Ninety Nine Nights

Nitey-night.

Woohoo, a thousand kills. Yes, that's right, a thousand, and I'm not even halfway through this current battle. I'll probably at least double that by the time I'm done with these lizardmen things. My unit are mostly done for, but no worries- my chosen warrior is quite capable of cutting a swathe through the remaining troops on her own.

If you think any of this sounds a little Dynasty Warriors, well, you'd be forgiven. Ninety Nine Nights (or N3, at it prefers to call itself) certainly owes a lot to Koei's over-the-top battle series, but there is a dash of inspiration from Blue Side's other series, Kingdom Under Fire, added for good measure. At its basic level, you chose from one of 7 characters and take to battle, following their own story through the world. Often these stories intersect with one another, so you'll fight the same battle from different perspectives, with different objectives, but whatever the case you'll usually be tasked with battling your way through literally thousands of enemy soldiers to reach your objective.

The storyline is somewhat vague, but runs along the lines of: An ancient orb was split in two, pitching the world into ninety-nine nights of darkness (hence the title, see?). Centuries later, the forces of Light hold one side of the Orb, and the forces of darkness hold the other. Both sides are at war, with the forces of darkness seeking to unite the orb and once again plunge the world into darkness. You'll therefore take part in a series of battles that occur in this conflict, seeing just how and why each character is involved.

Once on the battlefield, your chosen hero has a variety of attacks at their disposal. Staple light and heavy attacks can be combined into long combo chains, and mixed with jump and dash attacks for more widespread damage. Actually, most characters control pretty well, and feel quite different from one another due to their repertoire of moves. Swordmaiden Inphyy, for instance, has an array of swift but short ranged attacks, whilst heavy hitting troll Vik Vagk (yes, you read that name right) plows through the enemy with might hammer blows, and cute sorceress Tyururu summons impressive water magic to sweep away her foes. There are some RPG-lite elements thrown in for good measure, which allow you to pick up new weapons, armour and accessories and gain experience as you progress in the game. You can sweep through swathes of lesser foes with relative ease, and they'll be flung around like ragdolls from the force of your blows- nothing like feeling like a powerful warrior, eh?- though the occasional boss can prove considerably more challenging, and even require the use of- gasp- tactics to defeat. Fortunately, you have another weapon to call upon- the Orb attacks. Killing enemies will recharge your Orb meter, which, when full, can be unleashed with a devastating attack that will decimate anything nearby, and look rather spectacular to boot. Tyururu's tidal wave is particularly impressive, even if it does cause the game to stutter a bit.

Orb attacks aside, though, the game looks impressive under any circumstances. The landscapes- whilst not finely detailed- are at least varied and impressive, but it's the characters that really shine. Major characters are lovingly detailed and boast some quite striking artistic design, and even the myriad of rank-and-file troops look unique thanks to a clever dynamic randomisation process which allocates each soldier a random combination of available armour, weapon and facial designs. Not that you get much chance to see the rank and file troops, though- since they'll probably be lost somewhere in all the pyrotechnics and the sheer number crammed onto the screen- which can number into the thousands. Unfortunately, the framerate can't always keep up with the action, and with some Orb attacks in particular the visuals can slow to a crawl, which rather detracts from the action. The music is generally good, if forgettable, but the voice acting is pretty substandard throughout, lending a campy feel to an otherwise serious storyline.

Unusually for the genre, N3 actually lasts a pretty long time, too, even though each characters storylines usually encompass only 6 or so battles, these battles can be quite lengthy- anywhere up to 45 minutes or so- and even when you're fighting the same battle as another character the circumstances, objectives and fighting style of your character are usually enough to ensure that it at least feels a little different.

Written by :

James Hall