is this really a win for klonoa? namco puppeteering his corpse with the prospect of future games that may not deliver or even get made? i'd rather this series die if this is the quality we can expect from it.

nevermind the obnoxious practice of holding series' hostage like this, it's deeply upsetting that the only compromise we get is a butchered representation of what came before. because god forbid people play old playstation games that "look dated" next to other games releasing today despite there not being a good way to experience how the original games were presented to begin with. you'd think more people would push back against this; especially considering the cries for more klonoa content from those who grew up with this series, but to my surprise basically everyone seems to be eating this up no questions asked. every few years this happens, an old series gets a spark of life in miserable fashion and sometimes it leads to something greater, but even with the best outcome i think its a bad precedent to set. sure crash bandicoot 4 crushed all expectations and is in the running for best game in the entire series, but it rubs me the wrong way that it came as a result of scrubbing away the hard work done by the original developers back in the late 90's.

i understand that much of this stems from publishers more than developers (it's not like they've been very forward thinking when it comes to the preservation of old games to begin with) but when companies demand stringent deadlines with no regard to quality control of course the product will come out half baked, no matter how much love was behind the wheel of it. i don't have a bird's eye view on the development of this project, but i can't imagine it was enjoyable or flexible to work under. even if their hearts were in the right place, theres no chance they had the tools needed to really do this series the justice it deserves.

no matter the circumstances though, this is what we're left with. a botched collection of beloved titles that, for the foreseeable future, is the only way to comfortably play these for most people. i'm not upset that it's overpriced or not stuffed with extraneous crap to justify the cost, i'm upset that this is the standard for preservation the industry is setting for itself. who cares about the game's legacy and how it impacted people, just slap a name on it to excite fans looking for to rekindle memories of better days gone by.

best case scenario we get a new sequel out of this collection and it really delivers on fan expectations, but is that really the lesson to be learned here? treat the past as a frivolous step to success so we can move onto the next new shiny thing? i can't help but feel deeply cynical over the industry if this is how we think we should celebrate the past. klonoa deserved better

After 10 years of dormancy, Namco finally decided to give this series another chance with this collection. While it is a great way to bring Klonoa back, it isn't perfect. The collection itself is fairly barebones in terms of content and doesn't add much. Some other flaws include the grab Klonoa does with his wind ring feels a little off at times and the visuals aren't as good as they could have been, there are times when the graphics are almost mobile game tier. There are a handful of things this collection does right though, they went with Klonoa's Ps1 design for the original game, they brought back the gibberish language from the original versions, and even though the new visuals are not that great it managed to blend pretty well with some of the levels, particularly the final level of Door to Phantomile. Despite not being the greatest compilation or remaster, it does its job and is a good alternative to paying premium to get the original copies. Given the obscurity of this series and with the prices and rarity of the original versions, I would strongly suggest giving this a purchase as not only is this the cheapest way to experience these classics but also increases the chances of a third game and another compilation that gives the other entries more accessibility and a cheaper way to play them.

"it looks different" this, "my childhood" that; my brother in christ this shit runs like dogshit on both PC and Switch, constant suttering every second or two even on minimum settings at 720p. Fourty fucking dollars for this? And immediately greeted with a "please accept this EULA to allow us to actively enable telemetry and grab your IP etc." on boot. Distracting ass giant "SKIP SCENE" prompt on ALL cutscenes, locking the cute costumes to a giant DLC bundle that's another twenty fucking dollars. Nevermind the horrendous regional pricing. Fuck off.
EDIT: LOL the DLC doesn't even include files for you to play back locally i.e. MP3/FLAC or the "digital artbook", you can only view them in-game. They literally are selling the sound test menu you could unlock in og Klonoa. Holy fuck.

I'm usually firmly "eh whatever" on remakes changing visuals etc., and while I think this is serviceable in that regard, the ogs are just better in these departments. You may prefer the new look, I don't, but it also doesn't bother me that much.
EDIT: Nevermind Klonoa 2 looks like ass. Holy shit.

I also just want to add, please for the love of god play Klonoa PS1. It's an immensely special and important game to me and emulates perfectly or otherwise you can swaptrick it on PS1. Treat yourself to something good instead.

EDIT 2: Latest PCSX2 nightly appears to run Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil just about perfectly as well LMFAO fuck this remake duology. Ryzen 7 3700x peak at about 35-40% usage and GTX 1050 Ti peaks at 60-70% at 1080p, occasional slowdown at 1440p.

This game upsets me. I wasn’t expecting to like it, and I won’t pretend like that wasn’t the case. Even so, I still had hope that I would see value in it. I looked everywhere, and found almost nothing to appreciate. The game was everything I feared it would be; pointless, disrespectful, inconsistent, and soulless. There are a few bright spots that shine through the cracks, but on the whole this entire product comes across as a desperate cashgrab that banks off of the steadily growing cult audience around a fan-favorite series. Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series exemplifies everything wrong with computer game remakes. Because of that, and the insulting pricing and technical issues I experienced, this is one of my most hated video games… ever. I hardly even know how to talk about it because of how baffling the whole experience was. Might as well start from the top...

