

Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series
released on Jul 08, 2022
Klonoa is back! Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series brings back Klonoa: Door to Phantomile and Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil remastered in one collection to fans new and old. Get ready to set off on an adventure to save the world!
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I don't know I thought they were kind of boring. I really wanted to like these games, but they were just frustrating to play.
A solid if low-key remaster of two early PlayStation platforming classics. The gameplay is stronger in the second title, but the world of Phantomile draws me back to the original Klonoa. The excellent soundtrack and surprisingly sad story of the first game edge out the minor improvements and additional mechanics the second game introduced. Wahoo!
Dang these games are so good. I’d played the first few levels of PS1 Klonoa several times, and knew from that how stellar of a 2.5D platformer this is. This package brings it home even harder, and the levels only get more intricate as the game progresses. The first game is such a gem, so well paced and breezy. This mini-genre that Klonoa spearheaded — along with games like Tomba and Pandemonium — is so fascinating and so emblematic of that first wave of console polygonal 3D gaming.
It's a remastered collection of two of the best platformers ever created, so you can't really go wrong. But is it the definitive way to play Klonoa? Well, as for the second game... maybe. Honestly, it's been a long while now since I played the PS2 original, much as I cherish it. The way I see it though, this version of the first game lacks a little something of the original. Call it 'soul' perhaps. All the cutscenes in this collection are all rendered in-game. That means that the beautiful FMV sequences of the first game have been redone using the less expressive in-game character models, and as such a lot of the emotional impact has been lost. The infamously gut-wrenching ending of Klonoa 1 loses a lot of its power in the Reverie Series, and because of this, the PS1 original remains king in my opinion.
There's also some fuckery going on with the audio mix. The glorious music is offensively low in the mix, while the vocal samples of the original games have been included, resulting in some aural discordance. Music and SFX sounds crisp, but in cutscenes the characters' voices are incredibly tinny. It's quite distracting.
This is still a must play for any Klonoa fan though. Or even just platforming fans in general. Buy this so that we can be blessed with Klonoa 3 in the future.
Marked it a little lower due to the literal PS1-ripped voices for Door to Phantomile.
But you can't skip this remaster bundle, recommended for fans of platformers.