The story is told from numerous points of view. For example, a single battle will be told from the perspective of every main character involved on both sides of the war. It is somewhat interesting to see so many different aspects of a single battle, but at the same time most players would have appreciated some new battlefields to explore with the games numerous playable characters.
The narrative elements are not the strong suit of N3. Although the story isn’t terrible, it’s not the reason for playing the game. The cut scenes are generally very attractive, but lip-syncing is quite poor, and localization efforts could have been much better regarding dialogue translations. The quality of acting is serviceable, but not outstanding. A final gripe regarding N3’s cut scenes: there is an annoying design flaw in which the movies interrupt the players hard-won spark attacks anytime they unleash their orbs just before an unpredictable triggered cut scene. Not a game-breaker, but obnoxious nonetheless.
Cut scenes are attractive, but you won’t be playing Ninety Nine Nights for the mediocre story.
There are some other notable problems with the game, most of which center around how the game drops special items. When the player defeats a tough boss character for example, the reward items like bonus XP and more powerful weapons are only available for a few brief seconds, and if the player can’t pick them all up by the time the cut scene loads, the items are lost to the ages.
Compounding this frustration, the game will occasionally drop a powerful item outside of the boundaries of the playable area, making it impossible to pick up. Item drops are random, and all maps are repayable, so it’s not as though one can’t go back through parts of the game in order to gain better equipment, but the developers should have made sure players get their rewards after a single play through of a given level.
Another popular complaint of the game is the lack of an in-mission save system, which the developers claim was an intentional choice to promote a sense of tension. In practice the save system is not actually a significant impediment to the action, and the design choice actually seems to work in N3’s favor. When you are on the final boss fight of a given level, and you only have a few pixels worth of health remaining, the ensuing drama is palpable as you alternate between defending and attacking.
So although N3 is not a narrative powerhouse, it does offer up some visceral action for the Xbox 360. Although the pleasure to be had from mowing down army after army may not be enough for everyone, fans of straight-up action who appreciate tight controls, high production values, quality graphics, and well paced character progression could do much worse on Microsoft’s console. Fans of Kingdom Under Fire or Dynasty Warriors will be pleasantly surprised at the improvements found in N3. As mentioned earlier though, newcomers to the genre will like the game to the degree that they will enjoy the making their characters increasingly more powerful over time. The battles are all the same, essentially... it’s the player-character that improves as the game progresses, and capitalizing on these improvements is at the core of N3’s fun.
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