Remake (Remaster?) of both Klonoa 1 and Klonoa 2, I have never played Klonoa 2.
Both games are great to play and finish, but can be a nightmare to 100%.

That being said, Klonoa 1 is still a classic even in this remake, the control feels a bit stiff and unresponsive from what I remember, but it only matters if you're trying to 100% the game.

Klonoa 2 expands a lot from the prequel, with a lot more level and more cutscenes. The levels are longer, but sometimes are TOO LONG. Gameplay stays mostly the same with some new enemy that gives new feature, but the control feel a lot more slippery than the first, I actually fell a few times trying to stop at the edge of a platform.

Now the problem with 100% it is the Dream Stones, you need to collect 150 or more in one stage, and some of them need a really specific timing and input to get. Or if it's an auto-scroller section, you just have to die and restart to get back to the stone you missed.
Thankfully if you're just aiming for Platinum, all you need to care is the villagers (Klonoa 1) and dolls (Klonoa 2), which isn't hard to collect but can be hidden quite well.

Version: Klonoa Door to Phantomile

Either the remake is bad or people are looking through rose tinted glasses.

Why I liked it so bad?
- Controls; which is a very important part to platformers. In this game it never felt good controlling the character. The knockback with 0,5 sec invincibility frame didn't help either.
- Visuals; Original looks 10x better.
- Collect part; The game doesn't encourage it at all to collect everything. Like you don't even know how many of the 150 crystals you have while playing the level.
+ Music; only thing that was decent/good.

Feel free to comment and tell me why I am wrong/right.

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.

[Klonoa 2]

What a game. Klonoa 1 is a great game but comparatively a very safe one. While Klonoa 2 doesn't always nail the execution of everything, it's a significantly more ambitious game in every aspect, and therefore holds my interest and commands my respect far more than the first game, for as brilliant as it was.

Glorious visual design behind each stunning level, lots of interesting setpieces and spectacle moments and a really engaging story that kept me emotional the whole way through. I adore Klonoa 2, the numerous spectacular highs far outside the few clumsy lows.

Give this game a proper shot if you enjoyed 1, I went in expecting a downgrade as I was told to, and instead received a game that far supercedes it and rightfully claims its crown. A must play for platforming fans.

Klonoa 2 teaches you a life long and important lesson. You should steal rental products. You'll never know when it'll be necessary to snowboard down multiple expansive cliffs, so just take that rental snowboard.

Klonoa 1 is a pretty good game, but you can feel the age of First Try At A New Franchise On the PS1 out of it. The core kinda kirby like system where enemies are used as both your way of attacking and as a platforming too is a fun system, but it's usage is pretty basic.
The levels are... surprisingly multilayered for a game that's technically a 2d platformer. Again it's not out of this world but pretty ambitious. The remake controls okay. I really hate how miserablly short the grab range is, Klonoa himself feels pretty slippery and I really dont like floating being hold the button at any point rather that like pressing jump again in the air and then hold from there, like how most games would do this, (this is for both games, i felt it less in the 2nd but thats probably because i just got used to it) but it's mostly fine control wise. The game is almost really short, even on a casual playthrough.
Of course what separated Klonoa 1 as a fondly remembered cult classic from the other PS1 platformers of the era that are remembered as Pretty Good but no ones sweating over a sequel was the story. The game's final act tonal shift into the tearjerker ending is probably the most memorable part of the game, was likely a big reason Klonoa 2 was a lot more story heavy andddd probably why that game got a sequel becoming a series that people will post on twitter about how much they miss it.

