67 replies to this topic

[apti]

-Weird slow framerates during cutscenes. It's so strange, shouldn't cutscenes run BETTER than actual gameplay? This really confused me.

-Unpolished-looking character models. They look good from far away, but in cutscenes it's obvious they could use a bit more work.

-Goofy looking results screen. I wanted something classier than boat NiGHTS bouncing incessantly and vacantly for half a minute. Or coaster NiGHTS humping the tracks ._."

-I wanted more expansion on Reala, NiGHTS, and Wizeman's relationships (no, not that kind ._.") and backstory. You get hints but there's not much there...

-I wanted a bit deeper story. Not a whole lot happens despite all the cutscenes and stuff.

-Graphical inconsistency (see above). Stuff like gameplay and the CGs look awesome, I dunno why the quality varies so wildly :[

-Apparently no special all-A ending?! This makes me a sad panda.



I love everything else though. Gameplay, CGs, basic framework, bosses, all great. And the voicework was really good, I think. They all fitted decently, which is a feat in itself, but the actual acting is very good too. I was really pleased because this is one thing that usually is something I hate. Reala's almost-titter kind of laugh made me snicker, though. :3

The inconsistencies bother me, but that doesn't mean I don't like the game. I love it. I wish it had a bit more time in the oven, though. Something like the cutscene framerate or character models could easily be fixed... I wonder why they didn't...

[YamiLover13]

As much as we all want to know more about the marens and there story, you must understand that they are not the central part. The main storyline and background is for the kids and the kids only. I would never expect to see THAT much bout the marens. That info is all up to interpritation and a ass load of fan fiction....

I know you guys complain about the 'He' thing but don't get to upset. In the English language, when a gender for someone is unknown then it is called a 'he'. Its better than saying 'it' or going he/she, him/her, his/hers. Its kinda like how we say 'mankind' but that includes women as well.

[nirniva]

The Owl was worse than all the fairies and Midna combined!

WRONG.

NOTHING is more annoying than Navi.
NOTHING.

Hey! Listen! Look! Hey! Hey! Look! Listen!
I can still hear that evil, EVIL voice in my mind...

Besides, Midna is cool, although it kinda jolted me the first time she laughed on the Wii Remote speaker.

Oh, and on-topic? My main issue is the bad framerate during cutscenes.

EDIT: This is totally off-topic, but...I love Coaster NiGHTS' deadpan expression at the beginning of the Lost Park coaster mission.

I just had to say that.

[JaxTH]

Everything runs smooth for me, even online.

Even though japanese people keep beating me T-T

[Wizeman1213]

The fact that I can't play it due to the fact I don't own a Wii. They are freaking impossible to find nowadays! I have the game but not the system, strangely enough...

[Sako]

I hate that when I am trying to revive a dead pian, 20 pians come up to me and I can't hit the one I want.

Nightopians: *deep voice* CANDY!
Me: O.O

Same thing happens to me, usually when their all singing.

[phosphorus]

I feel like my previous post seemed to hate on the game too much. On it's own, JoD would be a competent game, but not anything very special. But, it had to follow NiD, and considering that they changed stuff that everyone liked before, it exposes itself to criticism.

Comparing JoD with NiD is like comparing a lime with a key lime. a key lime packs the same amount of flavor into a much smaller package, giving a much more memorable experience.

While I might be getting the wrong idea, it seems to me like no one prefers anything from the new game to anything from the old game. By that I mean, while I might not dislike say, NiGHTS's new design, I can't really say I like it more than the old one. (but I don't like how the new design carried over into the game.)

But things I specifically don't like about the game...

Nintendo's crappy sticks make flying in 1/16 directions more difficult that it needs to be, and I can never do it confidently enough to drill dash. I wish I had a DC to Gamecube adapter, or at lease that such a thing existed, because the DC analogue stick seems made for NiGHTS. I don't think it would be unreasonable to sell something like this.

While the camera USUALLY shows me what I need to see(I almost always can tell what's happening), it sometimes it not level with your character, particularly in Bellbridge, and versus Reala. while this is far from a deal breaker, no one's mentioned it. If I'm trying to say, fly horizontally, it creates to question of whether I should push right, to follow the character, or right and a little bit up, to follow the camera. NiD did this in a few places, but it was much more rarely seen, and most often when you weren't close to anything in particular. The only time the camera completely fails is when I'm fighting Reala. But that matters little, because no one seems to like those battles very much (If I'm wrong, tell me).

as for the look and feel...

I was hoping NiGHTS would behave like he (he, for convenience of course) behaved in the Storybook.

A big downer for me was the bird cage thing. One of my favorite things about NiGHTS in the original was that you could frustrate him. Walk up to the palace, close enough for NiGHTS to strech out his hand. turn around and take a few steps away. NiGHTS spins around in the palace, clutching his head in apparent frustration, then begins waving his arms, trying to get your attention.

