Ninety-Nine Nights or N3 as its tagged, is a game that looks great, sounds great. However, the developers of the game seem to forget that pretty graphics and great sound doesn't make a game a great game. When you break down N3 to its very core, the game is a Dynasty Warriors game that isn't nearly as much fun, and seems even more watered down.

There is no real story to N3. The background is there is this huge war between humans and this goblin army, with a few other things mixed in as well. The storyline, if you could call it that, is broken up so that you see the thing from several different perspectives. This means lots of different view points on the same missions. However, the different perspectives of the story still doesn't make it all that interesting. Each character seems to have more of a personal motive and less of a greater sense to be fighting in this war, which, while it has a reason for happening, just seems like a hashed excuse to give us an action game.

Graphically, N3 looks beautiful. The character models are great, articulate, and the designs for them has a lot of visual flair. The enemies look just as good, as well as the just individuals that you wouldn't expect to be so highly detailed. The game runs fairly smooth, dispite the insane number of enemies that are one screen at any given time.

Another great note for the game is its epic soundtrack. The soundtrack really does a wonderful job of building up these huge battles and missions that you will be "thinking" your under taking. Even the sound effects are wonderful, and though you will be hearing most of the sounds more frequently than you would really want to, the game still sounds great from start to finish. The voice acting is decent, given the value of the rest of the sound, and feels sort of rushed and tacked on to give it more depth.

In terms of game-play, there really isn't much to say. N3 is very combo based. That said, most of the combos are not useful. Just hitting the attack button is more effective than using your specials and earned combos. The idea is to take out and kill as many enemies as you can at any given point. Of course, the game has no shortage of enemies, and you will see your combo and kill counts frequently fly into the thousands. While at first this might be good, the hoards and hoards of enemies that keep coming at you tend to get tiresome, as they never pose much of a problem or challenge. There is no real strategy, you just run into the throng of enemies, and hit the attack button, occasionally releasing out a magical/special attack.

The missions are not anything special, and generally can be done relatively quickly. If you find yourself stuck, you can backtrack to the previous mission, or just keep killing until you find what your suppose to do. The missions are surprisingly short, despite the insane numbers your against. The length of the missions is actually more gratifying than anything, mainly because the repetitive mashing of the X button does get boring and tiresome.

The game forces you to play through it, giving you only one character at the beginning of the game. As you complete her mission, another character is unlocked, repeat the process for the new character, and get the same reward. The early missions of the game are generally nice, with a decent feel for the characters, but the later ones just feel hashed up and added on to fill content. Also, by the time you get to the last of the handful of characters, the game-play has really gotten boring and repetitive, causing you to often times just trudge through it to get to the end.

Ninety-Nine Nights is a game that tries really hard, but mostly just expects the graphics and sound to override the tedious game-play and hosh-posh story that comes along with it. In most areas, the game generally fails, and unless your a huge fan of lots of enemies on the screen and a huge kill count, I don't recommend this game. Even those who love Koei's Warriors games will find this one mostly lack-luster. The game truly is all flash, no substance.