Knights in The Nightmare

"Knights really isn't too different from the other stylus-driven bullet hell 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 recently released, with a bonus Yggdra mode available.

Please note that this page, for the sake of the majority of players using the English language translation, uses Atlus' Romanizations of character names, although most of the older entries for Knights in The Nightmare across the wiki use those by Sting. Both Romanizations are listed on the character sheet, for those who wish to compare or clarify who's being talked about.

This game is particularly noteworthy for the extremely unusual gameplay elements that it uses; it's an odd combination of time-management, strategy, and reflex. 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:
""I hear level-up music in my head! *giggle*""
 * Active Royalty
 * Affably Evil: Melissa, of all people, is not interested at all in following the orders of Zolgonark and Capehorn. She'll heckle you if you're in the way of getting Ancardia, but that's it.
 * After the End
 * All There in the Manual: Having played the other games in the series makes things a lot easier to understand. As for the canon bible and the extra materials, a few pages of them are available here (spoilers!). If you want the rest--well, we hope you know Japanese. Or are really, really good friends with someone willing to do the translation work.
 * Anticlimax Boss:, anyone? She goes down in 1 or 2 hi skill attack, and can't be helped that they give you Frabela and Amalgun/Ulrich to fight her with, who are rather ridiculously high level for the stage they appear in; even if you did not recruit anyone, you can pull it off.
 * Note that this is only on Easy mode. On the higher difficulty levels, her ability to heal herself practically makes her That One Boss.
 * Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Each scene has its own limit, but most of the problem comes because you can only have 4 equipment slots.
 * The Archer: Aquina,
 * As Long As It Sounds Foreign: This seems to have been the idea behind everyone's names.
 * Authority Equals Asskicking: Wilmgard.
 * Ax Crazy: Mellia.
 * Badass Nickname: 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)
 * BFS: Leonil's sword.
 * Big Eater: Lucia.
 * Blood Knight: Leonil.
 * Body Horror: So. Many. Examples. The most tragic is hands-down, though. Poor baby.
 * Boobs of Steel: Good God, Melissa, you're going to put somebody's eye out with those!
 * Subverted with Mellia, who despite being the smallest-chested of, is also the most destruction-happy.
 * Brainwashed and Crazy:.
 * Break the Cutie:.
 * Breakable Weapons: Each and every one. Even upgrading can make them break.
 * Bullet Hell: The main challenge of the game.
 * But Not Too Black: One dark-skinned NPC girl in armor is called "Tanned Knight."
 * Calling Your Attacks: you will hear a lot of these; hi-skill ones are especially nice to hear.
 * Celestial Bureaucracy: Asgard.
 * 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.
 * The Chessmaster:.
 * Cloudcuckoolander / Children Are Innocent: Primea is sometimes an example of both tropes.
 * Color Coded Elements: S, D, F, I, L, Neutral.
 * Cute Witch: Vienna and . Many of the Priestesses also qualify.
 * 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:
 * Dem Bones: One of the possible monsters.
 * Demonic Possession
 * 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
 * Disney Death:
 * The Dog Bites Back: Zolgonark decided to mess with and hide Ancardia, and enjoys demeaning and insulting Melissa.
 * Earn Your Happy Ending
 * 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.
 * Emotionless Girl: Vishnah.
 * Enemy Without:
 * Everything Is Better With Explosions: ...or at least Mellia seems to think so.
 * Expy: Many. Aquina is one of Malice, Leonil of Leon, Primea of #367, Bonita of Gulcasa, Vishna of Zilva...
 * The Faceless: Vienna.
 * Disc One Final Boss:
 * Fusion Dance:
 * Generic Cuteness: see also Older Than They Look
 * Genre Busting: You are unlikely to be able to classify what, exactly, this game is. You may even struggle to properly describe what its components are. 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... 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.
 * You want a shorter description that includes comparable games? Here it is: 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. Don't think too hard on it.
 * Glass Cannon: Maria has incredibly low VIT (7.77), despite her physical strength. She's the only character that recovers it between chapters, though.
 * Gotta Catch Em All: Getting all the knights.
 * Gratuitous English: Atlus's English release cleaned up a lot of this throughout the game's menus and interface. But for just one example of it... compare this Japanese screen to the one used for the English version.
 * Guide Dang It: Try to find without any help.
 * 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...
 * Heroic Sociopath: Mellia. She's just so over-the-top that you can't help but cheer for whatever insane thing she's doing.
 * Hoist By His Own Petard:
 * Impossibly Cool Clothes: Everyone, especially the main heroine(s). How do they move around in that getup?
 * Inferred Holocaust: Surprisingly enough,.
 * The Ingenue: Piche.
 * Interspecies Romance:
 * It Has Been an Honor: Gunther.
 * Kansai Regional Accent: In the Japanese version, all the Lemonoug people have a slight Kyoto-ben dialect. Not noticeable in the English script, obviously, where standard English was used to render every character's speech.
 * Karmic Death:
 * Kick the Dog: Yelma, and how. To a lesser extent, Capehorn.
 * Kuudere: Maria.
 * Lady of War: Maria and Mellia, . Many of Wilmgard's knights are this, as well.
 * Laser Guided Amnesia
 * Legions of Hell: The main force of opposition.
 * Light Is Not Good
 * Limit Break: Sort of.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters
 * Loads and Loads of Loading: English PSP version, which even causes a little bit of lag on scenes and sprite animations.
 * MacGuffin: Marietta's staff Ancardia.
 * MacGuffin Delivery Service: Couldn't we, I don't know, wait to fight until ?!
 * Manipulative Bastard: Yelma.
 * 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.
 * Moe Moe: Vienna, Primea, Piche, several of the young female knights, and even Maria and Mellia.
 * More Dakka: There's reason why this game is considered "a bullet-hell RPG."
 * Ms. Fanservice: Melissa and Mellia were designed for this role, according to the character designer. To a lesser extent, Marietta and
 * Multiple Endings: There's a couple of endings for each of ; which four endings you can get are determined by whether you're playing Maria's route or Mellia's.
 * Never Grew Up: and, according to the World Guide,.
 * Nice Hat: Most wizards and priestesses wear one.
 * Nice Job Breaking It Hero:
 * Nintendo Hard: Playing on just the normal difficulty is an exercise in badness, as the screen can quickly be blanketed in projectiles.
 * No Fourth Wall: Dahlia and.
 * No Fourth Wall: Dahlia and.

