Disagree with the hate and the disappointed/negative reviews. Still, these cautioned me so I didn't buy it, simply rented it for now. I am not too far yet but from what I've experienced, those doom-doom negative reports greatly exaggerated the game's minor faults. I'm having fun and I must admit to feeling significant nostalgia and even excitement as I saw the new interpretation! Love the look and the music. Only squeeled like a little girl once or twice though. SEGA's art of cheesy / fruity dialogue & designs is obviously still around ... in one sequence NiGHTS gives the boy a big dorky "thumbs up" which makes me laugh every time.
I'll have to play more to be sure, but so far I do not mind NiGHTS having a voice. It mostly sounds like a british young boy that is perhaps voiced by a woman voice actor. It is not bad, certainly nothing like "Big the Cat's" voice, if you recall that. "After all," I thought to myself, "what did I expect NiGHTS to sound like?" The cinemas ... just get thru them. Stupid that you cannot skip them, but so far from what I've seen, it is only the very beginning that you have to watch lengthy ones. Some sequences CAN be skipped by pressing the + button but not all. Finally, the game in action is more vibrant than any screenshot I've seen so far.
Gameplay -- not quite as easy to control as the original, I noticed. There is just a tiny different feel when I paraloop, and at first I was missing some blue chips and paraloops until I adjusted. I've been using the nunchuk & remote & having no problems. Using the remote alone is truly as awful as reported elsewhere -- there is a lag as you move your cursor! You could probably play that way, but who would want to? Stick with nunchuk's 3D stick. I noticed that tilting the remote left/right does flying / style tricks.
Bosses -- the bosses from the original NiGHTS game were a real treat, strange, fresh and unique from any other game. So far in Journey of Dreams, I have fought one boss (a descendent of the original's "Puffy") twice, which was a nice surprise. First battle was smaller and easier; the second battle came a few stages later and it covers significantly more territory. You have to grab or drill-dash the fat ball jester higher and higher, smashing transparent blockades and walls as you go, until you finally pop it on the nightmare level's sharp fangs at the top. Super-strange yet awesome music, great visuals and frame rate here -- I was loving it even as I failed over&over. I saw Caf Jr fighting a magician / card-playing lizard boss -- neither of us could figure it out because it was so un-traditional. Which is a compliment!
The normal levels feel very similiar to the original but in truer 3D, perhaps a bit slower, with the camera pulled further back. Very very similar and I'm not really sure yet of the best ways to score high. Thus, I suspect there is a hidden level of depth to the levels that I haven't discovered yet. But it is different from the original's Bonus Time multi-laps concept so I'm not sure exactly what I should do to get higher scores, except for the obvious getting links as you fly thru the 1 lap.
So far, I am enjoying the game, at first thinking it was a bordering on dull but changin my mind. I now find some of it bewildering at times and growing more fun as I continue to acclimate to it. That's all for now. Dualize!
