This time around, however, Nights takes a bit of a different turn. Keeping in line with the "world of dreams" theme – it wouldn't be Nights without it – players will take control of Will and Helen, two young children each entering into Nightopia (the world of dreams) with their own back-story, emotional baggage, and inner demons that come to life though the forming of nightmares. It's a pretty simple concept overall, and with each child's five main levels you'll get a different piece of the story leading up to the same grand finale. Once they arrive in the land of dreams, each character meets up with a Nights almost instantaneously, and from there learns to meld with the mysterious creature and fly through the world of Nightopia. Along the way you'll learn of the quest to find the hidden Ideya (basically essences of the human spirit), and eventually attempt to defeat a powerful god-like creature named Wizeman and his right-hand man Reala.
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Comparing this to the original Nights, there are definitely many improvements and this feels a lot more complete. The original is still better and genuinely captures a very specific emotion for me personally that means a lot to me, but this game is still a very very very good sequel.
I sort of feel like Nights on the Saturn could be compared to, like, Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2- tighter, less story, less hand holding, infinitely repayable. This game is more like Banana Blitz, a few new added things and ideas that sometimes work really well, still a really great time but the original always reigns supreme while being a little simpler.
The fact we never got a third Nights game makes me mad 😠
I sort of feel like Nights on the Saturn could be compared to, like, Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2- tighter, less story, less hand holding, infinitely repayable. This game is more like Banana Blitz, a few new added things and ideas that sometimes work really well, still a really great time but the original always reigns supreme while being a little simpler.
The fact we never got a third Nights game makes me mad 😠
I legit don't get why people disliked this sequel.
It takes all of the great things that makes Nights Into Dreams a classic and expends upon it in all the ways.
The atmosphere is litersally dream-like, able to mix together incredibly beautiful scenery with really effective nightmare fuel (seriously, some of the bosses looks messed up, in the best way). The controls are solid and feels natural with a Wii remote (even if I would love to see a port with a more traditional controller) and the side modes featured, both single and multiplayer, offer a lot of replayability.
While I can see why the writing can be a letdown for a lor of old fans (specifically regarding NIGHTS's character), I feel the message of following your dreams, trusting yourself and keep moving forward to face the challenges you can meet in your life, are still intact, and can even surpass the morals of its predecessor.
I kinda wish SEGA will do more with this franchise. One of the most underrated games from their catalog!
It takes all of the great things that makes Nights Into Dreams a classic and expends upon it in all the ways.
The atmosphere is litersally dream-like, able to mix together incredibly beautiful scenery with really effective nightmare fuel (seriously, some of the bosses looks messed up, in the best way). The controls are solid and feels natural with a Wii remote (even if I would love to see a port with a more traditional controller) and the side modes featured, both single and multiplayer, offer a lot of replayability.
While I can see why the writing can be a letdown for a lor of old fans (specifically regarding NIGHTS's character), I feel the message of following your dreams, trusting yourself and keep moving forward to face the challenges you can meet in your life, are still intact, and can even surpass the morals of its predecessor.
I kinda wish SEGA will do more with this franchise. One of the most underrated games from their catalog!
CARALHOOOOOOOOOOO 2
This review contains spoilers
Disclaimer: I played this game with a Wii controller. Also, English is not my main language, I'm sorry if you see grammatical errors.
Each entry in the Nights Franchise (yes, all two of them) can represent the core ideas and game design philosophies of Sonic Team in the respective times each game was made, arguably more so than the Sonic franchise.
The first "Into Dreams..." is an arcadey unique 2.5D flight simulator with a setting as inventive as the idea behind the game: 2 children venturing into a world made of their dreams with the help of a magical Jester creature. It was simple and effective, and while not everyone's cup of tea due to the enjoyment coming from trying to get the highest ranking possible, for the ones that stick to try that herculean task it's worth every hour spent.
10 years later Sonic Team drops its follow-up "Journey of Dreams" which mixes the timeless charm of the original, with awkwardness and head scratches that make you go "Why did they do that?"
In all fairness, I don't think the game is necessarily Bad, but you can tell a different Sonic Team made this than the one from 1996.
Like its predecessor, Journey of Dreams main and core gameplay style is a 2.5D Flight game where every level is made of 3 routes/courses + a boss fight at the End that is the major factor on the raking for the level, or in this game's case, the first main mission.
