Ninety-Nine Nights

N3 is a grand, gorgeous action game that feels empty at times.

Ninety-Nine Nights (or N3 for short) is a beautiful well crafted game that takes the action strategy genre dominated by KOEI's Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors series, and tries to do something a little more grand. Unfortunately, Q Entertainment's and Phantagram's first foray onto the Xbox 360 doesn't quite measure up. That's not to say that the game isn't fun to play or that it doesn't offer some compelling gameplay moments, but rather that it just doesn't go as for as it could have

N3 in a nutshell is a third-person action strategy game that lets you control an epic hero and two squads of soldiers. Much like the game series it is strikingly similar to in concept (Dynasty Warriors, anyone?), N3 also lets some of your characters have multiple bodyguards that help you on the battlefield. For the most part you only need to worry about your character, though you can issue commands to your right and left flanks to hold their position, defend or attack the enemy. Players will battle literally thousands of characters on a given map - oftentimes with hundreds if not thousands on the screen at once. Despite these massive and seemingly insurmountable numbers, players will find it relatively easy to plow through these armies using a combination of combat skills, and two very special attacks.

Players use basic melee "combos" to take down enemies, and as they kill enemies and earn experience, they learn new and more intricate combos to lay the bad guys to waste. But beyond these combos (many of which are pretty impressive but require some button mashing skills) there are specail attacks called Orbs and Sparks. Orbs are the first phase of these attacks. When you fill your Orb meter to maximum it flashes, allowing you to unleash a special and very powerful attack (there are two variations - one activated by the "Y" button and another with the "X" button). When you do this you collect energy for your Spark attack. When you have enough to fill the Spark Meter you can unleash an obscenely powerful attack that usually kills anything on the screen. While some character's special attacks are more powerful than others, sometimes these skills prove to be the difference between life and death.

As you litter the battlefield with bodies, not only will you collect orb and spark energy but also power-ups (things that give you things extra speed, invincibility, more health etcetera) that give you a temporary boost in one area or another. You'll also find weapons and items depending on your level and any items you might have equipped that influence item drop percentages. Unlike the Dynasty Warriors series, you can equip items at any time during the game (save weapons when you are in the middle of an attack), which makes things a hell of a lot easier during those more daunting full scale engagements with the enemy.

And that's pretty much the gameplay in a nutshell. As you complete each missions you'll level up, find new weapons and kill thousands of bad guys. All of this contributes to your final ranking on the map, which -- as we will mention later -- is important for unlocking an achievement. Getting an "A" or an "S" ranking on each mission map also gives you a (usually) rare item reward, so it is worth the hassle to go back and try the map again if you don't score so well the first time around.

The gameplay in N3 is fun and is just different enough to stand on its own, despite our numerous references to KOEI's popular DW series. There's a lot of variety amongst the characters too, each with their own speeds, attacks and styles. There are a total of seven characters, with one unlocked when you've finished all the folks listed in the game's manual. While each character brings something different to the table, I found that some of them could have used some fine tuning in the fight department. Overall the gameplay in N3 is pretty compelling, but it's a short, imperfect experience despite its generally solid action gameplay..

Graphically, N3 is a gorgeous game that pushes the Xbox 360 to its limits. The Orb and Spark effects are simply awe inspiring as they take over the landscape and sweep away entire armies in a crescendo of delightful carnage. Similarly the character design and animation is nearly flawless, with characters committing all kinds of violence both in the air and on the ground. Save a few weird physics problems with rolling rocks that sometimes ignore the basic laws of physics and gravity, N3's presentation on the battlefield is pretty spectacular.

The graphics are backed up by a pretty compelling storyline with some interesting lead and supporting characters weaving multiple stories on both sides of this light vs. darkness war. While we won't go into detail on the actual storyline, I can comfortably tell you that you'll get both sides of the sordid tale as you play through the early characters in the game and unlock the darker characters later on. Each storyline intersects with other tales of woe and triumph, and as you play the game you'll run into many of the cavalcade of heroes that you'll get to player in later chapters. You may run across a scene that doesn't fit, for example, but later on it will be tied into the storyline so that it starts to make some sort of sense. N3's storyline delivers a universal truth at the end, no matter what side you fall in love with, and offers multiple endings based on the character you are playing. While many of the mighty 7 don't play major parts in the final part of the tale, their actions and deeds do play an integral role in fleshing out the game's overall story arc.

The Achievements in N3 are pretty beefy with each netting you anywhere from 50 to 100 points a piece - pretty nice if you consider that most games only give you 10 to 20 each. Achievements include rewards for completing each character's campaign, leveling every character to the maximum level, getting an "A" or "S" ranking on each map and completing the extra mission. It's high quality stuff that adds nicely to your Gamer Score, and well worth the effort it takes to accomplish.

And now for the bad stuff... One of my biggest qualms with N3 is the correlation between movement speed and map sizes. Many of the maps in this game are amazingly huge for sure, but in several maps the developers used a questionable technique that artificially creates the feeling of traveling great distances. This was accomplished by making many of the characters' movement speed very slow so that it took longer to travel from one end of the map to the other. Now anyone who has played games like Dynasty Warriors or even Drakengard knows that this isn't necessary at all. Players don't want to waste their time going a short distance because their character is slow. This technique tacks on a lot of extra time and really takes away from the fun of the overall game. Note that not all characters go the same speed and some are quicker than others, but the majority of this cast could use a major speed adjustment to make things more solid.