Lunar Knights is Kojima Productions’ (yeah, the Metal
Gear Solid guy) successor to the Boktai series that appeared on the
Game Boy Advance.

Nickelodeon donated slime for this weapon.

The story of Lunar Knights has players crawling through dungeons in a
world that has been taken over by vampires. Players control either Lucien, a
brooding vampire hunter out to kill Duke, the leader of the Vampires or Aaron, a
young member of the Guild (a group of resistance fighters). Unsurprisingly,
these characters have all the feeling and plot development of a cardboard box.
It’s hard to give any credit to the game in the story department, because,
honestly, there’s just not much there. Some of the elements in the story are
interesting, such as the use of science fiction technology to battle vampires,
but having interesting elements doesn’t excuse the very poor follow-through. The
game does try, a little. There are some very poorly-veiled plot twists, but
there just ain’t much here.

Thankfully, the game itself is really quite fun. The vast majority of the
game is spent in dungeon crawls, fighting hordes of enemies. Battles, at first,
are pure button mashing, but as the game goes on, the game reveals more layers
of depth. Lucien is soon supplemented by elemental attacks with his sword. Aaron
also has elemental attacks, but has a very wide variety of guns at his disposal.
The abilities of these weaposn range from one that fires quickly, but with less
power and accuracy, to another that has missiles that automatically track
enemies.

Both characters also power up as they attack/take damage. Once they’ve
charged this meter, depending on the element the player has selected, they are
able to go on a kill-fest of elemental fury.

Normal enemies in the game can be surprisingly difficult, but the bosses are
surprisingly easy, provided the player has the sense to save a special attack
session for the boss fight. In all seriousness, this reviewer beat almost every
single boss in under a minute. This reversed difficulty of bosses and normal
enemies can be slightly frustrating, but it is one of the very FEW faults with
the gameplay. But the bosses generally aren’t done after simply being defeated.
Instead, the players must blast their vanquished vampire corpses into space via
what feels like a minigame shoot-’em-up as they blast through the defense screen
of vampires trying to keep their kind from being eliminated. This is a fun
addition to the game that just makes it that much more exciting to play.

Vampires + Space = Doom

There also happens to be a rather simple crafting system that lets players
upgrade their weapons with items they collect throughout the various dungeons.
Finally, as Lucien and Aaron level up, they gain points that can be distributed
freely by the player amongst three stats that amount to attack, magic attack,
and HP/defense. This tiny bit of customization is nothing new, but it is nice to
have it in there, as it seems like another breath of fresh air in what is a
truly fun game.

The game has solid music, but the sound effects and absolutely godawful voice
acting drag it down. Graphically, Lunar Knights isn’t much to look at.
The few cut scenes that exist are pretty decent, but overall the game looks
wholly average.

Despite a lame plot and lukewarm production values, Lunar Knights has
that “it” factor that games either have or they don’t: it’s fun. Plain and
simple. That is enough to make the game worthy of a playthrough.