Painfully, Sega's desperate effort only transforms a lengend into a fair product.
Similar to its brother, the story in JoD happens in a dream world called Nightopia endangered by the dark beings Nightmaren. Players will choose to become William Taylor or Helen Cartwright to start the adventure in Nightopia. The fate has arranged for them to meet Nights, a civilian here and help Nights to struggle against wicked faction of this world.
Overall game play of JoD has little change compared to Nights into Dreams. We control Nights flying in the space to collect golden rings and spheres through many game scenes. However, Nights can't fly freely but is confined to pre-rendered arcs. In addition, some episodes allow us to play William or Helen in a more traditional manner of Platform: pure running, jumping. Through out the game, you can help Nights to collect masks which helps transforming himself into dragon, dolphin or rocket to have additional swimming, sprinting skills. Each scene is further separated into smaller parts which requires completion between certain amount of time. At the end of each scene is a tough boss. Although all bosses have their weakness game does not offer any clue about this so you have to try and die several times. Here comes the annoying thing: Dying in boss fight will force players to redo the whole round, which makes such a short game like JoD take an unacceptable amount of time to complete.
My Dream mode seems to be more pleasant, you will hunt your favourite strange animals and bring up them. Through Wii Forecast Chanel, My Dream is lively presented with many kinds of weather like in our real world. Besides, Battle Mode and Speed Mode through Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection will allow you to play with gamers from all over the world. Another strong point of JoD is that you can choose over a selection of control device. Since game does not make any use of sensor feature of Wii, Remote + Nunchuk can be replaced with Classic Controller or GameCube gamepads.
If in the past Nights into Dream is on a par with Super Mario 64, the recent JoD can't be compared to Super Mario Galaxy as a platform. Looking at what Nintedo has contributed to Super Mario series, we can see how disastrous the slow advance of Nights is. Gamers still fly in a dream world, but where is the enthusiastic feeling once found in Nights into Dreams?!! Perhaps after a while with JoD, few can't help but wonder what Sega has done to make a legend become such a mediocre product.