Ninety-Nine Nights II will only take you one night to get sick of it.
In 2006, Q Entertainment developed a game for the 360 called Ninety-Nine Nights, or N3 for short. The game featured a handful of characters that went up against swarming hordes of enemies. For one of the 360's earlier titles, it was pretty impressive seeing a few hundred enemies on screen at one time. N3 was considered a niche title, and only really enjoyed by a select few. Four years later, Q Entertainment finally gives us a sequel and unfortunately manages to make it significantly inferior to the original.
The story's about as cliche as any dark fairytale you'll find in a children's library. A dark figure known as The Lord of the Night is brought into the physical world, and he has 99 nights to complete his transformation or he'll fade away. He unleashes his army on the land like a juggernaut, conquering and destroying everything in their path, as he makes his way toward Orphea Castle. In this castle is housed the Orb of Light, the key to completing the Lord's resurrection. Five warriors must now work together to defend the last bit of free land from the Lord of the Night's unstoppable onslaught.
If you have poor reflexes, then wash away any inclination you've had about purchasing N3II. It's hard as nails. The game pits you against thousands of enemies in every level, fighting hundreds of them at a time. Not moving quick enough will easily get you killed, but what really makes the difficulty hard to bear is how cheap it is. Since you're battling so many enemies at once, simple mathematics dictate that it's only a matter of time before you'll get hit.
There are archers that shoot you from afar, interrupting your combos. There are very annoying bird-like creatures that blast you with elemental-based attacks using deadly aim. The wizards are some of the greatest annoyances in the game, because most of the time they'll attack you when they're off-screen. There are also certain challenges that are so frustrating because no matter how great you're doing, the game will find a way to screw over your perfect run. You can even be juggled into the air and knocked out of it, and fighting more than one giant at a time is a death wish, as rolling out of the way of one attack has you rolling directly into the other.
Challenge is good to have in video games, provided it's done correctly. It just isn't in Ninety-Nine Nights II, and the difficulty's exacerbated by its horrible check point system. Some of these levels are long, ranging anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, and you'll be button mashing like crazy throughout. Protecting altars, destroying summoning towers, surviving traps - all of these objectives that you're doing can be serious trials, yet you'll die shortly afterward and have to start from the very beginning of the level. Poor checkpoint placement and very stingy health power ups can make the game a lot more work than it needs to be. There's nothing wrong with playing a hard game, but when you have to play all the monotonous parts over and over again, it's a serious siphon to the fun factor.
When everything is going right, the combat can actually be enjoyable. The game does a decent job of making you feel powerful enough to wipe out hordes of enemies in a single blow. You have weak and strong slashes as your basic attacks, but you can also use skills to damage multitudes of enemies at once. There are special attacks called Orb Attacks and Orb Sparks that use a three-tier system, so the more tiers you have in your gauge, the stronger those attacks will be. Each character also has a specific ability to help them overcome obstacles, such as breaking through barriers, moving heavy stones, or swinging from grappling points.
However, there's always something going wrong in the game. Aside from all the cheap tactics the enemy employs, you receive literally no help at all from your AI ally soldiers and partners. For story purposes, it's cool to fight side by side with another character, but the only problem is they just don't fight enough. It seems like they'd rather just stand in one place and try to stare down the enemy instead of attacking as ferociously as you do. They never bother to dodge, so they're constant punchbags, and they use their skills senselessly. For instance, they could be surrounded by the enemy and a quick Quake could push them all back, but they won't pull it off. Another example is you'll be down to one enemy, and then they let loose one of their more powerful moves for a total overkill. It's just shameful what was done with the ally AI.
Another very annoying facet to N3II are the new platforming elements. If you're going to have a game that has platforming, you have to make sure you do the jumping well, which they surely didn't. Jumping is stiff and many times unresponsive, judging distances is deceptive, and the characters don't stop on a dime, which makes it easy to run yourself off a ledge. Levv the Alcor also has some frustrating moments with his grappling points, because he lacks a fair amount of control when in the air. Honestly, the platforming segments can be just as tedious as the combat.
Ninety-Nine Nights II features a plethora of skills and equipment to be found. It takes experimentation to figure out what works best and what doesn't, but having a good combination of skills and equipment can make the game a bit easier. Obtaining some of these skills, though, can prove to be too much, as most are dropped by incredibly powerful versions of normal enemies. Going up against these targets is hazardous, because they attack with deadly unblockable moves and can very easily kill you, setting you back a good deal. Again, if there was a better checkpoint system in play, the player would feel more apt to go after these skills.
The game features five playable characters - two less than the original game. The issue is that they lack individuality gameplay wise. Aesthetically, they're all creatively designed, but aside from differences in speed and strength, they all feel very much the same. Their combos are almost identical, and if you found a string that worked with one character, you can use that exact same string with another. When you consider the variety among the characters of the first game and compare it to what's offered in the sequel, it's a major step backward.
Ninety-Nine Nights II has one strong asset going for it, and that its visuals. Wwhen the camera's panned out and you're slashing your way through scores of enemies, it manages to wow you a bit. The moves are so flashy, there's so much blood being splashed around and for the most part, the 360 handles it all well with hardly any slowdown. Still, it's far from a contender for best graphics of the year, particularly due to the fact that the environments could have used more work in both the technical and artistic departments. Up close, textures could use more polish, and the lip synching isn't done very well at all.
Audio wise, the game fares about as decently as its graphics. The sound effects do a good job of portraying the chaos on the battlefield. There's this cacophony of metal slicing through metal, and of flesh being ripped apart and bodies being thrown in the air, and all the skills sound powerful and full of energy. The music is orchestrated nicely, but unfortunately the paltry soundtracks becomes repetitive very quickly. The voice acting is very hit or miss. Galen speaks too softly at times and Maggni sounds too cheesy. Zazi and Levv have the most interesting performances, but all in all the voice acting just isn't that well directed. The poorly written dialogue also does nothing to help here.
If you absolutely loved the first, you'll probably find some enjoyment out of the second, but disappointment is almost guaranteed. There is just so little variety to the game from the characters to the enemies to the objectives. The poorly balanced difficultly and check point system just has you wasting too much time on things you've already done before. The story itself isn't even very engaging. There are a few cool boss battles to fight, but the game cheapens itself further by sharing these fights across multiple characters. It's nearly impossible to recommend this title for full price, or recommend it at all, even for a rental. Only extreme masochists and die-hard fans of the first need apply.