Inspired on the movie with the same name, Night Watch may please some of the people that enjoy the turn-based mechanics.
In this game, the main character is Stas, a murderer who discovers that he's not a normal human being, but an Other who belongs to the Light side of the story, the Night Watch. The Night Watch and the Day Watch are opposing sides that have been fighting each other for centuries. In the role of Stas, the player needs to uncover the evil plans carried by the Day Watch leader, fighting vampires, werewolves, witchs and other creatures belonging to the Day Watch.
The title may seem charismatic and complex, but it's all flash: The story is quite basic and the dialogues are very unspired, combining with the flaws that you will certanly notice when playing this game.
If you played Silent Storm or Hammer and Sickle, you will feel at home. Night Watch shares the graphic engine with this games; but there are differences. The textures and lighting are better looking, but there are slowdowns and the the destrution isnt so evident: Some cares explod and some windows break, but dont expect to destroy walls. Althought that happened in Silent Storm, it doesnt mean that it happens again in Night Watch. And it doesn't.
The graphics are basic like the storyline. The characters have poor animations, the effects you saw on the movie are no where to be found and the slowdowns, as I said before, are frequent. Yes, there are some nice lighning/shadow tricks in this game, but thats about it.
Now the gameplay itself is, once again, very inspired in Silent Storm. But, as you may know, in SS you attacked using long ranged weapons, rarely using melee attacks. Well, in NW the situation is exactly the opposite thing: You use lots of melee combat, but almost nothing of ranged combat (besides speels, but its a different thing). Now imagine playing SS only using melee combat: Not very funny, isnt it? Well.. thats Night Watch gameplay.
As I said before, if you played SS you will recognise NW immediatly. All the gameplay is based in walk-combat-combat-walk, using AP's for everything you do: Speels, melee atacks and walking. And althought the combats may seem fun at the beggining, they will soon tire you, probably because of its difficulty.
At least NW offers you some good variety of everything (cenarios out). To fight the creatures of Day Watch you have lanterns, pistols, clubs, swords, spells, etc... There are about 70 different abillities to chose, 3 classes (You have to pick one for yourself and for some members of your party) and a bunch of weapons. In this point, the game does well. But its still a pity that you dont have any kind of armour or option to costumize the looks of yourself or your party.
Not even the audio saves this game. The soundtrack does its job, but the voices are preatty weak. I even noticed some errors on the translations. One last note for the sound effects of the weapons and spells: Like the rest of the game, these are week.
But dont think that everything on this game is horrible: The combat is fun (on the beggening) and the thematics cann be very apelative to some people. If you liked SS or H&S, you should at least look at NW.
But its very hard to recommend Night Watch, because its flaws are bigger than its qualities. So try it before you buy it, but only if you aprove the game mechanic: Because if you dont, dont even bother playing Night Watch.
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The Good:
Follows closely the key aspects of the Nightwatch universe - Strategic gameplay had a lot of potencial - Impressive amount of spells and abilities.
The Bad:
Gameplay doesnt fit the game well -Too many graphical bugs and slowdowns - Combat is very unbalenced from time to time- Items and enemies are quite repetitive - Feels and sound like an unfinished product.