Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series

Good Morning

I still remember when I first played the Klonoa series… Okay well, I still remember when I first played a DEMO for a Klonoa game lol. It was when I first got my PlayStation 2 for Christmas as a child and it came with a demo disk containing a whole bunch of demos for games and one of them was a demo for Klonoa 2 Lunatea's Veil and… never played anything else relating to this series beyond that until a few year ago. But that demo still stuck with me even after all these decades. And now, thanks to me being a lot older and playing both the rest of the series as well as this remake of Door to Phantomile and Lunatea’s Veil I can safely say wow am I glad this series made a return and is much more readily available to everyone! And it’s not even because of the gameplay that I adore these games even more now than I did as a child when all I had was that one demo for LV. Granted, the gameplay for both these games is still fantastic and very unique for what it is. I say it’s unique because you have to use enemies via inflating them with Klonoa’s wind ring where you can then either throw them at other enemies or use them for a double jump. Or, hit switches or items in both the foreground and background. That’s probaply the most unique thing about these games, the 2.5d aspect of them… REALLY wish the only reason I knew what that term means wasn’t because of a not good review from the 2010’s on the first Klonoa game. Even though the game is still played as a 2d platformer, the levels themselves are still 3d and it takes advantage of that for certain puzzles where you have to throw inflated enemies. And yeah, nowadays this might not be THAT big of a deal compared to back in 1997 but it’s still a really cool and unique feature that no other platformer of this style has taken advantage off. And that’s not even counting some of the individual gameplay aspects both games have like certain enemies that do different things when you inflate them like Bombies or Likuri’s. A new addition to this version of the duology I really appreciate is the addition of being able to change the difficulty, starting with only easy or normal at first but unlocking a new hard mode once you beat either game once not only making the game more accessible to new players but also given veterans a new challenge. So, what’s the actual reason I love both these games and by extension, the Klonoa series as a whole? The story and characters! I can not express how much I adore this world and it’s characters which isn’t that much of a surprise considering having an engaging story was one of the main goals when first creating the original PlayStation 1 version of Door to Phantomile. Because of how short both these games actually are I can’t actually say to much about them but believe me when I say they are both some of the best stories I’ve played in a platformer series, 2 actually being my personal favourite because of the moral behind it. Granted my actual favourite in this series, the un-iroinclly sexy bounty hunter wolf Guntz from the GBA games, isn’t in either of these two games though lol. I swear I’m not a furry! And of course, you got how the games both looks and of course, they both look fantastic. The locations are all pretty and every level stands out and is memorable in some form. Not to mention the amazing music both games have that help give this game even more personality. That being said though, and this may or may not be a bit of a hot take… I actually kinda prefer how the original PS1 and PS2 versions of these games look. I don’t know, with the original Lunatea’s Veil I feeling like the lighting and shading is a little better and fits the overall tone of the games narrative and atmosphere a little better than the remakes where there’s a fair amount of bloom and the PS1 version of Door to Phantomlie with it’s 2D sprites but having the main villain Ghadius being a 3D models which made him much more imposing in that version in my opinion. Plus, something about this version of DtP still using the incredibly compressed voice lines of the PS1 version alongside the higher quality models just feels off to me. This isn’t even the only remake of a series of games from my childhood, if only ever growing up with that Lunatea’s Veil demo counts as having a childhood with this series, that I feel this way over either as I feel a similar way towards the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon remakes. But, of course, that’s purely personal preference because even with my preferring the visual style of the original versions, Klonoa Phantasy Reveri Series is still a fantastic remake of a classic pair of already fantastic games and one I would highly recommend. Now if only Namco would release a translated version of Klonoa Heroes for everyone to play considering that game only ever came out in Japan.