Klonoa is, frankly, about as good as platformers get.
The best way I can describe this game is that it’s earnest. It’s got so much heart and it radiates passion at every juncture. I can’t remember the last time I played something that felt like such a genuine labor of love.
The 2.5D style works extremely well, and in the remaster especially, environments are so beautiful and vibrant that you can’t help but grow to love Klonoa’s world. Your moveset is simple but effective - grabbing enemies with Wind Bullets and being able to use them to double jump opens up so many options for interesting level design.
But the highlight of Klonoa, really, is its narrative. Frankly, this is the perfect platformer story. It’s pretty common in this genre for stories to be an afterthought, but with Klonoa, this couldn’t be further from the truth. These poor kids are put through a lot, and it makes Klonoa’s determination and courage even in the face of overwhelming odds even more impactful. He’s such a charming, and again, earnest protagonist. There’s real stakes, depth, and even some darkness to Klonoa’s story in a way I didn’t expect - and it’s honestly just the perfect amount. Lightning in a bottle, frankly.
This boy’s story so clearly matters to the developers, and makes the adventure so fulfilling. A breath of fresh air in a genre dominated by the same plumber saving the same princess through the same worlds again and again.
My only gripes with Klonoa are with its difficulty. The remaster comes with two modes - Easy and Normal. Normal difficulty is perfect for a casual playthrough, being just the right amount of challenging, but the inclusion of Lives makes it problematic for a 100% run. I think lives are an outdated concept to begin with, but with so much to collect in Klonoa’s stages and often being forced to waste a life to retry a specific section for the right amount of crystals, having to restart the level so often feels punishing and soul-crushing. Easy mode does have infinite lives - so I’d recommend it for a 100% run and it did indeed alleviate many of these frustrations - but if we could have had Normal difficulty with infinite lives, then I really do think this would be a perfect game.
Klonoa: Door to Phantomile is probably my favorite platformer now. It’s so unbelievably earnest and it just makes it impossible not to fall in love with this dog-rabbit-cat boy and the world he lives in. The world matters. Klonoa himself matters. His journey, his growth, his losses, they all matter. And that’s why this game ends up having the best story I’ve ever seen in a platformer. Terribly underrated, and I cannot wait to play the second one. I really do hope that the remasters sell well enough that we finally receive a third mainline installment.
The best way I can describe this game is that it’s earnest. It’s got so much heart and it radiates passion at every juncture. I can’t remember the last time I played something that felt like such a genuine labor of love.
The 2.5D style works extremely well, and in the remaster especially, environments are so beautiful and vibrant that you can’t help but grow to love Klonoa’s world. Your moveset is simple but effective - grabbing enemies with Wind Bullets and being able to use them to double jump opens up so many options for interesting level design.
But the highlight of Klonoa, really, is its narrative. Frankly, this is the perfect platformer story. It’s pretty common in this genre for stories to be an afterthought, but with Klonoa, this couldn’t be further from the truth. These poor kids are put through a lot, and it makes Klonoa’s determination and courage even in the face of overwhelming odds even more impactful. He’s such a charming, and again, earnest protagonist. There’s real stakes, depth, and even some darkness to Klonoa’s story in a way I didn’t expect - and it’s honestly just the perfect amount. Lightning in a bottle, frankly.
This boy’s story so clearly matters to the developers, and makes the adventure so fulfilling. A breath of fresh air in a genre dominated by the same plumber saving the same princess through the same worlds again and again.
My only gripes with Klonoa are with its difficulty. The remaster comes with two modes - Easy and Normal. Normal difficulty is perfect for a casual playthrough, being just the right amount of challenging, but the inclusion of Lives makes it problematic for a 100% run. I think lives are an outdated concept to begin with, but with so much to collect in Klonoa’s stages and often being forced to waste a life to retry a specific section for the right amount of crystals, having to restart the level so often feels punishing and soul-crushing. Easy mode does have infinite lives - so I’d recommend it for a 100% run and it did indeed alleviate many of these frustrations - but if we could have had Normal difficulty with infinite lives, then I really do think this would be a perfect game.
Klonoa: Door to Phantomile is probably my favorite platformer now. It’s so unbelievably earnest and it just makes it impossible not to fall in love with this dog-rabbit-cat boy and the world he lives in. The world matters. Klonoa himself matters. His journey, his growth, his losses, they all matter. And that’s why this game ends up having the best story I’ve ever seen in a platformer. Terribly underrated, and I cannot wait to play the second one. I really do hope that the remasters sell well enough that we finally receive a third mainline installment.