Ninety Nine Nights. A timeless game........If you can understand just what the heck is going on!
User Rating: 6.5 | Ninety-Nine Nights X360
Ninety Nine Nights follows the classic medieval story of good versus evil. In this case Humans vs. Orcs, Trolls.....etc. with the even more powerful bad guy interested in the whole shebang. Not so classic is way the story is delivered. Instead of playing straight through as either a good or evil character, you get to play up seven different characters. Each one of these characters has a unique story line, but all seem to fit together in the overall story. So here's how it works. You start as the first character Imphyy. She's the sword (really big sword) wielding captain of the temple Nights. After you finish her story, you are then able to play as her brother Aspharr. After you finish Aspharr, you can then play another character or 2 and move onto the next character until you've unlocked all seven different characters. What adds a nice touch is that you usually meet up or come across these other characters while playing through each other character. If you’re playing on the side of good, they'll usually fight with you, and if not....you usually have to take em out. So after you've played all seven characters you can go back and play a "hidden" part of Inphyy's story which I guess pretty much ties everything up. Or does it? In fact it’s in the overall story element that this game takes a real nose dive. A lot of time I had no idea what the heck was going on story wise. I don’t know if it’s because the game was ported and shoe horned into English, or the developers just didn’t have time, but it was terrible. Often times I would finish a characters story and the game would shoot out to the credits, leaving me with a befuddled look on my face, asking myself “That’s it? What about?” At other times, characters would appear during the story and not really be explained at all, other than perhaps in the instructions. The real nail in the coffin for this one was that after finishing all seven characters the story still doesn’t make a lot sense and nothing is really resolved. It’s not until you discover and complete Impyy’s hidden mission that you get SOME closure with the game, but it still didn’t really make any sense. Overall the story seemed somewhat confusing and not very well developed at all. The game plays pretty much like a 1 vs. a bajillion hack and slash. I've only played a limited amount of dynasty warriors (Gundam style), but it seems like a close match. Anyway you will often find yourself on a battlefield surrounded by hundreds of enemies at a time. You do have allies with you, and its great thing you can't normally hit them, because you'd really screw them up. Everyone is mashed up on the battlefield and it's sometimes hard to distinguish friend from foe. So you pretty much start swinging your sword, double sword, staff....whatever you're using depending on the character, and watch your enemies go flying. You can perform an extensive list of different combos, but I found it pretty effective just to either mash one of the two different attack buttons, or find one really effective combo and pretty much use that over and over again. Aside from straight hack and slash, there are some role playing elements such as character leveling and the option to equip different items. In the end you pick a mission off the world map, beat the stuffing out of a ton of enemies, occasionally fight a boss, and then move on the next mission. You are rated on how well you complete each mission, and may receive items or weapons for better performance. You are able to repeat missions multiple times after completion, which helps when you need to level up a bit, or find an item you want. This feature, along with some unlockables such as artwork, forms the only real allure of replay value. Needless to say I felt contented to just move on through no matter what the rating. Another feature or lack thereof that hurts the game is multiplayer. Without multi player, one would hope that a well-developed story might step up to carry the game. Unfortunately, as I already stated, this is not the case, and combined with this missing online component Ninety Nine Nights plunges further into the depths of mediocracy. To go along with some interesting story telling and battle tested game play are some pretty decent graphics. The art style is of that oversized weapons, scantily clad women, medieval sort of thing we’ve kind of become used to. It works pretty well, when the camera is not in a position where it’s tough to see anything. Luckily you do have some camera controls and can usually adjust it as best you can. This game came out Aug 15th 2006, so I've played it basically a year after it was released and I think it still looks good. Nothing too fancy however, but a lot of other titles have come out since, so it’s a little tough to judge. The music and sound effects are alright, not including the bad voice acting. Not really anything that blew me away though. That’s pretty much it. Aside from terrible storytelling and horrible voice acting, the game looks good and sounds alright. The game play is ok, repetitive at times but ok. It’s always fun, however, to use a super attack and watch as entire hordes of enemies either go flying or just drop. I recommend playing this game if you’re looking for something quick to play though between games or something, since the complete game shouldn’t take too long. Definitely do not buy this game for full price, maybe even just rent it if you can. So yeah, interesting visuals, alright game play and terrible storytelling combine to form an alright game. 