For those not in the loop, this is a compilation remake of the two main Klonoa games, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile and Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil, which are puzzle platformers released in 1997 for the PlayStation and 2001 for the PlayStation 2 respectively. The former had already received a full emake for the Wii in 2008, renamed to simply Klonoa outside of Japan. This new Phantasy Reverie Series’s iteration of Door to Phantomile is based off of the Wii version. New changes include new bloom lighting, likely made to address complaints of the Wii version being desaturated, new character models that attempt to more closely replicate that of the original PlayStation version, higher-resolution texturework, and the removal of the Wii version’s English voice acting in favor of the original voices. The rest of this review will be assuming that you are fairly familiar with these games already, though I will avoid full-on spoilers. I will only compare this new remake to the original versions, as they are the only ones that are relevant.

The complete overhaul of the visuals of Door to Phantomile from the original demonstrates a complete misunderstanding as to how the original was designed. It’s the developers thinking that “making it all super duper detailed 3D” means that the games look better. Video games’ inherent reliance on technology has resulted in the change from low-poly 3D to detailed HD graphics for remakes like this to be interpreted as an upgrade simply because it is, by definition, technically better. Of course, this doesn’t take into account that everything about the original was made to be displayed at a specific resolution for specific displays. But, it is technically “better.” Moviegoers seem to understand that a new movie with digital cameras isn’t overtly better than an old movie shot on film, because, believe it or not, that doesn’t actually matter. What’s important is what the artists are able to do with what they are designing for. I personally don’t think I should have to explain this, but video gamers don’t seem to understand this. Sorry to break it to you, the Shadow of the Colossus remake is no different than the Lion King remake. These aren’t passionate reinventions of classic games, they are cynical cashgrabs conceived by studios to capitalize off of existing fans. Of course, this would be absolutely fine if they were accurate representations of their original iterations. Unfortunately they aren’t. Oh well.

The geniuses behind this remake thought “the old game had sprites for characters so we need to change them to models because expensive modern games use 3D models. That will make the game better because this isn’t what the old version would do.” I would argue that this is a cynical ploy of making a game look more technically advanced and modern instead of accurately representing the original intention of the game, though a more charitable view would be that the developers of the remakes saw new creative opportunities that could be brought to fruition by implementing 3D models. Unfortunately, this remake fails to follow-up on the possibilities of this change. The game tries to recreate every scene and animation basically beat-for-beat with the models, and as such fails to accurately represent what the original was doing AND it fails to provide a substantially different interpretation. The artists’ thought that doing the same thing as the original but NEWER and SHINIER and MORE EXPENSIVE would work. It doesn’t. This is exemplary of every other decision made in the remaking process for both Door to Phantomile and Lunatea’s Veil; they try to update their original incarnations without understanding why the decisions that made those games what they are were made. Take the walk cycle, for example. Instead of using the one from Klonoa 2, the Door to Phantomile remake utilizes a new one that is more similar to the walk cycle in the original. It looks… wwrrrooonnnngggg. The developers thought that they could replicate what the original accomplished by simply implementing the original thing in a new context, which does not work. At all. A sprite can animate like that, a 3D model can’t. Everything in these remakes is like this. A pivotal scene at the end of Vision 4-2 in the first game was phenomenal in the original. This new version is just cheap and lame, and knowing that this is what some people will think the game was like in the first place is embarrassing.

Klonoa 2 isn’t a complete overhaul in the collection like the first game is, but it still makes many changes. Too many. Way too many. I don’t understand what was so wrong with the visuals in the original version that they had to change so much. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY would have complained if they simply updated the original texturework for modern displays, slightly edited the 2D elements for widescreen, and bob’s your uncle. Garish bloom lighting, baffling texture changes that don’t feel like they’re even based on the original, additional foliage and background details, etc. What confuses me the most about all of this is the thought process behind it, what it’s meant to achieve. Ultimately, the visual style is still trying to simply be the original, while disingenuously parading around as more technically advanced than the original was. Because of this, it meets an in-between that doesn’t satisfy those looking for a creative new take on the original, nor does it accurately represent the original. It is a failure. A complete failure.

The obvious response towards criticism of unfaithful remakes is that the original “will always exist” so it doesn’t matter anyway. First of all, that would mean that remakes can literally be whatever they want as long as they happen to share the name of the source material. More importantly though, the computer game industry just doesn’t work in a way that facilitates two versions of one game having the same amount of relevance at one time. This new version of Klonoa is now the default for all future releases. It is very unlikely that Bandai Namco will backpedal on the decision to release and market this as some “definitive” version by releasing the originals untouched. If this collection had the option to play the originals, this wouldn’t be the case at all. But, of course, they couldn’t have been bothered to include them. If they did, everyone would be happy. Sure that wouldn’t change what the new version does wrong, but I sure as hell wouldn’t care because I wouldn’t have to play it. Once the publisher decides to not include the original versions, they have effectively killed off the preservation of the original. If you’re reading this review then you are most likely a dedicated gamer who likes cult classic puzzle platforming games, so you can play the original releases in some form. Unfortunately, most consumers aren’t like you. Humans are inherently lazy, so we will naturally play the versions of these games that are the easiest to obtain. Eventually, Phantasy Reverie Series will be older than the original games are now. On top of that, every subsequent release of these games will most likely be based off of these ones. Games only truly exist for as long as they are relevant. In 100 years, a very small percentage of players will choose the PlayStation version of these games to play over the new versions, and they will have to go out of their way to do so. If the first releases of both of these games were included, this never would have been an issue. I’m not upset that the new versions exist, I’m upset that the originals get their future cut off.

