En 2020 jugué Donkey Kong Country y me enamoró.
En 2021 jugué Ape Escape 2 y me enamoró yo diría que aún más
En 2022 he jugado Klonoa 2 y aun no enamorarme como los otros (por nada en particular) le tengo un tremendo respeto.

Realmente todo el tema de los sueños es algo que puedo entender aún sin poder explicar con palabras. Klonoa (y con esto también me refiero al original) es un sueño del que me acuerdo al despertar y recuerdo con cariño.

crash bandicoot: the huge adventure lacks an identity. it lacks innovation. in many ways, this game was made purely off of brand recognition and "hey you guys liked the crash trilogy? here's more of that, just lower quality!". believe it or not, i do not mean this as a condemnation of the game. if anything, i think it's probably the game's greatest strength; this game is a recreation of what the crash games on the PS1 did, just entirely in 2D. considering the limited capabilities of the GBA, that is impressive to me.

the imitation isn't a 1:1 however. many people would accuse this game of being an impostor, but among us diehard crash fans, it seems more like a flawed impersonation than anything else. slide jumps only let you jump if you're on solid ground. double jump inputs are very finnicky. death tornado spin doesn't work a solid 20% of the time you try to use it to hover. sure, it's aping crash trilogy, and every attempt to make it that is going to have hiccups, but this is stuff that really takes me out of the game, especially when it compounds.

and there are other nitpicks in the design of this game that make it lesser than for me. everything being 2D is fine on paper for me, but what makes it difficult to enjoy at times is how poorly communicated platform boundaries are. every platform is slanted to create the illusion of a third dimension, but all it does is create difficulties determining where the platform ends, which is especially precarious in a game with such stiff platforming like this. crash feels like he has no aerial mobility. i wonder if the intent was to make him feel like simon belmont from the original castlevania. this becomes an especially big problem in the snow levels, which are arguably the worst part of the entire game. the ice physics on top of the lack of adequate aerial mobility fused with the lack of proper platform communication magnifies the difficulty of the levels by a factor of 8. that's not even touching on the chase sections in those levels, which are arguably the worst in the entire franchise.

i have a lot more negative than positive to say about this game, but mostly because all the positive i have to say about this game is "it's crash bandicoot on the GBA". anyone who was interested in this game was sold on that premise alone (myself included, lol), and anyone who wasn't either didn't play the game or didn't enjoy it. this is probably exactly the type of game you should've played when you were 8 and on a road trip and didn't have access to your big boy consoles. it's an entry to the series, not an awful one, but certainly not a remarkable one either.

final note: megamix was cool. shame that his fight was just an autoscroller.

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile sigue siendo una obra que no ha sido replicada. Es una experiencia bastante única en el repertorio de la consola, es decir, ser un plataformero sumamente pulido y bien diseñado no es suficiente para ser algo realmente especial, pero ¿qué dirían de uno que se mantenga consistente en temática y estética para ser armónico con cada uno de sus elementos?, o ¿qué tal uno que ignore las tendencias de la época y juegue con sus tropos para hacerlo alcanzar un nivel de auto-entendimiento aún mayor?

Pasa que detrás de su aparente simplicidad, se esconde un maravilloso mensaje que ha sido pasado por alto en las discusiones del juego por bastante tiempo, razón por la que decidí explayarlo con atención al detalle en un video análisis. Si piensas que la historia acaba en lo triste y amargo que resulta su giro argumental en vez de notar la inspiradora carta de amor que simboliza su totalidad, déjame decirte que hay mucho más detrás de la Puerta a Phantomile.

~ ANÁLISIS COMPLETO: https://youtu.be/rBbGlcSyjtM ~

This is what happens when the entire Internet makes one too many "Crash Bandicoot has become Dark Souls" jokes. Some developers will take that as a challenge.

However, despite the balls to the wall level of difficulty here, this might be my new favorite Crash game. Everything just feels so finely crafted and purposeful - from the environment and creature designs to the way the characters respond to your inputs - that I'll forgive a little feature bloat in the form of the N. Verted levels. The way I see it, 100% completion is optional and something to be chipped away at gradually over time, because, yes, I can see how this game would quickly drive someone insane.