Addendum (4/26/24): A 2.1 patch dropped and gave the game another honest try, while there's still some pretty big problems with the overtuned difficulty of the emerald challenges, the kart handling, and very misplaced GP courses (really that first GP is a mess compared to the rest), there is a MARKED improvement as a whole with the way the game plays now.

This still needs some hefty lifting and work on its backend and I'm still not over the moon with it, but its a step in the right direction. I'm at least happy the devs seemed to have gotten over this attitude from older comments I've seen and actually taking the criticism to heart to make it better.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: Between the hour long tutorial with constant info dumping mechanics, a mess of visual components making seeing the tracks difficult, and the mechanics of racing itself being overly complex with both a ring currency system for spending to keep your top speed up...

This game's a complete mess. I really enjoyed Sonic Robo blast 2 Kart for the fact it was heavily skill based but still goofy enough that it was in line with how Mario Kart plays. This is just overkill in the audio/visual department without much of a second thought given to the actual core gameplay of the game. So much focus went into shoving so many mechanics like fast drops, ring spending, tricks off springs, etc. that it feels less like I'm racing and praying to god I do finger gymnastics to even stay on the road.

I hope they strip back some of this game or better balance it because in its current state, it's a frustrating mess that isn't very fun to play and its tutorial is a FUCKING HOUR LONG that I spent that I genuinely didn't enjoy.

Gonna preface this by saying that I quite like Klonoa 1 a good bit after playing a demo endlessly as a kid and ADORING the Wii remake some years later. Klonoa 2 is probably one of the greatest 2D platformers made, in my opinion, offering a touching story, gorgeous level design, and some of the best music I've heard in a game.

This HD remaster might be one of the most disappointing things I've played but in a way of seeing how many details were removed from Klonoa 2 and how...off things feel in Klonoa 1. It's very frustrating being super detail oriented! So many missing animations, lighting effects, visual touches, and lacking cel-shading really don't do it many favors.

That said, if you wanna play Klonoa and are pretty averse to other methods of playing the games, this isn't a bad collection by any means, but for $30 for a couple cult classics which lack some details that the originals really shine with...It's a bit of a hard sell.