This is the only based review for this game lol. I fucking hate how people are acting like Klonoa Needs Sequels, because god forbid a good series be allowed to rest.

I haven’t even played the original but I do agree with this sentiment.

Preach it.

The visuals and performance are pretty mediocre, but I really don't think this is as bad as you are making it out to be. I do agree it's really scummy they are holding Klonoa hostage in order for us to get more Klonoa content, the DLC being as expensive as it is and not even having unlockable costumes in the base game, the artbook and soundtrack being a separate application you pay for despite it running off the same menus that the remasters are, etc. It has quite a LOT of problems, but if it means it gets more people playing Klonoa and supporting the franchise then I think there are positives in that.

There was clearly some effort made (at least with Klonoa 1) to keep it faithful to the original PS1 game instead of just copy and pasting the Wii game. And gonna be honest a lot of what you are saying isn't untrue, but I think it comes off as toxic to simply say the fans are the problem and that we should boycott this because Namco cheaped out on the collection.

If people want to enjoy this collection and support it to see the possibility of new Klonoa content and to show Namco we are interested in more then let em. Klonoa is a very important franchise and simply being cynical about the situation rather than looking at the huge positives is counter productive.

@Venny I'm sorry that this piece is more negative than what I'd normally write, and I don't mean to disparage those that are genuinely enjoying the collection, but over time I've been consistently let down by companies that go down this route of porting old games and it's incredibly frustrating at this point. I'm trying to come at this from a preservation standpoint more than anything, fundamentally the game plays about as well as you could hope being a reconstruction of the originals, but I just don't find it to be representative on the whole of what came before, and I really don't care for companies wiping away old games in a fashion such as this. It's always possible Namco will port the older titles properly one day (Capcom just released the original Resident Evil on PlayStation Plus, so it's not like companies aren't willing to do it) but I think for the future it doesn't bode well that collections like these are presented as replacements to the originals. I don't want to control what people find more appealing, but for those who want to get into the series I can't help but at least guide them towards the originals. It'd be foolish of me to ignore how convenient this collection is if you wanna play these games (especially in the case of Klonoa 2) but I don't want people to disregard the originals due to their age as many have done for earlier games and their respective remakes.

@LukeGirard I completely understand and I fully agree I just think your review could have been worded better. The original Klonoa should be released in some form because of how different it is to what is in this collection. It's a completely different experience and not having both seems like a disservice to the original and how unique it is and Klonoa 2 having actual visual downgrades over the original PS2 game is kinda unacceptable, but as an option to play these games even with all of the flaws I think it's passable for newcomers. I do agree it's tiring that these game publishers are trying to make replacements for the original works as I've seen it happen with Crash and Spyro already. Hopefully the original Klonoa 1 and 2 can be put into collections or on the PS Store in their original forms in the future

I think you do pinpoint the problem of this collection: it weirdly hides the original game under the rug, treating the absolutely inferior Wiimake, that lost a lot of its own points and strenghts, as the OG. I don't think anyone was thinking this was a celebration of Klonoa, we aren't that cynical about all this. It's about mere economics; if people gets MONETARILY interested around the collection (as in, they buy the Phantasy Reverie) they'll flink up in developing a third game that we hope is good and holds a candle to the conceptual and thematic meanderings of the original two. I don't like Phantasy Reverie as an artistic proposition, its statement is clearly thriving for a mere mortem revival; I do like Phantasy Reverie as a way to engage in two games that are quite difficult to get hands on, especially Klonoa 2, and as a way to demostrate there is an interest on the IP and how it touched us. It's a "best between evils" situation. I prefer this to the sad fate the IP has had every time they tried to something with it.

Offcourse I prefer they just sell the original game to not having to pay fucking 200 fucking dollars to fucking own it. Jesus, I hate scalpers.

The thing is, I do think Klonoa deserved a trilogy, because its themes and introspection seemed to go for that; I do believe the child-adolescence melodrama study is quite a thrill in Klonoa, us being the dream travellers. As it is, a third game relating to adulthood and its own problems, and how as adults we deal with our emotions and responsabilities and what we've lost, is quite a good swing for ending the series. As it is, it's a beautiful collection of memories, but I do hesitate to call it complete.

It was never about preservation, it's more about environmental market study. I, for sure, I'm not happy with the fate of my beloved mascot.

Sadly, and it is the precedent our medium has always been motivated for in the grander scheme of things, videogames are about money. Poisoned, poignant pieces of art that follow the wretched, soulless leaching powercore structures of le dolla. We can't forget that, ever. This is the least worst of the things we've been dealing with.

