Apologies for the lack of a Spare Change column last week, life happened. Or as John Lennon said “Life is what happens, while you’re making other plans”.
This week 360 owners looking for a budget hack and slash fix should look no further than the very stylish Korean/Japanese slasher Ninety Nine Nights. At the very least its worth picking up before the sequel debuts to give yourself a taster.
The over arching plot is, not surprisingly, nonsensical and derivative. There’s a power stone and it gets split in half and the two powers of light and darkness war over the halves and if the light side loses the world will endure ninety nine days of night. During this lengthy nocturnal emission (he he) the shadow king will be able to enter the world and… probably… kill everyone? That’s not quite established, it’s strongly hinted that this would be a bad thing though and he is definitely not bringing any cake or party pies.
What’s more interesting are the individual stories of the characters; the warriors of light are shown to often be genocidal nut cases such as the first available character Inphyy, or generally selfish and introverted. Paradoxically the dark side characters are much more sympathetic, a goblin warrior seeking to redeem his fallen brothers honour and the simple minded ogre Vigk Vagk who’s actually the most likeable character in the game despite the fact he’s the last you’ll unlock.
So why should you get it? Well if you like games that just look plain good you’ll love N3. The game is gorgeous and the collaboration between the Korean developer Phantagram (responsible for strategy game series Kingdom Under Fire) and the Japanese developer behind the psychedelic Lumines has produced a game with a high attention to detail but avoids the androgyny of games like Final Fantasy; in other words, then male characters look male. The fantasy elements are a nice blend of elaborate Japanese designs that look like Yoshitaka Amano's work but with a lot more classical features such as plate armour and medieval style castles. The orcs and ogres look similar to the John Howe paintings from Lord of the Rings with a few manga style tweaks.
The gameplay though… to put it nicely N3 is a prime example of style over substance. If you’ve ever played a Dynasty Warriors game then you’ll be familiar with the style. Lots of enemies on screen, as far as you can see in some cases, just begging to be carved to hits by your various super attacks, punctuated by the occasional boss character who presents an almost ridiculously difficult challenge. Add this to the fact that the save checkpoints are few and far between and you’re looking at a lot of invested time and experience going up in smoke after a block happy enemy unleashes his super attack. To really advance in the game you need to max out your characters and this means playing a few levels over again to boost them up to a suitably kick ass level. There are weapon upgrades scattered around the battlefields, in some cases only appearing after you have met some criteria and enemies usually drop a few items you can equip during skuffles. The actual controls teeter on the edge of being simple button mashing, but to really be successful you’ll need to master your characters more complicated combos.
There does exist a sad subset of gamers who love Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors. They don’t mind playing the same battles over and over from different perspectives because they eat up the whole combination of experience combined with unlocking characters and weapons. I know because I am one. It took me about four months of dedicated play but I managed to once unlock every character and unlock all their secret weapons in Dynasty Warriors 4, that was no mean feat, we're talking leveling up fifty odd characters and then fulfilling an often difficult and complicated requirement to get their weapon. N3 is a game that will definitely appeal to that crowd, it has the art style and a degree of fun to the battles that will please most, but only sad unlockable junkies like me will look past its frustrating shortcomings to really enjoy the game. But then again, when you're paying under $20 for a copy, you don't have much to complain about right?
Want to share your own budget suggestions or recommend/warn of this one? Official discussion right here.
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