But in this game, NiGHTS seems much less... enthusiastic.

In the original, the Ideya were very mysterious things, they couldn't be held by ordinary means. but in the new game, the characters take them and hold them, and they find the last Ideya lying on the ground. It's just sitting there. (the same thing happened to the chaos emeralds)

The levels are too big and spread out. they're to visibly busy with not enough interaction, or at least, not the right kind of interaction.

NiGHTS has no tailbone.

Will and Helen look like they're made from porcelain. And Wills dad looks like Scott Tracy, pilot of Thunderbird 1.

There are some more abstract problems with the game, but many of them seem matters of opinion, so I'll stop now.

[AirMax]

I had a problem with the music they used over and over AND OVER AGAIN from the theme song. It also seemed out of place.

Also, Helen seemed to be particularly ignorant.

[Purgatory]

Owl became less annoying as the game went on, I must admit. And then when he disappeared altogether all was right in Nightopia.... LOL!

[Tango]

CHAMELAN! I. Hate. Chamelan!
Have you guys any idea how many times I Night Overed!? -chews up Chamelan's cape-

Heheh, I was watching my friend try it and he failed once or twice. I then took the wiimote from him and managed to get a 2.0 almost instantly

I absolutely love this game though. The levels are amazing; colorful, conceptual, etc. Helen and Will seem like pretty cool characters, could have gone without the owl but I don't mind it, the music is phenomenal, etc. When we first heard news of the dream gate I was going "oh no not a level hub :'(" but I really do like it.

The only things that really bother me at all:

- Cutscenes are cheesy and lame, though I can't imagine them any other way . I guess I like them overall, still.

- In the cutscenes they use the dash sound for NiGHTS/Reala when they're barely even flying.

- Cutscenes have a pretty bad framerate, but I seemed to have gotten used to it.

- Bomamba. Particularly, his hard version; I can't for the life of me get those cats over the hills

Again, this things are only minor; I love almost everything about this game 8]


(whee semicolon abuse!)

[viperxmns]

No Trick Ribbons, no replays, no more air brake, Reala's battle less epic than before (urgh), voice acting this time marred by crap accents (looking mostly at you, Will actor, funny how you also labor NiGHTS's name.. it's kinda charmingly cute though), lack of expression on the cut scenes (eyebrows barely move, yo)

[Maresuke]

They use Tamberines or shakers in every freaking song (it seems like) and that really gets on my nerves.

[DAiLiGHT]

That first boss irks me. Muchly so. I thought I could get him and I can't. *is shame*

[Zilly]

IF I SEE THAT OWL ONE MORE TIME

[Golden~Hedgy]

My Pros
- the music is great xD I love the remixes of the "NiGHTS v.s. Reala" theme and the Wizeman theme.. and the Nightmaren bosses' themes xD

- The voices are good... but Reala's laugh scares me 0.o

-the "My Dream" feature is fun xD I like to chat with random people! xD If you see someone named "Stephy" that's me... unless there's another Stephy 0.o


My Cons

-to me well... no idea why but I'm getting dizzy...

- Reala kills himself... lol ((He throws the balls things when you fight him but he always fly in front of the ball things....))

-Owl... I want to fly in the dream gate... but he won't shut up!!

-my thumb turned purple.... just like it would in the Sega Saturn control... 0.o

-can't rename the pians.... xP

-Cerbrus ((sp... that dong boss)) was hard... the stupid chain ball thing kept changing back to a spiked dog thing and yeah... I had to keep restarting... to avoid the Night over xP

-Cut scenes should've been CG'd.... I was truly amazed with the intro CG's and the opening movie.... very realistic xD

[Evil Reala]

The only problems I have is the sudden loading screens..sometimes they go black for no reason? o.o

The voice acting are alright cept for the kids..I hate how fake they sound.

Owl is alright...I got use to him already XD.

[Artemis]

Here comes the rant of someone who's normally pretty nice about this stuff but for the love of NiGHTS I will be the critic I hide:

1. THAT DAMN OWL!! Well the only time he bothers me is the tutorial, he talks too much.

2. DONBALON AND CHAMELEON!! They just got me uber frustrated. And I just don't like the chameleon 'cause he reminds me of poor Jackle ;_;.

3. The fact that if you get beat by a boss' first try you have to do the chase ALL OVER AGAIN!!

4. NiGHTS' voice is a little....too feminine to me. I've always seen it as a male, so I guess that's just my state of mind. O_o

5. I liked when the ideya were small, more shiny, and always flew around simply defying all laws of gravity like the rest of the game.

6. The ending,

Spoiler

I almost cried even though I know NiGHTS'll be back, like what Wizeman said *too lazy to repeat*. It was just too "WTH SEGA!? HOW DARE YOU?! WAAAH!".

