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Great Fun Gameplay with Gorgeous Graphics

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 31 / 34
Date: September 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Now THIS is the type of game I was expecting to get on the XBox 360's graphics! It is simply gorgeous. Hundreds of distinct characters, each acting individually and with his or her own look.

You start by playing a cocky female fighter. I liked this a lot - the character, while a bit revealing in the chest area, actually wears armor and her moves are *great*. The sword trails and combos are visual artistry.

This is of course very similar to both the Dynasty Warriors series and the Kingdom Under Fire series. That's not bad at all, it's a genre of gameplay that I enjoy. If you haven't seen these games, think of the opening scene of Lord of the Rings. When Sauron is swinging his weapon, blowing away tons of elf and human soldiers on each sweep, that's what you get to recreate here.

I did find it annoying that you have to play all the way through as a character to get to start another - I'd much rather be able to choose from a roster of characters right from the beginning. Also, I found many of the names of the characters to be quite silly. It unnecessarily drew away from the game's world.

Finally, although I don't really need a huge, complex plot for games like this, at least *some* plot would have been nice. Some strategy would have been nice too. Organizing methods of attack, or who to attack first, is usually a fun part of games like this. Here, it was more just attack all, then attack all, then attack all again.

To make it worse, there's no mid-level saves. So you could have racked up incredible points, and be at minute 29.5 of a 30 minute level, and one slight distraction like "Lisa, pick up that ringing phone!" and POOF you have to start all over again.

Still, I can deal with that. The game is fun enough that I don't mind replaying a level. Getting to more characters is certainly the incentive of playing through the levels as a set. The character models are gorgeous. The animation of the actions is gorgeous.

Sure, if you're not into this style of gameplay, then there are other games you can buy. But if you're a fan of the sweeping attacks and gorgeous graphics displayed here, you'll be up for a great experience!

Highly recommended.

not enough like Dynasty Warriors

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 22 / 26
Date: August 24, 2006
Author: Amazon User

99 Nights is an unabashed fantasy clone of Dynasty Warriors. It is a true next generation title, showing off the power of the XBox 360. Characters are well designed and well modeled. Dozens of characters, both friendly and enemy, appear on the screen, with none of the fog and draw-in problems of Dynasty Warriors on the PS2 or original XBox. And there are real, lush environments to fight in, rather than the blasted battlegrounds of Dynasty Warriors.

Unfortunately, in copying Dynasty Warriors, they didn't go quite far enough. While the gameplay of Dynasty Warriors, like 99 Nights, consists mostly of button-mashing melees against hordes of enemy grunts, in Dynasty Warriors there is an element of strategy. You are given an overview of the battleground, and you can choose whether to go after the enemy chief, pick off enemy generals, support your friendly generals, defend your chief, or attack the enemy reinforcement gates. 99 Nights is far more linear. Even though there is a map, and occasionally branching paths, there is no appreciable strategy involved. It's more like a traditional beat-em-up: You just keep plowing through grunts until you reach the boss.

And unfortunately, it borrows something from Dynasty Warriors that it shouldn't have. There are no save points. If you fall to the end boss, you go all the way back to the beginning of the level, losing perhaps 20 minutes of play. Dynasty Warriors also has pretty sparse save points, but there at least you have the option of trying a different strategy. In 99 Nights, restarting the level means pure repetition. The flashy, combo heavy gameplay is fun, but that much repetition gets old in a hurry.

So when is a real XBox 360 version of Dynasty Warriors coming out?

Great Game, But Know What You're Getting Into

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 14
Date: December 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

There have been some bad reviews of this game but I think they're because people don't understand what they're getting into. This game isn't Oblivion; it isn't incredibly deep. It is a "button-masher," plain and simple. It's essentially the same as Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, if you like that kind of game. (The only reason MUA has gotten so much hype and bette reviews is because of the comic book fandom, IMHO.)

The game is a lot of fun despite it being repetitive. Instead of having 4 high-powered characters mashing down on one or two opponents, you have one (with backup which basically just helps hold the line) and you're slaughtering 50+ fiends at once. If you've seen LOTR (who hasn't?), you're essentially like Sauron in the first scene, hacking away at enemies and sending them flying with a few swipes of your sword (or other weapon depending on the character). I still haven't grown tired of charging into a battalion of baddies and launching them into the air and hacking my way through. There isn't any slowdown which is impressive when there are that many fiends on screen at once.

