It played fine on SteamDeck after I searched up which version of Proton to force it to run under, and did some controls mapping.
That said...It's... Just the demo.
Unintuitive boss fight mechanics, a one hit kill and a three life maximum (before the game resets itself!) means: I just kept repeating the demo for the vast majority of my play time.
I could watch a tutorial on the rest of the bosses, but honestly the later levels (that I have reached) are just different paint added to first level.
6/10 - It's surprisingly good for being one of the earliest attempts at a making a 3d game.
If I was going to replay it, I would seach up a boss fight tutorial first, to save myself time. It's just not worth playing through the whole game each time I want 3 more chances to guess each under-communicated boss mechanic.
I've only actually played the first game, but as I understand it, NiGHTS is a high-ranking Nightmaren just like the monstrous bosses he fights. NiGHTS happens to be powerful enough to be independent. Whenever the other Nightmaren mug a dreaming visitor, if the visitor keeps hold of one of their Ideyas, NiGHTS finds it more fun to help the visitor wreck everything instead.
I had the original game and loved it. Initially hated it because it wasn’t what I was expecting, but since I paid so much I played it and got into it. Fun game.