N3 is about as bizarre as you can get, featuring flashy anime-inspired characters that nearly single-handedly fight a war against thousands of enemies, and they all have double letters in their name (such as Imphyy or Aspharr.) It also has a name that makes little immediate sense, Ninety-Nine Nights, and was co-developed by two completely different companies with vastly different portfolios. What does all this equal - a simple hack-and-slash adventure that may have been more hyped up than it really deserved, or is there more to it than that?

Q? Entertainment, known for their popular puzzle titles Lumines for the PSP and Meteos for the DS form one half of the development team of N3. Exactly what they contributed to the project is hard to pinpoint when you consider that the other team, Phantagram, developed the Kingdom Under Fire series on Xbox, which in a way bears strong similarities to our game of the hour. Despite having two developers on board the game feels surprisingly bare, and I really don't mean that as an insult but just an observation - it seems like N3 could just as easily have been helmed by one small team.

At the core Ninety-Nine Nights is a simple hack-and-slash adventure not unlike the Dynasty Warriors series. However, where N3 differs is the fact that it includes a vastly smaller roster than its hack-n-slash brother, and that plays out as an advantage. With a smaller roster, N3 has the ability to really focus on its characters, giving them depth and fleshing out their move sets so that each has a very distinct feel. The gameplay manages to be extremely easy to pick up and grasp, yet with a surprising amount of depth, for reasons I'll get into in a moment.

But first the story, and more importantly what the hell the title of the game is referring to! Well, N3 does a good job of making up a huge back story and failing to really indulge the players in it, instead focusing all on the present and none on the past. Suspend belief as I indulge you: many years ago, peace flourished over the lands of N3 - it was a time when all races could agree to disagree and war wasn't a problem whatsoever. Then, in typical Japanese fantasy style, a magical orb was shattered, thus splitting light and dark, giving birth a demon who covered the land in perpetual darkness. After ninety-nine days of fighting, the demon lord was defeated by the Keeper of the Orb on the one-hundredth day, and the demon was thus dubbed "King Ninety-Nine Nights". Suddenly, the keeper was murdered! And the Orb was split in two! BUT WAIT! A goblin snatched one half of it! Guess which half!

With the Humans in possession of the light half and Goblins holding the dark, the tides turned in our favor when the Elves decided to side with us, but the Goblin King has his own ally in mind: the Lord of Darkness. With the stage set, you as the player must fight this war as not only the Imperial Knights, but even as some unexpected characters as well. As you play through each character's separate storylines, you'll see them all intertwine, or in some cases pan out differently when you choose new actions for characters who previously weren't under your control. Though the story often comes off as mostly confusing, it's definitely cool to watch - and play - similar scenes or levels in completely different ways with other characters, sometimes from the opposite side of the battlefield (and I don't mean that in distance terms!)

From the start, N3 is hard to stick with. With only two attack buttons, a jump command and blocking, the game comes off as a bit bland initially - okay, really bland initially. However, if you do persevere, there's a good amount of depth and key features backing up the seemingly simple gameplay. Each character begins with a skill level of one and can only use a certain number of combos or skills, but as you level up you gain the ability to unleash extended combos, use new weapons and kick all sorts of ass in plenty of new ways. Leveling up isn't the only RPG element in N3, either - on the battlefield you'll discover pick up items that, while not changing your appearance, grant you extra abilities (or even handicap you.) Initially you can only hold one of these, and figuring out which item to equip when and where is a key feature that adds plenty of strategy, especially when you can start equipping up to five, creating a character much more powerful and skilled than when you originally started. You may begin with a very slow character, for example, but equipping certain items or weapons (all found on the battlefield, no shops to fool around with here) can increase your speed but may hinder your ability to block (which is frustrating to do in the first place - the block button is shared with an auto center command for the camera!) or it may even decrease one of your attributes, such as attack power or critical rate.

The attacks are easily the selling point of N3 - the combos look simply amazing, especially when you reach the higher levels for your character (you can only get to level nine so it won't take forever), and the best part is that each character has a move set, fighting style and weapon all of their own. The lead character, hot-headed Imphyy, caries a broad sword that makes lightning quick sweeps and can instantly pierce any foe, while her brother Aspharr uses a long staff that can reach enemies from a greater distance, which also allows him to easily destroy foes surrounding him in a 360 radius; something Imphyy has more trouble with. Switching to a new character requires a drastic change in playing style and this stops this game from descending too far into simple button mashing - although playing this way is entirely possible it isn't a lot of fun and often results in more harm to yourself than anything else. Other weapons (so as to not spoil the other characters you play!) include a double bladed staff (think Darth Maul) that's attached to a wire, allowing it to be thrown or spun around for great range attacks, and a weapon that doesn't attack but instead produces water with which to bombard enemies. One character is even equipped with nothing more than two daggers and must rely on quick speed and acrobatics to come through each battle alive.

