The combined efforts of Q Entertainment and Phantagram come to form with the highly anticipated Ninety-Nine Nights. Taking notes from Phantagrams Kingdom Under Fire we have a fantasy action game that boasts enemies into the tens of thousands. Resting my thumb, I welcome you to Extreme Gamers review of N3 (Ninety-Nine Nights).

Those evil Orcs and Trolls are back and it up to the armies the light to battle against darkness. Each side is pressing forward to cleanse the land of the other. Victory will be met as long as you can manage to stay awake while bashing through hundreds upon the tens of thousands of enemies. N3 is questions ideas behind war, justice, and the blurred path right and wrong. Ninety-Nine Nights goes deep into the drama, but these deep undertones are unfortunately topped with a generic run of the mill game hack n' slash game. It's seems like N3 holds on to ideas it can't quite grasp, the potential is there, it's in the execution where N3 suffers.

Cramped Combos
In concept Ninety-Nine Nights is a great idea, a highly dramatized storyline, some great lead characters, and strong combat and fighting mechanics. It's really sounds interesting, but in the end of the day, the over produced N3 becomes nothing more than a typical hack n' slash, Button Masher. Not in a mild sense of the term, hacking and slashing either. You'll have waves of enemies all waiting to be X'd. By X'd, I mean slashed by the (x) button. You'll be hitting that button more than enough, actually so much that your hand will probably get cramped and tired and you'll need to take a break from the N3 action. Ninety-Nine Nights really tries to make the battles more interesting with layers of combos, but at the end of day you only need to randomly smash buttons, no brains... good to go.

Thumb-Busting Exploits
Ninety Nine Nights is fun, but that's only up the point that the repetitive starts to settle, then the thumb-busting exploits of Inphyy and gang become real boring. I understand if the point fun and boring don't quite gel, but after an hour with N3 you will understand. A good way to explain the overall feeling of N3 would be to say, its fun to play in bursts, for about an hour once a day and that's about all. If you have the time to spread N3 over two weeks it might not feel as repetitive as trying to defeat it in a few sittings.

A Little More Spice
What N3 needed to make to give it a little more spice would be to add more dynamics to the combat system. As it stands N3 is very simple to control, fight and defeat hundreds of enemies. This is good to a certain extent, but it will most likely be too simple for the general gaming public. For controls you have a quick and strong attack which boils down to (X), and (Y), the other buttons (A) is for jumping and (B) is for your special power ability/ moves. The other buttons sort of control your assisting armies which is pretty useless because they work always in attack mode. That's about it, not much to sink your teeth in for more than an hour or so.

Now For the Good
I know the review has been a little negative right of the start, so I will focus on some of the good points in N3. First good notch comes in the way of the games overall storyline concept. In N3 each character plays in the same story line on a similar time frame, but they have their own unique background and viewpoint of the situation. This makes it interesting to see the difference in mind sets between each characters and pathways that lead them to a common focal point. It's just too bad this doesn't affect the actual gameplay.

The characters in N3 are all in nine degrees of each other and have a common enemies, and allies. You can play from both sides of this medieval esq. war which is also an interesting twist. For characters you start with Inphyy, the cover girl for N3. Inphyy is a 17 year old stubborn and furious girl who fights with the Temple Knights. Inphyys story revolves around her stepbrother Aspharr, and Dwingvatt a goblin who Inphyy seeks. Both Aspharr, and Dwingvatt are playable later in the game, Dwingvatt being a more interesting character because he is on the dark side of the story. The other characters in N3 feature a priest named Klarrann, the brute mercenary Myifee, a young sorceress of the water Tyurru, and hidden character Vigk Vagk.

Ninety-Nine Nights follows the light vs. dark theme right into the graphics and audio presentation. The graphics have their strong points and in the same right have a few bad points; overall it seems that N3 is very balanced between both.

The light or good side of the graphics and audio in N3 come in the way of its excellent epic background music, the sound clanging sound effects and special graphical effects for the characters powers, blurs effects and more. The biggest strong point of the graphics comes in the way of characters displayed on the screen at once, one of N3 selling points. It's pretty amazing to watch these battles unfold with a minimum of a hundred characters, N3 always holds on to that epic feeling even when the characters spewing their guts.

On the opposite side the dark would be the voice acting which doesn't always match the characters animation which probably has something to do with the japanese translation into english. The environments are also dingy and bland and they become repetitive like the variety in the enemies and supporting troops. N3 has a similar look to Kingdom Under Fire, but on the new next-generation hardware I was hoping for a little more. Besides the interesting light side characters like Ectvarr, Tyurru and Inphyy, N3 could of used more colour and a little more creativity in its overall design.

Ninety-Nine Nights falls a little short of expectations even though N3's soul is in the right place. N3 wants to be deep and engrossing, but the depth of the story never really translates because it's cased in a host of boring and simplistic gameplay elements. Even fans of the similar Kingdom under Fire might not feel at home with the strategic element missing. N3 is interesting enough for a rent, but I'd pass on purchasing this game until it hits the bargain bins.