Unlike the first game where you need to get a certain number of Blue Chips to destroy a generator and then get to the temple at the center of the level to complete a Course, in Journey, you need to chase a Bird guard Nightmaren (the villains of the series) that has a key. Catch the bird to get the key, then use it to break the cage at the beginning of each Course. You have to do this before the timer on top of the screen Runs out. While Chasing the Guard, the player needs to go through loops and catch blue chips to fill a combo meter (or links as the game calls it) that serves to fill the boost meter and earn points that are used to rank the player's performance in each Course, which also plays into the ranking at the end.
To start with the positives, I welcome the change in Direction: the first game was all about repeating the courses multiple times to get higher rankings, but if someone wasn't interested in that they could just destroy the generator and move on with a Low Rank missing part of the gameplay Appeal; but turning the main stages from a "Score attack" philosophy to a "Time Attack with a moving goal" one surprisingly works. They simplified some of the Loop and chips positions and the camera angle is adjusted to have a clear view of the surroundings. I like the first game approach a little better, but if we ever get a Nights 3, I'll be happy if they insert both approaches as separate missions.
Speaking of which, as I implied before, each level is now separated into 5 missions and you need to complete all of them to progress through the game. I was scared at first because, after Sonic Adventure it feels like every time Sonic Team puts Variety in their games, they usually tend to lose the focus of what should be the main gameplay style and put something completely different like Fishing or roaming around a map for 10 hours finding 3 mcguffins.
Thankfully, except for one type of mission, most of the gameplay variations fall in the Crash Bandicoot vehicle stage category, where even with slightly different controls or objectives I never feel I'm straying away from the main gameplay of the game: even when nights become a boat or needs to do paraloop challenges or needs to do a certain amount of links in the Octopaw levels, I'm still going though loops, flying around, performing tricks, chaining links and trying to get a high score like in the main missions. and the quality (not counting the stages I'll talk about later) ranges from OK to pretty good.
This is a Sonic Team project so of course the production value will be of good quality. This game doesn't disappoint for the most part: the soundtrack is stellar with various re-arrangements and covers of the series' main theme "Dreams Dreams" plus various banger songs like Queen Bella's boss fight or Reala Theme, and while the environment reuses most of the themes of the previous game, it's nice to see them again made for the ground up for a 6th gen system.
Honestly, if I'm in a completionist mood where I take a good stack of games that I completed the main story, but I skipped the Side content or I didn't get the highest rankings or all the collectibles, I wouldn't mind putting this one in that stack, especially in between the larger games with a ton of side stuff. I say this with levity now because I finished the game and I can go back and revisit the missions I want. But unlock them for the first time...that's another another story (and not a good one).
An Area where the game stumbles story and pacing.
The game's narrative is a retelling of the first game: two young children, a boy named Will and a girl named Helen, are suffering from "anxiety" (this game treats more like "not believing in themselves") due to personal problems, from Will feeling like his father doesn't give enough attention because of work, to Helen feeling like she is ignoring her training for a big Violin concert she has to do with her mother in a week. One night while sleeping, both kids get called into the dream world and meet the title character NIghts, and the new addition to the cast, a stereotypical intellectual owl named... Owl. Both of them notice that the two visitors have the power of Ideya, the dream energy that powers the dream world and that is hunted by the main antagonist of the series, Wizemen, and his army of nightmaren. So the Kids and nights need to unite their powers (literally) and collect all the Ideyas to restore peace in the dream world and resolve the kid's issues.
It's a pretty cheesy standard videogame plot that does its job and doesn't require too much explaining....and that's exactly what Sonic Team did!
I don't know if it was because of the change in industry standards or playing catch up with other devs, but Sonic Team is trying so hard to make the story much more involved, but ended up with a even less compelling result than what a Saturn game did 10 years earlier.
The original "Into Dreams..." isn't Oscar-worthy with its story and it can also be put in the cheesy category to some extent. Still, it shows the ingenuity of the Sonic team of old and it's a good evolution of the "using gameplay for storytelling" mantra they created with Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Since the dream world is made of the dreams and memories of the kids, Sonic team went around the limitation of the Saturn and used the environment as a representation of their state of mind: there are forests made of illusions and musical instruments, desert valleys with steamy cold machines and other various biomes that can be representative of the kid's inner emotional state, or a happy/sad memory, or their subconscious, or a mix of all and the above, making the player coming to their conclusions and interpretations without any sorta of forced explanation.
