It's a remastered collection of two of the best platformers ever created, so you can't really go wrong. But is it the definitive way to play Klonoa? Well, as for the second game... maybe. Honestly, it's been a long while now since I played the PS2 original, much as I cherish it. The way I see it though, this version of the first game lacks a little something of the original. Call it 'soul' perhaps. All the cutscenes in this collection are all rendered in-game. That means that the beautiful FMV sequences of the first game have been redone using the less expressive in-game character models, and as such a lot of the emotional impact has been lost. The infamously gut-wrenching ending of Klonoa 1 loses a lot of its power in the Reverie Series, and because of this, the PS1 original remains king in my opinion.

There's also some fuckery going on with the audio mix. The glorious music is offensively low in the mix, while the vocal samples of the original games have been included, resulting in some aural discordance. Music and SFX sounds crisp, but in cutscenes the characters' voices are incredibly tinny. It's quite distracting.

This is still a must play for any Klonoa fan though. Or even just platforming fans in general. Buy this so that we can be blessed with Klonoa 3 in the future.

I think Overland deserves a lot of credit for how understated it all is, even if that's sometimes to its detriment.

The story here is simple: an alien meteorite has crashed into Earth and society has collapsed as the infestation spreads. Our characters are heading west across the United States, looking for... answers? Hope? Some sort of catharsis? That's really up to you. A couple of randomly generated lines make up each person's backstory, and the rest is up to how the game unfolds from there. It gives just enough crumbs of small story beats throughout for me to color in the rest in my head.

Ross stole a flashlight early on from a group of traders. They reacted poorly, but he and Joel got away easily. Still, being marked a thief (literally, in the game's menus) never sat right with Ross as he would comment on it frequently. He and the crew avoided traders for a while, and when they did happen upon one he let Joel or Violet do the talking. Ross stayed in the car. Ross hates tomatoes. Ross is a thief.

When stories play out like that, the game really sings. Sometimes though I wish the game had a little more to say. Randomly generated conversations started to feel similar to one another as we got further down the road. Enemies and items are inscrutable, which fits with the survival aspect of the narrative, but the deeper I journeyed into alien territory the more I just wanted to know what certain things would do. It was fine on normal difficulty (with the ability to restart levels if things got too off the rails) but I could see how it would get old on a harder difficulty.

Overland is entirely worth playing once at the very least. If the art style or unique sound design are drawing you in, I say hop in and enjoy the ride.

I think what wins this game is mostly its crude but somehow interesting to look at visuals -- It's very interesting to see how a handful of pixels can really look like something else when arranged right, makes you see why the Game Boy was so successful in a way.

The story was... Fine, interesting I'd say, this dude loves its damn lighthouse, even becoming an obsession when we realize the things he's done just because of the lighthouse on his 20 year shift.

Some might say that the voice actor having a very thick accent was faulty, but I see it as charming, the game takes place on Russia I believe so it would make sense, not everyone has a perfect American accent.

Ann was kind of a disappointment, honestly. The only thing this game has going for it is some relatively nice animated cutscenes, though the art quality can be kind of hit and miss. Besides that, it feels like this game was attempting to be a tribute to RPG Maker horror (or perhaps just Ib in general), that completely fails to capture what made any of its predecessors special and ends up feeling like a poor imitation. A very unfortunate waste of effort when it feels like there definitely could've been more done here.