No Sleep for Kaname Date-From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES - PS5 Review

No Sleep for Kaname Date-From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES by developer and publisher Spike Chunsoft Co. Ltd.—PS5 review written by Richard with a copy provided by the publisher.

 
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

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Hello everyone and welcome back to another Somnium Files title! Today we’ll be taking a look at No Sleep for Kaname Date – From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES! A sort of filler game in the series set between the first and second games chronologically. In this instalment Date gets to experience the wonders of escape games in addition to his detective and mental deep dive work!

If you’ve read the review for No Sleep on the Switch, the takeaway from the PS5 version is basically just a smoother running experience, and that’s about it. Less lag or slowdown in some scenes, and faster loading times. For those who haven’t read the Switch review, come join me as we take a look at this nifty spin-off type game that’s broaching into escape game!

It's important to note right off the bat that if you don’t know what happened in the first game in the series, you’re probably going to be pretty confused. You can get away without having played Nirvana Initiative, although some things may still confuse you. That being the case, I’m going to assume you have a bit of knowledge about the series, but may be a little rusty.

No Sleep for Kaname Date starts out with Iris, the local internet idol extraordinaire, being kidnapped and waking up in a spaceship! She is told by an alien that she must use her “third eye” to escape the confines of the ship. She’s allowed one helper she can call, so who else but Date and his sentient AI fake eyeball companion Aiba! Basically this means Iris will need to “play an escape game” to get out while Date can give running commentary or suggestions. The viewpoint will rotate between Date’s investigation and Iris’s escape attempts, having a mix of investigations, escape rooms, and mental diving into the Somnium.

Let’s take things one at a time. Since this game starts in an escape room, we’ll begin there. If you’ve played any of the Zero Escape games, you’ll have a decent idea how this works, but basically the escape sequences work in the same way that real life escape rooms do. You have a bunch of puzzles and objects and your goal is to use what you have available to escape the room you’re stuck in. You can interact with points of interest, pick up and use or combine items, and rotate and examine items to figure out what to do.

Good news for those that are having a tough time, if you set the game to anything other than hard for the escape sequences you will get plenty of hints. Unfortunately this also means that if you don’t need those hints but are checking something or seeing if there are other places to inspect, it feels like you’re being treated like you have no idea what you’re doing. It isn’t too bad for the most part, but can get pretty annoying. Thankfully there’s not usually a time limit in the escape games, so most of the time you’re free to think or reexamine at your leisure.

Good news for you puzzle fans, pretty much all of the answers to the puzzles or riddles are quite reasonable. There were only two I recall being a bit troubling, one was because I discovered an alternate way to solve the puzzle that didn’t give the actual answer but still was AN answer, and the other was a bit of suspect wording, but I managed to get through them, so it isn’t unsolvable. Each escape segment is themed, and as you progress through the game you will actually get multiple characters to swap between during the escape segments. You need to find ways to pass items back and forth, or solve puzzles to make something another character can interact with work. It’s actually pretty neat.

While outside the escape game, you will be either investigating the disappearance of Iris, or the appearance of a mysterious pod that may have been related to the incident or it could be completely unrelated. Either way, it’s up to you to investigate! Go places, talk to people, examine things, and sometimes get into a quick-time event. It’s detective Date’s time to shine! An interesting thing about No Sleep for Kaname Date is that there are a ton of hidden alternate endings. Like, there are at least three in the first investigation sequence you do alone, and most of them are pretty funny.

Once you’ve completed your prodding at possible leads, you can head back to ABYSS, where Kaname Date can delve into the subconscious mind of a suspect, and hope to gain insight from their dream realm, or somnium as it were. In the somnium you control Aiba as she investigates the mental world. Things are usually weird here, and you basically play a guessing or association game where you can interact or examine items, and sometimes do weird things with them. Sometimes those weird things are actually what you’re supposed to do too. In the somnium you have a time limit, and actions and walking decrease your time. After 6 minutes are up, you’re forcibly ejected and have to restart either from a checkpoint or from the beginning.

A neat thing about the somniums is that they have a lot of really funny and weird interactions. Also, there are giant eyeballs you can collect that give points towards bonus content you can unlock in-game. If you collect them all you also get some concept art. Once you’ve completed a somnium once you can return to it with infinite time so you can explore at your leisure. The giant eyeballs are still here and can be collected, but the clear bonus for more than a second remaining won’t be available if you go infinite time. There are multiple difficulties for the somniums, mostly adjusting how much time gets used on actions.

I have to say I was rather a fan of No Sleep for Kaname Date. It’s certainly shorter than other titles, and the plot is very “filler episode” like, but I thought it was pretty interesting, and I found the escape additions a fun time. The graphics and soundtrack should be just what you expect from previous games, with decent 3D models for characters and interesting environments coupled with a suitable soundtrack and solid voice acting. I also like how each game has it’s own dance number.

While No Sleep for Kaname Date – From AI the Somnium Files probably isn’t winning too many awards, it’s definitely a nice filler between main title entries. The puzzles are good, the escape rooms are well put together, and the somniums are pretty entertaining. The story is also really interesting once you really get into it, but might take awhile to really take hold for some people. It is a little on the shorter side, but I certainly enjoyed my time with it. The PS5 port does wonders for some choppy load times and lag I experienced on the switch, so if you’re considering playing this title after one of the previous two, you won’t go wrong with the PS5 port here.

Score: 8.5 / 10