Lunar Knights

Lunar Knights

Lunar Knights, known as Bokura no Taiyō: Django & Sabata (ボクらの太陽 Django ＆ Sabata) in Japan, Boktai DS for short, is a Nintendo DS game released in 2006 by Konami.

Characters

Lucian

Lucian (Sabata in the Japanese release) is one of the two main heroes, and uses the powers of darkness. He hunts vampires and purifies them with the help of his ship Laplace and "Sunflower Girl" Alice. His Terrennial is Nero, whom he "stole" from Dumas seven years prior to the beginning of the game.

Aaron

Aaron (Django in the Japanese release) is the second of the two main heroes. He starts off as an apprentice Gunslinger from the Guild. After saving a girl in danger, he discovers that his Solar Gun holds the Solar Terennial, Toasty, allowing him to tap on Solar powers to use his guns.

Dumas

Dumas is the vampire who rules over both Old and New Culiacan. Prior to the events in the game, he had taken Ellen, Lucian's loved one, as his "bride", and as such Lucian bore a grudge against Dumas.

Terrennials

Lunar Knights introduces the use of powerful creatures representing the elements. They can be used to change the type of attack a character can use, as well as being able to do specific moves when you "whistle" or blow into the microphone. While the Trance Gauge is full, the player can perform a special Burst or Trance attack to unleash powerful attacks on monsters in the vicinity.

Gameplay

Lunar Knights allows the player to control not just one, but two characters, though not at the same time. Once both characters join up in a certain point of the plot, the player is free to switch them in and out. Lucian specializes in melee weapons, while Aaron specializes in ranged ones. One cannot switch characters while under a status effect (poison, confusion, etc).

New to this game are shields. Shields allow for the player to block incoming attacks, though by doing so they lose some of their guard counter. Not using the shields will cause the guard counter to slowly replenish. Should the guard counter reach 0 the player becomes stunned for a short while, and cannot guard again until the guard counter replenishes past 10. Finally, if the player pulls up the shield to guard an attack just before it connects, no guard count is lost, while special effects can occur.

Another new addition is the lock-on ability, allowing for the player to attack a certain monster from afar from an unusual angle. While holding down the R button (to lock on), if the monster is killed the game would immediately lock on to the next target for the player to attack.

Weather System

Unlike the first three Boktai games before it, Lunar Knights operates on a different weather system. This weather system is self-contained, meaning that no Solar Sensor is needed, but if the player so wishes they could link the game to a Boktai game with a Solar Sensor to use it in different ways.

The weather system contains a day/night cycle, and as such it measures moonlight strength at night. Unless they are wearing special equipment, only Aaron can charge during the day, Lucian at night. The strength of moonlight or sunlight also varies depending on cloud cover.

In addition to sunlight and moonlight, the weather system also contains 3 variables - temperature, humidity, and wind speed. These variables affect gameplay as when certain items expire under certain conditions, rather than rot they are converted into better items that will never expire. Additionally, some areas cannot be reached unless these satisfy certain conditions.

Once past a certain part in the plot, the player gets the opportunity to change the climate, and thus adjust the innate weather conditions to suit them. On occasion, special things may happen in certain climates (like a sandstorm in the Arid Desert, or thunderstorms in the Tropical Rainforest), which may bring about special effects. Also, using a Terennial Burst will adjust the weather conditions to temporarily match the Terennial's climate.

External links

• Official English website
• Official Japanese website

Gallery

American cover