7. The kids are all "OMG NiGHTS IS A 'MAREN?!". Couldn't they already tell from how he and Reala looked alike? I.E. the kids aren't observant.

8. Stop breeding you pians! @_@ I can't keep up!

9. I miss Reala's old battle. The new one is fun, but in the old one you got to see if you could beat yourself pretty much. And it showed how NiGHTS and Reala are alike.

That's all really....other than that I LOVE IT!

[Dead Pixel]

in the nIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-

STOP

For the most part the music is pretty great and fits well, not to mention the nostalgia factor on a lot of the tracks. I love how they've included and in some areas improved upon the original soundtrack, but that song...has got to go. sorry. it's not me, it's you.

Hearing it once during the credits in the original game was okay, but hearing it every 5 minutes in JoD? NO.

And the dialogue in general is awful. It's not just the voice acting, although it doesn't help. The writing is just bad.

...But you know what? other than that and maybe a few other minor details, I think the game is f^&*(ing spectacular.

[^_^ Go Dreamer]

*sobs* That I have JoD but have no Wii to play it on. >.< I guess I'll go play NiD and wait til next year for a Wii!

[suri]

I am happy to say I love jod alot more than I thought I would! but some complaints ofcourse ;P

- poor Night's finger tips were cut off, probably by reala during some torture
- Nights sounds/acts too much like a girl
- the Owl has got to stop saying "Visitor"
- when flying, changing directions is too sharp/hard to control/doesnt feel like origional, making me have to learn all over again how to get high links. (i bet when i go back to play origonal i will suck and have to relearn that again, then when i come back to jod learn jod again,etc)
- dreamgate area looks so barren/boring
- my-dream area looks sooo barren boring, needs some landscaping or something.

[DAiLiGHT]

That chameleon and Girana. They need to die. Or, at least, like, pee themselves in fear at the sight of NiGHTS, the flamboyant jester of justice and run away screaming. I'd pay good Ideya to see that.

And that damn owl with his "ideya" pronunciation. I pronounce it Idea and he says Ih-Dee-Ya. It's annoying and the next time he says it I'm going to pimp-slap him with the Wii Remote.

And those chase missions! If you don't beat the boss you have to do it ALL OVER AGAIN. What is that?!

I found Will's missions to be easier than Helen's for some reason. Is Will like, easy mode and Helen hard mode or something?

One last thing! *other members groan* Yes, yes, I know.

But just this.

"Go over and touch NiGHTS. That is, if you're interested in that sort of thing."

I seriously think that Owl is on some sort of smack.

Oh, Edit:

Did I mention how insanely insane that Bellbridge mission is?! It's like.... Why is Helen flying around? Why is Will? Why can't they Paraloop? What up with the Double Dualize thing? And Wizeman? I managed to get one good hit on him then I got turned around and he pimp-slapped me with one of those gigantic metal hands.

[Machenstein]

Pretty good game, but here are my gripes.

- Lack of Ideya Capture gameplay. I know I have said it about a hundred times now, but seriously... seriously.

- Analog control is not as tight as it was in the original.

- "Mindsight" control is very awkward since the cursor is severely jumpy and is confined in this invisible circle. Yuck.

- Where's Jackle?

- "Hoo! Visitor! Oh, this is awful! Well done, well done!" Damn owl... at least Reala gave him a good bitch slap.

- Speaking of the owl, the tutorial was a bit too lengthy. What happened to learning by doing, SEGA?

- The in-game cut-scenes. Why does NiGHTS have square fingers? Why do the kids look like plastic dolls with low polygon counts? Why is the frame-rate lagging at 15 fps? When will the owl stop talking? At least the voice acting is halfway decent.

- Some low-res textures in the levels.

- Will and Helen's platforming stages. Why are they in the game? See, that's why games such as Sonic Adventure 2 and Star Fox Assault suck. Focus on one gameplay genre and stick with it, Sonic Team. All you needed to do was just give us a whole game of NiGHTS flying stages and that's it. Sometimes less is more, not less.

- A few collision detection issues here and there. For example, I found myself stuck in Wizeman's force field while the other NiGHTS didn't come. My NiGHTS wouldn't even grab on to Wizeman because it was stuck in the force field for some reason. Instances like that were few and far in-between though.

- Bomamba's boss stage. The physics on those cat balls made it a tad difficult. It's not a terrible boss or anything, her boss stage is just my least favorite. It really wasn't nearly as exhilarating as the rest of the bosses.

- Reala's new design. I don't think it's horrible or anything, I just prefer his old design. I understand what the mask is about now so it's not as bad as I initially thought. I knew there had to be an explanation ever since he first appeared in the IGN trailer, so thank you Sonic Team. It's just that... well, the Reala in this game just doesn't seem like the same Reala that we encountered in the Saturn game. He seems like a new character taking on Reala's appearence. It's like Sonic's 1998 redesign all over again.