""Don't touch me you dork!"
 * Not So Harmless: Melissa.
 * Noblewomans Laugh: Yelma.
 * Obviously Evil: Guess which side of Mellia and Melissa represent.
 * Also, Yelma.
 * Older Than They Look: Too many to list. I am also not sure why they draw many characters (A LOT of the female knights, even some male ones too) to be so cute.
 * Omnicidal Maniac: Zolgonark and.
 * Optional Party Member: Everyone, technically. 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.
 * Orcus On His Throne: Every villain is guilty of this.
 * Our Angels Are Different
 * Our Souls Are Different: Look no further than the Wisp.
 * Psychotic Smirk: Mellia goes around with a face that proudly proclaims "I eat babies".
 * Rage Against the Heavens:
 * Red Oni Blue Oni: Subverted; Marietta and Maria have red and gold coloring and blue-oni personalities, while Melissa and Mellia wear blue and purple and act more like they're red oni.
 * Reset Button: What happens in the good endings.
 * Sadistic Choice: At the end of Mellia's route, as long as you didn't defeat Scoppio. Which is more important to you -- order or friendship? And no, you can't Take a Third Option.
 * Sealed Evil in A Can: Zolgonark.
 * Self Imposed Challenge: Many. The most popular are "Get all the knights" and "continually New Game Plus from Easy Mode to Nightmare Mode without ever using Transoul". ...Also, Nightmare Mode is in itself a Self Imposed Challenge.
 * Shipper On Deck: A handful of female and male knights get gossipy and humorous over who the prince is marrying.
 * Smug Snake: Capehorn and Yelma.
 * Spell My Name With an S: 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. Naturally, this causes a lot of difficulty between longtime Dept. Heaven fans that use Sting's translations and newer/foreign fans going off of Atlus's names, especially if the same character had a dramatically different name.
 * Spoiler Opening: PSP version, as usual.
 * Star Crossed Lovers:
 * 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.
 * 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.

"Stop staring at me!""


 * Surprisingly Good English: The voice acting, if not the text.
 * Taking the Bullet: Poor.
 * Theme Naming: A number of the bosses' names seem to be derived, to one degree or another, from the zodiac, particularly when the Japanese spellings are taken into account:
 * Tomato Surprise:
 * Tragic Monster:.
 * Trauma Conga Line:
 * Triang Relations: Piche, Nordich, and Alier.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: Mellia's route.
 * The White Prince: Nordich, who first appears to be little more than a spoiled brat.
 * Who Wants to Live Forever: The Mehse sure don't.
 * Your Princess Is in Another Castle: The cutscene after Scene 30.
 * Tomato Surprise:
 * Tragic Monster:.
 * Trauma Conga Line:
 * Triang Relations: Piche, Nordich, and Alier.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: Mellia's route.
 * The White Prince: Nordich, who first appears to be little more than a spoiled brat.
 * Who Wants to Live Forever: The Mehse sure don't.
 * Your Princess Is in Another Castle: The cutscene after Scene 30.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: Mellia's route.
 * The White Prince: Nordich, who first appears to be little more than a spoiled brat.
 * Who Wants to Live Forever: The Mehse sure don't.
 * Your Princess Is in Another Castle: The cutscene after Scene 30.