Video Game Review: Disappointing, Frustrating ‘Ninety-Nine Nights II’

Printer-friendly versionE-mail page to friendPDF version

CHICAGO – “Ninety-Nine Nights II” is one of the most frustrating major releases in a long time due to the unfulfilled potential of the title and inconsistent gameplay that could easily force a player to throw their controller at the screen in dismay if they’re not too bored to do so. With unrefined controls, mediocre graphics, and forgettable storytelling, this is easily one of the biggest disappointments of the season.

Video Game Rating: 2.0/5.0

Having grown up addicted to “Gauntlet,” I have less of a problem with button-mashing fantasy games than most but “Ninety-Nine Nights II” pushed me far beyond my personal threshold for the sub-genre. From the very beginning, the player will be repeatedly pounding buttons to kill hundreds of enemies with no real idea of what they’re doing or who they’re doing it to. On the first level, your warrior character swings his weapons and literally eviscerates hundreds of enemies but neither the hero nor his opponents have any personality. And the hack ‘n’ slash gameplay only adds to the sensation that nothing that’s happening has any weight, meaning, or relevance. It’s like watching a cartoon but you need to press X and Y over and over and over again to keep it going. Oh, and the cartoon is REALLY boring.

Ninety-Nine Nights II
Photo credit: Konami

The combat in “Ninety-Nine Nights II” is so repetitive and poorly designed that you don’t even really need to look at the screen. Push buttons randomly and repeatedly and you’ll probably kill a few thousand of the dumbest enemies to populate a major game in a long time. Even the hit combo is annoying as it regularly crosses into several thousand consecutive hits but produces almost no sense of accomplishment.

Nearly every element of “Ninety-Nine Nights II” feels underdeveloped. The difficulty throughout the levels fluctuates wildly with areas that are so easy you could read a book while you play it followed by some that feel downright broken in their design. More than once, I found myself stuck in a part of the game where enemy attacks, usually from flying creatures, came so quickly that I couldn’t move, dodge, or attack. It feels like a glitch or a design error more than something for the player to overcome through their ability. And some of the boss battles are ridiculously difficult including one tower defense sequence that could cause the most patient player to scream.

Ninety-Nine Nights II Photo credit: Konami

And it doesn’t stop there. The game has horrible checkpoints. You’ll die during one of the aforementioned nightmare sections of the story and find yourself about fifteen minutes back with the awareness that you’ve got a poorly designed boss battle fifteen minutes down the road…if you’re lucky enough not to die again. And don’t you dare turn it off before finishing a whole level. Like a 2002 game, “Ninety-Nine Nights II” has checkpoints that seem to be saving but will start you back at the beginning of the level should you need to take an actual break and go buy a replacement for the controller you just broke.

That’s what’s worst of all about “Ninety-Nine Nights II.” If the game was easy enough then the repetition might not be as annoying. But who wants to take time to climb a mountainous section of the poorly-designed controls merely to be thrown back into a story that they don’t give a damn about? Sometimes games can overcome frustrating graphics or controls by the power of their storytelling or variety of their gameplay. This is not one of those times.

As more and more games continue to shatter expectations with the excellence of their ambitions, it’s going to be harder and harder to give completely lazy titles like “Ninety-Nine Nights II” a pass. There will always be guilty pleasures made of underdeveloped titles but when you could play so many better games this summer, why waste your time on these long, exhausting “Nights”?

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com