Toronto Thumbs

REVIEW
Knights in the Nightmare

As much as I love RPGs, and I do love playing RPGs, reviewing them is continually proving a gigantic pain in the ass. This is a rather worthless statement given how easily I can be replaced. Everyone wants to write about videogames, aided in no small part by the relatively cheap nature of pens and keyboards. Engagement with the material is a little more costly however, which is why it’s so often the first victim of budget cutbacks. But if you’re one of the few finding it hard to encapsulate these experiences with a few hundred disposable words, then maybe you know where I’m coming from. I’m increasingly less interested in informing your purchasing decisions over simply having a conversation. There’s no answer or strategy for it – ideally the content offers the direction of voice and perspective.

I can tell you that what I love about the RPG genre has more to with legacy over relevancy – what these games used to represent rather than what they’ve become. When the industry was still in a state of graphical and narrative adolescence, these games offered the first real and believable sense of character, presenting deeper conflicts, personalities, and stories that were fresh because of an untapped complexity – an additional layer of effort that created new realities. The connection between the game and the gamer flowed naturally through the controller, allowing pixelated environments and characters to become real based on the merits of actions and events that required user participation.

Whether these characters and worlds have deflated and lost this depth in the quest for greater physical realism, or whether the narrative possibilities have reached the same limitations that cause other mediums to seek new vistas for storytelling is open to debate. What does remain certain is that very few developers seem interested in tackling this challenge.

There are a handful of releases that have seen me through the long winter of monotony. Admittedly the Tales series manages to still slip by on some mixture of scope and visual flair. Generally, games with SMT in the title manage to stir the cultural stew while endeavouring to reinvigorate gameplay. If I come across as an Atlus faithful, it isn’t because of a predetermined bias, but because the company reliably explores new territory with the larger share of its releases. Some of these attempts are more successful than others. In the case of Knights in the Nightmare, I was struck by a different approach. Everyone has a story to tell, but that doesn’t implicitly mean that story is always worth listening to. However, if one stops talking long enough to create something that is engaging to the touch before worrying about the ears, there’s every possibility that the result will be more compelling for the reorganization of priorities. I didn’t invest a fortune of quarters in shmups because of story, but because of the tactile experience. And that’s a good place to start, because a shmup isn’t an RPG, and yet maybe an RPG doesn’t always start with story – it’s just a game that happens to place more emphasis on it.

Sting’s DS release of Knights in the Nightmare manages to achieve more because explaining the story to you is the least of my concerns. The game is a lush, vibrant, unique, insightful, and innovative experience that obviously tests the limits of my thesaurus. The significance is reminiscent of the RPG renaissance on the PSOne that saw the release of titles pushing the genre to the limits of gameplay while still offering expansive narrative. So I don’t feel the need to spend pages convincing you of how important the story and characters are, not because they are non-existent, but because gameplay is the larger concern.

Simply put, the gameplay mechanics offer a greater reason for player investment than any writer could. And it’s odd that this isn’t a focus for more developers given that narrative is a relatively hit or miss business. Certainly gamers will push through tedious gameplay to pursue a compelling story, and yet accessible and tactile gameplay creates reason enough for the endeavour prior to that concern.

Players take on the role of the wisp, a small ball of white light controlled entirely by the stylus, and the idea of controlling the game by that means alone was enough to push me through a lengthy tutorial. Everything the player needs is accessible on the touch screen, which acts as a grid for the action that takes place on the top screen of the DS. Rolling the wisp over a knight triggers a normal attack, which is then aimed by stretching the direction of the attack toward enemies as the strike gauge charges. But these attacks are not enough to destroy an enemy entirely, instead producing crystals that players collect with the wisp to charge skilled attacks needed to finish opponents. These are selected by moving the wisp over weapons placed in item slots prior to battle. Enemy attacks are directed against the player rather than the knights directly, in the form of bullet hell patterns that attempt to fill the screen and strike the wisp. The result is a battle sequence that takes on the challenge of turning a strategy situation into a fast paced and reflex intensive gameplay dynamic equivalent to the shmup.

The additional complications are simply layered over this foundation. Objects on the battle screen can be attacked and destroyed to gain items and the essential personal items. And these personal items dramatically change the player connection to knights, who appear as new characters to be used during battle, but only join the party permanently when these personal items are dragged over them. The player uses objects from each character’s past to make a direct connection with these knights and thereby earn insight into their motivations for joining the quest to begin with. The involvement of each knight is legitimately earned in this way, rather than simply having their role dictated, with the formation of the party determined by the player’s ability to assign these items to the proper knights in the first place. So the emphasis of creating a party is placed entirely on the player.

All the elements of a successful strategy game still surface. Multiple weapons can be combined and strengthened prior to battles, with class specifications determining which knights can use which weapons. A battle has multiple stages, with a break between each where the player can change the weapons and items made available. An addition element allows the player to change the status of battle between phases, which affects the weapons as well as increases the amount of crystals produced by normal attacks on enemies – determined by the amount of time the player has spent in a single phase.

Certainly there is no shortage of elements to keep track of, which creates an incredibly complex field of battle to manage – with the player working to keep all of these features in mind while avoiding the aforementioned bullet hell. But this amalgamation of concepts is kept simple because of the tactile nature of the game, which always ensures the player is never physically required to use anything beyond the stylus to make the game work. And this is how the game becomes six layers of brilliant, relying on proactive innovation in how the player interacts with these established gameplay mechanics. When there is no new landscape left to conquer, you instead revisit, reinvent, manipulate and mutate the existing environment to create a fresh experience. That the game also manages to present a landscape overgrown with unique designs and a pervasively fresh aesthetic is a welcomed occurrence.

Normally I’d reinforce the reasons why I feel this title is important, which you’d then be free to take or leave at your leisure. But just this once I’d like to sidestep that dance and take a different approach. Knights in the Nightmare is about the last remnants of resistance against predictable and repetitive games that embrace simplistic and reliable branding for the masses. And that’s where the intimate experiment from my childhood meets with cold corporate reality, where we as gamers have an active decision to make in whether we want to consume the same experience over and over again, or embrace the spirit that offers new ways to experience the core fundamentals.

Abandon delusions of objective journalism, because they are delusions. This isn’t about objective journalism, but about the manipulation and mutation of culture - and our stake in it is clear. Our participation isn’t a passing joke, despite how many of my peers write off the significance of everyone’s role in determining where the industry moves. And where they openly insult and belittle your stake in the matter, I’m arguing that it’s up to you to determine the return on your investment regarding the mindshare owed. It’s up to you to decide who gives you the most return, and certainly in your interest to consider it.

This is about a reality founded on capitalism, now entering a state of hyper-capitalism where we can’t separate the differences anymore. There is no line between lifestyle and labour, and we vote with each dollar to determine the direction of these mediums – this is the 24/7 culture blender, where your participation is vital despite the incentives offered to ignore that responsibility. So, I won’t go on at length about a videogame, because I’m not convinced that’s the answer this time. There are countless reasons why you should at the very least try this title before succumbing to more predictable habits. The focus of that decision is on you, even if you don’t believe it is – so I’ll leave you to cast your vote in the matter and help set the course of the machinery.

Posted in DS, DSi, Reviews |