour - the Micro d-pad. As a result, getting those diagonals is a little tricky. That wouldn't be much of a problem except for a mechanic they have added to Lunar Knights: to dash, you hit forward twice. What this amounts to is that, while you have your finger hovering between up and right (for example) to move up the screen, the d-pad will register little movements between the two and think you're pressing a particular direction twice quickly. The result? You dash for no apparent reason. It took me about an hour's worth of play to figure out why that was happening. It's not good.
So, onto the good. If you liked the Boktai games at all, there is much to love right from the start in Lunar Knights. Sure, the characters are different and they have adopted even more of an anime style (whether you like that or not is a matter of taste), but the look and feel of the gameplay is exactly like Boktai. It's very familiar.
You start not with a little sun guy, but as a dark kid with a flying cat, Nero, as a familar. You're on a planet (yep, it's gone a bit more sci-fi) that has been plunged into darkness by a nasty vampire. And you've got to take him out. Like the little sunflower thing in Boktai, Nero tells you everything you need to know as you go on so the early parts of the game are tutorial-like and yet not so simple that they'd bore anyone who played Boktai.
There's a nice blocking feature which becomes essential in the early boss battles and starting with a sword rather than a gun adds interest (although, if I remember correctly, Boktai 2 had that too).
If you're wondering what's on the second screen - the sky. So far that hasn't done anything but I'd imagine it plays a bigger part when you get into day/night stuff. It hasn't asked for the time yet so I don't think what time it is in the real world plays any part.
So far, it's all more of the same. If you liked Boktai, you're likely to enjoy this too. I'll be interested to see if it adds anything new along the way.
I'm going to start with what may be seen as negatives first, because that's just the kind of guy I am. Some of these might not actually be negative depending on your point of view but here goes. Lunar Knights, as a Boktai game, is yet another series that made the leap from GBA to DS for no real reason other than the DS is the next system up. This could be a GBA game. Is that a problem? Nope, not for the game itself. It just brings home once again that the GBA may have been killed off far too early.
But it has lost the solar sensor in the move. Now some people will see this as a negative (innovation=everything?) but, actually, I see this as a positive. The solar sensor idea for Boktai was a great gimmick but for some of us rendered the games almost unplayable. If you work during the day or don't live in an area with a lot of sunlight or don't fancy playing outdoors, Boktai was useless. Not so with Lunar Knights. No solar sensor equals much more freedom to play. A positive in my view. I have heard you can attach a GBA Boktai cart if you want to play with a solar sensor but it hasn't been mentioned in-game and I haven't read the rather meaty instructions.
And yet, it suffers from a common DSism that I wish developers would just stop doing - they have a 'blow' mechanism. For whistling. Yep, to attract monsters in this, you have to blow into the microphone, which is supposed to simulate whistling. Now, I know that the microphone can pick up sound. Nintendogs showed that (Nintendogs and Elektroplankton - are they the only games that actually use the microphone for anything other than blowing?). So why blowing represents whistling, rather than actual whistling representing whistling, is a mystery to me. Any more immersive than hitting a button to knock on a wall? No. Just offputting to those of us who play while commuting. Adds nothing.
There is one other DS-related negative that I have to say I didn't see coming at all - the d-pad on the Lite is pox for an isometric game. The Lite d-pad is very loose in comparison with its closest neighbour - the Micro d-pad. As a result, getting those diagonals is a little tricky. That wouldn't be much of a problem except for a mechanic they have added to Lunar Knights: to dash, you hit forward twice. What this amounts to is that, while you have your finger hovering between up and right (for example) to move up the screen, the d-pad will register little movements between the two and think you're pressing a particular direction twice quickly. The result? You dash for no apparent reason. It took me about an hour's worth of play to figure out why that was happening. It's not good.
So, onto the good. If you liked the Boktai games at all, there is much to love right from the start in Lunar Knights. Sure, the characters are different and they have adopted even more of an anime style (whether you like that or not is a matter of taste), but the look and feel of the gameplay is exactly like Boktai. It's very familiar.
You start not with a little sun guy, but as a dark kid with a flying cat, Nero, as a familar. You're on a planet (yep, it's gone a bit more sci-fi) that has been plunged into darkness by a nasty vampire. And you've got to take him out. Like the little sunflower thing in Boktai, Nero tells you everything you need to know as you go on so the early parts of the game are tutorial-like and yet not so simple that they'd bore anyone who played Boktai.
There's a nice blocking feature which becomes essential in the early boss battles and starting with a sword rather than a gun adds interest (although, if I remember correctly, Boktai 2 had that too).
If you're wondering what's on the second screen - the sky. So far that hasn't done anything but I'd imagine it plays a bigger part when you get into day/night stuff. It hasn't asked for the time yet so I don't think what time it is in the real world plays any part.
So far, it's all more of the same. If you liked Boktai, you're likely to enjoy this too. I'll be interested to see if it adds anything new along the way.
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