Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil
One weekend when I was a kid, my brother was away and I got to pick a game to rent from Blockbuster. Having a certain affinity for cartoon rodents, I chose Klonoa 2. I hadn’t played the first game, but I liked this rabbit dog’s hat. I didn’t have a memory card so I left the console on the whole weekend. Luckily, I was able to beat the game before my brother returned. Mostly, all I remember from that experience was this intense feeling of melancholy that came as the credits rolled.
Well, that and snowboarding.
Picking it up again some twenty years later, I’m wondering if I’ll feel that bittersweetness again. So far, however, nothing about the plot is endearing. It’s a shame because it should be interesting based on the premise. Klonoa is a dream traveler. He is able to enter different worlds and affect their dreams, or maybe the worlds themselves are dreams. I’m not entirely sure.
The voices speak in a made up babbling language. I usually love made-up tongues like these and this one sounds pretty good sometimes but the voice acting can be really grating. Worse, you cannot speed up the dialogue. Fortunately, the music is often great.
I’m about halfway through the game and I’m having a breezy time. The level design of the first several stages is really simple and a little boring. You grab enemies and toss them. You can chuck them below you to jump higher. There’s not much more to it than that. It has one of my platformer pet peeves: there is no inertia or method of speeding up your movement. There are some situational methods of getting fast, but most of the time, you move at a jaunty stroll. I felt myself becoming impatient as the levels tend to be quite long. There are unlockable secrets if you collect every small gem in a level and there is no way that I can commit to that. Life is too precious.
What makes the game enjoyable is the set dressing and the way your path crisscrosses through the dioramas. I actually feel a sense of excitement before I begin a level just because I like how they look. I think I will see the game to the end after all. If nothing else, I want to see how my old memories stand up.