That's my honest opinion. I know it seems like much, but it really isn't. A large majority of those problem are simply minor problems. The big problems are the control flaws, some graphical errors, the alternate gameplay styles and the rare instances of screwy collision detection.

I would advise that, sometime in the near future, we send in these complaints to Sonic Team so they can make NiGHTS 3 better. Like what DiGi said in the podcast, we need to share our honest opinions. Journey of Dreams is not a bad game, it's just hindered by these many flaws that keep it from achieving true greatness. It's much like what Super Mario Sunshine is to Mario fans; not a bad sequel to a 1996 classic, but heavily flawed. I suppose the third time is the charm?

[Maresuke]

- Reala's new design. I don't think it's horrible or anything, I just prefer his old design. I understand what the mask is about now so it's not as bad as I initially thought. I knew there had to be an explanation ever since he first appeared in the IGN trailer, so thank you Sonic Team. It's just that... well, the Reala in this game just doesn't seem like the same Reala that we encountered in the Saturn game. He seems like a new character taking on Reala's appearence. It's like Sonic's 1998 redesign all over again.

You spoke from my Heart. That's exactly what's wrong with Reala.

I would advise that, sometime in the near future, we send in these complaints to Sonic Team so they can make NiGHTS 3 better. Like what DiGi said in the podcast, we need to share our honest opinions. Journey of Dreams is not a bad game, it's just hindered by these many flaws that keep it from achieving true greatness. It's much like what Super Mario Sunshine is to Mario fans; not a bad sequel to a 1996 classic, but heavily flawed. I suppose the third time is the charm?

I hope they make a Third and learn from their mistakes... I also am sad because it sounds like a lot of problems came from Rushing... like glitches and poor frame rates... I sincerely hope they don't push the next one. I want another game just a better game. I wouldn't mind voicing my opinions in a nice manner, like you've done.

"Well done."
(Sorry I had to)

[ayamemaiden]

Pros-
Wizeman's battle is freaking epic
A- Life
Persona Mask abilities
Music

Cons-
Wizeman thinking hes God (but still NiGHTS was right about freewill, epic. Games seem to have Biblical overtone.)
Hearing 'In the Nights' in Bellbridge
Graphics on the Ideya
The owl talking every single time when I get close to the icons
Bomamba's board conrols


Hilarities-
I once seen a Pian named REAP
'Go on and touch NiGHTS, that is if you are into that sort of thing.'

- "Hoo! Visitor! Oh, this is awful! Well done, well done!" Damn owl... at least Reala gave him a good bitch slap.

[Alex Atkin UK]

1. Voice Acting, its all dreadful and has no place in the game IMO but particularly NiGHTS is painful.
2. Cut scenes, they are aweful due to reason 1 above and worse still they make redoing levels takes AGES as you can't skip them, urgh.
3. Chasing the bloody bird, makes collecting blue chips worse than pointless as I don't bother because it just takes longer to catch the bird if you do (unless I am missing some game mechanic that makes you faster when collecting chips).

I finally got to Wizeman just now (always got bored with the game before that) and its really REALLY gotten me angry as I failed twice and it takes too damn long to do the whole level and sit through the cut scenes, I just haven't the patience to try a third time. Although I have to admit, NiD sometimes did that but in comparison JoD is far worse as the levels are longer and it has cut scenes. Makes you quite forgiving of NiD as if you just wanted to try the boss again you could zoom through the level fairly quick due to not having to chase a stupid bird.

All in all these are the reasons I have not played the game much, there is just too much bad outweighing the good.

[Lélis]

-Owls talk TOO much
-The controls are bad
-The game is too short for the price
-I don't like NiGHTS voice.
-I don't like tutorials very much. In the past NOBODY needed a tutorial to play a game. And specially, I think this tutoril is boring
-CG - why not more CG? The introduction one was so cool
-I don't like the levels with the children. In fact, I hated them.

[LittleBunnyFooFoo]

one about JoD is Donbalon it just really scary

[Penelopi]

How it likes to crash my Wii. Seriously. I shouldn't have to worry about trying to press the off button on the controller when I'm not at the main menu to avoid a game freeze. And I shouldn't have to worry about plugging/unplugging controllers at the main menu causing my Wii to have a breakdown and continuously scroll through the options. The main menu in general has glitch issues which cause me to have to unplug the Wii b/c nothing else will shut it off or even operate.

Half-done cutscenes. Nuff said.

Half-done accents. Either you do them or you don't.

How some of the 2nd time boss fights are very annoying, such as Queen Bella's, Chamelan's, and Bomamba's.