Nine Nights Reviews

Wuxia Prince of Persia. Ci Lang, the Red Wolf, was a feared assassin. After his last job, the organization he works for declares him a wanted man. His only chance to survive is to reassemble the knowledge of a lost technique that would allow him to face his rivals. But many hunters are striving to claim the reward for his head, and he will need to perfect his skills in order to survive. A set of levels full of enemies and some secrets that you need to traverse and fight your way through. The game is a mix of combat and platforming, navigating maze-like levels. The platforming is clearly inspired by Prince of Persia, with wall-running, swinging on beams, and navigating loads of spike traps and sharp circular swords and blades. There are also some underwater sections, but most of the time you are jumping, wall-running and swinging across the levels. The combat has a lot of beat'em'up influences, with each enemy having a health bar in the top right corner, with the bosses having multiple health bars. The combat system includes regular, heavy attacks, blocks and dodges, and , as well as multiple combos with jump + attack, and multiple moves you can purchase, allowing you to speed up to a hyper-run, from which you can launch into jump kicks, or power slides. There's a fair bit of variety in strikes, though I found that jump + aerial kick is probably the most broken attack, because iit can be chained against most mini-bosses, essentially stunlocking them out of comission. Of course, this only works when there are no minions round who can knock Lang off his combo, and leave him vulnerable to enemy strikes. There's a pretty good enemy variety throughout the levels, with encounters being mixed and requiring strategy and mixing your skills and attacks to approach. Overall, the combat system was a lot of fun, even if there were some serious difficulty spikes. The story is paper-thin wuxia, with enemy charaters getting barely any backstory, but it's pretty irrelevant, as it's all about the gameplay. Sadly, the game is not without bugs. One level in particular had really messed up checkpoints and respawns, with the ability to fall through the level geometry, and the respawns glitching progress. Some of the minor enemies (the wolves and eagles) are also broken, being able to dodge hits and stunlocking Lang on impact. Because the game relies on checkpointing, a progress bug could require a full restart, which would obviously lead to frustration. Similarly, encountering a difficulty spike without sufficient healing and chi-restoring items 2/3s into the game could lead to a non-winnable encounter, which is a different type of a soft-lock. Despite this, I do consider the game to be a hidden gem. It is the kind of linear action game we do not get enough of these days. As such, even with all the caveats, I had a ton of fun with it.

Listen, you need to know what you're getting into with this. This is an extremely janky action game probably made by one guy, with some suspect sound assets (you'll recognize them when you hear them). But, it's actually pretty fun. It has a nice flow to it and handles surprisingly well. I give it a recommendation if you want to just have some hack and slash fun without being concerned for a top tier game. A cheap price for a budget experience, but still a good one.