The dreamy landscapes lose their magic very soon as the screen fills with collectibles, health refills, keys to open doors, and the worst one, enemies respawning only so you can advance, slaves to what-you-have-to-do... The main characteristic from a gameplay perspective comes in the form of Klonoa’s weapon. His weapon can capture enemies and then throw them around any direction or even use them as a double jump. There’s not much to it and after five minutes the interest in using this mechanic is lost. The game knows it, so in order to keep the idea being used it throws mini-puzzles again and again and again turning what would be a forgettable tool into an unforgettable chore.

The not specially great platformer could be enough to carry on with the overall adventure, but in that regard it fails even more. The biggest miss is that the drama doesn’t hit at all. Is it really that sad that a character that just talked to send Klonoa to do a chore in the whole game dies? Is it to cry if at the end of Super Mario Yoshi said “sorry Mario I messed with your mind so that you would help us, you are not really from this planet you must go”? I think I would care a little bit about anything that happened if the supposed charm wasn’t so careless. One highlight of how mishandled this charming adventure is would be the second boss of the game, where to liberate the mother of a character from the control of the bad ones you have to hit her with another mind-controlled evil guy until both become good again. Between this and killing a mother’s ghost to liberate her in the first Pokemon games this generation’s moms must have kept their guard very up.