N3: Ninety-Nine Nights

A few good evenings-in to be had, certainly...

Ninety Nine Nights is a brand new hack ‘n’ slash action beat 'em up game developed by Q Entertainment; the company responsible for the popular portable titles: Meteos and Lumines, along with Phantagram, the developers of the critically acclaimed Kingdom Under Fire series on the original Xbox, which Ninety Nine Nights unsurprisingly resembles.

It is difficult to talk about Ninety Nine Nights without mentioning the long lasting Dynasty Warriors series. While Ninety Nine Nights doesn’t have the strategic elements that Dynasty Warriors so prominently featured in its latest rendition, it is apparent almost immediately that the storylines are much more inspired, and accompanied by some truly awesome looking cut-scenes. The strength of the fantasy humans vs. goblins storyline helps inspire players to play through the game.

Ninety Nine Nights allows you to play as 7 different characters, each of which feature their own unique storylines. Some stories such as Inphyy and Aspharr campaigns cross over, meaning you may end up playing the same missions twice but from a different perspective and with slightly different objectives. Other Characters - such as the rugged mercenary Myifee’s story - are completely independent.

Each character's storyline includes around 6 missions lasting roughly 20 minutes each. At the start of every mission you will be given a choice of two groups of soldiers to follow you into battle, these can include swordsmen, archers and axmen. You can then command these soldiers as they engage the enemy. But make no mistake, it is you who will be doing most of the fighting, as your army serves as more of a distraction while you slice up your foes.

The Fighting system in Ninety Nine Nights is relatively basic, but rather fun at the same time. You will find your character pulling-off these insane one thousand hit combos on gigantic groups of enemies. The combo system mostly involves pressing X and Y in the direction of nearby enemies, but as basic as it sounds it can be surprisingly enjoyable thanks to the satisfying sight of watching your enemies fly across the terrain as a result of your deadly blows. Ninety Nine Nights also features an RPG style levelling up system which helps give a little more depth to the mindless hack ‘n’ slash gameplay. As you play, your character levels up and gains bigger and better combos, providing an important incentive for doing the best you can. Sadly few of the campaigns are expansive enough to make the most of the level up feature as they can often be completed within a couple of hours. Thankfully, as you progress through the missions they get more difficult, meaning you may decide to go back and play previous levels to increase your character's abilities. You can also pick up new items and weapons on the battlefield, which subsequently changes stats such as attack range, power and speed, but doesn’t effect the style each character fights with.

Graphically Ninety Nine Nights can be very impressive in places. The thing which stands out most prominently is the epic amount of enemies on-screen at one time. A large battle often involves a few hundred well crafted characters, and looks very impressive indeed. Also, the cut-scenes are well animated and very pretty to watch. Sadly some things are less impressive, such as the annoyingly over the top distance blur and the occasionally choppy frame-rate.

On another note, the sound in Ninety Nine Nights won't win any awards. The character voices all sound particularly low quality and even crackly in places. The battle sounds are also rather comical. Unfortunately the music for the most part isn’t much better either, and although there are some memorable pieces, most of the in game music will have you reaching for the custom soundtracks in no time.

Ninety Nine Nights is an interesting addition to the hack ‘n’ slash action genre, but it could have been a whole lot better. Aside from the basic RPG elements and decent storylines, Ninety Nine Nights remains a shallow game with little to make it stand out. However, fans of the Dynasty Warriors series who could do without the strategy elements in favour of a stronger storyline may want to check this game out.

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By Steven Embling