No Sleep For Kaname Date - From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES Review (Switch 2)

No Sleep For Kaname Date - From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES is the newest entry in Spike Chunsoft's AI: Somnium Files series and is actually a spin-off of the first two games. As a 'mid-quel' between both stories, No Sleep for Kaname Date is a good companion piece for fans of the series but not so much for those unfamiliar. Its visual novel elements are bolstered by new gameplay mechanics that keep the game, and series, from becoming stale.

This entry also sees the return of our original protagonist, Kaname Date. This time around, his idol friend, Iris Sagan, is kidnapped by a UFO and she’s forced to play escape room games in order to stay alive, while Kaname works around the clock to uncover the dark secrets behind Iris’s abduction.

No Sleep for Kaname Date is the Trails through Daybreak 2 of the series, as its story doesn’t move the overall series plot forward in a meaningful way, but focuses on a much more personal conflict. I’ve always loved the series’ incorporation of wacky conspiracy theories to its mysteries, but then it turns out that the truth is actually much more grounded.

While I enjoyed the characters talking about how ancient civilisations received alien technology, I do think that No Sleep for Kaname Date has the weakest twists of the three games so far. They’re a little more predictable this time around and as a result don’t hit as hard.

By its very nature of being a spin-off, the story could leave some fans feeling alienated, but it reintroduces characters like the second game’s protagonist, Ryuki, to show players what he was doing before his prior big debut. The new characters Hina and Akemi are fantastic additions, as the former’s love for puzzles and the latter’s weird reptilian origins make the already weird cast even more enigmatic.

This makes No Sleep for Kaname Date an excellent bridge between both games. The game fully expects you to know who these characters are and how they fit into the overall Somnium Files universe, so it's best to go in once you’ve played the other two entries.

The previous games were written by Kotaro Uchikoshi, who was also director of the Zero Escape series. However, this time around, No Sleep for Kaname Date is directed and written by Kazuya Yamada. Honestly, it’s hard to tell that this game was written by someone else entirely. Yamada did a great job emulating Uchikoshi’s writing style. Iris is just as bubbly as ever, and Date is as much of a perv as he was in the previous games. The characters’ personalities are consistent, which prevents No Sleep for Kaname Date from feeling jarring.

The main gameplay mechanic revolves around Psyncs, where Date can jump into the psyche of another person. Date will have to solve “mental locks” that are related to the current mystery. Here, his eyeball companion, Aiba, navigates throughout the dream-like world interacting with various objects. For example, if she comes across an important script, she might get the option to “take” or “read” it. Only one of them is the correct answer that’ll progress through the mental locks.

These puzzles have remained largely unchanged from previous games and end up devolving into guessing games. There’s really not much of a strategy except hope that you pick the right answer. It feels rather unengaging sometimes.

However, the new escape room puzzles are much more exciting and make up for the somewhat underwhelming Somniums. Ironically, the game where Uchikoshi is the least involved with borrows the mechanic he’s best known for. These escape rooms require you to really put your brain to the test. For example, in the first escape room, you have to look at patterns on torn flags to figure out a special code to put into a terminal, or else your room will run out of air.

The escape rooms feel intense when you’re on a timer, especially compared to the Somniums. It’s difficult to strike a balance when it comes to escape rooms, but they feel appropriately challenging here. I felt an immense sense of satisfaction when I solved them, and that they were never unfairly hard.

If you are having trouble during these segments, however, there are plenty of gameplay settings and options to tailor your gameplay experience to be more approachable. You can enable infinite hints and even ask the game to reveal the solution to a particular puzzle, too.

Having played both the Switch and Switch 2 versions of the game, the latter’s graphical enhancements and load time improvements feel negligible. However, No Sleep for Kaname Date is a visual novel, so the lack of differences don’t really matter much. The Switch 2 version does support Mouse Mode, which I tried out for a bit before reverting back to standard Joy-Con controls. You can navigate escape rooms and Somniums, as well as interact with clues and items. Sure, it’s a nice feature to have but the novelty eventually wears off.