Journey of Dreams does (Unfortunately) force some explanation: in some instances, the game stops to explain what the level represents and that just sucks some of the magic of the original. in its place, we have the trademark Sonic Team 2000's writing and cutscenes directing in all its Awkward glory: the cutscenes are a bunch of nothing burgers that fail to have any (intentional) charm with bland dialogue that feels first draft, almost like place holder lines that they forgot to cut, and a cast of flavorless characters that don't go beyond their archetype. The only enjoyment I got was from riffing the hell out of these cutscenes.
It wouldn't even be that bad if it wasn't for the amount there is in this game. there's one every time you start a mission for the first time and you can't skip them unless you see them once.
They are so boring, it's like playing Mario 64 or a crash bandicoot game but everytime you enter a stage, a "lore" video from late 2000's/ early 2010's youtube will play, like the ones linkara makes.
And Speaking of immature, let’s talk about the kids, They are probably the worst part of the game. They are the emotional center of the game but fall flat in every aspect like they are trying their hardest to hijack the game in every way possible. And they are especially disappointing if you compare them to the previous Kids, Claire and Elliot, and they didn't speak a word: their dilemmas are very generic, the models are the most uncanny of the whole game, and the ACTING!?
Look, this game is 15+ years old, the actors of the kids are adults and I hope they are living their lives to their fullest and that they will have the best future possible, because man, their performances don't help their cases: they sound like they are acting in a bad school play, with their directionless delivery.
And to top it off, they have the worst missions in the game. Yes, you play as the kids without nights in a few instances and it’s just painful! You know when you start a main level you are briefly playing the kid you choose just to reach Nights and dualize (the name of the fusion between Nights and the children)? Sonic Team, in their infinite wisdom, decided to make levels out of those brief sequences and all of a sudden the player is trusted in a puzzle platformer that is completely different from the rest of the game. And just like any other half-assed shift in gameplay made by these devs, it’s not good: the puzzles are braindead, attacking with the blue chips is imprecise and the levels are LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG, some almost reach 10 minutes.
At first, I didn’t think that they were going to be prominent because Will’s campaign has only one, but then I played Helen’s side and she had not one, not two, but 3 of these things, one for each level. Combine them with the nothing story at the beginning of the mission and the game just becomes a slog. The pacing is all over the place in this game: because the missions are not very long, it feels like the game comes to a halt when I can’t skip the cutscene before the mission where I have to collect bubbles that do nothing but tell me that I’m going to collect bubbles.
(Conclusions)
To reiterate, this is for the first time Only. After that, you can play the levels as you want.
And that’s the duality of Journey of Dreams: it’s a game that can be fully explored in its full potential when everything is simple and laid out, kinda like the first game.
I can see Sonic team giving an honest try in making Night appealing for the home console sensibility of the post saturn/dreamcast days and some of the changes I welcomed. But going through the game for the first time is painfully slow and some players may not have the patience.
It’s a painful 7 out of 10 game brought down by a few but very noticeable flaw that kinda makes it another 2000s Sonic team project: something with good intentions but ended up being kinda awkward.
Each entry in the Nights Franchise (yes, all two of them) can represent the core ideas and game design philosophies of Sonic Team in the respective times each game was made, arguably more so than the Sonic franchise.
The first "Into Dreams..." is an arcadey unique 2.5D flight simulator with a setting as inventive as the idea behind the game: 2 children venturing into a world made of their dreams with the help of a magical Jester creature. It was simple and effective, and while not everyone's cup of tea due to the enjoyment coming from trying to get the highest ranking possible, for the ones that stick to try that herculean task it's worth every hour spent.
10 years later Sonic Team drops its follow-up "Journey of Dreams" which mixes the timeless charm of the original, with awkwardness and head scratches that make you go "Why did they do that?"
In all fairness, I don't think the game is necessarily Bad, but you can tell a different Sonic Team made this than the one from 1996.
Like its predecessor, Journey of Dreams main and core gameplay style is a 2.5D Flight game where every level is made of 3 routes/courses + a boss fight at the End that is the major factor on the raking for the level, or in this game's case, the first main mission.
