A Case Of Split Personality
HIGH Great voice acting and humorous writing.
LOW Clunky puzzle-solving between characters.
WTF How hard the devs go on Date’s ‘pervert’ character quirk.
TRANSCRIPT: Hi everyone! Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com!
The Somnium Files are a series of visual novels that put players in the role of Kaname Date. He’s part of an elite police force known as ABIS who take on criminal cases through a process called Psyncing. This technique has Date and his AI construct partner Aiba hop into the dreams of subjects to obtain clues the subject may be only subconsciously aware of. The catch is that they have only six minutes to find as much as they can in these dreams — otherwise they’ll cause massive damage resulting in the death of both Psyncer and subject.
In this third entry, Date is back at it again — but stay with me here, because it’s a wild start.
Players in No Sleep begin with teen idol Iris Sagan trapped in a UFO above a strange planet in a sexy bunny costume… for reasons. A reptilian alien with a lizard tail and a third eye reveals that she’s looking for those worthy to survive the “Great Reset” of Earth. Those who can complete something called the “Third Eye Games” will be deemed worthy, and Iris is one of the first to make the attempt. She is allowed one contact with Earth to help her succeed, and who better to help than Kaname Date?
No Sleep is a midquel that takes place between the first two Somnium titles, with this case focusing on how Iris was abducted and who’s behind the Third Eye Games.
As in the previous entries, players will use Date to investigate locations in Tokyo and talk with those around to gather information about the case. He’ll also go into people’s psyches to probe the unique mindscape of each subject, find clues and solve puzzles.
The writing and the characters still are still on point, as in the previous entry — Aiba is equal parts quippy, logical, and protective of Date. Iris is innocent and naive in a way that’s endearing. Date himself is a proud pervert, but also is willing to put everything on the line to protect those he cares about. While there are still a fair number of crude jokes which should be expected from the series at this point, the significantly shorter run time means there’s less time for that aspect to become grating, and fewer opportunities for the perv factor to take away from the story as a whole.
Where No Sleep largely differs from the rest of the series is the inclusion of the Third Eye Games, which amount to an elaborate escape room. Players will control iris to explore the room, find items and clues, and solve puzzles in order to escape. Sometimes items can be combined to create new things — a broken staff and a metallic idol make a hammer — and other objects will solve riddles of varying kinds. There are also narrative “tension scenes” where the music ramps up and players have to solve a puzzle within a time limit or else fail the escape.
While these escape room sections are an interesting angle, I didn’t ultimately feel like they paid off because they become a bit unruly as more of the cast get pulled into them. At first it’s just Iris, but then the sections split between multiple characters, with each having only a part of the answer a puzzle. For example, I would locate half of an answer to a puzzle with a first person, switch to another to find the second half, and then switch to yet another character to use those bits of information and actually solve the puzzle. Once it got this complicated, it felt more like friction than fun to find answers.
These puzzle rooms also fell flat for me in terms of story — there’s no development for anyone involved in these sections, as doing them doesn’t have any effect when we return to the visual novel side of things. It’s like they’re disconnected sidestory “time outs” that don’t touch the rest of the experience.
On another note, I have problems with some of the UI and mechanics.
The settings page for accessibility options (font size, volume, hints, etc) is microscopic on a television screen, and even worse playing the Switch in handheld mode. Also, No Sleep swapped between Japanese text and English text when I completed objectives (finishing a chapter, finding collectables, etc). Similarly, I think think there were localization issues as well, as there was some dialogue and phrasing that didn’t quite make sense.
No Sleep has its faults, but I can’t say that I was disappointed revisiting the series, even if trying something new didn’t end up working in its favor. Thankfully, the runtime is half the length of the other two, so it’s not as much of a commitment and the missteps are slightly more excusable as there’s less of them than there would be otherwise. Ultimately though, I would only recommend playing No Sleep if series fans have already been through the other two and are desperate for a fix.
For me, No Sleep for Kaname Date gets 7.5 character swaps out of 10.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Spike Chunsoft Co., Ltd. and is currently available on Switch/Switch 2 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch. Approximately 14 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.
Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood, Strong Language, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol, and Violence. Lots of F*** throughout, and many curse words. One of the main characters is in a sexy bunny outfit the entire time, with no narrative reason. Date’s character flaw is how perverted he is, and that comes across loud and clear in jokes and some of the dialogue. Definitely not for younger players.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Sound is not needed to complete the game. Captions for character dialogue can be resized, but not for all UI elements.
Remappable Controls: The controls are not remappable, and there is no control diagram. Players will use the left stick to move the character and make decisions for dialogue choices, right stick to move the camera, A to interact with items, Y to open the menu, X to open a mini map, L to check the log of dialogue, R to turn off and on the auto advance for dialogue. All of these buttons will also be used individually for quicktime events.
While Sonic and Street Fighter were great places to start, his first love was Final Fantasy X when his dad bought a PS2. Ever since, that love for gaming has evolved -- there are a number of game worlds out there, and he intends to explore them all. RPG to horror, platformers to casual and everything in between -- if it’s available, he’ll play it.
While his time is short between writing reviews, tabletop gaming, and attempting to start a cheesecake business, he has caught all 806 pokemon and can speedrun Star Fox 64 in less than 40 minutes. He’s always looking for new things to try and new challenges to conquer. You can find him on Twitter -- @eugene_sax.
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