The graphics are gorgeous, I might add. This is the perfect game if you just want to sit down, not worry about how much magicka you have (or whatever else), and just slash away. It's a great "in-between classes" game for us fellow college students. It is repetitive (what "button-masher" isn't), but there are several characters to unlock, each with his or her own weapon and way of dispensing enemies, so that adds replay value to the game.

As long as you know what you're getting into with this game, ignore all of the bad hype. It's a lot of fun and I reccommend it.

Live your own epic battles...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: August 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I can see how some people would write this game off as a button mash fest, if they've only played it one day at a friend's house. However, I've played this for most of today, have gotten pretty deep into it and I must say, the previous reviewer is way off base.
First, yes it's true, you only start off with 2 combos and 2 orb attacks at the start of the game, but as you progress thru the game, you unlock new abilities, powers, moves and combos to unleash upon your foes giving you many attack options during gameplay - not just mindless button mashing. In addition, as you progress in the story you unlock other characters that you can play as who have their own unique abilities, powers and attacks that will provide tons of replay value. Also, objectives are constantly being added during the heat of battle to keep you on your toes, it never gets dull. And the Orb attacks and Max Orb attacks are visually stunning to witness. It's really cool to pull off a Max Orb attack and wipe out an entire battalion in one spectacular move! And don't mistake this for an easy game either. As you become more powerful, the objectives and battles become more demanding and you need to plan out not only what attacks work best against certain enemies, but you must also learn to assemble and command the battalion's that join you in the fights. This is the best attempt at merging the worlds of battle strategy and all out action/fighting gameplay and if you go in gung-ho, you wont last long as the battles become more intense.
The cut scenes are gorgeous, and are right up there with Team Ninja's work on games like "Dead Or Alive 4" and "Ninja Gaiden". The graphics are stellar and I personally have encountered NO slow down even in heavy combat.

If you were disappointed with "Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth II" on the Xbox 360, like I was, then you've gotta try this game! It easily soars past it in quality, graphics and overall entertainment value. Plus, at under $50, it's the best priced new 360 game out now. My only complaint, and this is small, is that the original Japanese audio has been replaced with English. Just like in DOA 4, I prefer the original voice actors, I don't mind subtitles.

I've got 99 problems and this game is one.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 11 / 15
Date: August 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Hacking and slashing, along with a bit of strategy, was the name of the game in Phantagram's last projects, the somewhat popular Xbox games Kingdom Under Fire and Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes. The team's latest game, N3: Ninety-Nine Nights, follows a similar structure and familiar gameplay, but it lacks the heart and soul, and anything outstanding, that would put it above other similar games.

N3 tells the tales of several different characters, none of whom have a very interesting or captivating story. From the blessed, powerful Imperial Knights Inphyy and Aspharr to the brutal mercenary Myifee, you'll encounter characters who have slightly stereotypical roles, appearances, attitudes, and styles. I personally couldn't ever take the game's story seriously simply because of the character names. I already mentioned Aspharr, but you'll also meet Dwikfarrio and Dwingvatt, as well as a giant frog king named Phakk the Third. What were they thinking?

For days I tried to give N3 a lot of credit for its gameplay, but there isn't a lot that you wouldn't expect from other Dynasty Warriors-esque titles. You'll run straight into hordes of enemies that range in the dozens to the hundreds. These crowds are fun to run into, but once you start attacking, N3 loses its massive charm. The combo attacks for each character are disgustingly simple to pull off and require very little skill in terms of timing. Combos aren't even necessary, in the end, because a player could quite easily mash the basic attack button and finish the game in a few hours. The only challenges I ever encountered were the boss characters, who seemed overpowered and often untouchable.

Once you kill enough of the horde, you'll accumulate orbs that power up a special attack meter. Each character has two levels of special attacks. The first attack, which is activated after a red orb meter fills up, is interactive: you'll mash buttons and generally watch things die. This series of attacks is simply a beefy combo that you'd normally pull off. The second attack is charged up while killing things in the "red attack." You'll earn blue orbs that charge up for a super mega ultimate attack (haha) that kills just about every non-boss character on-screen. Some of these attacks look cool (especially Dwikfarrio's storm of doom), but once you've killed ten thousand orcs, you've killed `em all, right?

