Kaname Date is on yet another convoluted detective adventure through the strange ideation of the Somnium in No Sleep For Kaname Date – From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES. The very first installment in the series was absolutely eaten up by fans of series creator Kotaro Uchikoshi, who is also behind the Zero Escape series, and I can truly see why, as someone who has never played an entry in the AI: The Somnium Files series. Even in a brand-new adventure, Kaname’s team and the overall gameplay are reintroduced for new players to get to know and judge, with a few new gameplay elements thrown into the mix.
Even though it’s a visual novel, the game also has a pretty in-depth gameplay system that has you solving insane puzzles and following through on your regular detective duties. However, I do have to say that a lot of this was marred by the outdated dialogue and general personalities of a lot of the characters. That being said, I’ll admit to having skipped through a ton of the completely voiced dialogue because it just made me feel weird to have it on my living room TV.
Read ‘Em and Weep
Without really spoiling a whole that isn’t already available in Spike Chunsoft-specific sites and store pages, No Sleep For Kaname Date – From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES puts you back in the shoes of Kaname Date as he goes on a weird journey to save Iris after she’s been abducted by aliens. As Kaname, you’ll interact with a whole cast of characters on your quest toward finding what happened to Iris, using your special left eye, named AIBA, to gather additional information. You’ll also spend a good chunk of the game in the Somnium, a dream world that lets you see through memories to help uncover relevant clues.
I very much liked how straightforward this story was, which is really what I love about visual novels as a whole. However, instead of your typical 2D characters and backdrops against text boxes, the game is much more interactive. You are literally walking through the different areas of investigation to uncover new clues and ways of moving forward. You still have your typical visual novel gameplay elements, like chatting between characters to uncover new information, but it’s a lot prettier and makes me feel more in control of how I play.
Let’s Skip Through That, Shall We?
In between the story itself, talking with other characters, and the puzzles you’ll have to complete, there’s all this weird dialogue. I hate being one of those people who say, “it’s 2026, we should give this a break,” but I really think we should give all this perverted, porno magazine talk a rest. It feels as though the whole game was written by a bunch of older guys, which is probably true, but doesn’t need to be THIS apparent. It really made the dialogue and general character personalities feel really outdated, and I ended up finding myself skipping through a lot of the completely voiced dialogue.
That being said, the voice acting was actually really great. Again, each character is completely voiced and adds a lot of flair to the overall tone of what’s going on, but it was really cringey at times. Unfortunately, that’s really the best way I can phrase it.
Puzzles Galore
One of my absolute favorite aspects of No Sleep For Kaname Date – From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES is the puzzle gameplay. Yes, I’ll admit that I felt really dumb at times because of how complicated some of the puzzles can be, but they always made sense by the end. There is also a button that acts as a guide to help you get to the next part of the puzzle, and, if you’re playing with the feature on, it can have AIBA quite literally give you the answer so you’re not stuck forever.
Personally, I really liked this feature because I think there’s nothing worse about a visual novel than being stuck and feeling as though you have exhausted all of your options. But I love that even if you choose to just breeze your way through the puzzle, there’s a lot of it to actually have to go through. The puzzles are pretty smart, and made me feel like I had no idea what I was doing at times, but there definitely were times where I felt that instead of being ‘too smart,’ the puzzles were trying a bit too hard (I’m looking at you, weird puzzle box pool puzzle).
Conclusion
Overall, I had a great time with No Sleep For Kaname Date – From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES, despite feeling that the writing and general character personalities were severely outdated. In a lot of ways, the innovative gameplay and complex puzzles sort of made up for this, especially since I was just skipping through it all by the end of the game. While it’s no Super Famicom Detective Club, I’d definitely recommend it both to the those who really enjoyed the first installment of AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES and those who generally like visual novels and haven’t given this one a shot yet.
A PS5 review key was provided by the publisher.
All That Detective Work is Tiring
No Sleep For Kaname Date - From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES is a fun visual novel with really cool puzzles and unique RPG gameplay, but feels really outdated at times when characters speak or interact with one another.
