Review #581: Klonoa 2 - Lunatea's Veil

 Jump and grab.

 Klonoa 2 is the cutest platformer you'll ever play. This is a 2-D platform game that keeps it simple and fun all the way through, which will test your proficiency with two things: Jumping and Grabbing.

 The story is a nonsensical mess. Klonoa appears in a dream world, Lunatea, and gets assaulted by two mysterious characters, but as luck would have it, Lolo, a priestess, and her pet-friend aid Klonoa in defending himself, by restoring Klonoa's Wind Ring's powers. What follows... is a silly, nonsensical story about Klonoa and friends trying to ring some bells before the shadowy characters destroy Lunatea. Some people might read to much into the story and how it's supposed to be an allegory about Klonoa dealing with the first game's aftermath, but I think that's giving it too much credit. What I can say, however, is that the game is beautiful, and the world of Lunatea and its inhabitants are a colorful, creative and quirky bunch. It's a pleasure just to look at this game. That said, while they can be skipped, the game has too many cutscenes for what amounts to a very uninteresting story.

 The game is entirely in 3-D, but you play on a 2-D plane, with the game being as simple as simple can be. One button jumps and the other one shoots the wind bullet a few steps in front of Klonoa. Any enemy hit by the wind bullet will get capture by Klonoa, and then he can use them as projectiles or as platforms to get a second jump from. The entirety of the game is based upon these two mechanics, with puzzles coming in the form of figuring out how to use enemies and their quirks. For instance, electric enemies can be used for a electrified dash upwards that breaks anything on top of Klonoa. Yellow enemies change color upon hitting other enemies, and you must figure out the correct order to hit enemies so that you get the correct color to break the right obstacle. It's delightfully simple, and the game makes excellent use of its mechanics, always having some new obstacle that requires a bit of thinking. Enemies respawn upon death, so you can't get stuck if you mess up.

 Bosses are very interesting, as you need to figure out how to damage them. Each boss has two different phases to go through. Interestingly, after getting hit every enemy will enter a counterattack motion, but if you're savvy enough you can actually hit them out of it! Bosses were surprisingly fun to defeat thanks to that. Another thing the game gets props for is how well the difficulty was handled, early stages are fairly easy, but they get progressively tougher in a very linear fashion. The game also features a few snowboarding/waterboarding stages that I really didn't care too much about.

 Klonoa 2 is a beautiful game that makes expert use of its two core mechanics. The puzzles and platforming challenges are different enough that they don't feel repetitive, and the game's short length may aid in that. Anyone that enjoys a good platform game will have a blast with Klonoa 2.
 9.0 out of 10