N3 lacks checkpoints or in-game saves, making each and every mission quite punishing. Should you parish 20 minutes into a long mission, you're forced to do it all over again. That's right, you'll kill the same crowd of orcs, destroy the same catapults that are firing at the castle walls, and fend off the same cheap boss character.

There don't seem to be any rewards for putting yourself through the pain of playing through this game other than unlocking more characters, which simply forces you to play through more of the same [...] you stomached with a previous character. You'll even revisit the same levels multiple times with different characters. Exciting.

At least N3 looks alright. The staggering amount of enemies on the screen is impressive to say the least, and the minimal slowdown is pretty nice as well. It's too bad the character models get so repetitious, because the heroes that you'll use look amazing. Inphyy, the cover girl, is my personal favorite character, with her glittering golden wings and blood-red and shiny silver armor. It's also too bad that everything in this game sounds awful. The voice acting is some of the worst I've ever heard, and the lip sync is so ridiculously off that I began to believe Phantagram didn't even make an attempt at realistic syncing. The sound effects get old within seconds of starting the game up, and the soundtrack didn't seem to kick in enough when it should have.

N3: Ninety-Nine Nights may very well be the biggest disappointment that the Xbox 360 has had to date. What should have been a gripping, intense action game is nothing more than a game that could have been. Move along, play Dead Rising and enjoy your fall until the winter blockbusters release.

Decent game wish I could get my copy ( T_T )

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 12 / 18
Date: August 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Okay this is going to be a two part review one of this video game and one of my experiences with ordering this game through Amazon.

3/5 stars to the game
First this game is extremely beautiful over all. The graphics to the CGI is just amazing and stunning. If anything this game can show some of the real possibilities visually that the x-box will be providing with gaming as the years come. The down side of this game is rather larger though as it's really pretty much a button mashing game. There are lots of combos that for the most part can be used or you can just mash buttons and just randomly pull them off rather successfully I might add.. I was able to hit a 5000 kill rate with combo after combo without ever learning a single one (didn't even know at first there were combos lol). That was about 10 mins into the game. I guess this makes it easily playable for most people. It's very much like dynasty warriors game series in some aspects. The story is pretty good if you can get past the worst voice acting I think I've ever heard and I play RPGs a lot and it's pretty amazing how bad it is (muted tv and put on subtitles). Over all the game is pretty fun though my thumb gets tired after an hour or 2 from the just repeated mashing as thousands of soldiers are running at you. I wasn't impressed with the lack of equipment slots. You get 3 slots for accessories and a weapon slot. Nothing else. Highly suggest downloading the free demo from x-box live and trying the game out before you buy.

0/5 stars to Amazon
Now for my ordering experience with Amazon and this game:
Okay originally I ordered my copy on July 6th. At this time it said on this site it was available and ships in 1-2 weeks. I was looking forward to playing a new x-box game so went ahead and ordered it. Turns out the actual release date was set for Aug. 16th, but Amazon made a mistake and was selling it as available now (they changed it a week later to pre-order it now). I called them up complaining that they should get their facts straight before taking orders. Well with not so much as any warning btw they didn't even email the people that did order this during the available now time to tell them "hey sorry, but we made a mistake". I had to call them to find out what was going on. So I sucked it up said, "fine whatever I'll wait until Aug 16th" not like I have much of a choice. So today is Aug 16th and my next door neighbor is playing his copy right now. Do I have my copy NOPE. I have this great email though about how they're sorry, but we've delayed your order again. We'll be shipping your copy between Sep 18th ~ Sep 21st and they sent this email to me today on the 16th. I guess I should be happy I even got an email at all telling me. Don't bother if you have a problem with Amazon calling their customer service either. They just use some over Seas Company in India to deal with it and they have been absolutely of no help in explaining why it was delayed or anything else in this matter. I should have just pre-ordered it from the game shop down the street. At least I'd have my own copy today instead of playing it at my friend's house. Let's just say I'm not happy at all with them right now.