I feel like it’d be more of a problem if it was a Silent Hill HD Collection scenario where the releases themselves were all kinds of buggy and entirely removed fog, forcibly changed voice actors and replaced the text with ComicSans. Even N. Sane Trilogy had wildly different physics that greatly affected platforming feel and I still have nightmares about the jet ski. The most this does wrong is make everything SLIGHTLY too bright, but I feel like new players would have much the same feelings trying them for the first time, especially considering it’ll run at 4K 60 FPS widescreen in its best form

You could say the exact same things here about the Wii remake from 2009, which for Door to Phantomille this does improve off of best it can, except back then there wasn’t this insanely pretentious idea where it’s the original game up-resed or you should never even bother to update a look more in line with modern expectations and it was far more of a departure art-design wise.

Namco really hitting us with the Capcom Special

"exact same things here about the Wii remake from 2009"
That's the gist of it. The wiimake itself was a pretty lackluster reformulation of the classic game, but it wasn't sold as the "definitive" or "the original but better" treatment the marketing kinda implies with Phantasy Reverie. Most of this collection's problems arise from it; if it wasn't for the deliberately insulting way they've treated the 1998 release, elevating the 2009 remake as the real one, this is pretty much just a cheap re-release with some face make up. If anything, they really went out of their way with the fucking bloom, my eyes were watering down in the switch demo, and not because I was emotional.

thats a lot of words for a scrimblo that says Rupurudu

Waryowani?

This review barely even describes how it was botched and just assumes you know, how does this have 55 Likes lmao

@FrozenRoy my brother in christ you don't have to be an art connoisseur to look at the ugly ass bloom and dragged n dropped wii assets that plagues every screenshot of that collection and have it be restated here. It kinda speaks for itself on how obviously cheaply put together it looks.

I mean the amount of likes doesn't say anything at all about the quality of the review, just how popular the person is. I mean there are reviews written by an AI and those had more likes than this.

@frozenroy because look at who made this review

That is true though, the bloom is fucking atrocious no doubts about it, but I saw people praise the new Zelda remake when the bloom thing was even worse, so...

Thank you SO much for getting this out there. Hopefully this sentiment can branch out of this site and people will think more critically of this. THANK YOU!

Sorry to comment twice on this, I just thought I'd mention this.

I've been feeling quite aimless as of late, and this Klonoa remake looming over me wasn't helping. The original two games are very important to me, and seeing this cheap and lazy collection being announced and having people get excited over it was saddening. The closer the release came, the more I started to get anxious over it. I knew deep down that I didn't like what it is or represents, but I wanted to appreciate something in it. I played it (like a day after launch day since the game wasn't activated on Xbox until nearly a full day after release for some reason) and it was both everything I feared it would be an a technical dumpsterfire. When I logged and rated the game, it felt wrong because it was being showered with so much praise. I was frustrated and saddened by how nobody was talking about the technical issues, absurd price, DLC Digital Deluxe Edition, and most importantly the inherent nature of this sort-of collection. Then, seeing this review and having both the review and the comments agree and validate my opinion and anger about the situation made me feel a lot better. Tomorrow I'm leaving to be with family for a week, hopefully by the time I come back I'll be able to stop thinking about Klonoa and move on. Thank you guys very much

Seeing a lot of suspicious activity in this thread. Think we might need to take Reyn into custody for having the blandest takes known to man.

true, hating on backloggd users is a pretty bland take nowadays

@MalditoMur i think you really hit the nail on the head here. i'm currently working through klonoa 2 for the first time (though it's taking longer than i'd like due to how fickle it can be to load the game "properly") but i'm really enjoying myself so far. assuming this game doesn't feel conclusive for the whole series it would be a shame to see it fizzle out and never tackle themes regarding the next steps in life after childhood. the personal dilemma i've run into is that, while namco probably has the creative willpower and ingenuity to make a finale to the series truly shine, i'd rather not trample over the old games to make it happen. it truly is a trade off of having the series finish incomplete, or let it continue while giving the keys to people that may or may not be in it for the best reasons. obvious the quality of this collection is not indicative of a potential sequel, but it's still concerning nonetheless if this is what they thought was ok to ship out the door. if this collection does do well and we get a hypothetical klonoa 3, i'll be nothing but elated to see the series get once more chance at success, but it's hard to deny that the road ahead fills me with trepidation.

@SunlitSonata if the argument towards the collection is that we should excuse it's quality since first time players won't notice the differences anyway, then why should any game try to appeal to a newcomer? it's a line of thinking i fundamentally disagree with. even if we assume newcomers won't be bothered by the new changes (which isn't being super charitable as things can't still be perceived as looking bad even without the context of a previous work to compare it to) the whole reason we should be porting beloved games to modern platforms is not just to preserve the games as they were, but also to show newcomers why we fell in love with them in the first place. is it really pretentions to think pieces of art should be painted over every few years just to fall under modern standards? naturally that's not something everyone had in mind 10 or 15 years ago, but as a new medium it's understandable that not everyone will have a strong grasp of how certain things should be perceived or handled in the future (ie. preserving art assets and making it easy to port games to newer hardware). it's for that reason why i think companies should try to be diligent towards preservation now while the medium is still young, before it's too late and many old works truly are inaccessible to anyone who wants to experience them. i don't care how many remakes or reinterpretations developers feel the need to make, so long as they can stand aside the work that inspired it. because at that point you're not reevaluating something, you're just replacing it.

