NiGHTS Into Dreams makes quite possibly the worst first impression I’ve ever seen a video game make in my entire life. Right when you start the game you get…nothing. No explanation of the story, no explanation of mechanics, or controls, or objectives, or…anything really. You’re just sorta dropped into the level and expected to figure things out yourself. And even when you get to playing you’re just assaulted with so much visual clutter on screen, all these collectables, icons, different elements that you have no idea what they even do or what their purpose is. I wasn’t just confused, I was STARTLED at how this game first presented itself. Even when you look into the “how to play” section (which btw is basically the only story explanation you’re gonna get in this game, it’s not very well handled at all), it still didn’t properly explain a lot of the finer stuff you had to do in order to do well at the game. I legitimately had to look up an online guide to figure out what I was even supposed to be doing to progress and do well in the stages.

From what I can best surmise, you start out every level in NiGHTS by controlling the kid (either Claris or Elliot) in a 3D environment. Aside from nabbing some collectables at the start and being a backup failsafe if you run out of time as NiGHTS I don’t really see the point of this even being in the game, you only really have a basic jump and the levels themselves don’t take advantage of platforming elements. The real meat of the game is when you reach the lone altar in the stage and take control of NiGHTS, switching to a 2D perspective. The main gist basically amounts to…collecting stuff. Flying through hoops, getting collectables, you need a certain amount of blue orbs to break open the main objective of each “lap”, these giant containers. Repeat this process 4 times (though each lap is different in both course layout and the obstacles/gimmicks you encounter), fight the boss at the very end, and that’s really about it. At first, I didn’t hate what I was doing, but I wasn’t super invested in it either. Kinda just felt like collecting stuff for the sake of collecting stuff, again not bad but not really that interesting. It didn’t help that the visuals and the overall environment, while thematically super creative and imaginative, ended up making a lot of elements like items and ESPECIALLY enemies just sorta blend into the background. I didn’t even know wtf the stunt rings did until I looked it up. While the capsules are your main objective, the biggest other objective NiGHTS tasks you with is getting the highest score you can possibly get. Everything contributes to your score, items, enemies, the rings, the capsule. Generally though, the biggest point contributor in NiGHTS comes from getting chain combos, collecting stuff super fast back to back from each other in rapid succession. The more you do this, the higher the chain you get and the higher your score will be. It helped in getting better scores than I was getting but it still wasn’t enough I felt. I did eventually figure out that I could completely bypass the altar and repeat the lap as many times as I wanted to maximize the amount of points I receive per lap, which did end up boosting my scores significantly. Combine all of this and NiGHTS eventually started to “click” with me. It’s a very trial and error sort of affair, needing to memorize where any of the collectables are each lap (since the 2D planes tend to have a lot of vertical space and the camera only goes so far), and needing to deal with the inherent gimmick each level presents, but once I finally understood what I was supposed to be doing, the game finally started to become kinda enjoyable. It’s incredibly arcady in nature, and there’s a lot of fun risk and reward elements present with this kind of design: do you think you can risk it to go against the clock and go another lap to get some more points? Are you able to meticulously use your dash to chain items that would otherwise be somewhat out of reach? I did end up vibing with the general game flow in the end, but I must stress again, that’s AFTER I took the time to look up what the game wanted from me. if I have to look up an internet guide just to get a solid grasp on what I should even be doing or what any of the game’s mechanics even are? That is a major problem.

The bosses on the other hand don’t get any excuse, they SUUUUUUCK no matter what. It didn’t really matter if I knew how to fight them or not, they’re incredibly clunky, irritating to go against, and not really intuitive in the slightest. The only ones I didn’t really have a big problem with are the fat balloon lady (Puffy) and the final boss (Wizeman). The final boss is arguably way better than every other boss fight in this game and that’s only because it’s an obstacle dodging fest. Again, I really dig their creative designs and the idea of beating the boss as fast as possible to get a huge multiplier boost to score an even better rank at the end of the stage is a cool idea, it’s just…yknow…too bad they forgot to make any of them actually fun.

Every other aspect of NiGHTS is really well done. The dream world’s aesthetics are super creative and the visuals are top notch for the Saturn, even if the FMV cutscenes are…positively hideous to put it mildly. The music is really good too, I feel like I could drift off listening to the stage select theme all day. The arcady nature of the gameplay, when it eventually clicked with me, was a decent bit of fun! The game is also really short so it never felt like my time was wasted. However, the awful boss fights and the fact that the game doesn’t explain…anything really are pretty big negatives, especially for someone JUST getting into these games for the first time. Still though, I did end up appreciating my playthrough of NiGHTS Into Dreams in the end, and I guess that’s all I could really ask for.

Sorry to say but those sheep enemies in the first world still creep me tf out. They aren’t giant like they are in All Stars Racing Transformed but I still genuinely hate looking at them, kill them all in a massive fire immediately.