Lunar Knights revolves around two characters: Lucian and Aaron. Lucian is a vampire hunter, wielding various dark melee weapons. He is also imbued with the power of darkness, and can change into a vampire after he builds up a Trance (shortened to TRC in-game) meter by fusing with his Terrennial, Nero, which allows him to absorb life out of his foes. Aaron is an apprentice sharpshooter, and uses a variety of Solar Guns to deal damage to his undead foes. Unlike Lucian, Aaron has light powers, and can temporarily become an avatar of the sun when needed by fusing with his Terrennial, Toasty. The player increases the two characters' levels by killing enemies, and their weapons may be upgraded with various parts, allowing more abilities to be used with that weapon. The ultimate goal in
Lunar Knights is to destroy a number of boss vampire enemies, in which the basic mission is to defeat each of them in their respective dungeons, either by exploiting their elemental weakness or using Trance. Once this is accomplished, the boss is launched into space using the Casket Rocket, Laplace; the player then enters a minigame consisting of three parts. The Casket Rocket is controlled from a third-person perspective with the stylus. By moving the stylus, Laplace moves, and tapping the screen causes it to fire lasers. After these three segments have ended, there is a short video segment in which the defeated boss is purified with the intense solar radiation in the
stratosphere, made possible by the Interstellar Satellite Sunflower. As more bosses are defeated, the player is able to gain access to different elements through terrennials. There are four different terrennials available besides Nero (Dark) and Toasty (Sol): Ursula (Flame), Tove (Earth), Alexander (Cloud), and Ezra (Frost). With each acquired terrennial comes a different climate for the player to manipulate. This can be done by going to Sheridan's Mansion and selecting 'Change Climate' to change the default weather. Certain parts of dungeons, which often hold new items and weapons, are inaccessible unless the player changes the weather. Special high-priced items are dropped by enemies or objects under certain climate conditions. The game relies on an in-game weather control system, known as the paraSOL. It has a
thermometer, and measures humidity and
wind speed. The weather is generated from the game itself, not from the local outside environment. There are five types of weather: balmy subtropical, tropical rainforest, humid continental, arid desert and frigid arctic. The Trance meter is built up as the player lands blows on their enemies. When it is full, the player can use the powers of one of their Terrennials to launch into an extra powerful attack that affects multiple enemies. The transformations mentioned above are two of these attacks, but some are more magical in orientation, and often revolve around interaction with the touch screen. Burst attacks are Trance moves performed by terrennials other than Toasty and Nero. When a Burst attack is used, the weather will change accordingly. Terrennials are the physical manefestiations of the elements that accompany the characters, with fire, ice, wind, and earth represented. In addition, the sun has a terrennial as does darkness. Furthermore, there is a null-elemental Terrenial only available in the Japanese version - War Rock, whose details are described below in the Crossover section. When these terrennials are equipped, the player can use TRC powers, and they will add their elemental attacks to weapon strikes, at the cost of some energy. Each element is directly vulnerable to its polar opposite, and resistant to itself. For example, if the player strikes an ice-aligned monster with fire equipped, extra damage will be dealt, but if ice is equipped, less than normal damage will be dealt.
W-Gate slot The player is able to use the
Game Boy Advance Boktai games' Sun sensor to play
Lunar Knights like the original
Boktai games. This option gives the player more of an advantage: slotting a GBA game into the DS' W-Gate allows the player to use extra sunlight by adding the detected sun strength to the amount produced by the in-game weather system (the extra sunlight appear as green blocks in the game's sensor bar) for a certain amount of time. It also enables the player to play in sunlight regardless of the in-game world's weather. Depending on which game is introduced into the W-Gate, the Solar Sensor will cause different effects in
Lunar Knights: • Solar Sensor Version 1: By inserting
Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand in the GBA Slot, the standby character will fill his ENE (Energy). • Solar Sensor Version 2: By inserting
Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django in the GBA Slot, the standby character will fill his LIFE. • Solar Sensor Version 3: By inserting
Shin Bokura no Taiyō: Gyakushū no Sabata in the GBA Slot, the standby character will fill his TRC (Trance) meter. Regardless of the game inserted, the Solar Station will also be charged depending on how much sunlight hits the sensor. Blowing into the Nintendo DS's microphone will cause the character to whistle, drawing attention to enemies. This serves to replace the wall tapping of earlier games in the
Boktai series. Whistling also has the function of using a terrennial's special technique, which can only be used when the terrennial is glowing; this happens during affiliated climate or time of day.
Crossover content Boktai DS, the Japanese version of
Lunar Knights, continued the crossover-promotion the series had with
Capcom's
Mega Man franchise since
Boktai 2. Django and Sabata fight Ox Fire, one of the enemy FM-ians from the original
Mega Man Star Force, as a hidden boss. If they are successful in defeating him, War Rock can assist them as a seventh terrennial. Players can also obtain exclusive items by transferring game data from
Star Force into
Boktai DS. Similarly, content from
Boktai DS can be transferred to and unlocked in
Star Force; while this content was removed from the English release, it was restored and translated for the game's re-release in
Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection. ==Setting==