Klonoa 2 is a lot better. The levels feel more linear but they're still not straight forward left to right walks, and especially later in the game the level have a lot of backtracking, which is fun. The core gameplay hasn't changed, but instead they've added a lot more enemies that do unique things when you pick them up, and platforming/level design with a lot more moving parts and varied designs. It's smartly not just using enemies as obstacles that you occasionally use to get a double jump, but as puzzle pieces. And a lot of sections really just puzzles, but they're fun so I'm down. Like mentoined before you get a lot more varied level designs; bringing back old stages but revamping them, levels where you're getting chased by an enemy for most of them, a LOT of snowboarding levels, level where after doing a thing you have to escape, level with a oxygen guage, ect ect. I don't really remember much of Klonoa 1's levels even though i played it only a few days ago, but 2's got a lot of memorable levels.
Also yeah it's a lot more story heavy. I don't think it hits like Klonoa 1 but it's fine. I was definetly zoning out for chunks of it but I really shouldn't be putting too much weight into ps1 platformer stories just cuz 1 had a nice tearjerker moment.

Klonoa 1 is rough with charm while 2 is jsut an improvement overall. I'd give K1 like a 3/5 and then K2 somewhere between a 3.5/4. Checkem out.



Oh yeah i should talk about the remake part of it. it's fine. Game runs good. I like that K1 still has that crunchy dialogue audio that I love. I'm not super into the graphics of the game, it feels flat and reminds me of like a wii game (which, ironically, K1 has a wii remake), and I'm fan of K1's sprites on a 3d world and K2's overall color platette more. But hey, this one's new and shiny and on a shit ton of consoles.

A decent remaster, but the changes to Door to Phantomile were honestly disappointing and I have such mixed feelings on it.

Pretty much all of the designs from the Wii version were cut out without an option to toggle them, which feels baffling. The script is reverted to the PS1 version, which has a lot of stilted lines and some mistranslations. The environments are brightened up in places which looks nice, but the animations are stiffer and pretty much every bonus feature from the Wii game was cut out. It still plays decently, but it just overall feels like a step back aside from the environmental touch-ups.

Klonoa 2, on the other hand, I've experienced pretty much no issues with aside from the boss death animations not being as good.

Honestly, they should have just ported the Wii version unchanged alongside the PS1 version, that way everyone's happy regardless of which one you prefer. Overall, it's not bad, and I appreciate that they bothered to remaster the series at all, but I feel like the changes to DtP are super unnecessary.

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.

Glad to see these games playable on modern systems! #klonoasweep and all that but I wanted to break down my feelings on these:

Klonoa 1: Love the very dreamlike feeling of the game (very fitting). Unfortunately I think whatever they put together for it is a bit subpar. I think it's based on the Wii version? It feels a bit janky and there's concerningly little i-frames when you get hit. Also the difficulty spike towards the end was very frustrating. The game's still pretty good but IMO dig up your PS3 and buy the version of the game on there while you still can.

Klonoa 2:
A much better port! This was my first time ever seriously playing the game and it was really interesting! It seems to have even more of an emphasis on puzzle-solving than the first game. Some really cool stuff going on with the gameplay and visuals, and the story was really neat. The hoverboarding sections are very strange and felt like something added in because it was the early 00s and extreme sports games were at the height of their popularity, but honestly I didn't mind much and they were decently fun.

The low-down:
I don't think the success of this collection will actually guarantee the release of a third game. Honestly I'm fine with it if they don't. I find the preservation and accessibility of these games more important than getting sold a sequel.

The biggest thing about these games is that they're very melancholy and emotionally heavy for something largely aimed at children, but not to the point of being overly dark. I don't think you should force a kid to play them or anything, but I hope the current generation of art kids find them on their own and play them.

I rented both of these games in their original forms back when I was a kid but never finished them, it is pretty exciting that they are accessible again after so long, particularly Lunatea's Veil, as I've played PSN releases of the PSX Door to Phantomile and the Wii remake. These are both charming games but 2 is definitely the superior one. Don't really see the complaints about the lighting, I'll be honest, think both games look great and ran well with an occasional but not particularly noticeable frame drop here and there. Overall I think the games look and play great, and I was really satisfied with the experience, this is an incredibly niche series so it's honestly a shock this exists to begin with. Please, somebody remake Tomba next.

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!