Age: 1 day old
Location: In stores & PSN
ESRB: Teen
Players: 1

Hello, PlayStation.Blog readers. I’m a super fun and newly available (in stores and on PSN) game seeking that special person to take me home and get me going. To be clear, I’m not a casual game; I’m the real deal, a true hardcore experience, and I’m looking for a serious gamer who can commit to a mix of action, strategy, and roleplaying to delve into my campaign and unlock my secrets. My name is Knights in the Nightmare, and I’m available now on the PSP.

I vary between 2” tall and total non-corporality. I love long walks along the lakeside; fast-paced, action-packed bullet hell shooter gameplay mixed with tactical RPG goodness; and dark chocolate. I think I have a lot to offer a prospective player: over 40 missions spanning an emotionally charged narrative fraught with loss, hope, and retribution, not to mention a thrilling mix of fast-paced action and strategic roleplaying, beautiful visuals and sounds, and much more.

I’m looking for someone who can handle my uniquely involved, satisfyingly challenging mechanics. He/she must be open to a slight learning curve, but after that it’ll be non-stop innovation, a stunning array of colorful, stylized graphics, and a ton of replayability to boot.

The more time you spend with me, the more you’ll get out of me. I have three different main characters I can offer an interested player, each with their own unique take on my story’s events. Moreover, because recruiting characters throughout my adventure is a big part of the experience, and because it isn’t possible to recruit every single one in one playthrough, you’ll have plenty of cause to boot me up for a second or even third run.

Even better: for a limited time, regardless of whether you pick me up from a store or through PlayStation Store, I’ll have a friend of mine tag along, too. That’s right, get me and you’ll also get Yggdra Union (PSP). Everyone knows two is better (and more fun) than one!

Do you have what it takes to complete me?

• It’s NOT ok to contact this poster with questions/requests regarding the localization and/or release of unrelated games

Because Knights in the Nightmare is so radically different than any other game currently available for the PSP system, it tends to offer most gamers a slightly steeper than usual learning curve. In order to make acclimation to the game’s amazingly satisfying mix of strategy-RPG and bullet-hell action, here’s some tutorial-style stuff to get you started before Knights in the Nightmare hits stores and PSN on November 9th.

The Basics

You are The Wisp. You awaken with no knowledge of where you are or why you’re there. Only one thing draws you: a battered, cursed castle. There, you sense, a terrible tragedy occurred. You find you have the power to awaken and control the spirits of victimized knights, and you find yourself compelled to use this power to uncover the story of this calamity and rid the castle of its curse.

You begin every chapter of the game with a story sequence. These cutscenes are one of the game’s biggest strengths—lovingly drawn and animated, they are heavy with emotion and stray far from your typically bright and happy clichés.

It should be no surprise that you’ll next find yourself on the battlefield. From this first tactical map, you’ll first need to determine who you’re taking into battle. Early on, you won’t really have a choice; you’ll have only the characters the game story provides you for the given scenario. But later, you’ll have one of three different character types in your party:

• Nameless Knights: Their sole purpose is to fill in and help out; they’ll be gone at the end of the battle.

• Recruited Knights: You pull them into your party by giving them an item (in battle) with which they have an emotional connection. Miss your one opportunity and you won’t be able to recruit them until the next playthrough!

• Your Main Character: There are three main characters in Knights, one of which, Princess Yggdra, is all new and exclusive to the upcoming PSP release!

You’ll probably deal the most with recruited Knights, as they’re the only ones whose souls can be fused or harvested in order to improve your overall options on the battlefield. That particular feature, however, is best left for the in-game tutorials. Yay, incentives to buy!

Teh Fighting Rules

Each chapter gives you a set number of turns (based on difficulty setting) to complete the battle. Let me give you an example scenario. You’re starting the first of six turns in particular chapter. You wipe out all the enemies, thus ending the first turn. From here, two things happen: you go to a slot machine of sorts (The “Encounter” Reels) from which YOU, based on your timing, choose which enemies you’ll fight in the next turn:

Tied to each enemy is a tile on the Enemy Matrix. Essentially, you want to fill up a row or column (or a diagonal line) of tiles. Meaning, each time you end a turn and get to the slot machine, you can affect how many turns it takes to complete the chapter. Want to try and recruit as many Knights as possible? Looking to gain as much experience as you can to level your knights up? Well then, try to take as long as possible to get a complete line on the Enemy Matrix. Or maybe you just want to get through the chapter as quickly as possible? Well, try and time your selections on to fill a line up on the Enemy Matrix as soon as possible (I’ve zoomed in on it below):

