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Good: Music, amount of enemies onscreen, some interesting attacks

Bad: Awkward camera angles, no checkpoint system, A.I.

More: Repetitive than Dynasty Warriors

Ninety-Nine Nights owes as much to the Dynasty Warriors series as Capcom's own copycat, Devil Kings. Both of these titles took almost the exact same formula from the Koei series, but while Devil Kings offered absolutely nothing fresh, N3 had a chance to thanks to the power of the Xbox 360. Even with the advantage of next-gen hardware, this title features even more repetitive action than Dynasty Warriors (and more glitches and annoyances to boot).

N3 doesn't feature any historical setting like Dynasty Warriors, it instead opts for a fantasy world involving a war between humans and goblins. The story is really as generic as can be, and the narrative doesn't include any truly interesting characters.

You'll start as Inphyy, a sword-wielding woman with some quick attacks. As you level up, more moves and item slots will become available to you. There are multiple characters to choose from, but you must unlock each by finishing the previous one's campaign. Each character features only a handful of missions, and you'll get to experience events and battles from different perspectives.

Actual battles are exercises in jamming on the X button for extended periods of time, followed by running for a little bit, then back to the X button. If you're getting bored (which you will), you can throw in a power attack with Y every once in a while. Similar to the Musou attack in DW, you can build up an orb gauge by defeating enemies. Once it's full, you can unleash huge attacks for a short period. Enemies that are killed while in this mode will fill your Orb Spark gauge, which is a devastating area attack.

Most of the time, the camera will give you an extremely awkward view of the action. Another problem is that important items (dropped by powerful enemies) will sometimes fall outside the area of possible movement. This can be awful if you're desperately trying to find a health pickup, only to have it fall right outside of your grasp. Also, the game has a tendency to go to cutscenes right after these items are available (or during a charge attack), stealing your chances of actually getting your reward.

Battles between your soldiers and enemy forces are ridiculous to watch, as they'll mostly just stand around until you jump into the action. It's actually possible to run straight through a horde of goblins without getting hit once. Most boss fights are ridiculously easy thanks to the simple A.I. After you knock them down, they're vulnerable when getting back up. It's possible to just keep attacking them when they get up and not take a hint of damage. There is no in-mission save option or checkpoint system, so if you get killed by a boss after 25 minutes of work, prepare to go through it all again.

On the visual end, N3 does a good job of presenting a ton of characters onscreen, but it's not without its price. During some huge attack sequences and other times of commotion, the framerate can take pretty dramatic hits. Most of the environments are extremely generic, and you'll have to see most of them multiple times thanks to the repeating stages from different perspectives. N3's strongest aspect is the great orchestral soundtrack, which complements the action well. Despite this, the quality of voice acting is sub-par at best.

N3 takes the concept of Dynasty Warriors, adds more enemies, and subtracts much of the polish and fun. If you're looking for this kind of constant hack-and-slash gameplay, you'd be much better off going with the long-running Koei series.

Graphics: 7.5

Sound: 8.0

First Play: 6.5

Replay Value: 5.0

Gameplay: 5.0

Overall: 5.7