N3: Nintety-Nine Nights II Review

I for one, when I was much younger enjoyed mindless hack and slash games that thrived off repetition and meaningless plot lines. Now a days in today’s video game market, the big key is fun mechanics and an interesting story line that makes the game interesting to play. The first was a disappointment to say it nicely, and the fact that there was a sequel shocked me even more. The development team seemed to have thrown everything that was wrong with the first game and build a game off the scraps. First off let me point out the plot lines of N3II. You play as a series of heroes that are trying to save the world from a overlord who is trying to take over the world, by sending out his minions for you to fight through. There seemed to be no effort from the writing or game play teams, to even add a different kind of twist to an already predictable story line. I remember being in a party chat while playing through the prologue, and saying, “This game is having an opposite effect of what games are intended to do”. By that statement I meant by keeping me awake to play it.

For starters the voice acting and cinematics were boring, and mind numbing. The character acting never matched up with the dialogue and there was a number of times when watching a cut scene you sat there in silence with nothing being said or done within the cinematic. None of the characters are likable and have 0 charisma. Each mission tries to contain within it a boss at the end, who sometimes is a frustrating battle, and for someone who has to play through a game in it’s entirety for a review, this was gut wrenching.

The game features a combat system that Dynasty Warriors players will be familiar with, just not as complex in some situations. For the combat you are continuously moving between your “X” and “Y” buttons for your heavy and light attacks. Your “LB” button is your special skill attack, and your “RB” is your special attack, both of which use your manna. From the very beginning of the game, you may find fun with the combos, and by the way getting to a 3000 hit combo is very easy, and finishing your enemies off with a heavy barrage is fun to watch. The problem comes in when that is all you do throughout the game. There is very little variation and moves to learn to add variety to the combat. The enemies never vary either, as you have your main grunts, and horsemen, and then your archers. All of which are consistent and never vary.

This game, however is challenging. Just getting through one campaign mission took several attempts, due to the games hard to find manna and health replenishment. Also the save system is a scare. You do have checkpoints through the hour long missions, but if your like me and want to turn the game off after your 5th time of dying at a boss, you will have to start the entire mission over from the very beginning. The game will not autosave after checkpoints which is troublesome. This is a game that I can see hitting the bargain bin very soon after launch and the fact that this game came out at $60 is a slap in the face. The game just felt completely rushed out to store shelves, and seemed like the games core concepts were put together over a weekend. I hate to think that if they had more time the game could have been good, but seeing as how the first came out over 4 years ago I find that highly unlikely.  I can only hope that for the sake of all gamers that this game does not get a third installment.

Rating: 3/10  

+ An ok $5 weekend rental

- Cheap save system

- Ugly environments

- Play, rinse, repeat effect

- No variation

- Problematic combat

- Weak storyline

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