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GamerTag
The rarely updated blog of Joel Dixon
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Ninety-Nine Nights
# Posted by Joel Dixon at 23/03/2008 01:33:33Updated by Joel Dixon at 17/09/2008 09:29:37
When I bought the Xbox from a workmate he included his 4 remaining games. I had already completed three of those games (Kameo, Oblivion and Enchanted Arms) after my first few weeks in Edmonton around 8 months ago. The fourth game, Ninety-Nine Nights - took considerably longer.
Ninety-Nine Nights cover
A joint effort between Q Entertainment and Phantagram, Ninety-Nine Nights (shortened to N3) is a hack-and-slash game with up to a few thousand enemies to vanquish in each level. You start the game as Inphyy, a 17-year-old leader of the Temple Knights fighting a holy war against a horde of goblins and other supposedly evil groups. Once you finish the main storyline with Inphyy you unlock two new characters and replay the same story with a different viewpoint. Each character you unlock tells a different part of the story and lets you play on both sides of dark and light, which changes the events of the story.
The game play has elements of RPGs such as level progression based on experience points and a number of weapons with status changing upgrades. The story also reminds me of RPGs like Final Fantasy - complete with world-saving teenagers, a predominant light-versus-dark theme and female characters that believe boobies are more effective against a sword than armour.
All protected from stabbings. Unless, of course, someone goes for the chest
Visually N3 is very impressive, and this was obviously an important goal of the development team. Hundreds of enemies and allies are onscreen at once set against purty backdrops of the desert, jungles or a snow field. Each enemy is given a different look with a random combination of various armor pieces, and act relatively believably when left on their own. Unfortunately it seems they pushed the poor Xbox too hard as the framerate is noticeably slowed when a large number of enemies are joined by the destruction of structures such as a sentry tower. While this doesn't affect the game play too often it does make the game look a little unpolished.
Bring it!
N3 is essentially a button masher with one button controlling a regular attack and the other a power attack. These buttons are combined to inflict powerful combo attacks, and you learn better attacks as you progress in level.
For each enemy you kill you are awarded a red orb. When you collect enough you can unleash an orb attack allowing you to cut through hundreds of enemies like partially set jelly. Enemies killed during an orb attack result in a blue orb. When you collect enough of the blue orbs an orb spark attack pretty much levels the playing field of foes.
The achievements in N3 are quite well implemented for such an early title. Awarding an achievement for completing the game with each character encourages you to uncover the complete story in the game. If I was playing this game on a system without achievement points I probably would have stopped playing after finishing Inphyy's quests and would have missed a lot of the story elements. The final achievement, progress each character to level nine, gets repetitive to the point of tedium - which explains why this game took so much longer to complete.
Ninety-Nine Nights isn't the most strategic game, but when you come home from work there's a certain level of fun to be had mowing through thousands of animated goblins.
3 out of 5
# Posted in the Gaming section and tagged as: Xbox 360
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Comments
 Hoff Posts: 39 |
Aye certainly a good game for such an early release on the xbox. I found the UI to be a little unpolished but I guess you can't expect much when there is a hundred on screen at once. I believe it was the first title pushed out to the xbox to appeal to the Japenese market. I think it bombed a little over there tho, Just wasn't quite as polished as the Dynasty warriors series. I've done all but the last achievement. Its a long haul and didn't want to do it all in one bash. I prefer to keep my sanity! Still for 200AP's its kinda tempting. Would also be nice to get another game to 1000... only 1 there at the moment is kinda depressing. One thing I think this game sorely missed was a co-op. I think this game could really have shined with some 2 player co-op action. I rekon it was probably left out to squeeze its release a little earlier  # Posted - 26/03/2008 09:24:19 |
 joeldixon   Posts: 156 |
Only 1 game to 1000 - would that be Enchanted Arms? Just shows that you go for the easy points while I spend my time getting those illusive last 10 points  I was doing a lot of the leveling while watching the first 5 seasons of That 70s Show with Bell split-screen. Now that's multitasking! Good point re co-op - it'd be cool having each player as a different character (mixing say Inphyy with the unlockable character) to play off the strengths and weaknesses of each etc.  # Posted - 26/03/2008 19:39:20 |
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