Teh Fighting Controls/Mechanics

There is one very important thing to know about fights in Knights in the Nightmare: You do not control the Knights. You are the Wisp. That is what moves when you move the nub/directional pad. So, as the Wisp, here’s what you can do. At the start of your fight, you set four weapons in the four slots around the screen (or maybe three weapons and one key item, so that you can hand it to a Knight and have them join your party). These weapons have two primary traits:

1. Alignment (Law or Chaos): A balancing system for the game’s combat. In short, as you spam a weapon in one alignment (you actually toggle between the two), it becomes less effective and you receive less MP to use on special attacks from your enemies. Law weapons cannot be used when you are in Chaos mode, and vice versa.
2. Class restriction: Weapons are all designed for one knight class (of which there are 9). You cannot use a Warrior’s axe with a Lance Knight and you only have four weapon slots and typically 2-3 characters in a fight at once. This means you’ll often have to be making tough choices: what items/characters you take into which fights and so forth. Rewarding strategy!

So you move around as the Wisp and drag weapons ONTO the characters you command. Your enemies attack you with floating, neon projectiles. It doesn’t matter if their attacks hit your Knights; they’ll just pass right through them, really. But they can hit you! A timer that starts at 60 seconds and only depletes when you charge an attack or when you get hit acts as your health. You need to avoid your enemies’ attacks, which can be varied in pattern and speed, deal out your own attacks, constantly cycle between Law and Chaos, collect fusion components from enemies when you hit them, and so forth.

Gosh, this might have been a bit much, too involved and detailed. But then again, we want you guys to be prepared when Knights in the Nightmare hits stores and PlayStation Network on November 9th for $29.99. And again, if you pre-order/get a copy at launch, you get a FREE digital copy of Yggdra Union (a $14.99 value!). Did we pique your interest? Or just bore the hell out of you? Because it’s the latter, I’m going to go be depressed for a week.

Visit the official Knights in the Nightmare website, for more details about the game. For more info about Yggdra Union, visit http://www.atlus.com/yggdraunion.

Riddle me this, PlayStation.Blog Readers: What is an innovative mix of bullet-hell action and strategy roleplaying headed to PSP system this October with improvements like enhanced visuals and sound, a widescreen (16:9) aspect ratio, and new content such as a third playable character?

If you answered Knights in the Nightmare, slated for release on October 19th in stores and via PlayStation Network, then a winner is you! Now for your prize: a pat on the back.

*pat*

Ok, fine, we know that’s kind of weak, so how about a new video trailer for the game?

We’re quite confident you’ll find this to be an extremely meaty and informative trailer. Heck, the trailer is so packed with info that it makes the word “trailer” seems a bit puny-ish because it really does feel as though you’ll need some sort of large camper or RV to store all this Knights in the Nightmare goodness.

“I’ve heard nothing about this game until this point,” you muse, playing absent-mindedly with a wisp (another pun… you’ll see) of hair (chin hair for the boys, head hair for the girls). “What’s it about?” you ask, your attention starting to drift.

Excellent question! Knights in the Nightmare puts you in the role of a Wisp, awakened in an abandoned, long-forgotten church deep in the woods. You don’t have any memory of how you got there or why you were in a deep slumber in the first place, but you find yourself drawn toward a monster-infested castle. There, you witness sorrowful events from the past, memories of vanquished knights whose souls you re-awaken and whose abilities you take control of in order to confront the very forces of evil that took their lives. It’s a haunted, emotional narrative, one that gets better each time you play it (and considering playing as each of the game’s three playable characters lets you see the game’s events from a different perspective, you’ll have more than a bit of incentive to do so).

Did the above story description leave a little to be desired? Perhaps it was a little too mysterious? Good; hopefully that means you’re more interested in playing it now!

As for how the game plays… Well, I could explain it here, and I would most certainly use words/phrases like “action-packed,” “strategic,” and “unlike anything you’ve ever experienced,” but frankly, that’s why we made the video, so mayhaps now would be a good time to watch it?

Look for Knights in the Nightmare on October 19th in stores and via PlayStation Network!