Ninety-Nine Nights for Xbox 360

With the Xbox 360, Microsoft is trying to make up for their relative lack of success in Japan, where most console trends begin and often end. The Xbox was a dud there, with only a handful of Japanese-developed games that could compare to what was out on PS2 or GameCube. To do this, MS has employed many Japanese designers to handle more projects for the platform, such as Q Entertainment, who along with Korean developer Phantagram, have crafted Ninety-Nine Nights, or N3 for short. Created to appeal to the Dynasty Warriors sect of gaming, N3 is a pure-bred hack & slash action game that doesn't try to dance around that fact. That might give it a limited audience, but it's the sort of niche title that might convince many on-the-fence gamers, regardless of territory, to plunk down the cash for a 360. People like this exist, I swear. As Microsoft's 1st game since the launch (a dry spell of legendary proportions), N3 has a lot riding on it and potential to match. Does it? Well...

Goblins, Orcs, and a bunch of people with impossible to spell names
Rather than take the Dynasty Warriors route and bombard players with ancient Chinese warriors from the Obscure Reference-O-Meter, N3 has taken the easy route by putting man against beast – namely Goblins, Orcs, and a race of frog-dudes who have a enormous crowed frog as their leader. In fact, the game really doesn't define who is 'good' and who is 'evil', instead leaving that up to the one playing. You might think it does when you hear each of the playable characters discuss the call of light or dark, but some of the actions portrayed in the many cutscenes make it ambiguous. It's an interesting hook even for a game that's merely a hack & slash action game. All told there are 6 main playable characters and one bonus PC, representing different perspectives on the current conflict. Each character has roughly a half-dozen stages, telling the story from their angle. However everyone's arc is actually different, placing you in scenarios different from others. So instead of it being one huge overarching plot it's more like a half-dozen alternate universes...many possible futures, as Reese might say.

But hey, nobody comes into a game like this excited about the story or characters – they want to run around and dice up hundreds of enemies at once. Thankfully N3 has plenty of that. Not only does each character have its own story, they also have their own unique strengths to combat and individual special moves for massive damage...no weak spots though. We'll take Inphyy for starters, because she is your only choice when the game begins and for many this might be as far as you make it before growing bored of hacking and slashing. She's a swordswoman – a huge sword at that, and combined with her speed, she can run in, make a large swipe at a gang of Goblins, and generally run off without taking any cheap damage. Generally she's not as strong as the other melee characters, but her speed means getting more attacks in. Like an RPG, characters get experience for killing enemies and as they level get more HP, stronger defense, and the right to equip more powerful weapons and a larger amount of accessories to aid them.

Leveling up also unlocks special moves that can be triggered by chaining the two attack buttons in special ways – the only downside is none of them really are any better than just running around and wildly slamming down on the X button. Upon killing enemies, red orbs a la God of War, Devil May Cry, and many other action games will materialize, which charges up a unique 'adrenaline' attack that can take out enemies in rapid succession if perhaps you need to create some breathing room. Everyone's is different – Inphyy's is a combination of her dash ability with the sword swinging, and sometimes feels out of control and thus not worthwhile, but on the other hand, her brother Aspharr uses is spear to stand in place and decimate anyone who dares get near him. When in this attack phase, the usual red orbs are replaced by blue ones, that charge up yet another meter. This attack could be considered a weapon of mass destruction – upon pressing B to trigger it, almost every single enemy on the screen is wiped away. Furious anger, indeed.

Usually a game in this genre has some semblance of strategy – Dynasty Warriors had its own little quirks, and Phantagram's own Kingdom Under Fire series has always been heavy on strategy to mask the fact that the gameplay is a one-trick pony. Surprisingly enough N3 is quite low on such things. Before each stage you can choose infantry to accompany you, like archers or pikemen (guys with spears and stuff), and you can order them around a bit, but that's about it. Their purpose seems inconsequential, because they can all die out and the mission doesn't end. They just get in the way anyhow, and when trapped in a huge mob of characters, it's hard to spot the enemies meaning there's plenty of times where you'll be attacking air since there's no friendly fire. Naturally, these troops are pretty worthless and have the AI tendencies of a bunny rabbit. A dead one.

Check your brain in at the door...and don't throw a 360 controller at the wall
Whenever you review a game such as this you have to leave a caveat into it – no matter how hard you slice it or argue it or mention that Inphyy is not bad looking before you realize she's 17 and thus it's kinda creepy, Ninety-Nine Nights is just like all the other hack & slash games out there, and if those aren't your cup of tea, this one won't be either. The game technically is as shallow as the new Paris Hilton CD, without much diversity in the gameplay – even if the playable characters have their own attack tendencies and skills, it's still the same thing over and over again. It boils down to being a constantly repetitive experience and if that's not you thing and you absolutely must have some semblance of substance to go along with N3's style...just save the cash. That said if you really like the genre (and seeing how popular Dynasty Warriors is, I'd say it's a popular genre), it's a decent enough time. With each character lasting an hour or 2 at most, it'll take maybe 10 hours to clear them all which isn't bad. It just depends on how tolerant you are of repetition.

