Platform: Xbox 360
Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Phantagram
ESRB Rating: M
Genre: Action
As much as you would like to say Ninety-Nine Nights is another Dynasty Warriors clone (which I wouldn’t argue with), it actually borrows more of its ideas from Phantagram’s own Kingdoms Under Fire series. Like Kingdoms Under Fire, Ninety-Nine Nights tries to get as many enemies on screen at once for you to blow right through with repetitive attacks and combos. Yes, there’s little strategy involved?for the most part you’re just going to be bashing the X and Y buttons to attack throughout the whole game.
You start Ninety-Nine Nights with only one character, Inphyy. As you progress through the game you’ll unlock more characters to choose from. A nice little feature, but the game is still the same even with other characters and their different weapons and attacks. When you start a mission you control the battlefield leader, in this case Inphyy, while your troops follow your commands. Before a mission you’re able to choose two groups of troops such as mercenaries or archers. They pretty much just stand around and hack away at a few enemies, but you’ll be doing the majority of killing.
In fact, you’ll be doing a lot of killing.
One of the nice things about this game is the beautiful, smooth entrance of thousands of enemies on screen at once. The game doesn’t slow up at all, even when you’re attacking. And when you’re killing off those thousands of enemies, don’t forget to be persistent. Like Dynasty Warriors, the more hits you get constantly, the higher your hit-combos will be. It’s really not crucial but I think it’s a cool little thing just to have fun with. Try to get over a thousand hit-combos, and then let me know what you think.
Other than the really sweet graphics and the abundance of enemies on screen at once, Ninety-Nine Nights is merely a hack-n-slash, repetitive and boring game. I really wish developers would stop making these kinds of games. It’s getting old and unless they come up with something to somehow make it more fun, the genre is going to fade. Actually, that might not be such a bad thing after all.