So what do these new versions add? Non-intrusive features like unlockable bonus materials can add a lot to a collection for returning and new players. Well, there’s basically nothing to speak of here. By far the best inclusion is the new “Pixel Filter.” I thought that this would be some sort-of CRT filter, but instead it’s a weird lo-fi filter that distorts the colors a bit and makes the visuals more “retro.” It looks really cool, when I play with it I try to pretend that it’s some unrelated 32-bit throwback platform game with cute characters. It only goes so far, but still a cool addition. I like it because it is optional and it looks different than the original in a way that isn’t trying to just look more technically advanced and modern.

Difficulty selections have been added. They don’t take away anything, though I don’t think I can exactly “praise” them either. Because of their tacked-on nature, I can’t imagine a new player feeling incentivized to go up from them to the higher difficulties. Still, they’re harmless. Audio balance options have been added alongside fully customizable controls, which are always great to see. And… that’s it. That’s really it. These options are presented through a new menu that looks fine but the way it awkwardly pops up on the screen rubs me the wrong way, like a late-90s pop-up ad or something. The game selection screen is similarly amateurish with a misaligned logo and awkward scaling. The way the music just suddenly starts and stops is bad too. The game in general oozes a rushed, budget aura and feels consistently unpolished. I guess that leads me into my next big thing…

I was mostly expecting this game to be disrespectful and lazy, but what I wasn’t expecting was for it to be an absolute technical disaster. For full transparency, I played the Xbox version of Phantasy Reverie Series on an Xbox One S and on a technical level it was horrendous. I recognize that a very small portion of the audience for this game are on Xbox, so it likely got the short end of the stick, but that does not excuse it for being nearly unplayable at times. Of course, I haven’t been recording anything so you’ll have to take my word for it. I’ll run down the list of minor issues that I encountered in Door to Phantomile now:

• Consistent audio crackling throughout the game. Most of the time it wasn’t that bad, though 6-2 became literal earrape at two points.
• Klonoa’s shadow would sometimes disappear for seemingly no reason. Most noticeable in 4-2.
• There were two times that I was hit by an enemy that flew me way to far away, leading to me falling to my death.
• Sound effects would repeat and cut out. Happened most often with Klonoa’s “Wahoo!” double-jump sound. This happened during a pivotal scene.
• The audio mixing made it nearly impossible to hear certain sound effects. Of course, you could go into the options menu and turn the music down, but then the sound effects that aren’t messed up will destroy your ears.
• I’m not sure if the input lag is really bad or something else, but movement in general felt very delayed. I could press the jump button in the middle of Klonoa’s flutter and he would jump when he hit the floor. The delay made later sections far too difficult.
• Sometimes elements in the background would pop in. This is very minor, and most noticeable during 3-1.

Alright, as for the major issues, I’ll start with the less damaging one: the load times are pretty bad. Loading a stage takes too long, loading in the world map took like 30 seconds one time, and load points during a stage are absurd at times. Loading in the room where Klonoa meets Balue in the first stage took over 20 seconds to load. That’s awful. I even copied the game over to my internal hard drive in the hopes of fixing this and it was still awful.

The big issue is stuttering and strange frame… skipping? I don’t even know what it is, but I swear sometimes the game will straight up not render frames which causes me to fall to my death. The frame rate itself is mostly consistent I think, it isn’t all that bad. The stuttering, however, is painful. It is horrible. The game will stutter like every five seconds if not more and no matter what I never got used to it. It makes the game hurt to play. I played the game in one sitting, but I had to pause the game often just to save my eyes from the stutters. I can’t even adequately explain this in words, it is horrendous. This is simply unacceptable, and the fact that Bandai Namco and Monkeycraft released this and aren’t getting ANY criticism for it is extremely disheartening.

Klonoa 2, by contrast, was significantly more polished. I didn’t notice audio or visual issues, there was no stuttering and the load times were very quick. It still isn’t quite at the place it should be, there are quite a few performance drops and the game still feels a bit unstable and janky, though I can’t exactly describe that with examples, it just felt that way. This gives me the impression that this is simply a rushed and sloppy product squirted out to fill up a release schedule and bank off of the critical acclaim of a beloved franchise. There are some signs that the developers cared about this project, such as the completely remade scrapbook images for Klonoa 2, but the project on the whole lacks care and feels unfinished and unpolished. It’s especially unfortunate because these games were technical marvels on PlayStation and PlayStation 2, with very brief load times and a locked 60fps.

Phantasy Reverie Series exudes cheapness, so of course, of COURSE it is retailing for $40. This is downright inexcusable considering how little content is on offer here. I am and have never been one to judge games based on their price. I recognize that the corporate bigwigs are ones who make the price and that doesn’t necessarily reflect the artistic integrity of the game, nor do I think that a short game should have a low price because it is short. Those arguments are absurd and anyone who makes them without some other justification needs to shut up. The problem here is that this game has no artistic integrity in the first place because it is a corporate product manufactured in a lab that is riding on the acclaim of the original games. And no, “it’ll go on sale” is not an excuse. First of all, it says a lot about the product itself that you would justify its existence by saying that it’ll be super cheap eventually, but we should also always judge a product based on the price that it was designed around in the first place, not the price that it might have a year down the line. This is a cheap collection with barely any content that is retailing for significantly more than most other comparable releases.

