The World of Night Watch is an extremely popular novel / movie in Russia. It started off with the novel called ‘Night Watch’ back in 1998 then grew in popularity ever since. To date, there’s five parts in novelisation yet in 2004, the movie of the same name was released. This proved to be a massive hit among the Russians as the budget, I believe was around $4 million and, at the box office, cashed in close to $34 million. Because of the success, especially in the movies, gaming developers Nival Interactive decided to release Night Watch to the PC gaming market. Using the aging Silent Storm engine, whilst still effective, it’s now pretty rough around the edges however the core gameplay is acceptable, only just.
Thankfully, little has changed to this game adaption to the novel / movie with regards to the background. Looking in hindsight, the game does a remarkable job explaining about the history of Night Watch and why it exist. So, if you are not familiar with the novel / movie, you will be pleasantly surprised how this game tells the backstory without blasting you with a million lines of dialogue. Let’s put it this way, I never heard of the novel / movie Night Watch and after playing around an hour in this game, I have a fairly good grasp of what’s going on and who’s who in the world of Night Watch.
That said, expect the world full of creatures like vampires, were creatures, dark mages and so on – all that supernatural stuff is all presented here. When the opportunity arises to choose your archetype, there are three to select being the shape shifter (warrior), sorcerer (support) and mage (magic user). My suggestion here is to choose the sorcerer class as this class you never get to play otherwise, even when playing other leads. Why is that I have no idea. Naturally you can opt to play the other two classes if you wish however, being me, I like to experience all classes.
The gameplay is in the form of turned based – not surprisingly considering it uses the Silent Storm engine. However it feels like a strip down version as there are maneuverers that has been omitted like couching, guarding, spotting and so on. So, being turned based, you come to expect tactical combat however, in this game, it’s all about brute force and gaining the initial surprise. Because there’s no ‘hide’ option, the game uses ‘entering the gloom’ as the way to surprise your opponents.
Before I go on, what ‘entering the gloom’ means is that, all supernatural beings can enter the ‘twilight’, or ‘gloom’ as the movie / game calls it. The gloom is another dimensional area where only ‘The Others’ (meaning you and other supernatural creatures) can draw their powers. This gloom enhances your powers however it drains it too. Another words, every round you stay in the gloom reduces your mana then health. The speed of draining is based on the character class percentage score. Mages have the lowest percentage so it certainly favours the mage class by a long shot. Also, according to the novel, there’s seven layers of gloom however the game only allows you to enter the first layer.
As briefly mentioned before, gaining surprise is vital as everyone initially located in the ‘ordinary’ world (as no one can effectively stay in the gloom forever). So it’s very wise to stalk your opponent before rushing in as, in most times, you will be outnumbered considerably. Pick your opponents wisely and all will be fine. After combat, both your health / mana will regenerate at a fast rate so it’s not really worthwhile investing in the healing crafts as combat should be fast and hard hitting – that is, gaining surprise is vital. Also the enemies never move so it’s worth your time to heal up before moving on.
The highlight for this game is the number of spells to choose from as there’s a decent array of spells and this includes the ‘warrior’ class (shape shifter). Yet, like most games, some spells are pretty overpowered. I won’t say which one however you will soon discover which ones are / aren’t. My tactics, if I have a team of three (for which in most parts it will be) is to use my mage as crowd control, my shape shifter to attack head on and sorcerer to apply buffs. Sorcerers are useful when turning ordinary objects into magical ones – example: picking up a chocolate bar and infuse it with magic makes this chocolate bar, when consumed, regenerates mana. Very good when fighting / stalking in the gloom for a long period of time. Grab an apple, infuse it with magic, when eaten it will heal you and so on. Each item you’ll find has a certain magical property attached to it when infused by the sorcerer. Of course the higher the sorcerer’s level, the better the returns.
Powered by the woefully underrated Silent Storm engine, unfortunately this game doesn’t utilise this engine to its fullest extent. The maps are average in size however there’s no real need to explore the entire map other than the ‘designated’ combat zones. Yes, there are multilevel buildings however most doors cannot be opened, no matter what and, even though you might be able to go around it, there’s nothing to find or do – it’s just a morgue. A total shame as this engine is capable to do wonderful things like destructible environs, however, in this game, it’s pretty limited.
The sound quality is a hit / miss. Being a Russian game, don’t expect great voice overs – they simply just do the job otherwise it will be a wall of text. There’s nothing wrong with walls of text however, if you like reading, grab the novel instead. The overall sound effects like casting spells are pretty decent and thankfully distinguishable from one spell to the next, so you can have a reasonable good guess of what spell has been cast by the sounds / graphical effects. Yet I’m not a fan with the game’s musical scores. The title splash score reminds me of Metallica’s ‘One’ and the combat score is way too cheesy for me – it’s pretty horrible. I think Nival Interactive was looking for an up and coming band…well that got just that.
To finish off this game, it may take around fifteen to twenty hours or so. For me, being the world’s slowest player, I finished this around twenty two hours. Note that because the nature of turned based, each combat can easily take around ten minutes plus. Also, the game is linear in style and that’s a shame. I was hoping that there will be choices when selecting the next mission (like in Silent Storm) however that’s not the case here. The storyline is actually quite decent though - worthy of a Night Watch episode.
Night Watch from Nival Interactive is not a bad product overall. Thankfully I didn’t purchased this full price. Coming to think of it, I’m not even sure what the full price is. Regardless, it did bring Night Watch to life using the computer game medium. The upside is the wonderful spells you can cast as it feels like the developers have put effect into this. However, the downsides of linear missions, virtually no character creation (e.g. no stats management – only choice is what spell to learn when levelling up), not fully utilising the Silent Storm engine and heck, you can’t even recruit other players (as the ‘recruitment’ forms part of the story). The downsides outweigh the positives unfortunately so.
5.5 / 10