Digging Through My Steam Backlog: Nights Into Dreams

 Isn't this an odd one, Nights Into Dreams. I had heard people praise this as Sonic Team's best non-Sonic work and one day it was around $2 on Steam so I figured why not. Of course if it's on this backlog dig it means I never played it. Is Nights as good as people claim and worth begging for a sequel to as so many have? 

Nights' story follows Elliot and Claris, two children going through tough patches in their lives, as they're pulled into the Dream World of Nighttopia. There they discover that an evil wizard is trying to destroy Nightopia with nightmares and team up with Nights, a jester of unspecified gender but I like to think is a woman, to stop said wizard and save Nighttopia.

The story of Nights is told non-verbally and barebones which I personally am torn on was a mistake or not. There's clearly more going on here with Nights and the bosses she fights, namely this identical jester who serves as the second to last boss, and it looks like an interesting world but it doesn't get developed as much. On the other hand, late 90's video game voice acting.

Of course, with Sonic Team games of this era the plot isn't why you're here, it's the gameplay and honestly I both get why Nights Into Dreams is so beloved. But I also why it was completely inadequate compared to Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot for the time. But I'll get to that later, let's not bum everyone out now.

Gameplay in Nights can be a bit confusing unless you read the manual, luckily once you do it's easy to pick up. You start off as each as one of the two children and run towards Nights who is imprisoned within a tiny palace. Freeing Nights gets one into the main meat of the game in which she needs to move through 4 courses and earn orbs with which to destroy nightmare machines. After that Nights can fight the levels bosses which range from colorful to "what the hell?"

Playing as the children is a bit clunky and not really fun, you run in a straight line or get your ass kicked. On the other hand, playing as Nights is super tight, responsive, and just plain fun. The feeling of genuinely flying within a 2.5D space is fantastic and while Nights' only real attacks are loop de loops and dashes, you'll get a feel for the game's combat quick. Figuring out where to go was a bit rough at first, like I said you'll have to stop and read the manual first; but once I did it was off the races.

Overall, there are 10 levels in total between Elliot and Claris, 5 per each. You need to do the four acts and then get to the boss within a fairly strict timer that killed me more than the enemy. With that said though Nights is actually a very short game, I blew through it in about 2 hours. My only hang up was some of the bosses giving me a hard time. You can go for higher rank in each level but I didn't really see a benefit to it.

That's why I say this game is a bit inadequate to what Nintendo and Sony were offering. Mario 64 and Crash offered far meatier content in their games than Nights did, and Nights was basically Sega's answer to those games. In that regard Nights doesn't hold up well, it feels more like a quirky side project for Sonic Team.

In that context though Nights is an excellent underrated gem and I get why people want more Nights content. It's charming and colorful with a fun as hell gameplay loop, I just wish there was more of it to chew into.