Knights in the Nightmare is a deceitfully poor choice of name for a unique experience breathing new life into strategy role-playing games. Removing buttons from the equation, it utilizes the Nintendo DS’s touch screen to the fullest without sacrificing any complexity. Whatever you thought you knew, prepare to relearn it.

At first glance any player may feel a bit over their head, as the campaign does not even provide a tutorial. If you wish to learn to play you’ll either need to read the instruction booklet or progress through the excruciatingly long yet slow-paced tutorial. Despite the numbers and the drawn out and unnecessary dialogue, these lengthy lessons prove to be quite valuable in teaching the deeper and key lessons in playing the game. It’s the difference between being adequate and having a tough time or being excellent and having a blast.

The general premise of Knights in the Nightmare is you control the spirit of the deceased king, awoken by a loyal warrior whose supposed loyalty is brought into question by their own mysterious objectives. The story plays out in various phases across time, presenting an event occurring in the present while also displaying scenes that have happened in the past. Between each of these the king’s spirit must confront a set of monsters, calling upon his deceased knights to defeat his foes.

This is where the game begins to stand apart from the rest of the crowd. The enemies do not attack the knights, but instead attack the king’s spirit, which represents where the player’s cursor is touching the bottom screen of the DS. The player must avoid the various colorful attacks sent out by the enemies while equipping their warriors with the best weapons to defeat them. Each enemy and weapon has an elemental alignment determining the amount of damage taken. Most weapons can only be used during certain phases of battle, referred to as Chaos or Law. As more attacks are made during these phases, monsters drop fewer gems and shards that are used for experience points, as well as magic points that are required to use weapons for more attacks. The different phases also determine different attack patterns for the different classes of knights. In order to be victorious, the player must frequently switch between the two phases and adjust their strategy accordingly.

The player must win a battle within a set number of rounds, and victory is determined by filling up a table in a similar fashion to a game of Tic-Tac-Toe. Between rounds the player is shown a sort of slot game which is used to determine what enemies appear. When an enemy is defeated, a “kill” marker is placed in the table. If the player manages to fill an entire row, column or diagonal set in the table, they have won the battle. Afterwards the player is allowed to determine what knights are placed onto the board and choose up to four weapons. These choices become important when determining character attack patterns, enemy alignment’s and the statistics of the knights themselves.

If the player cannot complete the board within the set number of rounds, they lose the game. Similarly, every knight has a form of health called vitality, which is lost each time a knight performs an action. When vitality reaches zero, the knight is dead and gone for good. In time, the warrior that set the king’s soul free becomes a member of the group that is required for each battle. If her vitality reaches zero, then the game is over. The player has the option of retrying the battle, which will resume the battle precisely where it had left off. Any damaged enemies will remain damaged, and any lost or weakened knights or weaponry will continue to be diminished.

The game certainly takes time to learn and may even require several attempts to play through the game. For the more timid players, the game also offers an easy mode in case the campaign proves too difficult. In the end, this challenging and layered strategy game is a golden child of what the touch screen can offer in modern gaming. It has taken a genre that has remained relatively stale in the past several years and completely turned it around, introducing something brand new and polished.

The story may not be for everyone, but any fan of strategic role-playing games will surely love Knights in the Nightmare. For those that are typically not fans of Japanese role-playing games, it provides an experience unlike any other, mixing in active elements of games like Ikaruga with more traditional styles such as Final Fantasy Tactics.

The only problems are the game may prove to be quite difficult for a lot of players, as well as the effort required to make sense of the game’s narrative. Still, the game does enough well that the cost of admission is just right.

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