Klonoa for the Wii Review




Why have plat-formers died off? Whatever happened to there being, like, thousands of them? It seems like Mario, Wario and Kirby are still bringing it through the ages. I would put Sonic down here, but he has basically screwed himself over too much to come back. One day, I remember reading about a character known as Klonoa and how a game for the Wii was coming out for it. I then read up about it, and found it out was a revamped version of a Playstation 1 classic. I got excited and put it on my list of games I wanted to play. After I beat Madworld, I got this game in the next couple of days in the mail. So, is this a horrible translation from PS1 to Wii? Or is it a Gem that the Wii has been ever-so looking for.

Basically, the whole story takes place in a world known as Phantomile, a world powered by dreams that people have by night. One day, a plane crashed into the top of the hill in Phantomile, and a character known as Klonoa and his ring spirit Hewpoe go find out whats going on and save Phantomile from what evil has been brought upon the land.

This is one of those characters that were part of the whole mascot craze in the 90’s, when it ended. Older gamers know that multiple different mascots were made to compete against the almighty Mario and Sonic. Usually, they all had horrible games but some actually made it through to get at least a couple more sequels like Sparkster, from Rocket Knight Adventures, and Klonoa, from, well uhh, Klonoa. Now, this game has gotten a total makeover in the form of new redesigned characters, awesome graphics, new cut scenes and everything.

The game play is in the style of a 2.5D plat-former much like Super Mario Brothers 1, Goemon’s Great Adventure, Yoshi’s Story, and Wario Land Shake it! Every plat-former has their own unique thing that makes their games fun, like Mario has the Fire Flower and the multiple other power-ups in his games, Sonic is fast, Kirby can swallow, then copy enemies’ abilities, and Wario has you going around collecting treasures and money. Klonoa has the ability to pick up enemies and throw them. You can also use them to give your character a double-jump-like ability by throwing the captured enemy down to the ground after jumping.

The graphics are just gorgeous. I mean, I could say they are almost as good as Super Mario Galaxy’s graphics in the term of color and such. I was actually glad that they didn’t just port the PS1 version of the game, since another Wii game Counter Force didn’t get upgraded to current graphics, so it got bombed by reviewers. The art style is bright and colorful, with unique and wonderful Nintendo-like characters. I think the whole charm comes from the style of the game, since you would think it has a cutesy soft story, but the story itself is quite dark for such a game. I won’t say anything about it so you have to play the game yourself. The music is beautiful, and just a hoot to listen, to the point that I wish there was a soundtrack for the game. The music for this game actually stands up to some of the best of the Wii’s Library of Games.

It is time now to pick up the bad parts of the game and smash them. The length of the game suffers the same as Madworld and Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars. It’s too short. You could easily beat this game in a day. The sad reason for that fact is that it is too easy, I mean, until you get to the two last areas of the game. The rest of the game is just a breeze to get through. The voice acting isn’t bad or anything, since sometimes they overdo it to the point where it’s annoying. Even if you’re not listening to the English voice acting, the made-up language thing can get on anyone’s nerves.

All and all, this is a pretty awesome game. This is the full package for a third-party Wii game, awesome graphics, dark story, and amazing music. This game is an automatic buy for any Wii owner looking for a good Wii game. Now, if we can only bring back Vectorman and Ristar in some way, shape, or form.

This game gets an 8.1 out of 10

Rated E for everyone.

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