Unlike the first game where you need to get a certain number of Blue Chips to destroy a generator and then get to the temple at the center of the level to complete a Course, in Journey, you need to chase a Bird guard Nightmaren (the villains of the series) that has a key. Catch the bird to get the key, then use it to break the cage at the beginning of each Course. You have to do this before the timer on top of the screen Runs out. While Chasing the Guard, the player needs to go through loops and catch blue chips to fill a combo meter (or links as the game calls it) that serves to fill the boost meter and earn points that are used to rank the player's performance in each Course, which also plays into the ranking at the end.
To start with the positives, I welcome the change in Direction: the first game was all about repeating the courses multiple times to get higher rankings, but if someone wasn't interested in that they could just destroy the generator and move on with a Low Rank missing part of the gameplay Appeal; but turning the main stages from a "Score attack" philosophy to a "Time Attack with a moving goal" one surprisingly works. They simplified some of the Loop and chips positions and the camera angle is adjusted to have a clear view of the surroundings. I like the first game approach a little better, but if we ever get a Nights 3, I'll be happy if they insert both approaches as separate missions.
Speaking of which, as I implied before, each level is now separated into 5 missions and you need to complete all of them to progress through the game. I was scared at first because, after Sonic Adventure it feels like every time Sonic Team puts Variety in their games, they usually tend to lose the focus of what should be the main gameplay style and put something completely different like Fishing or roaming around a map for 10 hours finding 3 mcguffins.
Thankfully, except for one type of mission, most of the gameplay variations fall in the Crash Bandicoot vehicle stage category, where even with slightly different controls or objectives I never feel I'm straying away from the main gameplay of the game: even when nights become a boat or needs to do paraloop challenges or needs to do a certain amount of links in the Octopaw levels, I'm still going though loops, flying around, performing tricks, chaining links and trying to get a high score like in the main missions. and the quality (not counting the stages I'll talk about later) ranges from OK to pretty good.
This is a Sonic Team project so of course the production value will be of good quality. This game doesn't disappoint for the most part: the soundtrack is stellar with various re-arrangements and covers of the series' main theme "Dreams Dreams" plus various banger songs like Queen Bella's boss fight or Reala Theme, and while the environment reuses most of the themes of the previous game, it's nice to see them again made for the ground up for a 6th gen system.
Honestly, if I'm in a completionist mood where I take a good stack of games that I completed the main story, but I skipped the Side content or I didn't get the highest rankings or all the collectibles, I wouldn't mind putting this one in that stack, especially in between the larger games with a ton of side stuff. I say this with levity now because I finished the game and I can go back and revisit the missions I want. But unlock them for the first time...that's another another story (and not a good one).
An Area where the game stumbles story and pacing.
The game's narrative is a retelling of the first game: two young children, a boy named Will and a girl named Helen, are suffering from "anxiety" (this game treats more like "not believing in themselves") due to personal problems, from Will feeling like his father doesn't give enough attention because of work, to Helen feeling like she is ignoring her training for a big Violin concert she has to do with her mother in a week. One night while sleeping, both kids get called into the dream world and meet the title character NIghts, and the new addition to the cast, a stereotypical intellectual owl named... Owl. Both of them notice that the two visitors have the power of Ideya, the dream energy that powers the dream world and that is hunted by the main antagonist of the series, Wizemen, and his army of nightmaren. So the Kids and nights need to unite their powers (literally) and collect all the Ideyas to restore peace in the dream world and resolve the kid's issues.
It's a pretty cheesy standard videogame plot that does its job and doesn't require too much explaining....and that's exactly what Sonic Team did!
I don't know if it was because of the change in industry standards or playing catch up with other devs, but Sonic Team is trying so hard to make the story much more involved, but ended up with a even less compelling result than what a Saturn game did 10 years earlier.
The original "Into Dreams..." isn't Oscar-worthy with its story and it can also be put in the cheesy category to some extent. Still, it shows the ingenuity of the Sonic team of old and it's a good evolution of the "using gameplay for storytelling" mantra they created with Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Since the dream world is made of the dreams and memories of the kids, Sonic team went around the limitation of the Saturn and used the environment as a representation of their state of mind: there are forests made of illusions and musical instruments, desert valleys with steamy cold machines and other various biomes that can be representative of the kid's inner emotional state, or a happy/sad memory, or their subconscious, or a mix of all and the above, making the player coming to their conclusions and interpretations without any sorta of forced explanation.
