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YUMENIKKI -DREAM DIARY review
by Keravanjoki

A very different experience from the original, but not a bad one. It captures the visual atmosphere of the original great. Mind that it is far more linear than the original. It is more focused on puzzles, there's no really open-world experience. It is still good that it is not just a remake of the old game, but something new. I can appreciate that. There's also a good story, that I can't really explain without spoiling.
So, it's not a masterpiece like the original game was. But I won't lie telling that I didn't enjoy it. It's a good game, give it a try.

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Translated by
Microsoft from French
So, there's something you need to understand right away if you played the original game: it's not a remake of Yume Nikki!! If you expect to play the same game redone in 3D, you will be very quickly disappointed, because it is actually a puzzle game/platforms in the universe of Yume Nikki. The original was essentially based on exploration; the player could explore and discover the world of Madotsuki's dreams at its own pace. This is not the case in this game: the puzzle side is much more present, and the dreams of Madotsuki are very linear now. Again, this game is not a remake of Yume Nikki, it only keeps the original as the universe, but I still found this game sympathetic. The gameplay of the game is variable. Most of the time, we will have a 2.5 D gameplay at the limbo/inside or the little nightmares. There is even a passage that made me think of Oddworld. We sometimes have 3D gameplay, but it's pretty rare. Quite frankly, I never thought I'd see any platform passages in this game. (We even get an object that allows us to have a double jump and glide, very useful for these platform passages.) The game does not really encapsulates the atmosphere of the original game, but it succeeds more or less to create its own atmosphere. On several occasions I was surprised to think of Silent Hill, and this is probably because Kadokawa accentuated the horrific side of Yume Nikki in this game. I'm staying on it to land on the subject of music. There are some remixes of music from the original game, and new music rather sympatiques. What we get at the exit is a mix of dreamlike ambient, dark ambient horror and occasionally music with a small note of trip-hop at the Silent Hill. I would never have imagined such a mix in a Yume Nikki, but yet somehow it works. A point on which the game suffers cruelly is its lifespan. The game can end in 2 hours, then it takes an hour at the most to have the secret end, then another 1 to 2 hours for the 100%. My counter is at 9 o'clock because I made the game a second time because of a bug (I would come back later). Basically, it's quite possible to finish the game at 100% and to have all the successes in less than 5-6 hours. I think the length of the game will depend mostly on the time you put to solve the puzzles, perso, I think it's pretty hot, for a game that sells €20, and this is probably the reason why it is already on sale the day after its release. The other big black point of this game, which will be corrected with time (at least hopefully), is its instability and collision problems. While I played the game, it crashed twice, and I got three bugs: Madotsuki starts running on the spot alone and is blocked, gets sucked under the ground and comes out of the map... It's not too serious, since the game AutoSave every 5 seconds, but it remains annoying. One bug in particular shot my save because she started running alone out of frame after solving a puzzle, forcing me to reload my save. But the resolution of the puzzle was validated before I recovered the item, which disappeared, and suddenly I was definitely stuck for the sequel... For collision problems, I found two elements of the set in the game that can be crossed, and sometimes Madotsuki barely to aggripper on the edge of a platform... Once again, nothing serious, but it can get awkward. Finally, to summarize, I liked this game, but I still remain on my hunger after having finished... Maybe the hype of his ad from January 25th made me wait for more of this game than I should have expected. Anyway, despite its short lifespan, it's a few hours during which I enjoyed myself. I would advise you to play it by reminding you that this is absolutely not a remake of the original game, and taking advantage of the promo to buy it.
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This lets down the original in lots of ways. It sorta follows the general idea, but Yume Nikki was never about precision puzzle platforming or railroaded gameplay. There are also glitches sometimes, and the original was really polished! There's not much to explore and the tedious gameplay is killing me. I gave this game a try, but you don't really have to.