Hands on with the time-shifting DS RPG Lunar Knights

Considering the amount of Japanese roleplaying games in development for the DS, it will be a wonder if we have any time left over for real-life, such will be the days and months we'd end up spending guiding spiky-haired orphans through fantasy worlds filled with magic, monsters and perky unrequited love interest.

At least Lunar Knights offers something different. For one thing, it's not from RPG HQ Square Enix. Rather, Kojima Productions (the Konami studio best-known for the Metal Gear Solid games) is at the helm and promising plenty of action.

We didn't know much about it until we played it on the Nintendo stand at E3, to be honest, and as well as some fairly surprising elements (a 3D space ship shooting mini-game anyone?), it looked pretty polished and seemed to offer plenty of novel ideas.

One such departure is its more mature theme, with playable character Lucien being imbued with the power of vampirism (something that feels like it's been nicked from Konami's Castlevania series).

Not the sort of affliction you'd generally want, in Lunar Knights however it's incredibly useful, as Lucien can morph into a vampire, sucking the life out of his foes. This happens when his fury meter is fully-powered, which you can achieve by cumulatively successful attacks. These battles happen in real-time, making the game much more frantic than in more traditional turn-based roleplaying games.

Your other playable character is Aaron, who unlike Lucien fights using guns and other longer range weapons. He can shapeshift too, but whereas Lucien turns to the darkside, Aaron turns into a creature of light.

And it's this contrast between darkness and light (cunningly hinted at in the game's title) that's the foundation of Lunar Knights; you play Lucien during the night parts of your quest, and when the sun comes up, it's time to switch over to Aaron to continue your vampire-hunting exploits.

All this operates thanks to Lunar Knights' internal clock system, which simulates the passing of time in the game world, as shown on the top DS screen. If that sparks any memories, it's almost certainly because a similar system was used in Konami's GBA game Boktai, which was also developed by Kojima Productions.

Indeed, rumours suggest that if you've got a copy of Boktai (which actually contained a light sensor in the game cartridge) in your DS at the same time, Lunar Knights will synch up with it. If not, you'll just have to use whichever character is available, depending on whether it's day or night in the game world.

As if all that wasn't enough to contend with there's a weather system too, which depending on the conditions will bring extra powers to each character and also affect the types of enemies you encounter.

You'll also have your pet, Terranial, to help you out. This elemental creature will be crucial to victory, as the beasties you'll be up against are all based around elements such as fire, wind and earth. You need to use the DS touchscreen to draw the right spells, getting Terranial to attack a fire monster with ice for example. Konami promises there'll be microphone-based attacks too.

But as we said at the top, Lunar Knights isn't just about top-down dungeon quests. At various points you'll also get to take to the skies in the Casket Rocket, at which point the game goes into a 3D view as you're thrown into space-based shooting levels. And why not.

Certainly one to look out for, Lunar Knights should make its way to shops either towards the end of this year or early in 2007 – it's not yet been confirmed. To see the light, or indeed the sun set on our hopes for Lunar Knights, click on "Track It!" above.