Metareview - Ninety-Nine Nights

Born of a union between Kingdom Under Fire developer Phantagram and Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Q Entertainment, Ninety-Nine Nights promised to combine the grand scale of Dynasty Warriors with dramatic storytelling and strategic gameplay. Despite its impressive pedigree, however, N3 appears to have delivered only an average button mash experience with a next-gen coat of paint. Perhaps the game's lofty ambitions will be better served in a sequel.

• TeamXbox (67/100) enjoyed the battle effects and character animations, but it didn't hold the reviewer's attention: "Once the 'wow' factor wears off (the number of enemies per frame is crazy at times), Ninety-Nine Nights starts to get pretty mundane...it was more of the same, over and over again. It feels like more could have been done without losing the button mashing appeal."
  

• GameSpot (59/100) feels the mindless action orientation only wears thinner as N3 progresses: "None of the seven playable characters have particularly compelling stories to tell, and the game's annoying English voice acting doesn't do a good job of conveying what little story there is."
  

• IGN (56/100) notes a critical flaw in one of the game's only redeeming features: "N3 has a tendency to skip straight to a cutscene once you complete an objective, even if you just killed a rather large enemy that dropped something you might want. Too bad for you. If you didn't scoop it up in the half of a second you had after defeating the enemy, then you're out of luck."