For comparison, the Mega Man Zero Legacy Collection contains 6 games and retailed for $30 at launch. That collection certainly isn’t perfect and is not the ideal version of those games if you like proper scaling but it is a good value and is much more polished than this. On top of the games themselves in that collection, they also feature a jukebox to listen to the music, tons of visual options (even if there’s no integer scale for the DS games), and loads of extras that fans can get a real kick out of.

Phantasy Reverie Series doesn’t feature any of this. Well, kind-of. See, this rerelease of 20 year old games has a DLC Digital Deluxe Edition variant that contains, you guessed it, an artbook and music player. You know, features that are supposed to be in a collection like this in the first place. This is insulting. This is extremely greedy. This is awful. And this costs $70. The fact that Bandai Namco released this for $70 is… I… I can’t even comprehend why this hasn’t stirred much of any controversy. Does nobody even know about this? This is one of the most transparently greedy things I’ve ever seen in a package like this. Features like this are SUPPOSED TO BE A PART OF THE COLLECTION IN THE FIRST PLACE! Even with these features, the collection would still be pushing it in price, but at least it would be… something. Instead, us who saved the money, us worthless cheapskates who bought the standard version which is already overpriced, we don’t get anything. Relative to the amount of games in the collection, this is just as much of a value as Super Mario 3D All-Stars, which stirred tons of controversy. Hell, even THAT collection had digital soundtracks. This has nothing. Nothing!

You know, I’d be perfectly fine with a $40 price tag if they had done more with this. Instead of allocating resources to nonsense like adding garish, disgusting bloom lighting that overpowers the image, or changing the character models in Klonoa 2 even though there is no reason to do so, they could have spent that time and money on throwing together a GBA emulator and including the Klonoa games for GBA. Or even better, they could have released the first officially localized version of Klonoa: Moonlight Museum for the Wonderswan. Or maybe they could have gone even further than a simple art gallery and instead made an interactive room that the player can explore to observe the art and other bonus material like dev materials for the games, akin to the Insomniac Museum in the Ratchet & Clank games. That’d be awesome!

But, no. None of this. There are additional costumes, at least… oh wait those are locked behind the Deluxe Edition too. Wait a minute… the first remake on Wii had unlockable costumes. And THOSE were in the game at no additional cost. They were harmless extras that were unlocked as a reward for players who finish the game. That means that Bandai Namco took previously made content and sold it for extra as DLC. Why, WHY is nobody on their case for this? Why??? This is horrible! Jesus Christ, this is a scam! A scam! They are selling even the base version of Phantasy Reverie Series as definitive iterations of these games, meanwhile they are literally TAKING CONTENT AWAY AND SELLING THEM AS DLC! I don’t like the Wii version at all, most of my criticisms for the fundamental design approach to these new versions also apply to that game, but it doesn’t pull a fast one like this.

So this is the part where I beg you not to buy this, and where I say that if you buy this, you will get more products like this. Unfortunately, it’s probably a lost cause. If you are interested in reading this in the first place, there’s a high likelihood that you’ve already purchased this. It is #3 on Trending on Steam right now, and the user reviews are “Very Positive.” So you more than likely don’t care about how this is disingenuous, or lazy, or a ripoff because you’ve already bought it. Even if you haven’t but are planning to, I doubt this lackluster review from a pretentious dickhead is going to convince you otherwise. So, you speak with your wallet and tell Bandai Namco that you want more of this, because clearly lots of other people do too. Of course, it is possible that I’ve swayed you, or that you never planned on getting this in the first place, and in that case I’d like you to walk away knowing that this is nothing more than simply another entry in the long list of cheap cashgrabs banking off the success (this time mostly critical success) of an acclaimed work. Hopefully, if we manage to get the word out that we don’t want more of these, we’ll stop getting them.

In my ideal future, every game ever will be available on all relevant platforms. In that future, we will be able to buy the original version of this game right alongside the new version. Most signs point to that not being the case, which I’ve come to accept. As for now though, I’ll just ask for you to play the originals instead. The PlayStation version of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile is currently available on PSN for PS3 and Vita, at least in America. It is my understanding that it was taken down from the store alongside many other Namco classics. It is $6 and well worth that price. Get it as soon as you can if you are interested because it is only so long before the shop goes down. If you can’t get this, emulate it. If after playing the game you want more, buy Klonoa 2. You’ll want to import a PAL copy if you live in North America since the game is expensive over here. It supports PAL60, so you should be good. If the price is still too steep, you can always emulate it or use an application like OpenPS2Loader to play it. On OPL 0.9.3 it plays perfectly with the right modes turned on. Load times are long with USB (about 15 seconds to load a stage, thankfully no in-stage loading and the levels are lengthy to boot) but plays fine otherwise and that’s obviously not a problem with SMB and HDD loading.

So in conclusion, how screwed is Klonoa now? Well, this seems to be selling well if the Steam Trending page is anything to go by. Plenty of people are talking about it. It upsets me but there’s nothing I can do about it. Bandai Namco has stated that this may lead to future collections down the road, and considering the quality of this one, I highly advise not buying them. I sure as hell aren’t. If there is a “Klonoa 3” of some kind, I’m not sure if I’m even going to buy and play it. A part of me is repulsed by the idea. Hopefully, my cries for something better are heard, and the next time Bandai Namco releases these games they’ll actually include the original versions alongside the new ones, but considering how game rereleases usually go that is very unlikely. Oh well. Goodbye Klonoa. Goodbye...

Save Klonoa #KlonoaSweep buy the games legitimately to support the series and prevent it from another painful death. We could get Klonoa 3.

