PS2 NiD Remake Review

Recently, I got my hands on a copy of PS2 NiD remake and played all the way through it. After giving it a lot of thought, I feel I'm ready to give it a review.

First off, I have to say the biggest thing that gets noticed first by anyone who played the original is the graphics. They're gorgeous. In that department, Sonic Team did a wonderful job. Everything looks up to date and beautiful. I can't praise them enough for that. The dreams, characters, etc just feel like they have new life brought into them. Then again, the graphical update was one of the main points of the remake in the first place. To a gamer that hasn't played NiD before or even heard of it at all, they might not make the game all that special, but still nice anyway. If you never played the Saturn version, you can play the game under the original graphics and everything. It even keeps your same scores, which is nice too.

One of the things I noticed early on while playing, was that the physics and the controls are different from that of the Saturn. Granted, things work basically the way they did before, but the problem is that if you're used to the way the Saturn version played, the PS2 version is so easy that its hard. I know that sounds weird, but its true. Someone completely new to NiD probably wouldn't have a problem with this, but the veteran players will need time to adjust. One of the things I did like about the easier controls though was that its now easier to pull off acrobatics while you have a ribbon, therefore allowing you to boost your score more and making it easier to get a "Dreamy !!!".

On a more positive note, they left the soundtrack completely as it was. Everything about that was as it was in the Saturn game, which pleased me as a veteran fan of the game. Some of the sound effects were changed, but it wasn't that big of a deal to me.

What was nice was that once you beat the whole game and got A's on all 7 dreams, you unlock the Christmas NiGHTS dream. You can choose to play as Elliot or Claris, of course. Once you get A's with both characters, you unlock alternate costumes for them. Unfortunately, you can't play the Saturn version of the dream. What really broke my heart with this though was that a good chunk of the game was taken out by taking out the whole memory game present unlocking system. Apparently, you unlock all the kinds of things that you would have on CNiD by playing through and doing certain things in NiD itself. Sonic into Dreams was also not in the game, so that seriously disappointed me. My feeling is that the presents were one of the major points of playing CNiD in the first place.

Something I did like was being able to exit a dream partway through, skip cutscenes, and the credits without having to reset. Granted I love the credits and cutscenes, but some times when I wanna play all the dreams all the way through, I don't feel like sitting through both endings and the credits twice. Also, you have the option of having it automatically save your data or doing it manually, which I also like. The only Japanese menus in the game for the most part are the save menus. You don't really need to know any Japanese to figure it out though. The left option is yes, which is what you want.

Another issue that upset me was the lack of 2 player VS mode, where one player plays as NiGHTS and the other as Reala. The battle goes the same way it would in normal one player mode in the Reala battle. The objective is to paraloop the other player 3 times before they do it to you. The lack of this in the remake saddened me a lot.

I liked the additional seasonal events added to the game. It of course had the CNiD option of playing as Reala on April Fool's Day in Spring Valley. However, now on July 20, you can play as Claris in a swim suit in Splash Garden. You can also play as Elliot in a swim suit in Splash Garden on August 31. Also, for the month of October, you can play as NiGHTS in a gray Halloween costume and Claris dressed up as a witch in Mystic Forest. On October 31, you can play as Elliot in mystic forest with a Dracula costume and NiGHTS in a gray Halloween costume.

All in all, its a good attempt at a remake. There are some things that could have been better, but Sonic Team did a good job overall. It is definitely worth getting, especially the full Nightopia Dreampack version because that has the NiGHTS story book. However, I wouldn't get rid of your Sega Saturns if you have them. People who haven't played the original versions of NiD and CNiD wouldn't notice a lot of the issues I mentioned. What I liked was that they mentioned Yuji Naka under special thanks in the credits as well as thanking all the people who played the original games.

My rating for this game would be 8/10. There was nothing wrong with the game itself, but my feeling is that it left too much out from the original CNiD. I would still recommend you buy this game, though. You'll have to have your PS2 modded or get a Swap Magic, but its well worth it. After all, the game is region locked.