Genre: Puzzle Platformer
Developer: Now Production
Publisher: Namco
Release Date: September 11, 2001

This is my first Klonoa game I’ve ever played. I’ve always heard good things about the series, a nice platformer puzzler. From my knowledge the mainline is more of a platformer while the handhelds are more puzzle focused. In this game, Klonoa’s world banned having dreams. Which is kinda nonsensical but whatever and you have to stop this because everyone is turning into monsters n shit. The plot is not the main focus at all so a simple and silly set up like this is fine.

The meat of the game is in the puzzles, a lot of them are well thought out with the rare exception. That exception usually has some vague solution that I end up not being sure is the true solution or that I ended up finding some other way of doing it that the devs didn’t attend. Usually this also ties into some iffy platforming that ends up being hard for no reason at all. Sometimes it can add a fun level of challenge, but most of the time it’s some really tight jump that takes so much time to do. It comes out of nowhere a lot of times, with the rest of the level being pretty easy other than those out of place parts.

The levels are very well designed around the puzzles other than that. The design is formulaic with most of it revolving around Klonoa’s restricted moveset. There are three main level types, traditional, auto scrollers, and snowboarding sections. The traditional levels are what I previously described, a 2d platformer mixed with puzzles. The harder parts of the game are contained within the auto scrollers, this is where most of the fun and challenging platforming is. The snowboarding sections function as easy ways to get lives, unless you're hunting for all of the gems they’re easy. Since they repeat these only three level designs they have, it can get repetitive and kinda burn you out of the game if you play it all at once like I did(three days). If you're looking to only play a couple levels a day on the bus or something. It isn't the biggest deal, it was kinda attended to. The only other level type that shows up once a world, boss levels. They suck. The most piss easy shit ever, a total waste of time.

Visuals are very nice to look at and pop nicely on the gba screen. I did play this on my sp and r36s so I did have a backlight lcd screen. So I’m not sure if it actually looks good on the original gba screen without that. I’m assuming it does since it’s saturated and no older reviews mentioned it being hard to see so Imma take their word.

The music is another well done thing with minimal flaws. I would say it’s one of my favorites on the system now. Listen with headphones due to the mono speakers on the handhelds. It really matches the tone of the game and fits so well.

Gameplay: 8/10
Music: 8.5/10
Art Direction: 10/10
Story: Airplanes/10
Overall Score: 8.5/10
Final Notes: 9-11 game = good
Last Edited: 1/14/25