Some other issues with Normal Mapping.
First, foliage luminescence explodes, making night not look so nighty.
Second, while I think nighttime generally appears a better with Normals OFF, there are still a few objects that are permanently Full-Bright
Compare Normals ON https://imgur.com/ZssGbdf
https://imgur.com/fHWrjcn
v Normals OFF
https://imgur.com/mzVctlm https://imgur.com/C4XFWnI
One other 'issue'. Normals OFF results in some objects not being illuminated by dynamic lights (just turn on a lantern at night). Not sure if this was typical behavior before recent 'modern renderer' updates, but for a lot of the personally unattractive light artifacts that
Win10
AMD RX480 GPU - driver 20.9.2