You know, not to diss the backer who’s review was absolutely damning, but 1) I personally found no issue with the framerate throughout my experience with the game so far, 2) while I do agree that the PS1 version is the best way to play Klonoa 1, I would argue that for newcomers, this is certainly a great introduction to the franchise. Being a port of the Wii version means no skidding on platforms that lead to unfair deaths, and that’s really good stuff. And 3) frankly I don’t care about the DLC costumes because they’re not really the main focus of the game, don’t really provide much enhancement to the gameplay and I prefer regular Klonoa anyways.

The remasters have surprised me with how well they present themselves so far: the graphics are vibrant and colourful, bearing more similarity to the PS1 version; Klonoa’s model is also reverted back to the original design and the cutscene dialogue uses the original PS1 audio (although I would’ve gladly appreciated the quality be upscaled as well). Sure, Klonoa isn’t as expressive as his PS1 sprite counterpart due to the limitations of in-game models, and he no longer says Manyah when he gets hit (a downside of porting the Wii version); the Skip Scene button could’ve been hidden as well, but I don’t think those small nitpicks are worth completely trashing this game for. It still controls fine, plays fine, looks amazing for a Unity Engine port, soundtrack still delivers and Klonoa even has idle animations now! Again, I’m not saying this version is better because the PS1 version is clearly superior, I’m just saying that this is still a perfectly acceptable port of one of the greatest games ever made!

I’ll come back to the game as a whole when I’m done, but I’m labelling this game as my favourite game of all time because I consider both Klonoa games to be that as a collective, and putting the Phantasy Reverie Series as a placeholder works for me.

Two fantastic platformers in an incredibly charming and well-deserved package for new consoles. I was aware of the Klonoa series but never really got to play those games much due to the insane costs of getting a physical copy.

Fast forward to 2022, and both games have finally been released on every current console on the market. Door To Phantomile is extremely fun with the key mechanic of being able to use enemies as a way to jump and progress throughout levels and a story that's well told. My only complaints are that the hitboxes are a bit too short especially as the game spikes in difficulty towards the sixth and final stage. It is based on the Wii remake but there have been some changes to bring it closer to the PS1 release.

Klonoa 2 is a more tightly designed game that still holds up more than 20 years after its release. The emphasis on puzzle solving and hoverboard levels broadens the variety of the gameplay beyond what the first game has done. The visuals have ditched the cel-shaded like design of the original, and I quite liked the story better in Klonoa 2 compared to the first game. The music in both games are certified bangers as well.

Both games are still emotional punches to the gut. Not even joking.

Two of the most thoughtfully-designed and sincerely-expressed 2.5D platformers that set the bar for the ilk that followed it, and it still remains unbested for 20 years in the running. Hope to see more people giving this series a try now that a pair of what were previously such expensive and inaccessible games are now finally so ubiquitous on major modern platforms.

As far as the nuances of the ports themselves go, the quality feels doled out in a rather unbalanced way. Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, which is based on the Wii remake from 2008, goes back on many of that remake's creative decisions in an attempt to more closely resemble the presentation of the PS1 original. Klonoa is back to his cutesier self. The English dub is completely removed in favor of the original (very compressed) PS1 audio. Huepow has hands again?

It's clear the developers really wanted to go out of their way to live up to how good the original still is in spite of Namco's previously very dull attempt to remake it, and while it hits a little closer, it still falls short. Ultimately, all the prettier visuals are still being puppeteered by stilted animation and camera work that is exactly the same as the Wii original. It's nothing outright bad, but it's just mediocre enough to notice the difference. For the kind of story Klonoa 1 aims to tell, the passionately-animated and expressive PS1 original still aims the highest and hits the hardest in this department.

Thankfully, the level design is still top-notch, and they even neatly divided the original PS1 handling and the Wii handling between Easy/Normal modes. Neat! First-timers will probably find this version of Klonoa 1 "good enough", and it's definitely worth playing over the Wii version now, but if you're familiar with the series there will probably be enough of these microscopic oddities to at least briefly make you raise an eyebrow or two.

My playthrough of the Nintendo Switch version unfortunately also displayed various bugs, including but not limited to a flashing mis-textured sky on the second level, a missing animation on the final boss, and background music incorrectly looping and then immediately skipping to another track in the middle of a very important cutscene. Beyond the subjective issues I have, this could really use a patch to at least fix these sorts of things.

Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil, on the other hand, after the mixed experience I had with Klonoa 1, very pleasantly surprised me! Perhaps it always stood a better chance, since they were able to upgrade the original 3D assets to higher-res equivalents rather than having to remake 2D ones into 3D entirely from scratch, but the improvements demand one's attention nonetheless. While the environments in Klonoa 1 simply look like more colorful and occasionally smoother Wii levels, Klonoa 2 really wowed me at several points in my playthrough.

Even as someone familiar with this game, I was finding myself soaking in and appreciating so many little details that had always been there, but I had never been able to notice before due to the lower-resolution visuals of the PS2 original. The world of Lunatea really shines here, it felt astonishingly fresh. The sense of scale, the color, the atmosphere, while still changed and improvised here and there, at least still rhymes with the intent of the original artwork to the point where when there is the odd little difference that sticks out, I'm often finding myself cheering it on rather than wishing it was more like the original.