However, and these can be pretty big howevers, N3 has some frustrating issues, one of which might dissuade you from actually finishing any of the stories. The first one is probably not much of a stunner – I've already mentioned the infantry AI isn't very bright, but neither is the enemy AI, who tend to just stand there and occasionally get a cheap hit in while you make them all into mincemeat. When you approach a mob from a distance they're usually just standing around leaving me to clean up the mess. Next up is an unusual quirk – how the game handles saving. The 360 tracks a settings file that keeps your unlocked characters safe, but if you ever want to return to an old character to replay stages and gain more experience (or if you're out for the 200 points each bonus achievements), you have to keep an individual save of that character or when you choose them at the title screen, you start over at level 1. It's not a real big deal since the save sizes are very small, especially if you have the 20GB HDD, but it's a puzzling little aspect of the game. Because of this, my maxed-out Inphyy vanished and that was a sad realization.

Neither of these stack up to the most annoying thing of all – the lack of in-game checkpoints. One might read that and wonder why you'd need them in a game like N3, but believe me, their exclusion is the single most frustrating thing I've seen in a long time. Generally each stage lasts about 30 minutes and feature numerous encounters with boss-like characters, all of whom are not the unintelligent and lazy bums their infantries are. Instead, they can be cheap and annoying, especially if you're not at a high enough level to put up much of an offensive. The problem is, if you are killed...you have to start the level all over again and lose all the experience you earned prior. Let that sink in. Back? Good. Imagine a game where you're already dropped into a repetitive gameplay mechanic, and the have it multiplied by restarts when you get jobbed by an annoying Troll or that huge frog guy who has a butt splash that takes about 1/4th of your health away in one shot. The only thing worse than a game that can get repetitive is when you're forced to replay the same repetitive parts you've already gotten through. I don't mind having to finish a stage without getting a chance to save the game, but gee-whiz, how about a checkpoint or 2 to reduce the pain and suffering?

Triple Cored slowdown
N3 looks good...but not great. Don't expect this to be a showpiece for what the Xbox 360 can do, unless you have friends who get excited at hundreds of NPCs on the screen at once – because that's what you get. The game doesn't have the same sort of annoying pop-up or draw-in that other games in the genre have, but instead the far distances have ugly blur that makes it difficult to see what's coming. The art value is high, with beautiful locales and unique main character designs, but they do come from the school of beautiful (some might say androgynous, but that takes a lot of effort to spell) people instead of rugged, scarred warriors. But the large stages don't exactly come off as 'next-gen' even in HD – it's a halfway point between what Xbox could do and what 360 can possibly do. The craziest thing is that in a few instances, where there's added graphical effects (fog usually) or obscene amounts of enemies, N3 actually starts to chug and slow down. It's probably not a coincidence that during those times of slowdown I wound up taking more damage than usual from the random Goblins floating around.

At least if you're wandering around slicing and dicing, there's a decent orchestrated soundtrack to pass the time, along with a nice selection of sound effects to really emphasize that you're a killing machine. As a matter of fact everything is great here until the characters open their mouths. In the tradition of other horribly voiced games like Resident Evil, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and whoever voiced KOS-MOS in Xenosaga Episode II, N3 features some of the most grating, cheesy, horribly translated voices since...forever. The high-pitched squeals of Inphyy, the girly voice of Aspharr, and Heppe (one of the few NPCs that have a unique identity) screaming 'en garde!' every 5 seconds...ugh. I think I need some therapy. It's almost amazing how a big budget game published by Microsoft – a company that probably could afford to purchase Earth itself – has such horrible voices. They must have found a 6th grade drama class at one of the local schools and gave them free cookies in exchange.

The Last Paragraph
Ninety-Nine Nights is a good time, provided you have an enjoyment of hack & slash games and can tolerate a lot of repetitive actions, because that's N3's lone bread & butter. That, and be capable of handling horrible voices and don't mind repeating stages if you happen to die at any point. Aside from that, the game plays well, has some cool bits, features a nice visual style that makes up for a lack of sheer technical prowess, and at least tries to craft a coherent storyline which doesn't shove good and evil down your throat. However if hacking, slashing, and hacking & slashing some more isn't your cup of tea, feel free to skip N3 and save the $50 for another 360 game down the line – you won't miss anything nor will it convert you to the Dynasty Warriors side.