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!
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!