This remaster of 2 also really likes normal-mapping. Tons of work went into juicing up the textures relative to Klonoa 1 and it really shows. There are parts of this game that, were I new to the series, I would probably mistake it for a ground-up remake rather than an up-res'd remaster. Of particular acclaim are the boss arenas for Folgaran the Armor Beast and the room where the final boss battle takes place. Jungle Slider looks great with the new water too. Breathtaking stuff compared to the PS2 version.

All-in-all, this collection is absolutely worth the price, despite its issues. What remains untouched at its core are clever brain-teasing platforming puzzles with a huge spoonful of heart and charm that'll leave series veterans and newcomers alike feeling very hungry for a Klonoa 3 by the end.

By the way, the framerate on Nintendo Switch is not good. I was able to avoid it for most of my playthrough by playing through a capture card that capped it at 30, but the unlocked 60 that the game natively runs at is very noticeable. Probably worth picking it up on other platforms if this sort of thing bugs you, unless they decide to go back and fix this.

Happy wahoo'ing!

Klonoa is finally back with remasters of the first 2 Klonoa games finally leaving PlayStation exclusivity!

This is overall a 1:1 remaster of the original games built from Klonoa's Wii remake and the original Klonoa 2 on the PlayStation 2. I give huge props to the team who made this release as they took the feedback people had from the Nintendo Wii release Klonoa and tried to make it as accurate to the PS1 original as they could and in my opinion making it superior to that version. And the improved models in Klonoa 2 are far more thematically appropriate between the jump from the first to the second game. While I do really appreciate the effort put into this I don't think it's flawless.

Despite this being remastered the visuals can look very lacking and cheap in areas sometimes the graphical fidelity looking worse than the original Klonoa on Wii and Klonoa 2 on PS2. Some may not find huge issues with this, but personally I do find it a bummer that these remasters have such a dated look to them.

Performance of these remasters varies and the framerate even on higher end hardware frame pacing can become an issue. Personally it didn't effect my overall experience that much, but it's still odd this happens as these remasters don't have the most spectacular looking visuals to begin with.

Aside from these issues I really do think this is worth buying. While I prefer the look of the original PS1 game with it's 2.5D art style this collection is great for newcomers looking to play these games affordably and for Klonoa fans who want to support the franchise and see more.

Video review: https://youtu.be/TMbcl_T5pxE

Klonoa has made a grand return with not just one, but two remasters. I’m a big platformer fan, especially for games from this era, so I was excited to give it a shot.

Gameplay
The games play as 2.5D platformers, although the second game does feature a lot more 3D stuff. Both are good at what they set out to do: straightforward, yet fun platforming. The game mechanics are introduced at a steady rate, the environments are easily some of the best I have seen in this genre in years, and I was a really big fan of the dual purpose that enemies serve. One one hand, they are enemies and can cause you damage, but on the other, most have some sort of unique ability that can be activated only after you grab them.

It’s a lot like Kirby in this way and it works really well with the level design, hiding just enough secrets to keep exploration interesting, but without going overboard to the point of tedium. There’s always something new to find, some new boss to take down, some new environment to explore - it’s pretty good at keeping up the variety, although it is also important to note that both games combined take roughly eight hours to clear. Sounds short, but honestly, it’s perfectly fine and might even be a bit longer than it needs to.

I say that because the second game does resort to a bit of backtracking with some of its levels. A bit disappointing to see in place of entirely new stuff, but again, it doesn’t go overboard there.

What it does go overboard on - at least in the second game’s case - is the story. There is easily like six or seven times more dialogue in the second game compared to the first and honestly, a lot of it is not necessary. Not to say that the story is bad, but maybe half of it could have been done away with and nothing of value would be lost.

So while the second game may be a massive upgrade in terms of general gameplay and level design, it does have some faults of its own and I’m still struggling to decide which of the two was my favorite with this in mind. Regardless, I had a great time with both and the good vastly outweighs the bad in both games.

Remaster
On the remaster front, the game is solid. There's updated graphics, high resolution support, uncapped frame rates, customizable controls, and some new additions like difficulty options and a local co-op mode. I played it without any sort of technical issues at 4k 144fps and the controls are simple enough that it’s fine on both controller and keyboard and mouse.

A few things to note though. The anti-aliasing option appears to be broken as switching it between off and 16x does not produce any noticeable difference, even when zoomed in. I was also not a fan of how aggressive the bloom setting was and ended up keeping that toggled off. Otherwise, the settings are fine.

Overall
Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series is a great remaster of two fun games. Solid platforming, fantastic level design, great music, and the remaster does a nice job touching things up for modern platforms. It’s a nostalgic experience for sure and one I would recommend to platforming fans.

Not a legitimate review (because I just played the first world of both games), but I want to throw my hat into this ring of fire I see brewing here.

I'm willing to admit that the graphics can look a bit cheap, asset-wise. I personally think that the original Klonoa 1 looks much better than the Wii version (which this game's remake is clearly based off of). I do think that there's an argument to be made against Klonoa 2, dropping that game's cel-shaded characters for more consistent models between the two games. I think the one thing I can unanimously agree on is that the game feels a bit too bright, lighting-wise. Some of that visual atmosphere has definitely been lost in the transition.

But on the other hand, there's an attention to detail that I think would be shameful to ignore. Everything is colorful, whimsical, and animated. For crying out loud, they kept the title screen easter eggs in Klonoa 2. The level design remains untouched as far as I can tell, and that's ok in my eyes because it never needed fixing.

