N3 : Ninety-Nine Nights, the button mashing mass murder game!
Hold that thought and continue reading because I'm about to tell you about Ninety-Nine Nights. A game that is as much a button masher as it is a game that is simply about getting tons and tons of kills, and I truely mean tons.
So where did N3 come from? Seems that the games borrows heavily from the two titles I mentioned in the first paragraph. It's takes the large maps, and tons of enemies on screen from Dynasty Warriors and mixes them in with the more strategical and party based combat as seen in Kingdom Under Fire.
Sounds like an excellant combination, right? I am actually going to say yes to that. The game is pretty good, although it does seem to miss out on some things and leaves you really wondering 'What is going on here?'
The game follows the stories of 7 differant characters, but at the start only one is avaliable. As soon as you start the campaign (the actual only mode the game has to offer) you run a quick tutorial, and then the game throws you into some hard battles.
And I really do mean hard. N3 is quite difficult. I found myself beating a level only to repeat it and gain experiance so that I might have a chance in the next. I guess that also gave me time to aquire new weapons and items which tend to drop quite randomly.
The item finding is pretty good. As soon as you pick up a new item (say one that adds a bonsu to life) you can immediatly equip it simply by pressing the back button. The same can also be done with weapons. Each character has a pretty good selection of weapons, you just have to find them.
So what about the graphics? Does the game look good? The answer to that is yes. I think the game looks great. The surroundings are nice, and there is many differant areas to look at. One mission you are in a desert where the next a frozen wasteland with a castle. The game can also throw hundreds and hundreds of enemies on screen at once. NICE!
I also wondered what it would be like to be able to take on 200 enemies at once in Dynasty Warriors and kill them all with one musou attack. In N3 you can actualy do that seeing how you can get a pretty good attack very similar to the musou. What's also cool is that you can get an even better musou attack that pretty much clears the entire screen and then some. I'm talking like 500 kills in 10 seconds!
So what are the missions like? You are given tasks which is basically take out this army, then take out the next. After that, take out another army. Atleast the game can throw multiple races at you. You see goblins, and orcs, and even trolls (which are powerful adversaries!).
To really get the full story, although it leaves out quite a lot, you have to play through as every character. One thing I did notice is that some events from one story are changed with the next, so things can be quite confusing. There are short cinematics at the start and no endings to speak of. A little bit of a downer there.
So lets see some things that would make someone want to try out N3.
- Similar to Dynasty Warriors. - Great graphics. - Tons of enemies on screen and tons of kills at once. - Seven characters, each of which have differant attacks and specials. If any of those sound appealing to you then atleast give N3 a rent. It is a much better game then what many people are saying. It's just a little repetitive, but what game isn't these days?