Journey of Dreams is proof that Sonic Team doesn't just make bad Sonic games, they're perfectly capable of fucking up NiGHTS too.

Although I found the original NiGHTS Into Dreams to be a perfectly fine Sega Saturn game, I did note that it's horrible camera and wonky controls held it back from being great. Nevertheless, I cut it some slack. After all, you can cheat to pan the camera out, and the controls "could be potentially alleviated if you have the right tools." I may need to make an addendum to that review, though, as Journey of Dreams proves that NiGHTS kinda controls like total garbage even if you have an analog stick, or a wiimote, or any of the other dozen control methods you can use to play this game (they're all bad!) The camera is at least pulled back enough to make each level perfectly readable, and it rarely tilts in a direction that makes it difficult to see upcoming rings, blue chips, or hazards.

Considering the controls are bad but the camera is fine, at worse I should feel about the same as I did with Into Dreams, right? Well, that would be true if it weren't for the fact that you don't really play a whole lot of NiGHTS levels in this NiGHTS game. Each world is broken up into five stages, among which is a singular flight level, a smaller run through the same stage where you have to get a set amount of "links," and a boss fight. The other two levels are either underbaked minigames or incredibly dull 3D platforming stages where you control Helen or Will. I'm not sure who on staff looked at the bits of the original NiGHTS where you're running around as the kids and thought "there should be whole levels of this." The ranking system from the previous game also returns and earning a C or better in every stage is required for the true ending, though the requirements to earn a C rank seem pretty lenient so you shouldn't have too much trouble managing that, at least. I suppose one could view that as a tacit admission that the game is frustrating to play so you gotta lowball the score requirements.

So, I can't wrap this review without mentioning the fact that NiGHTS speaks in the Queen's King's English, and there's just something really disconcerting about that. Part of what made the first game so charming was how it silently told its story, but Journey decides to toss out all the brevity and mystery for cutscenes that sometimes take as long to sit through as some levels are to play. I'd say half my time was spent watching Journey of Dreams, which isn't exactly ideal, and over-explaining how Nightopia works robs it of that dream-like quality that was so crucial to the atmosphere of the first game. Dreams are discordant and confusing, so if you're going to set your story within one then it seems really counterproductive to carefully explain exactly what the imagery of the dream means. "This world is made of glass, a reflection of your fragility," ok you didn't need to say that, maybe consider shutting up and letting they player just exist within this abstract space and come to that conclusion themselves. Even the ambiguity of NiGHTS' gender is abandoned as he's very clearly referred to in masculine terms, rather than letting the player impose upon him their own interpretation of who he is, as you might do with a character symbolic of a dream world. Hell, even known criminal Yuji Naka put it best when he said "the residents in the dream world shouldn’t have a gender, rather, the form of the characters should be determined by the person who is dreaming." It's almost like this was an intended part of NiGHTS' design for a reason, which in the intervening decade was apparently forgotten by Iizuka. Why am I not surprised.

NiGHTS is an interesting series that I see a lot of potential in, which has unfortunately been done dirty and probably won't see the light of day outside of references in other Sega projects. Into Dreams was held back by the Saturn's hardware, but Journey of Dreams is held back by a lack of creative vision and thoughtful design. I drank too much egg nog while playing this game and had a dream that hundreds of little spiders with NiGHTS' face crawled out of an open wound on my arm, and one of them turned its head and looked me dead in the eyes and told me the date of my death.