There's still definitely some modern gaming scum dripping off this title though. Extra outfits are cute, holding them as $20 DLC for a $40 game is not. The game assaults you with EULAs once you hit the title screen (no Bamco, you don't get my personal information). I don't know why every cutscene needs the "skip" and "speed up" buttons present at all times. It's not the most distracting thing, but like, shoo, shoo, I'm trying to enjoy the story!

Lastly, I understand the plea for the preservation of the original titles, but I see it from this perspective:

If you want to play the original Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, you have three choices. Buy it digitally for PS3/PSP/Vita (this choice will likely disappear in the near future), sell a kidney so you can afford an official copy, or emulate it. If you want to play the Wii version of Klonoa, you either sell your other kidney, or you emulate it. If you want to play the original Klonoa 2, you either sell your secret third kidney, or you emulate it.

It might hurt for some people to hear this, but most consumers tend to take the most convenient option. I don't swear allegiance to companies, but I'm personally just glad that these games are being preserved in ANY capacity. I consider the quality high enough to warrant my recommendation. If you haven't played these games and want to know what all the chatter is about, I believe that you're doing yourself a disservice by not picking this up.

EDIT: Finished both titles. I personally found Klonoa 2's remaster more enjoyable. Just make sure to turn off bloom in the settings, it helps combat the extreme brightness. Door to Phantomile was fairly enjoyable, but as a retooling of the Wiimake, I have to say that I still prefer the PS1 original overall. Something felt...off about how Klonoa controlled in that remaster. Nothing unplayable though, I still beat the Extra Vision in just under 5 minutes. I'm an old pro.

As someone who completed both Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (2022) and Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (1997) back to back, I can confirm the superiority of the original to this new half assed “Phantasy Reverie Series” version.

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (1997) is a very charming game. Much of that charm lies in its art direction. The 2.5D makes everything look different, unique and unlike anything else. All of that is lost in this version and in Klonoa (2009) from which this Phantasy Reverie version is supposedly based on. It instead looks plain, generic and like any other platformer, but with the addition of over-saturated & -exaggerated lighting and colours.

How is it possible that no-one on the entire development team ever thought of maybe removing the gigantic ”SKIP” & ”5x SPEED” buttons which smudges itself on every cutscene. It’s so distracting and it’s almost as if they want you to skip the cutscenes because of how lacklustre they are. Sometimes the dialogue can feel sluggish, other times dialogue is too fast to be able to read. In the original PS1 version you manually went through the dialogue — that way you could read it at your own pace, without being bored out or stressed about following with.

The game has some incredible music, but that’s something I didn’t realise until playing the original. There must be some odd mixing going on it the new game which prevents it from popping like it does in Door to Phantomile (1997)

It does the job and it’s undeniably fun despite its flaws. 50$ for two games you could emulate for free and at the same time be made looking and running better is what ultimately makes this bundle not worth being bought, unless you’re a console-only gamer.

I was wrong. Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil’s original release has rightfully reclaimed its spot as my favourite game of all time (so far).

Can’t believe they screwed over the ending of DtP 4-2 this badly. Might bring myself to beat the Klonoa 2 remaster one day.

I still have hopes that one day, Bandai Namco will hire a development team with genuine passion and thorough understanding of everything Klonoa stands for to create a brand new Klonoa title, especially with sales being positive. However, as it stands, Monkeycraft only made a perfectly servicable, playable, 2.5D platformer game that has no identity, no polish and no soul. It’s contaminated by corporate greed to its core and the difference can’t be more obvious.

Not today, Klonoa, but maybe another day. It’s time for you to go…

…back to your Phantomile, the PS1 and PS2, where you truly reign supreme.

Look into Klonoa's eyes and tell me you hate him. You can't do it. Everybody loves this little bastard, which is why it's so crazy they only ever gave him two games (four, technically, but I'm not counting that GBA shit.)

Well, Klonoa's back! Maybe! It all depends on whether or not enough of you buy this so-so port of Klonoa's two Playstation outings. The good news is that these games hold up due to the virtue of their design, the bad news is that this collection has some shortcomings that might just make Phantasy Reverie as a package a bit underwhelming. But hey, don't worry, at least none of it is as bad as Sonic Origins.

I never played the original Klonoa and only messed around in the first few levels of Klonoa 2, so I was excited to get a chance to sit down an play these. However, it also means I don't have a very good point of reference for how Klonoa should handle versus how he does in this collection. Both games play similarly, with Klonoa using a ring that allows him to inflate enemies and toss them along the same plane he's on or into the foreground and background. This mechanic is used for some pretty creative though ultimately simple puzzles, as well as providing him the ability to essentially double jump by springing off an enemy. This is used more frequently in the late game where you have to chain enemies and double jumps across large chasms.

Levels are very smartly designed and make great use of 3D space to layer in pathways that you'll eventually loop back to in the background and foreground. This feeds back into the aforementioned tossing mechanic as you sometimes need to clear obstacles from these paths before exploring them properly. I really like getting teased with little bits of the level that I've yet to reach, it's great. You can also collect six hidden characters/dolls in each level, though all but one across both titles are so easy to find that you probably won't need a guide let alone a second trip through a level to get them all. The one outlier seems to require the use of a second player to boost Klonoa up to a hard to reach place, and I do think it's pretty awful to design a single mandatory 2-player collectible. You can get up there by fussing around with two nearby enemies, trying to jump off one and grab the other at the apex of your jump, then double jump off that, but executing this is really finicky and it definitely feels like something you aren't really meant to do.

