This one's not even worth renting.
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Developers: Q Entertainment, Phantagram
Game Genre: Beat 'Em Up
ESRB Rating: M for Mature
Opening Thoughts:
The M rating on this game is ridiculous, as is the hype leading up to its release. The big deal about the game: thousands of enemies on screen at one time.
Story (6/10)
I read the booklet before playing the game and thought, "Holy crap, this is gonna be amazing" for two reasons.
1.) I love the Dynasty/Samurai Warriors series and the gameplay is very similar.
2.) Konami's Dynasty/Samurai Warriors series is based on ancient China and Japan, respectively. N3 is a fantasy game based in a war between humans and goblins with elves, trolls, orcs, dark elves, pwucks (frog-like creatures with tridents) and gewgs (wolf-like creatures with axes).
Q Entertainment tried to mix the storyline of 7 characters into one storyline. The idea was to play through certain characters' stories to unlock new characters, and as you progressed, more about the story would be revealed. Here are the problems with that:
1.) First of all, the first two characters you control are Inphyy and Aspharr, leaders of the Temple Knights. Very little is known about the storyline at this time. These two characters have the longest, hardest and most boring storylines of the entire game.
2.) Each character has a 'different viewpoint', as Q Entertainment put it, but they take that too literally. In Inphyy's storyline, she kills King Dwykfarrio. In Aspharr's, he lets Dwykfarrio live. In Dwingvatt's, he kills Inphyy. In VigkVagk's, he kills Inphyy, Aspharr, and Dwykfarrio. See my point? How is more about the storyline revealed when the same characters are both winning and losing the same battles?
Anyway, here are the basics. The humans have the Orb of Light and the goblins have the Orb of Darkness. If these two Orbs are combined, the King of 99 Nights will be released and everybody, more or less, will die. The bad part is, the King of 99 Nights is influencing the goblin king Dwykfarrio, who starts a war with the humans to attempt to reunite these orbs.
Gameplay (7/10)
N3 throws thousands of enemies at you at a time. The good part; it's cool to see thousands of enemies come after you. The bad parts; you are too strong for them, so you don't even need to depend on allies, you just rush through, kill them, rush to the next group and kill them. This is balanced by extremely hard bosses, which sucks. If you die you have to restart the level, each of which takes from 20-45 minutes to complete.
The final boss is RIDICULOUSLY IMPOSSIBLE. Inphyy's highest level is 9. I had the highest level, the best items and the best weapon going into the final boss battle. I used my Orb Spark attack, which is the most powerful attack, and it took down his health by (and this is probably generous) a sixteenth. After that…with the best weapon and highest strength available…I attacked…and did ZERO damage to him. He then opened a portal, which sucked me in and damaged me over and over again. I could not get out. And I died. Multiple times. And I gave up.
Graphics (9/10)
The cinematics are amazing, and the in-game graphics are great, but there is a lot of lag and the in-game cinematics look like they are dubbed. The voices are terribly off.
Durability (4/10)
A short storyline and no online play. Very frustrating.
Overall Score (6.5/10)
Final Thoughts:
This one's not even worth renting.