~*Update to this*~
Well I recieved my copy surprisingly before Sep. 18th. Got to play through my own copy instead of spending hours at friends house playing it. Nothing in my review has changed other then I hate the lack of save points in the game as others have mentioned. If you do died later in the game when levels take 20+ mins to complete having to repeat the level is no fun. Still consider this a button mashing, hack and slash, no brain required, look at the pretty lights, semi rpg game. Don't suggest buying it. Renting it might be a better option or borrowing it from a friend. I'm sure there are much better games to blow 50 bucks on.

An Attempt to Lure the Asian Audiences by MicroSoft

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: November 19, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Ninety Nine Nights is a brand new hack `n' slash action beat 'em up game developed by Q Entertainment; the company responsible for the popular portable titles: Meteos and Lumines, along with Phantagram, the developers of the critically acclaimed Kingdom Under Fire series on the original Xbox, which Ninety Nine Nights unsurprisingly resembles.

It is difficult to talk about Ninety Nine Nights without mentioning the long lasting Dynasty Warriors series. While Ninety Nine Nights doesn't have the strategic elements that Dynasty Warriors so prominently featured in its latest rendition, it is apparent almost immediately that the storylines are much more inspired, and accompanied by some truly awesome looking cut-scenes. The strength of the fantasy humans vs. goblins storyline helps inspire players to play through the game.

Ninety Nine Nights allows you to play as 7 different characters, each of which feature their own unique storylines. Some stories such as Inphyy and Aspharr campaigns cross over, meaning you may end up playing the same missions twice but from a different perspective and with slightly different objectives. Other Characters - such as the rugged mercenary Myifee's story - are completely independent.

Each character's storyline includes around 6 missions lasting roughly 20 minutes each. At the start of every mission you will be given a choice of two groups of soldiers to follow you into battle, these can include swordsmen, archers and axmen. You can then command these soldiers as they engage the enemy. But make no mistake, it is you who will be doing most of the fighting, as your army serves as more of a distraction while you slice up your foes.

The Fighting system in Ninety Nine Nights is relatively basic, but rather fun at the same time. You will find your character pulling-off these insane one thousand hit combos on gigantic groups of enemies. The combo system mostly involves pressing X and Y in the direction of nearby enemies, but as basic as it sounds it can be surprisingly enjoyable thanks to the satisfying sight of watching your enemies fly across the terrain as a result of your deadly blows. Ninety Nine Nights also features an RPG style levelling up system which helps give a little more depth to the mindless hack `n' slash gameplay. As you play, your character levels up and gains bigger and better combos, providing an important incentive for doing the best you can. Sadly few of the campaigns are expansive enough to make the most of the level up feature as they can often be completed within a couple of hours. Thankfully, as you progress through the missions they get more difficult, meaning you may decide to go back and play previous levels to increase your character's abilities. You can also pick up new items andweapons on the battlefield, which subsequently changes stats such as attack range, power and speed, but doesn't effect the style each character fights with.

Graphically Ninety Nine Nights can be very impressive in places. The thing which stands out most prominently is the epic amount of enemies on-screen at one time. A large battle often involves a few hundred well crafted characters, and looks very impressive indeed. Also, the cut-scenes are well animated and very pretty to watch. Sadly some things are less impressive, such as the annoyingly over the top distance blur and the occasionally choppy frame-rate.

On another note, the sound in Ninety Nine Nights won't win any awards. The character voices all sound particularly low quality and even crackly in places. The battle sounds are also rather comical. Unfortunately the music for the most part isn't much better either, and although there are some memorable pieces, most of the in game music will have you reaching for the custom soundtracks in no time.

Ninety Nine Nights is an interesting addition to the hack `n' slash action genre, but it could have been a whole lot better. Aside from the basic RPG elements and decent storylines, Ninety Nine Nights remains a shallow game with little to make it stand out. However, fans of the Dynasty Warriors series who could do without the strategy elements in favour of a stronger storyline may want to check this game out.

Another xbox 360 disappointment

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 20
Date: September 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I really wanted to give this game an opportunity to please me, and for the first two minutes it was mildly amusing.

Like all other xbox 360 exclusive games, it eventually proved to be another unfinished piece of highly detailed garbage.

The game is obviously not finished because of how pathetic the plot line is. According to the back of the case and not any of the characters within the game, you choose a good side or an evil side to go on a quest to obtain the stone of union. Initially you can only choose one character, every playable character in the game only has the ability to play in their own very brief story mode. There are seven playable characters, who each lack the ability to earn any kind of empathy from the player. The story line apparently wants you to empathise with them however.

