Just finished up
NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams (on Wii).
This was my first time playing a NiGHTS game because, like everyone else on Planet Earth, I never owned a Saturn. Expectations were pretty high for this sequel due to the cult-status of its predecessor, but this one is tough to recommend.
NiGHTS is this androgynous jester-like figure who flies around through rings and collects orbs. Keep hitting circles to get a combochain going for more points. Pretty simple, intuitive, arcadey stuff. Very few buttons used and a host of controller options (GameCube support!!) should make this easy, but it never gets to that Super Monkey Ball level of precision.
Controls feel clunky in the flying levels, with no option to invert the Y-axis, auto-scrolling that seems to actively hinder how far you can look. There's also a few dull platforming levels (escort missions...) with confusingly laid out levels, overly simple puzzles and stiff controls.Story however is where this game really trips up. You're playing the dreams of two meant-to-be adorable moppets, but these lil' shits hog all the screentime with their poorly delivered dialogues, dead-eyed stares and realisations about the meaning of friendship (barf).
The game is plagued by cutscenes (and loadtimes) that play out the trite story, when all you wanna do is fly around as NiGHTS. I'm not making this up, the gametime logged on the file is 3.5 hours after completing both kids' story. But due to unskippable cutscenes (even on retries, always lovely) I spent a whopping 7.5 hours completing the game! There's
some stuff to like though: music is top-notch and there's a musicality to the better flying levels. Some of the visuals are nice enough, with the CGI cutscenes being real standouts (the in-engine ones are awful though). The world feels different enough to not be totally generic, with its cutesy Sega Nightopians, varied bossfights and main character of ambiguous gender. Gameplay is also different enough from most other games that it's easy to see why people like NiGHTS so much, although unfortunately controls are clunky throughout this particular instalment.
Verdict: NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams is
just likable enough on idea, world, music and bossfights. Those positives keep it from being awful; but its clunky controls, plethora of annoying talkative characters, endless unskippable cutscenes, stupid lack of checkpoints are all actively conspiring against it. If this franchise interests you, go for the (HD remake of the) original if at all possible.
5/10
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