No Sleep For Kaname Date - From AI: The Somnium Files Review
It has been six years since AI: The Somnium Files was released, and that original game was everything I could have ever wanted as a spiritual successor to Kotaro Uchikoshi’s Zero Escape series. Somehow, they made a sequel, which reached similar highs, although for largely different reasons. A sequel with a unique identity to itself was even more than I could ever ask for, and so I also found a lot to love in Nirvana Initiative.
Now there’s a third game, I guess. Kind of. No Sleep For Kaname Date - From AI: The Somnium Files is a spin-off title, taking place between the previous two games. It leans into the team’s history working on the Zero Escape series far more than past entries, leading to a shorter entry with some new gameplay style and nonstop fanservice. It’s also not written or directed by Kotaro Uchikoshi (likely because he was busy at work on Too Kyo’s opus The Hundred Line), with Uchikoshi instead supervising new writer/director Kazuya Yamada.
No Sleep For Kaname Date is an interesting game. The shoes that Yamada is stepping into are large, and I don’t envy the task of expanding a world heavily associated with Uchikoshi’s unique writing style. No Sleep had a lot going against it, being a smaller-scale spin-off as well. Despite everything, and even my own disappointments, I managed to come away enjoying more than I didn’t. I made sure to approach this with modest expectations, not to expect a full-on third game with this, and I had fun.
Given that No Sleep For Kaname Date uses most of the gameplay of the past games, I’m not going to recap the specifics. I’ll mention a few small additions, but the core gameplay for Investigation and Somnium remains the same. If you’re a newcomer, I’d recommend reading prior reviews first if you’d like to get a better idea of what's going on here. Having said that, however, I wouldn’t call this game newcomer-friendly. It will try to explain itself, but it doesn’t try to be as standalone as Nirvana Initiative. This entry is for the fans.
Budding internet sensation Iris Sagan has been abducted by aliens and forced to participate in a series of escape games. At the helm of this conspiracy is a Reptilian-themed woman named Akemi on a computer screen, hosting what she calls the Third Eye Game (get it?). Date is back as the protagonist in this case to track down Iris, as she works with her “friend” Ota to escape this twisted game.
The first thing you’ll immediately notice is that all of the characters have been turned up to 11, because this spin-off’s main focus this time around is humor over all else. Date is hornier than ever, for example. He’s even more addicted to porno mags and cabaret clubs. The most extreme characters from the past games definitely get the most to work with here, which makes sense given the focus on comedy and the short run time. Characters like Mizuki and Ryuki have their moments, but feel a bit pushed to the side to make way for ones more suited for making silly bits. You can expect most characters from the previous two games to show up here, no matter how insignificant they might have seemed.
If I were feeling more uncharitable, I’d say the characterization veers on flanderization. Thankfully, the exaggerated character portrayals just kind of worked for me. Considering that the dialogue was not written by Uchikoshi, and how the returning cast felt a bit more simplified in Nirvana Initiative, I think it works well enough for what this game is doing. This game lives and dies by its comedy more than any other entry, and if moments like Date looking at Hitomi’s shoebox and saying he’s too “full” to sniff it like in past games gets you giggling, then you’re in for a good time.
Having Date back in the driver’s seat (quite literally, in some scenes) did a lot of heavy lifting. As much as this old bastard gets on everyone’s nerves, he’s a hard guy to hate. Date worked well as a mentor, but he’s one of the reasons why the first game grabbed me all those years ago. So a whole new game with his back-and-forth teasing with Aiba was hard not to enjoy, no matter what. I’m also happy to say that his English voice actor, Greg Chun, continues to bring his all to the role even after six years. All the returning voice actors from both games do an expectably fantastic job in their roles.
Outside of the new characters, who I thought were simply fine, the only character that didn’t really work for me was Iris herself. Her role to spout ridiculous conspiracy theories has an interesting payoff in the narrative itself, but has admittedly gotten a bit stale since the original AI. While I don’t think this game did much to make me like her more, it’s not like I don’t find her inclusion in the cast fun. No Sleep For Kaname Date brings back the first game’s cast front and center, but with the zanier writing you’d find in the sequel. Since their stories have all concluded, I ended up being fine with this mystery serving as an excuse to put these characters into wacky hijinks.
