Sonic the Hedgehog became a huge success in the early ’90s and became Sega’s mascot. Logically, a sequel was in the process. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was being developed by both Sonic Team (which was in Japan) as well as the Sega Technical Insitute (in the US). Yuji Naka, the creator of Sonic and the lead programmer of Sonic 2, had to travel between these two locations many times. One day, as he was waiting for his flight to Japan, he came up with a game that centered around flying. The character designer of Sonic, Naoto Oshima, loved the idea and they, along with Sonic Team, brainstormed ideas on how it would work. They decided to have it take place in dreams and development of the game began after the release of Sonic & Knuckles in 1994. On August 20, 1996, “NiGHTS Into Dreams” was released in the US for the Sega Saturn. The game received a ton of praise. Levi Buchanan from IGN even said this, “If you have a Saturn and its without NiGHTS, your collection is woefully incomplete.” So, is the game what dreams are made of? Or is it a NiGHTmare?
I’ll be reviewing the Steam version which contains both the original Sega Saturn version and Remastered. I will be reviewing the original Saturn version. so you may not experience the same issue I had.
When a human sleeps, their dreams take place either in Nightopia or Nightmare which are the two halves of the dream world. Wiseman the Wicked, the ruler of Nightmare, is draining the energy of those who sleep to conquer the two halves of the dream world and eventually the world. He creates Nightmaren monsters to accomplish this including NiGHTS and Reala. NiGHTS, however, rebels and is imprisoned by Wiseman in a container that contains the dreamer’s Ideya.
Meanwhile, in the real world, in a city called Twin Seeds, two teenagers are going through a rough time. Elliot Edwards, a basketball player, and his friends are challenged by another group of players and face a huge defeat. Claris Sinclair, a talented singer, auditions for a singing role on stage but she gets stage fright during the audition and does horribly. When the two slept that night, they ended up in the Nightmare side of the dream world. The two escape to Nightopia and find out they wield the rare Red Ideya of Courage which is the only type of Ideya Wiseman cannot steal. While in Nightopia, they free NiGHTS who tells them about Wiseman and his goals. Elliot and Claris team up with NiGHTS to stop Wiseman, recover the other colors of Ideya, and return balance to the dream world.
I love the story in this game, especially the ending. The growth the characters have during the game is quite impressive for a game like this. My one problem is that I wish it was explained as you play the game. In order to know what is going on story-wise, you’re going to need to read the manual. I give the story a solid A.
The goal of each level is to collect the four types of dream energy (White meaning Purity, Green meaning Wisdom, Yellow meaning Hope, and Blue meaning Intelligence) from Wizeman’s Ideya Capture by collecting 20 blue chips and taking them to the capture. In order to get these chips, you simply must fly to them as NiGHTS to collect them. If you fly in a loop, all the items within that area will go to you. The more rings you go through or items you collect in quick succession, the more points you get which will help you in getting a good rank. After doing so, you will face a boss battle where you deal with one of Wizeman’s Nightmarens. I found the gameplay quite fun but unfortunately, I have a few complaints about it. The game is very poor at explaining the game’s mechanics so those who play the game blindly will be very confused about what they’re supposed to do. My other complaint is there are some portions of the game where I face extreme lag and the background becomes glitchy. Typically when I play games on my computer and I face this, I blame my computer not being powerful enough but it was running fine despite the lag. I tried the remastered version to see if I would experience the same lag and, sure enough, I didn’t. This makes me think that they intentionally kept the extreme lag to keep it accurate to the original. While I do understand this, I will have to dock the gameplay down due to this issue. I give the gameplay an A-.
The soundtrack is fine. It does have some great music that I really like such as “Dreams Dreams,” “Sowing Seeds,” and “NiGHTS,” but I feel the rest is fine. I give it an A-.
To conclude, I really liked this game. I recommend reading the instructions before playing it because you’ll get extremely confused by both the story and gameplay without it. Unless you are someone who prefers to play the original (like myself) I recommend playing the Remastered version as it’s a lot less laggy and prettier. I give the game an 8.5/10.
RE: NiGHTS Into Dreams Review
NeoMetallix > 10-10-2020, 10:32 AM
@ I have never played this but it's one I've always been interested in due to the praise. I didnt realize it had a story though, that makes me more interested.
