Lunar Knights is definitely the spiritual successor to Boktai even though Konami insists it’s a brand new franchise. Sunlight and moonlight supposedly play a very important role in the game. There is no light sensor like the Boktai games. Instead, the DS’s top screen displays either a sun or a moon depending on the time of day.

Control is done predominantly with the standard d-pad and buttons. The Konami representative claimed that the touch screen can be used to initiate special attacks like a tornado, but I didn’t see anything of the sort in the demo. The only use I noticed was that you could tap the corner of the screen to power up your character.

The main game plays like a standard isometric action/RPG. Your character can attack, defend, and charge. There are two main characters in the game. At any point you can hit select to switch between them. One of them is powered up by sunlight and shoots out beams for long range combat. The other is powered by moonlight and uses a sword for close range combat. In the demo, both could move through relatively successfully. This means your character choice comes down to personal preference more than level requirements. If one character dies you will automatically switch to the second character and continue on.

The time of day supposedly affects the use of the characters, but in the demo I played it was dark and rainy and I didn’t notice anything interesting. In fact, the only character I was able to execute any sort of special move with was the one supposedly powered by sunlight. I’m sure most of that is probably due to the game being unfinished or I was just confused.

This action/RPG style is not the only aspect of the game. Once a boss is defeated, you must take him into space so that he can be purified by the sunlight out there. To do this you take control of a ship and the game takes on a Star Fox like feel. Ship control is done completely with the stylus. To move the ship around you use the stylus to click and drag. To shoot, you tap the screen in any location that your ship isn’t. If there is an enemy there, the bullet will lock on. This adds a very interesting twist as it is impossible to move and shoot at the same time. You have to position your ship, then shoot, then dodge enemy fire, then shoot some more, etc. I actually thought it was quite fun.

The visuals were very polished and there are even some great cinematic cut scenes. Technically there were some significant slow down issues and the load times between areas was a little bit too long. I’m hoping these shortcomings are due to it still being in development.