Ninety-Nine Nights is an other choice beside Dynasty Warriors
Since Ninety-Nine Nights is one of the first generation of Xbox360 games, the graphics of the game is not as good as the new releases. But look back to the time when the game first released, it is quite good. There is always a large number of enemy show on the screen and don’t have serious problem of sudden appear or disappear of enemy in front of you. The game can also easily to hit a combo more than 1000 or even more that you seldom can hit in a Dynasty Warriors game. It is exciting to see your maximum combo meter continue to increase. The game allows players to use custom soundtrack but the music of the game are really good so I never use my own music.
Talk about disadvantages, the minimap of the game can’t show the whole area of the stage and the enemy clearly. So sometime I can’t find the right direction to the boss and waste a lots of time. The game only has 7 playable characters; it makes the game can be finished quickly. Although all the characters have different attack styles, all of them get a major problem. That is they all walk so slowly especially for Klarrann who carry a big and heavy staff. The orb attacks and orb sparks look awesome but only cause more damage to the normal enemy and very very little damage to the boss characters. Lack of checkpoint in stage and very difficult to find healing items to restore your HP make the game hard to play when your character level is low. So it makes you need to play a few more times of some easier stages to level up your characters before you can continue the story. You can select your two guard units before the stage but they are not useful. Beside the guard units, other NPC or playable characters allies are not very active on the battlefield, so don’t depend on them. Also when the boss is blocking, no matter which direction you attack, you can’t cause any damage. It is a pity that the game is for 1 player only.
To sum up, Ninety-Nine Nights has some problems but still worth to play. The characters design and background story are good, that makes me really enjoy playing it. It also give a breathe of fresh air to the players who played the Koei’s Dynasty Warriors series so many times like me. There is rumor that there will be a sequel to N3. I am really looking forward to it and hope the next one will correct all the problems that appear in the first one.