While playing, you'll notice that your character has a variety of moves that improve in combo length and strength as you gain experience and level up. You'll also notice that these complex combonation attacks don't do very much to your enemies since they magically become invincible while they're reeling back in pain from your initial attacks. While your more powerful enemies leave themselves open to attack by preparing a strong charge attack, you cannot hurt them in any way since it's more important to microsoft game studios that you regret investing sixty dollars into their company.

Many people will notice how this game functions like a very popular game legacy known as "Dynasty Warriors". Indeed it is somewhat like Dynasty Warriors in how you hack and slash through hordes of enemies, charging an eventual high power attack while doing so, moving closer and closer to a high profile enemy who you'll have to chop away at in order to defeat. A big difference is that this is 2006, and if you're going to rip off Dynasty Warriors then you may as well rip off the most current version of it and learn from the mistakes of previous versions. This game is as slow and dull as Dynasty Warriors 3 is to someone who's played Dynasty Warriors 5.

The characters become more and more idiotic as you play, one in particular is beyond the definition of idiot. Eventually you'll play as a female magician who shoots small jets of water at her enemies, and those jets of water kill your enemies. She won't shoot them directly at the enemy if the enemy is slightly left or right of her line of sight, she'll instead shoot directly at the ground. Someone at microsoft game studios made that decision, that you should be playing a sixty dollar game where a character in that game responds to the attack button by shooting at the damn ground while enemies are directly in front of her preparing their attacks.

In this game if a boulder comes rolling down a hill, misses you and comes to rest at the bottom of the hill, it's still considered a fast rolling boulder to the game. Walk into it, and you fly back in pain as though you've just been struck.

In this game if you're in the middle of a horde of enemies slashing away and a cutscene occurs, you stop but your enemies don't. You will watch yourself standing there like a dumbass for a few seconds before the 360 crunches numbers trying to load up the five second cutscene, and then see your character getting smacked back and forth by the enemies that were surrounding your character.

In this game you can find and equip all the defense boosting acccessories you want, and still get killed in at the most five hits by one of the signature enemies. Combine that reality with the fact that they can declare themselves invincible simply by preparing a laggy charge attack and then add in the fact that you'll play some levels for an hour only to get slaughtered so easily, and you'll realize why this game can be very irratating indeed.

Another obvious way to tell that this game is unfinished is the fact that throughout the game you encounter characters with unique abilities, and pathetic input into the sorry excuse for a story line. Most of these characters are not playable, though you know that they were originally intended to be. Obviously microsoft decided to wrap this one up early, while assuming that the quality of the cutscenes will over shadow the lack of quality in the actual game play.

This, like all other xbox 360 exclusive games I've ever purchased, is going right back to the gamestop I bought it from. I don't ask for refunds or trade-ins, I just give it back to them.

I'm begging microsoft to finish their games from now on, I really honestly want the xbox 360 to do well in the video game market.

Amazing graphics just don't cut it

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: November 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

After playing this game I kinda sat back and was WOW. Amazing. So I started playing it and the graphics are amazing and the control are easy to learn. And than 3 hours into it and a very long mission about an hour long I die. Normally that's fine. But this hour long mission I had to start over and over again from the beginning. There isn't enough save locations to really enjoy this game if you have other things to do. Please developers people do have lives. Also its a lot of the same stuff over and over again. Its a 100% hack and slash game. Its has some fun areas but at the same time it gets boring fast. I say rent it. If you like it buy it.

First xbox 360 game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

My wife and kids gave me a core Xbox 360 for Christmas along with this game. This game rocks. It's very pretty, and I love launching enemies through the air. I usually don't like straight "hack and slash" type games as my tastes tend more towards games like Civilization 4. However, this has become very addictive and stress reducing after a hard day at work and after the kids are in bed.

The graphics are incredible. My very first game system was a Sega Genesis, and it's amazing how far games have come. N3 looks great on my 46" Samsung DLP.

It's been over two months, and I'm still working my way through this. I've opened up three characters with four to go. I imagined if I played a few hours every weekend, I'd already be done with the game, but since I only play an hour or two a week, this is giving me a long period of fun.

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