Have you ever jumped into a swimming pool full of molasses, and then attempted to run a full 26.2 mile marathon. My answer is no, but now I know what it's like, that's playing Klonoa. In a world of Celestes and Super Mario Worlds, 2D platformers have effectively been ruined. The crisp speed, responsiveness, and tightness of those titles has spoiled the genre. Now it may be unfair to site Celeste in a critique of a game that came out in 1997, however it's hard to ignore what Klonoa isn't after playing something that simply felt better. Super Mario World though, a game that came out in 1990, feels and controls leagues better. Klonoa 1/2 just felt sluggish to control. Movement was strangely weighted and input buffering was the cause of a plethora of level resets and falls. It was this that got me, at the end of the first game, to wind it back to easy mode so I could complete the Reverie Series with a little bit of tempo and get on with my days.
Mechanics got tired fairly quickly into the first title. Klonoa's beam felt like a diet version of the Kirby swallow mechanic, in which you're borrowing the attributes of various monsters to achieve light puzzling and platforming to get to the end of the course. Unlike Kirby though, a lot of using the beam relies on jumping in which you don't have a float mechanic to rely upon. Recycling mechanics isn't the end all of platformers, like the previously mentioned Super Mario World, but when the rest of the game feels rough, it begins to rub you the wrong way a lot faster.
There's a story here, in both of these games, but I unfortunately didn't find myself invested. I appreciate this attempt at making the story interesting, which is rare in 2D platformers, however the fake language and peculiar character design didn't draw me in.
I had fun... until I didn't, which unfortunately was pretty quickly into Door to Phantomile. Given the existence of much better games in this genre, I can't recommend that anyone plays this package. The silver lining though I guess though is that it wasn't a timesink, running probably less than eleven hours between the two titles.
Mechanics got tired fairly quickly into the first title. Klonoa's beam felt like a diet version of the Kirby swallow mechanic, in which you're borrowing the attributes of various monsters to achieve light puzzling and platforming to get to the end of the course. Unlike Kirby though, a lot of using the beam relies on jumping in which you don't have a float mechanic to rely upon. Recycling mechanics isn't the end all of platformers, like the previously mentioned Super Mario World, but when the rest of the game feels rough, it begins to rub you the wrong way a lot faster.
There's a story here, in both of these games, but I unfortunately didn't find myself invested. I appreciate this attempt at making the story interesting, which is rare in 2D platformers, however the fake language and peculiar character design didn't draw me in.
I had fun... until I didn't, which unfortunately was pretty quickly into Door to Phantomile. Given the existence of much better games in this genre, I can't recommend that anyone plays this package. The silver lining though I guess though is that it wasn't a timesink, running probably less than eleven hours between the two titles.