A Sweeping Saga of Ancient Betrayl (Ninety-Nine Nights (Xbox 360))

Member Name: Goldensummit

Product:	Ninety-Nine Nights (Xbox 360)
Date:	14/06/07 (149 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Graphics | Power of the next gen | How Unique the Characters are | Originality

Disadvantages: Voices | Lack of characters | Lack of battles | No in-game save

N3: Ninety Nine Nights, currently the newest game released by Phantagram (Kingdom Under Fire series), and their first venture to the next gen consoles. Purely based on a fictional story, with fictional characters, you take control of one of seven unique characters, and lead their storylines. Though the levels don’t really vary that much, the main ambition is just to slaughter your enemies with bone-crunching button mashing, and leaving none of your enemies alive to tell the tale.

If you haven’t gathered already, N3: Ninety Nine Nights is a hack n slash game, a lot like Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors (KOEI), your main objective is to tear apart your enemies. What makes N3: Ninety Nine Nights different you say? Well, there is an incredibly less playable characters (only seven), and the game is a lot shorter, but less repetitive. You only start off with one character, which you will have to earn certain accomplishments (killing someone in battle, getting through a certain battle etc) to unlock the next two. Each character is unique, they have unique weapons, and their battle stances are completely different from each other. Take Inphyy (first character) for example, she wields a very powerful blade that emits red/orange magic when she deals destructive damage. While other characters, such as Myifee, who wields a double ended spear, and his actions are rather like Kratos’ from God of War.

As most of your characters, you play on the human’s side, and then you get a chance to be on the enemy’s side, which consist of Goblins, Orcs, Gewgs, Pwucks, and many other fictional beings, which you do get the pleasure of destroying manically. The game is exceedingly fun, I know I’m rather biased towards hack n slash games, as I just find them very enjoyable, regardless of their repetitively, but this game is one of the top notch hack n slashers. The battles are rather long, but gets very annoying when you spend over an hour on a battle, and you die at the last minute, rather frustrating, but that’s the same with all of the hack n slash games Phantagram have made, they really need to add an “in-battle save”, would solve a lot of problems, and a lot of mindless hours trying to break it.

I found the game highly addictive, with the added bonus of gaining experience from battles and items to search out to increase the quality of your warrior, makes the game more fun. When you’ve finished their story, you can go back and select any level they have done, but you can’t choose a character, and then play as them in someone else’s story, which is a shame. The maximum level is 9, and you become level 6 (standard) at the end of each story, so you will want to go through the levels a few more times again to gain those level ups. Increasing your level allows you to perform more and better combos to deal even more very destructive damage to your enemies. It also increases your stats, so you will be stronger, faster, more powerful etc.

The story for the game is original, completely fictional also, so it is a totally new experience for all gamers out there. The sound effects are very good, the crunching noises as you smack hundreds of goblins with your weapon, and onslaught you bring upon them, just very good. The music isn’t what I first expected, going by the Kingdom Under Fire series, I was expecting hardcore rock as the soundtrack, while in N3: Ninety Nine Nights, they have gone a classical way with the game, which does indeed make the battles seem more epic and heroic. Quite frankly, the voices were awful, pain to my ears, I really hated Inphyy’s voice, it sounded nothing like her personality or attitude, and she just sounded like an eleven year old child with the brain of a forty year old. With the personality like hers, you would expect the voice to be more fierce, or aggressive, while it just seems she’s going to bore you to death with her extremely gentle voice. The other voices aren’t exactly spectacular either; probably the only decent voice is Tyuruu, who is a 12 year old sorceress, which actually fits quite well. The others? Just plain awful.

The graphics are excellent, as long as there aren’t too many enemies on the screen at once. Many have said this, and I do indeed agree, when there are too many enemies, it looks like one big blur, but then, you can’t really blame how that turned out, considering your fighting hundreds of enemies at once, I don’t think you would particularly care either at the time. The game isn’t difficult in the first few levels for the first few characters you gain, as they are normally just easy levels to ease you into the game, but later on (in the 4th / 5th levels) you will start to feel how hard it gets, and how easy the enemies can defeat you, and as the battles will last forever, you will have to start from the very beginning of the battle if you do die (which will probably happen the first few times).

I got this game for £17.99, which isn’t too shabby considering its’ a next gen game. I enjoyed it when I first got it, and I still enjoy it now, it was defiantly worth the money. I would give this game a nice 8.2/10, purely for the sheer enjoyment I got from this game, and as I love hack n slashers, this is just the icing on my XBOX 360 cake!

Thanks for reading guys, stay tuned for more reviews, I should be writing a lot more now as I’ve found my inspiration. I apologise to those who expected me to write a lot earlier this year, but I’ve been very busy, and I hope I can redeem my laziness with kick ass reviews. Thanks.

Summary: A next gen hack n slasher that hits gold!