I've always wanted to play the Klonoa games when I had found out about them in middle school. Partly due to his character design. It was series that flew under my nose for most of my life mainly cuz I never owned a Sony console growing up. I even missed out on the Wii remake on Klonoa 1. The Phantasy Reverie remakes were my answer and initiative to actually start playing these games.

K1 -
As of writing this log, I had beaten K1 over a year ago, so my memory is a little hazy on how I felt at the time of beating it. What I do remember was actually enjoying my time with it. I kinda felt surprised the first time I played the game and realized how simple it was control wise. It was really only jump and air bullet. I don't know why, but I thought it would have more movement based controls. The game was simple, but the level design expanded with what you can do with grabbing, throwing, and jumping off enemies. Personally, I thought that Klonoa's little Yoshi hover felt weak to use (which I understood that it wasn't meant to act like Yoshi's and give you extra height). My thoughts on the gameplay were further elevated when the level design required you to throw enemies into the foreground and background. The game's worlds and levels were colorful and creative. It's really leaning into the dream world aesthetics. Overall, my experience with K1 was pretty good. This was a brand new experience for me as I had never played the original. I had even forgotten the original game used sprites instead of 3D models.

K2 -
Going into K2 after just beating K1 was a little weird. I had that same expectation that I had going into Klonoa 1 about there being more controls for gameplay. K2 remains the same in gameplay to K1 with a few additions in enemy types and levels. The new additions being hoverboard levels and unique enemy types that you can pick up. The hoverboard segments weren't bad but I felt that they were kind of lacking. Controlling Klonoa on the board felt limited. Making turns felt slow and I wish there was a great sense of speed in the levels. Again, the level design in the sequel is great and I would say even better than K1. From the platforming to the puzzles, K2 stands out from K1 while still being the same gameplay.

My Final Thoughts -
In both segments, I had not talked about the story of either game. I feel like that be whole a pages of my thoughts on both games' stories. But I mention it because of how I experienced the stories in this remake. Prior to finishing K2, I was slightly spoiled with a cutscene from the PS2 version. Something about the way THAT version of the game looked and that cutscene left me questioning why I'm playing the remake of K2. The lighting and the outlines on the characters were drawing me in more than the look of the remake. While I don't think Phantasy Reverie looks bad, it lacks visual identity that the originals had. Also, I looked at gameplay of K2 after finishing the game and it looked significantly faster. There was a feeling of floatiness in the remakes that I just got used to, but I was not the biggest fan of how it fully felt. I am aware this remake was made in Unity which could affected the physics or this was consciously done by the developers. I feel that learning about the previous versions of Klonoa 1 and 2 shouldn't affect my overall experience with both games. I enjoyed them, but I think I feel more incline to replay them in their original versions.