SCIENCE!!! – Knights in the Nightmare Lazy Man’s Startup
Well then. This be the most complicated DS game I’ve ever played. Woah kids. I never said “fuck this noise.” There’s some good combat up in this. This is a one-of-a-kind battle system everybody should experience as it’s a Strategy RPG that moves at the speed of you. Think Secret of Mana * Disgaea * Big Bang Mini. Despite all the complaining on the complexity, I haven’t lost yet on Normal. There’s too much tutorial for one player to take in without stabbing one’s face, so let me tell you things ya actually need to know as opposed to the encyclopedia the game wants you to know…at least to get you through the first 10 stages…
I’m a lazy guy, you’re a lazy guy. This here’s a beginner’s guide for lazy people that don’t suck at videogames.
Step 1: Watch all the Basic Steps section before you start the game. Don’t worry about the Tutorial right away.
Step 2: Read this guide
Step 3: Play game with sound. Audio cues are very important when trying to follow what the hell this game is doing, despite the failwhale voice acting.
Step 4?: Reread guide or go this way if still confused: www.atlus.com/knights
WTF is the Objective?
Before the fight, see that 4×4 grid on the bottom left (top screen) with the horizontal lines? Some of them may say ‘KILL’. All you’re doing is playing 4×4 Tic Tac Toe/Connect Four. You want to run a line of four kills horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. Every horizontal line represents the lifeline of a bad guy. Kill one, you get the ‘KILL’ label on the grid part the enemy represents. Every “battle” you think you’re fighting with that wisp countdown is really just called a turn (and I’ll just call ‘battle turn’). You are given something like 9-ish of these ‘battle turns’ to kill enough enemies to make a tic tac toe on this 4×4 grid. At the beginning of each battle turn you get to pick which spots on the grid you fight the enemies in what looks like a slot machine. If you have any Mario Party dice-manipulation skills whatsoever, you can time it so you can pick any grid space you want. The colored lights flash in the same order, so count how many flashes it takes for your light to reach the space you want and stop the slot machine accordingly.
SideTip: If you see one horizontal bar has two different color lifelines, that enemy is going to recover health. Depending on the bad guy, it could recover over time if you don't select it again, or it can recover if you hand pick that enemy for another fight right away. It’s kinda like the Vs. Street Fighter series when you swap a partner out. The longer lifeline is the amount the bad guy can recover. In most cases, just try to select the same enemy multiple times in a row until dead since enemy damage accumulates across multiple turns.
