Knights in the Nightmare....shmup and strat/rpg??

[Etrian]

I'll tear you into pieces! It worked!

I have never been sexually attracted to a male voice before..

[Drascin]

Also, audio cues are handy, but I'm not sure I'd call them absolutely vital.

Not vital, no, but really, when everything is shooting at you and you can't distract yourself to watch the bars and such, hearing the sounds is very handy.

But then, I'm generally very sound-dependent.

Also, have played a couple more battles. The game gets real (as in, no more kid gloves) pretty fast, and I'm still not sure I get the kill table thing, but my only real complaint is that whenever I get an unit in the top right corner, it's extremely uncomfortable to grab weapons and such, because I keep mis-selecting the dude .

By the way, anybody know if there's any way to heal units apart from leveling up? I didn't realize the life cost of abilities at first, and a couple of my knights are rather... dying. Again, I mean.

[Gwyrgyn Blood]

So let me get this straight:

You have to select various weapons which are color-coded to your "turn phase" and use them with characters (that don't actually exist) that you can summon (and they're given to you without any explanation whatsoever despite explanations being everywhere) and these summons can only use specific weapons.

Weapons are 'color coded' based on their element. The L/C icons are what tell you if they work in Law or Chaos.

The knights you find that you can recruit are already dead, they are wandering spirits/souls. When you give them a key item they recognize, they will join you. There's a reason for this so it's not without any reason or explanation.

Each class is limited to its own weapon type, other than Maria who uses anything.

This game pretty damn complex. More like, overly complicated though. It's like this finely tuned RPG lands with a bunch of effort shoved into it, but they took that effort, ran with it, and kept running.

It's really not hard at all though. There is a lot of stuff to learn initially but taken bit by bit it comes together pretty fast.

How do you move your characters from where they're currently standing? I wasn't able to do that, but I've only beaten two different battles and I shouldn't feel like I'm forced to read 50+ tutorials before I even play the game.

Dualists move upleft or upright when doing a Chaos attack (any type of attack works). Knights can move in any direction with a Chaos attack but can't move up/down hills. Maria can move 1 square in any direction with her Chaos attack.

There is also an effect type that lets a character move freely but you have to find and activate one of those first.

Also, have played a couple more battles. The game gets real (as in, no more kid gloves) pretty fast, and I'm still not sure I get the kill table thing, but my only real complaint is that whenever I get an unit in the top right corner, it's extremely uncomfortable to grab weapons and such, because I keep mis-selecting the dude .

There's not much to the kill table. It's a grid, and to win any battle you just have to fill in a line horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. You pick which enemies you want to fight during the enemy slot machine between turns. So you can specifically watch and pick to fight enemies that fill in the grid as fast as possible, if your goal is to finish a level fast, or avoid doing so if you need extra time to whack objects for key items.

The only other thing of note really is that the color on the grid, and the color in the slots, is the same as the element of the enemy. So if you are fighting a battle with red/blue/yellow spots, you know automatically that all enemies are of the elements Fire/Ice/Lightning. Makes counter-picking weapons a lot easier.


For mis-selecting guys, if you hold L or R you enter Hide mode. You can't select anything while in this mode so you can use that to get to the item you want without worrying about touching someone by accident.

By the way, anybody know if there's any way to heal units apart from leveling up? I didn't realize the life cost of abilities at first, and a couple of my knights are rather... dying. Again, I mean.

Transoul fuses two knights together. It sort of averages their CI/LI/VIT based on some hard to follow factors like any relationships between the characters, loyalty, and probably other stuff. So basically you can sacrifice one knight to give another some more VIT (and other stuff). A better option is to just keep leveling up any knights you like, you get +1.5 VIT per level up which should keep them alive a long time.

[Drascin]

For mis-selecting guys, if you hold L or R you enter Hide mode. You can't select anything while in this mode so you can use that to get to the item you want without worrying about touching someone by accident.

That's going to be SO useful. Thanks, man!

Transoul fuses two knights together. It sort of averages their CI/LI/VIT based on some hard to follow factors like any relationships between the characters, loyalty, and probably other stuff. So basically you can sacrifice one knight to give another some more VIT (and other stuff). A better option is to just keep leveling up any knights you like, you get +1.5 VIT per level up which should keep them alive a long time.

So, only levelup then. I'm the kind of crazy guy who insists on going through every strategy RPG without losing a single unit. I'm not going to feed my troops to each other unless it becomes absolutely necessary .

[Gwyrgyn Blood]

Units have a max level they can hit, and it's not that high. To get it higher you have to sacrifice a unit to them with Transoul.

You can also use Maria, Nameless knights, and just stick with the latest knights you get if you don't want to worry about Transouling anyone. Can't tell you how well that works in the long run though. Later on I'm sure you are going to be abusing Hi Skills a lot so you might be burning through VIT pretty fast.

[sfried]

Finally got to Scene 11...I should've realized sooner you can switch units at the prep-screen, and that the units alread placed do not necessarily have to be used (unless you have the item to recruit them).

This game has so much in it, I think I might cold-start my save file...

I also have to add that the colors are not what matters in the kill matrix. It's the kills. The colors simply correspond to the enemy/place in the slot/matrix, and you simply have to allign kills (not colors as I had previously assumed) to end the stage. It's possible to end the whole level in one round, for example, if you allign a red, yellow, and blue horizontally or vertically, then kill off all the enemies in that round.

[jp]

I got this game on Friday. I'm digging it. I had to resrart my game twice now though. First time I didn't realize I could get knights (hahahaha, gah!) and the second time I didn't realize I was supposed to be giving items to the villagers.

First time I think I got to scene 8 or so. Second time to scene 13. Now I'm on Scene 15.

Cool game though, for sure.

[Kyper]

Yay, I recently completed my first playthrough. I'm pretty bad at SRPGs (as in I don't really have elaborate strategies, just use the basics) but it wasn't too hard. I didn't transoul anyone and I didn't have any problems. Actually, I tried to by looking at the vit graphs of the characters and exhaust the ones with a starting high vit rating while getting their loyalty up in the process. Didn't really matter 'cause I had lots of knights to use and most of the high level weapons simply allow you to use both that weapon/element's hi skill with both law and chaos.

I really overlooked effects 'cause they'd disappear after the rush count changed. But after doing some reading, the early effects are quite useful like #3 quick charge. And effects don't change until a combo ends, so you can do things like juggle a boss with 2 lance knights or stack together lots of boosted elemental damage with the ready function and decent timing. And to use the later effects, there's #55 which can let you carry the rush count to another turn.

Luckily, there's an alternate story mode, along with hard and nightmare difficulties to try out my new found info...

[FRO]

So this is RTS, not a more traditional turn-based strategy game? I thought it was the latter.

So then it's like Herzog Zwei?