The battlefields are considerably smaller than Dynasty Warriors, and some don't include anything more than some open land that you can barely even move around on (though exploring could produce some nice treasures!). Luckily they're all varied enough to keep the game fresh, but not complex enough to frighten a player away from going back to (which you will do either as another character or replaying a level for a new rank.) Rocky canyons where players must avoid boulders and landslides, a dense forest with plenty of twists and turns for ambushes, amazing grasslands with castles and churches in the distance, each rendered in glorious detail - the only problem is that interaction with the landscapes is incredibly minimal! They look superb and offer nice areas to wage war in against hundreds of enemies, but sometimes you'll find that you can't even jump over a small wooden fence that doesn't even reach your character's knees! Imagine what kind of fun this could have been if you had the ability to wall-jump, or climb up large rocks and leap off them into a large group of enemies. The inspired visuals and backdrops are regrettably paired with very uninspired interaction, and it does dampen the experience a good amount. Hell, when destroying bow-and-arrow guard towers there isn't a single hint of reaction when you slice at the tower; it simply falls over after you swipe at it enough, your sword passing through it over and over with no visible impact! Furthermore you're held back by several invisible walls all over the place, some of them even preventing you from obtaining dropped items from enemies, which is extremely annoying at times. This kind of sloppy design is not at all befitting to next generation gaming - it's all very well making it look great, but if the subtle details aren't attended to as well, then all you've got is a pretty looking last-gen game.

That gripe aside, those looking for a hack-and-slash adventure with some good item and weapon depth will love N3, especially when it comes to searching out for those rare items or ranks. Each level comes with a completion letter grade, with S the highest (though A is considered extremely good and is the main grade to strive for), and obviously the higher the grade, the greater the rewards. Luckily, completion time is a very minor factor in the grades, with kills, guard survival rate and orb uses playing larger roles. Playing levels over again isn't a problem at all, purely because when you do so it's likely you'll be a higher level character than you were originally, with better weapons and items, thus making it a new experience.

I may have thrown you off with two key comments up there, the first being 'Guard Survival Rate'. You're usually accompanied by two guard battalions on your battles, each one made up soldiers of light infantry, heavy infantry, pikemen or archers; but believe me, they aren't here to help you actually kill foes. Of course they try their best, but they're little more than distractions for the enemies while you run in and slash everything to bits. Often you'll find your troops struggle to kill a single isolated enemy soldier and though you can command your men to either attack or defend, it really makes little difference. Their chance of survival depends solely on your ability to kill everything around them with haste. Even though they're useless, they do still add to the atmosphere in a big way! All around you there are enemies, your soldiers, other commanders from your army, archers in the distance... the game is actually very atmospheric, especially when you come charging in from the distance and see nothing but a sea of soldiers battling it out!

The other comment about orb attacks also plays a key role in the gameplay. Each time you defeat a soldier, a red orb appears and floats into your character. Once you accumulate enough of these and your Red Orb Meter charges up, you can enter Orb Attack mode, where your two attack buttons change and unleash new devastating moves. Enemies taken down by these slashes and hacks produce blue orbs, which work in the same was as the red ones but instead lead up to one mammoth attack that usually obliterates anything and everything that moves around you (and isn't on your side, of course... that is unless an enemy mage put a spell on you that gives you the 'ability' to attack your own troops!) Each fighter has a completely different attack, such as Imphyy who sucks the souls out of any foe nearby compared to Aspharr who shoots out a huge beam of light that simply destroys anything in its path and leaves no trace of life behind. Other attacks go a bit further, including one that summons comets to the battlefield! Both types of orb attack play an important role to the gameplay and round off the needed depth and style.

Although rated M for Mature, the violence is actually very toned down and cartoonish; there's no blood to speak of, enemies don't lose limbs or heads and there's so much going on at once that it's even difficult to really focus on individual enemies being killed by various swords or blades. Blood is instead replaced by flashy light effects, or some sort of elemental power such as fire attached to specific weapons. The graphics in all look great, backed by solid animations for each character and a smooth running engine that rarely slows down (though unfortunately it does at times.) On the sound side of things there's some horrific voice acting and no ability to switch it to the native tongue with subtitles. Though some of the actors do an okay job, trust me when I say that most of it is just awful and uninspired. Any time you see a character standing on a hill giving a speech to his troops yet speaking in a normal, room-level voice with little enthusiasm or motivation - right before a huge freakin' war - you know something has gone terribly wrong in the sound booth. Luckily, the battle effects and ambience do a bang-up job, including some excellent war cries when many characters rush into battle creating a huge echo of screams. The fully orchestrated music is also great, but is hindered by a bizarre cut-off problem that causes it to simply stop long before a battle is over.

Despite the ranking system and character levels giving some solid replay value, it won't last very long in the end. Each character has a campaign of, at most, six levels (some have as few as two), and the achievement list is extremely short - there's only ten to get. With most levels lasting under fifteen minutes and only a single player mode, I will never forgive the creators for not including some sort of co-op multiplayer mode... think about it. How did they miss this!? It would have been a huge amount of fun to take it online with a buddy and slash the living hell out of everything in sight! Okay, I lied... I'll probably forgive Q? Entertainment when Lumines Live is released. But Phantagram, I'm sorry, Kingdom Under Fire 3 won't be enough!

Regardless of the glaring omission of a complete lack of multiplayer, Ninety-Nine Nights is a great deal of fun for those that stick with it long enough to uncover its hidden depths. The items, superb looking combo attacks and variety in the characters make this a hack-and-slash title that does the genre and your 360 proud. Pick it up and stay with it, you won't regret it, and may even find yourself playing it for a good, let's say, ninety-nine nights!

Reviewed by Christopher Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).