• Publisher: Sega
  • Release Date: Dec 18, 2007
  • Summary: As a fantasy jester called NiGHTS, experience a heightened sense of gliding, spiraling, and looping through seven extraordinary worlds of Nightopia where the ocean resides in the sky and glass-formed cliffs overlook a castle of mirrors. When the "Nightmarens" from the neighboring dark world of Nightmare infiltrate the idyllic Nightopia, NiGHTS must defend the dream world to keep it safe for all dreamers. NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams takes you in a voyage filled with courage, hope and inspiration. [Sega] Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 47
  2. Negative: 2 out of 47
  1. This was obviously a labor of love for the development team--something that goes beyond the nuts and bolts of typical game design. [Jan 2008, p.86]
  2. Magnificent, beautiful, well designed, yet cruelly flawed in its structure, Nights: Journey of Dreams is absolutely worth playing. Whether you'd want to pay full price for it or wait a little longer, though, is less of a certainty.
  3. Hardcore fans of the original will either be apologetic of NiGHTS shortcomings out of loyalty to the original, or be completely incensed with the shoddy production values.

See all 47 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 10
  2. Negative: 0 out of 10
  1. First thing's first. I HATE the majority opinion of this game. As far as I'm concerned, it's one of the greatest games on the Wii. I'm a Sonic fan more than anything and this beats every Sonic title on the Wii for me. Secondly, just because I disagree with your opinion or I'm not as old as you, doesn't mean you should completely disregard my opinion, at least hear me out. Right, starting with the story. It features two children, William Taylor and Helen Cartwright, and follows their journey through the magical world of Nightopia, a world created by dreaming humans who travel to the Night Dimension while they are asleep. There they meet a wise owl, creatively named "Owl" who tells them about the Night Dimension and the Ideya every human possesses when traveling there. Every visitor to the Night Dimension has a total of 5 Ideya and these are usually stolen by Nightmaren from the evil counterpart of Nightopia, Nightmare. They then meet NiGHTS, a genderless, carefree, jester-like being who allows visitors to Dualize with him/her and fly. From there, they discover that Will and Helen still possess the Red Ideya of Courage and this creates a door to Nightopia, a world created as a reflection of the visitor's heart. This means that Nightopia is different for every visitor. Once entering this Nightopia, NiGHTS is imprisoned by Reala, a henchman Nightmaren created by Wizeman, ruler of Nightmare. Will and Helen can use their Ideya of Courage to temporarily Dualize with NiGHTS and unlock the cage he/she is trapped in. I won't say anymore as it would ruin too much but all in all, this game has a very original storyline and, based on what you've read, you can come to a conclusion on whether or not this is your sort of thing or not. As with most Wii games, the control scheme can be very....awkward. I, personally, don't enjoy the strange control schemes the Wii usually has to offer although most games do provide either Classic Controller or GameCube Controller support as backup and this one is no exception. The full list of control schemes for this game are: Wii Remote alone, Wii Remote and Nunchuck, Classic Controller and GameCube Controller. This means there's a choice for everyone to become comfortable with the one they choose and nobody can complain about not having the correct peripheral to play the game. There is, however, a problem I should address with all the control schemes using an analog stick...8 directions only. The analog stick only lets you move in 8 directions which feels incredibly restricting compared to the 360-degree movement of the original Saturn analog stick. However, hardware limitations aside, the game is still more than playable and there's also the Wii Remote control scheme available (though I wouldn't recommend it). Additionally, addressing the hardcore NiGHTS fans, I want to explain something. The original NiGHTS into Dreams... was a fantastic game and, don't get me wrong, it IS better than Journey of Dreams although not by a huge amount. However I do think that, seeing as the original came out when we, or you, were much younger, we saw it as a much more magical and immersing experience as opposed to being newly introduced to something as an adult. The original, even with it's hardware limitations, still managed to create a beautiful and magical world and I think that Sonic Team have done their best with the hardware the Wii has to offer to do the same with Journey of Dreams. The slowdowns are a downside but you have to sympathize, the game was moved over from the Xbox 360 and PS3 to the Wii late in the development of the game so they did what they could, keeping a nice balance between aesthetics and performance. Moving onto the voice acting, it's...good...but it's not great. Not terrible, but not great. It's certainly got a cheesiness to it. I mean, this IS partially to do with the writing but still, I suppose they did what they could with the fact they had to take a game with no major story and no dialogue and turn it into a game driven by storytelling and dialogue filled cut scenes. Owl and Reala have to be my favorite voices purely because of how convincing they are as both a wise owl and an evil jester...thingy...respectively. As for NiGHTS' voice, while I think I would prefer it if he/she didn't have one, the one they chose wasn't too bad, and I suppose they HAD to chose one given the story driven nature of the game. Personally, I would have preferred it if Sonic Team took the "Nintendo" approach and let all dialogue be text based and all character emotions be visual. I would definately recommend those who haven't played the first NiGHTS to check it out and for those who have, give this a try, I'm sure you'll like it. If you've already played this game, play it again and give it another chance. C'mon, it's not that bad. :D Expand
    • 1 of 1 users said yes
  2. IanW.
    10
    Just as good as the Saturn classic.
    • 1 of 1 users said yes
  3. 6
    No where near as magical as the original, the entire game feels rushed. The Graphical presentation aside from boss encounters feels and looks like that of Sonic Heroes and Shadow the hedgehog, both of which were developed by Sonic Team USA. It's a very heartwarming game to go through the lives of these children and enter the world of dreams where they can escape it all. But engaging in pointless and uninteresting platforming with children that move more like robots in-game is nothing short of disappointment. It surely isn't the classic, but it's still very playable, and a small breather for hopefully a new installment that can play the worthy successor role. Expand
    • 1 of 1 users said yes

See all 10 User Reviews

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