The core gameplay is mostly the exact same as the previous game, with the only notable difference being that Third Person Investigation has been replaced with escape rooms. You’ll play as Iris and her group, and switch between them to solve a variety of puzzles. I was curious how Team Zero Escape would be able to handle themselves after years away, but they still got it. Outside of the view being shifted to third person, they play similarly to the Zero Escape games that I remember so fondly. You’ll pick up a variety of items around the map, and then use or combine them in various ways to chip away at all the puzzles in the room.
I especially like that each room features a moment where you’re given a countdown to figure out the most complicated puzzle in the room. There was genuinely a lot of pressure during these scenes, and I was often left stumped for several minutes writing notes and piecing things together. These segments are also where basically all the new 3D assets were made, and they look great. From a gameplay perspective, this is No Sleep For Kaname Date at its absolute best. I’d even pay money just to get a few more of these.
As much as I adored all of the escape room sections, I’m sad to say that I found the Somnium sections to be a downgrade from both previous games. Not only are they much more linear than ever before, but all of them re-use areas from either past games. No Sleep uses the same locations as the previous two games for investigation, so I was hoping we'd get more unique and interesting Somniums to make up for this. The other AI games re-purpose maps as well, but typically they’d be expanded or changed heavily (the Naix office having a whole extra section to swim through comes to mind). Here, that’s not really the case, and the puzzles are easier than ever. I was a bit let down at how Somniums in Nirvana Initiative were streamlined, but those still had a lot more experimentation required to solve them, whereas here that is just not the case.
Somnium segments have always existed as a creative way to expand on character backgrounds and advance the plot, but that’s about all they do now. The puzzles were much more straightforward this time around, and there felt like less of a reason to go off the beaten path and explore. I will say, though, despite my complaints for Somniums this time, one of them housed the most emotional moment in the entire game. It tackles a lingering thread I didn’t know I needed addressed, and almost reached some of the most tear-jerking Somnium of games past.
Speaking of linearity, another minor disappointment was in story progression. Past games offered a branching story, where your choices in the Somnium would split the narrative and take you on completely different paths. Combing through the flowchart and piecing together the mystery across different timelines is what made me fall in love with Uchikoshi’s games all the way back with the release of Virtue’s Last Reward. Unfortunately, this time they opted for a completely linear flowchart with unlockable Joke Bad Ends. Rejoice, this includes Atami. Most of the ones I found are like this, just being short joke scenes and a game over. They’re worth hunting down, but I do wish there had been more of an attempt to keep the timeline jumping from the previous games.
I’m not allowed to get into specifics, but I was pleased to see that unlockable extras from Nirvana Initiative have made their return. Once you’ve hit credits after around 15 hours, there are a good number of optional bad ends or extras to track down. I haven’t found everything in the game yet, but I was genuinely pleased with the kind of content they offered up for people to unlock. I got a handful of wonderful grins at some of the references found here, and I would love nothing more than to just gush about what they’re doing. It’s consistent with the new wackier tone as well, and all of it had me laughing.
As interesting a mystery as No Sleep sets up for itself, it doesn’t quite land the same way its predecessors did. The spot on the timeline it decided to box itself into, being an interquel, led to a bit of a unique problem. It’s very clear early on that nothing introduced here can influence events in the timeline, so what happens ultimately ends up feeling inconsequential and predictable as a result. The game wears this like a badge of honor as it ties up its story in a very AI way, but how they get there wasn’t the most satisfying. I think the predictable story didn’t end up being enough of an issue to take away from the parts that work, but I wish it could have been a complete home run.
It might seem like I’m harsh on this spin-off, but I think I’ve grown more fond of the title the longer it sat with me. To get the most out of No Sleep For Kaname Date, you need to align your expectations in advance. The story isn’t devoid of emotional pay-offs, but it’s hardly going to hit things out of the park as hard as the previous games did. What it sacrifices in the typical mind-bending mystery, it makes up for with excellent comedy writing. This game knows it can’t meaningfully advance the plot of the main series, and it blatantly doesn’t try to. It wants you to have another go with characters you grew fond of throughout two really special games. It wants to make you laugh over the most ridiculous jokes, and applaud as Date powers up with his signature porno mags. As an AI fan who didn't need this to be the next big thing, I can’t help but appreciate what this offers.