- Knights in the Nightmare really isn't too different from the other stylus-driven bullet hell Bingo strategy RPGs out there.
The third installation of Sting's Dept. Heaven cycle—confusingly designated "Episode IV" and chronologically placed between Yggdra Union and Riviera—and released for the Nintendo DS, Knights in the Nightmare tells the story of a mortal kingdom suffering a sudden influx of demons, which have killed most of the realm's knightly defenders. Compounding matters, the good King Wilmgard has vanished, and his political opponents seem to consider this a wonderful time to make their moves.
The player controls a disembodied spirit called the Wisp, brought (back?) into the world by a mysterious armored woman named Maria. The Wisp must recruit the souls of the dead knights, combat the demons, and piece together what precisely is happening to this world.
The game was localized in North America by Atlus and released on June 2nd. Keeping with ST!NG's habits, a PSP version of this game was released, with a bonus Yggdra mode available. A remaster was also released in 2022 for the Nintendo Switch, but only in Japan.
This game is particularly noteworthy for the extremely unusual gameplay elements that it uses; it's an odd combination of time-management, strategy, reflex, and Bullet Hell. None of the soldier units you control are in danger of being attacked, but the Wisp (which is basically your stylus pointer) IS. It's also got a rather obtuse plot; unless you're paying attention, expect to get lost.
Knights in the Nightmare utilizes these tropes:
- All There in the Manual: There's more information on the lore and the backstories of certain knights in the Dept. Heaven Episodes World Guidance lore book.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Each scene has its own limit, but most of the problem comes because you can only have 4 equipment slots.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Capehorn, Yelma, Zolgonark and Melissa. None of them particularly like each other.
- Cast of Snowflakes: The game has around 200 named characters with unique portraits and backstories, though most of them only appear as stage NPCs or recruitable allies with little to no story significance.
- Character Portrait: Every single knight has a unique one, other than Red Shirt ones (AKA Nameless) that are in cutscenes or in item/XP collection optional stages who have generic portraits.
- Dead to Begin With: It would be easier to list who isn't dead by the time game starts. Here's a hint: The wisp's soldiers are all deceased knights which it can briefly materialize to attack its enemies. Before each new level, we usually get to see a flashback cutscene of the new knights in that area and what they went through just before they died.
- Deal with the Devil: Marietta, of all angels, did this with Zolgonark for power, which backfired spectacularly.
- Destroyable Items: You wanted the Key Item in that treasure chest? Too bad, you got it to 100% damage. Hit Reset and try again.
- Die, Chair, Die!: Breaking objects in the field grants you materials, or key items to recruit knights.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Capehorn, the first of the Big Bad Duumvirate to be fought, is encountered roughly halfway through the game.
- Disney Death: Wilmgard and all the knights, who technically were never dead in the first place. Aside from anyone you Transouled, they all get better in the good endings.
- The Dog Bites Back: Zolgonark decided to mess with Marietta and hide Ancardia with the Accursed most likely to step on it and break it, and enjoys demeaning and insulting Melissa. In Maria's route, first Maria beats him up and then Melissa eats him. In Mellia's, Mellia herself can do both.
- Emergency Weapon: Your knights' normal attacks. They do damage equal to the knights' level when the first enemies in the game have several hundred HP, making any attempt to defeat anything with them an exercise in futility. They do, however, create a large shower of crystals, perfect for restoring enough MP to use proper attacks.
- Enemy Without: Maria and Mellia are respectively good and evil sides of Marietta, separated due to the deal with the devil above.
- Everything Is Better With Explosions: ...or at least Mellia seems to think so.
- Fusion Dance: Melissa and Zolgonark do this to become Melad Margus, the being of heresy.
- Genre-Busting: The game is tough to categorize, or even to make sense of its individual components. Let's try: A little bit of Bullet Hell mixed with Interface Screw (the enemy is shooting at the wisp, YOUR CURSOR, rather than the soldiers you animate), some Real-Time Strategy with Turn-Based Strategy hybrid elements, a Bingo system to determine every stage's win conditions... and some RPG elements for the various ghosts you control. That's not even getting into the really weird stuff like hitting the switch between "Law" and "Chaos" to switch modes for characters' hitboxes across the map. In short, it's Ikaruga meets Persona 3 meets Final Fantasy Tactics. Put it in a blender, add the Interface Screw, subtract "Bullet Absorb" from Ikaruga, and you got this game.