Journey of Dreams does (Unfortunately) force some explanation: in some instances, the game stops to explain what the level represents and that just sucks some of the magic of the original. in its place, we have the trademark Sonic Team 2000's writing and cutscenes directing in all its Awkward glory: the cutscenes are a bunch of nothing burgers that fail to have any (intentional) charm with bland dialogue that feels first draft, almost like place holder lines that they forgot to cut, and a cast of flavorless characters that don't go beyond their archetype. The only enjoyment I got was from riffing the hell out of these cutscenes.
It wouldn't even be that bad if it wasn't for the amount there is in this game. there's one every time you start a mission for the first time and you can't skip them unless you see them once.
They are so boring, it's like playing Mario 64 or a crash bandicoot game but everytime you enter a stage, a "lore" video from late 2000's/ early 2010's youtube will play, like the ones linkara makes.
And Speaking of immature, let’s talk about the kids, They are probably the worst part of the game. They are the emotional center of the game but fall flat in every aspect like they are trying their hardest to hijack the game in every way possible. And they are especially disappointing if you compare them to the previous Kids, Claire and Elliot, and they didn't speak a word: their dilemmas are very generic, the models are the most uncanny of the whole game, and the ACTING!?
Look, this game is 15+ years old, the actors of the kids are adults and I hope they are living their lives to their fullest and that they will have the best future possible, because man, their performances don't help their cases: they sound like they are acting in a bad school play, with their directionless delivery.
And to top it off, they have the worst missions in the game. Yes, you play as the kids without nights in a few instances and it’s just painful! You know when you start a main level you are briefly playing the kid you choose just to reach Nights and dualize (the name of the fusion between Nights and the children)? Sonic Team, in their infinite wisdom, decided to make levels out of those brief sequences and all of a sudden the player is trusted in a puzzle platformer that is completely different from the rest of the game. And just like any other half-assed shift in gameplay made by these devs, it’s not good: the puzzles are braindead, attacking with the blue chips is imprecise and the levels are LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG, some almost reach 10 minutes.
At first, I didn’t think that they were going to be prominent because Will’s campaign has only one, but then I played Helen’s side and she had not one, not two, but 3 of these things, one for each level. Combine them with the nothing story at the beginning of the mission and the game just becomes a slog. The pacing is all over the place in this game: because the missions are not very long, it feels like the game comes to a halt when I can’t skip the cutscene before the mission where I have to collect bubbles that do nothing but tell me that I’m going to collect bubbles.
(Conclusions)
To reiterate, this is for the first time Only. After that, you can play the levels as you want.
And that’s the duality of Journey of Dreams: it’s a game that can be fully explored in its full potential when everything is simple and laid out, kinda like the first game.
I can see Sonic team giving an honest try in making Night appealing for the home console sensibility of the post saturn/dreamcast days and some of the changes I welcomed. But going through the game for the first time is painfully slow and some players may not have the patience.
It’s a painful 7 out of 10 game brought down by a few but very noticeable flaw that kinda makes it another 2000s Sonic team project: something with good intentions but ended up being kinda awkward.
This game is so ugly that my Wii refuses to play the cutscenes half the time
Nights: Journey of Dreams is a slightly frustrating but ultimately solid game. It follows the story of two kids with somewhat interesting emotional baggage (that is slightly different from the struggles of the two kids from the first game) and attempts to build off the first game by introducing more mission variety, toggable power-ups, repeat bosses with higher difficulty, and cutscenes. Unfortunately, each of these aspects falls a bit flat in some way. The mission variety is hit or miss and can feel like padding, there are a couple frustrating bosses that feel luck based, and the story cutscenes mostly just stretch out the basic story too thinly and have mediocre voice acting. Fortunately, the core gameplay still feels good (on a normal controller), the levels are imaginative and colorful, and the music is still sublime. I also do enjoy most bosses, and the final level is genuinely great. Overall I do recommend this game and especially if you're a fan of the first game. I can't help but feel like this game has a lot of wasted potential stemming from the devs not quite understanding why the original is beloved by a small but dedicated fanbase. Overall though I do enjoy it and find a lot to like despite it’s issues.