@FrozenRoy i had written this piece before i had finished klonoa 1 and as such i made sure to approach this collection in broad strokes and focus on the general fact that i disagreed with it's existence and how it presented the series even at a basic level. now that i've gotten farther into the collection and finished the first game i feel this is more true than ever, but i don't think it would have effected this too much. there's really only so many times i can say "i don't like this change" before it starts to belabor the point. i do think a lot of the visual identity is easy to pinpoint at a glance though, sure someone might not know the minute of what was changed in the port, but they can still look for themselves and tell if they like how the games look or not. it doesn't exist in a vacuum and will always be compared to the original for better or for worse, but i still think people are smart enough to come to conclusions without having a degree's worth of knowledge on klonoa, botched ports, and remasters. if you'd like to read a piece that's a bit more detailed and intimate than mine, HylianBran just wrote their own piece on the game that goes into a a fair bit more detail than I did and I'd highly recommend giving it a read if you want the perspective of someone even more emotionally invested in the series that myself.

@HylianBran ahhh thank you for the kind words!! i was kinda doubting if i should post something this scathing on my page when i usually like to focus on stuff i like, but seeing the near unanimous praise around the collection made me feel like i should throw my hat in the ring. as for yourself, i'm happy to hear you're starting to settle over the whole thing and i'm glad we were able to help you with that in some small way. all i can hope is that, if people come across some of the harsher criticism over the collection, that they're willing to give the originals a shot. even if a day comes where you have to work even harder than it already is to comfortably play them, it'll always be worth it.

https://c.tenor.com/k2HZzO6T59YAAAAC/sephiroth-minor-spelling-mistake.gif

The performance is especially unfortunate. Not sure where this comes from, either one of his books or an interview, but anyway Hideo Yoshizawa (director and writer of Door to Phantomile) has stated that hitting 60fps was one of his goals from early in development, and it was apparently very difficult to accomplish. The dev team's efforts paid off big time since that game is smooth as butter. Wonder how he feels seeing the legacy of his greatest work trampled like this.

"but it's hard to deny that the road ahead fills me with trepidation"
And I'm all for it, to accompany. I've demostrated I'm a lot more optimistic about the matter, but believe wholeheartedly: I would prefer completely to resell the originals. In fact, I told my friends to play the originals. I've been doing that for the past years. And I think that's the route we should be going for. Share the originals, give easier and dumbfuck ways to play them with no hesitation. I'm making a Klonoa video someday, and that's gonna be my service on the case. But just staying pessimistic won't help the situation. I know because I've been pessimistic for way too much time around this, I actually was pretty pissed off with the demo.

I do appreciate your comments, every harsh comments on Phantasy Reverie though, never think the contrary. We need representation of what this ultimately means, as I actually agree on the sentiment. I do think there's more than one way to go about this. I'm kinda sick of falling in the downward spiral you know.

Very necroposting at this point but was so funny to me how Hideo flattered the remaster and gave it a little praise for changes he would've made. The man jumped the shark a while ago lmao.

“is it really pretentions to think pieces of art should be painted over every few years just to fall under modern standards?”

I mean with games it works differently than other mediums because playability is a very specific factor. It’s a lot easier to convince someone to watch an old movie where all they have to do is spectate, than play a game from when general design principles weren’t codified yet, or worse, when games were made deliberately unfair or grindy just to stretch meager runtime capabilities out.

That’s why, even with all the chirping about how the Demons’ Souls remake redid the art assets and that somehow making it a sin against god despite the core game being untouched, having an actual stable/higher framerate with much more clarity in the lighting and resolution will always make it easier to recommend by nature for improving the actual playability. Bad framerates are history entirety dictated by limitation and poor optimization with then-current tech. Or similarly, Wind Waker HD’s fixes for the Triforce Hunt. And for older games, being restricted to 4:3 when most people have widescreen displays now is an inherent limit of their times to jump over, unless you’re relying on tacky borders.

Basically what I’m trying to say is, it would be harder to convince your lay person to play a game that inherently looks behind what they expect games are, or to emulate (which is confusing for most people, especially in Klonoa 2’s case).
On a relative scale any supposed “botched” element I doubt would make people beg to play the original games instead, because I think these remasters do a strong job preserving the playability and spirit of both experiences. Look at the general response to this, and it’s mostly just reaffirmed people’s love for the character, so any well-poisoning slightly overbright visuals could cause isn’t creating negative miasma.

TBH having now played both Klonoa games AND watched a friend play through the collection (in fact, them buying the collection to revisit their childhood is what spurred me to play), the niche negative reaction to these remakes seems seriously overblown. It's not hard to see why Klonoa fans seem to enjoy it a lot.