- Glass Cannon: Maria and the other Heroines have incredibly low VIT (7.77), despite their physical strength. They're the only characters that recovers it between chapters, though.
- Gratuitous English: As is series tradition, the interface in the Japanese version is rife with this, though this was largely corrected in the localization in favor of more natural sounding English.
- Guide Dang It!: In order to get the good ending for the first campaign, you have to recruit a certain character... in a hidden level.
- Heroic Sacrifice: The player can power up any character by sacrificing others. Although it's not that big of a deal, since almost every character is already dead to begin with, and the whole Transoul action is basically merging two souls to make a mightier one...
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Yelma gets killed off by Zolgonark, a being that she helped summon. Made even funnier since she actually tried to pull off You Have Outlived Your Usefulness on Zolgonark.
- Inconsistent Spelling: Meria/Melia/Mellia, which has been officially and unofficially written all three ways. A lot of the knights' names suffered from this, too, until they were given official spellings by Sting. When the game was translated by Atlus, however, a lot of these romanizations were discarded, some due to being too long (i.e. Willemgard becoming Wilmgard), others for unknown reasons.
- Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: The game starts off In Medias Res with very little context as to what's going on. The backstory is slowly unfolded through flashback scenes in Anachronic Order which help piece together the mystery of just what happened in Aventhem Castle.
- Meaningful Name: The original Romanization of Algiery's name is "Alighierie", as in Dante. The best ending can be considered an analogue/extended Shout-Out to The Divine Comedy, with Wilmgard as Dante, Maria as Virgil, and Algiery as Beatrice.
- Mind Screw: In the artbook,
one of the game designers admitted that even they had trouble keeping track of the plot. Also, do NOT try to classify the gameplay into a genre. It is an exercise in futility. See Genre-Busting above. - Multiple Endings: There's a couple of endings for each of the four faces of Marietta; which four endings you can get are determined by whether you're playing Maria's route or Mellia's.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!:
- During Maria's route, in Stage 46, after you beat Zolgonark, Melissa comes out and fuses with the remains of Zolgonark to become almighty Melad Margus, the final boss of that route.
- During Mellia's route, if you find Marietta's staff in the secret stage, Mellia will break it and this will automatically lead to the bad ending of Mellia's route.
- No Fourth Wall: Dahlia and Pamela."I hear level-up music in my head! *giggle*"
- Optional Party Member: Everyone, technically, save for the Heroines. Most stages have a default group of knights the Wisp can use; to permanently recruit any character, the player has to find an item connected to them hidden in a previous stage, with the exception of the first, of course.
- Order Versus Chaos: A core theme, most prominently seen in the two attack modes being named "Law" and "Chaos". Story-wise, "Law" refers to the current status quo of the world being separated into a hierarchy going from Asgard at the top, to the Surface Worlds beneath them, and the Underworld further down. "Chaos" refers to the Primordial Chaos which predates this system where all worlds were equal. Capehorn's goal is to return the world to Chaos out of spite towards the gods.
- Rage Against the Heavens: The Mehse and the Tiamats believe themselves to have been abandoned by the gods, who have been doing nothing to help their persecution at the hands of corrupt officials from Aventhem Castle. They tried building a tower that'd reach the heavens to protest this, which was deemed in violation of the Unwritten Law and was destroyed by the gods, who then further punished the Mehse with unwanted immortality. Capehorn, a particularly ambitious Tiamat, was so enraged that he set in motion a plan to topple the natural order established by the gods, kickstarting the plot of the game.
- Red Baron: King Wilmgard is known as the Lion Heart King. Also, all of the knights are revealed to have nicknames in the artbook - some of the nicknames there are particularly badass (Wrath of Night, Iron Rose, Scarlet Fury) and some... aren't. (Innocent Apprentice, Sullen Axe, Passionate Youth)
- Stop Poking Me!: Not your knights really, but rather monsters. You can 'talk' to them by bringing the wisp onto the square they are in and pressing the arrow button, which is really putting the stylus on their face. Do this with a monster and they will say an annoyed quote."Don't touch me you dork!""Stop staring at me!"
- Tower of Babel: Thematically present with the Western Tower, built to reach all the way to the heavens before being destroyed by the archangel Marietta. However, it's not a symbol of hubris so much as an attempted protest towards Asgard's complacency.