Klonoa 1 and *2 are so mechanically similar it's easier to talk about them as one game, though 2 does add a few levels where Klonoa surfboards through obstacle courses. These remind me a lot of the minecart levels in Donkey Kong Country, though they swap perspectives from 2D to 3D periodically. The behind-the-back portions of these levels are pretty weak, and it feels like you really have to slam the analog stick all the way to the left or right to get any real movement out of Klonoa. I wish I had more fluid controls during these segments, especially the last couple surfing stages, which see Klonoa surfing on incredibly thin winding platforms suspended over bottomless pits.

Something I observed that I suspect may not be true of the original games are some wonky hitbox detection. Unless Klonoa is dead-center with an enemy when he attacks, it will just whiff completely. I've thrown enemies into other enemies and obstacles and watched them clip right through, and during the later levels when you have to do a lot of very precise double jump chains it just becomes frustrating to screw up mid-way through because Klonoa was ever so slightly too high or too low when using the wind shot, even though it very clearly hits the enemy. This is such a consistent issue between both games that I have to wonder if it's more a consequence of the engine they're both built off of and not a quality they share with the original games. In any case, both Klonoa games are pretty easy and fun throughout, but due to poor hitbox detection I found myself getting pulled out of it during the final stretch of levels in each game.

Seeing as these games were made by the game guy who gave us Ninja Gaiden, it goes without saying that Klonoa is very narrative driven. Characters stop and chat mid-level pretty frequently, and in the case of Klonoa 2 it's rare that a level doesn't at least open or close on a long cutscene. Thankfully, the stories for both games are charming, cute, and surprisingly heartfelt. I was also shocked to see that Klonoa as a character has some genuinely good development between both games. I'm used to stuff like Sonic or Mega Man which also have narrative elements that connect between games, but revert the characters back to the same base personality for each new adventure. Klonoa actually matures considerably between his two games, and by the end of Klonoa 2 you can see that he's grown even more. This is somewhat reflected in his character design as well, which appears aged up for Klonoa 2, though I don't know if canonically that is the case so much as wanting a new design that made better use of the Playstation 2 hardware.

Lacking from this collection are any sort of design docs as unlockables. I would've loved to be able to unlock concept art, old advertisements, interviews, something, anything.* They also did not bother to include the original versions of the two included games. Even if they were just emulated, it would've been nice to have them packed in for posterity. What you see is what you get, though. Two remade games, no frills, no extras. That'll be 40$ please, and if you don't cough it up they'll put Klonoa feet first into a wood chipper, and you'll have to watch them do it!

I paid more than that though, because I just had to have this on disc, something that apparently Namco Bandai figured the American market just didn't want? What the hell is this? I gotta import my children's platformer game from freakin Europe? Terrible.

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.

Aside from a few graphical issues and UI changes that looked a little cheap, my affinity towards Klonoa (particularly Lunatea's Veil) remains intact. Two of the greatest games of all-time are given a lick of vibrant paint - the games themselves remain untouched (thankfully!) - and STILL retain their charm, unique level design and soundtracks that just slap. You'll be hard pushed to find 2.5D (or any other) platformers with as much imagination and fluidity as Klonoa.

Had the biggest "nostalgia bomb" playing these childhood - and current - favourites and will absolutely be playing them again, and again...and again...

even though this is clearly not the best they could do and the game shouts cheapness at your face, for some reason i really enjoyed it. klonoa 1 is one of my favourites of all time and even though it doesnt even come close to the ps1 level of quality, i still enjoyed it. a big problem i had when playing klonoa 2 is i thought it was prety ugly for a ps2 game, but with time got used to the plain textures and weird colour and ended up loving the aesthetic (also i think not upscaling the game to 1080p in PCSX2 helped me aprecciate the visuals even more). klonoa 2 is a lot more polished than 1 in this remasters, but in some cases it was really weird for me, some textures seemed like a texture pack some dude made in 2011 and it just looks wrong. other times it just looks beatiful, i'd say mira-mira mountain and maze of memories is where the visuals of this remaster shine the brightest. also most of the textures in klonoa 1 are just upscaled versions of the wii or just the same low resolution texture without upsacling, which look awful.

i think the problem here was the budget namco gave to the devs, cause there's a lot of changes that they could have just not do like changing every cutscene in klonoa 1 to match the ps1 script or add those extra details to the klonoa 2 ending. these devs really cared about making a good product, but it seems rushed in a lot of ways. another thing i think almost nobody said is the castilian spanish translation is incredibly bad, it seems extremely rushed or some kind of misscomunication between teams because i cannot comprehend how someone could translate lines with its literal sense without testing if it even makes sense in 2022. klonoa 1 psx had this problem too but in 1997 this was extremely common, and the klonoa 2 spanish translation was perfectly fine, it didn't need another translation but they did it anyways. i'm not sure if this is a problem in other european languages or not but this is inacceptable. comment down here if somoene got problems with the frech or italian or german or whatever translation i'm curious now.

even though this collection has all this problems, i've enjoyed it a ton and i couldn't be happier klonoa gets another chance to get revived (even though it doesn't seem very likely having whatched the 0 advertisement this game got) and i'm sure this remasters could have been extremely good with some more time and budget.

quick thing i forgot to mention, the font used in texts is fucking awful and is the same font in every damn thing i hate it.