Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (PS1)

While Namco probably couldn’t ask for a better mascot than Pac-Man when it comes to recognizability, he’s more of a character who represents their history rather than one capable of carrying things forward with personality and flexibility. However, Namco decided to take a crack at creating a new mascot to join him back during the fifth generation of console gaming, and that’s how Klonoa was born, a strange mix between a rabbit and a cat dressed like a kid but with a hat paying homage to Pac-Man. His platforming adventures were meant to resonate with kids and adults alike, but he never seemed to catch fire the way other mammalian mascots like Sonic the Hedgehog did, and based on Klonoa: Door to Phantomile at least, it wasn’t the game’s fault for his low popularity.

Klonoa’s first adventure takes place in the dream world of Phantomile where he lives with his grandfather and spends his time playing with a Ring Spirit named Huepow. However, a dark being known as Ghadius invades this world of sweet dreams and aims to corrupt the dream energy in the Moon Kingdom so that Phantomile would become a land of nightmares. Naturally heroic, Klonoa chases after him to try and stop him and save the people who are being corrupted by Ghadius’s influence, but it’s really Joka who serves as Klonoa’s constant rival throughout, the jester-like creature being Ghadius’s faithful servant and the one to sic many of the monsters and corrupted denizens of Phantomile on Klonoa. This tale of dreams and fantasy creatures is an excellent fit for a light-hearted adventure, and many of the environments are vibrant and colorful to match, but the game does sometimes shift into some legitimately sad moments. It won’t weigh down the entire tone of the game, but the threat Ghadius plans poses and the ramifications of his work are brought up and depicted enough to establish the stakes. The people of Phantomile speak an invented language that is captioned in text boxes, but even with this barrier to understanding them, Klonoa’s emotion can shine through during the many happy and triumphant moments as well as the few sadder stops along the way.

The form Klonoa’s adventure takes is a sidescrolling platformer game, but it’s not truly a 2D or 3D game. Klonoa’s movements are locked to a 2D plane as he moves through the stages, but the environments are three-dimensional, meaning that while you don’t control his Z-axis movement, your path may wind out in any direction it so pleases. This isn’t just a visual effect, this so-called 2.5D level design allowing for things like areas intersecting with each other or taking place adjacent to a different segment of the level, the player sometimes able to hop between intersecting paths or toss objects into the background or foreground. Throwing is the main tool of interaction in Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, as almost everything you do will revolve around the ring that Huepow powers for you. While Klonoa himself can jump and even do a brief flutter to move slightly further, the ring is what allows him to fight any foes he faces, the ring firing a wind bullet that will pull in certain foes and inflate them into an easily throwable orb shape. Defeating many enemies can be as simple as picking them up, but others may require you to toss another foe at them. Your inflated foes are also perfect for throwing at switches to activate them and can even serve as a way to get more height by throwing them below you for a boost.

Almost all of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile focuses on the use of inflated enemies for combat and platforming challenges. Much like in a Kirby game, this means that your reliance on foes means you have to approach them, the ring having a pretty short range for grabbing and inflating the enemy. When an enemy can’t be inflated, you’ll often have to avoid their attacks while grabbing weaker baddies and hurling them when the opportunity arises, but there are also smaller enemies that have defensive measures you need to overcome to grab them. Most of the time, enemies do become pretty uniform in their usefulness while grabbed save for a special type that explodes after a few seconds, but it is by mixing up the platforming design and enemy layouts that it continues to challenge this simple but universal mechanic. Because it is so important, the game even makes sure that any area that requires an enemy to overcome, even an area where you only need them to grab optional collectibles, will have replacement enemies appear if they’re needed to get past the obstacle and you wasted the one you were given. The game is more concerned about you overcoming the challenge than doing it on your first try, and as such it’s happy to make challenges that require you to move quickly or even jump repeatedly through the air by grabbing enemies mid jump to use as extra upward boosts. You do have a life bar and can die if you fall down pits so there is some tension in failing a challenge, but you’ll always have the resources you need to overcome them, allowing for some more complex tests of timing your throws right.

The boss battles are a fairly good test of using your enemies to your advantage as well. The big bosses are always immune to being grabbed, so the game asks you to stay moving to avoid their attacks until you not only have a smaller enemy to grab, but the opportunity to hurl them at your foe to deal damage properly. Some are pretty simple to beat, but just like the levels, complexity gets layered on as you become more used to your throwing power so that these can serve as the combat highlights they’re meant to be. The levels mix up the main play to fairly good effect as well, although some gimmicks don’t work perfectly like waiting in a stage that shifts from day to night in a set pattern that changes which enemies and platforms are active. For the most part though, they continue to mix in new layouts for your ring jumping to work through that feel distinct. In these stages are also optional prisoners you can free, these often placed behind slightly harder jumps and throwing puzzles as collecting them all can earn you a final challenging stage to play. The interplay of throwing enemies and using them for extra jumps gets a surprising amount of mileage throughout the game and the level design continues to throw new ideas for challenges at it, so while Klonoa: Door to Phantomile’s mechanics may be simple on paper, they have the satisfying sharpness in design that makes for an enjoyable platforming adventure.

THE VERDICT: Klonoa: Door to Phantomile’s lighthearted but sometimes serious adventure in a land of dreams is an excellent platforming journey with a deceptively simple mechanic at its center. The ability to pick up enemies to use as projectiles or as jump assistance has a surprising amount of flexibility, the game happy to provide the enemies that allow you to tackle any challenge put before you while still making enemies a decent threat because you must get in close or overcome their defenses to snag them. You don’t ignore your foes since they’re what you need to throw, and this leads to a game that leads to constant consideration of the area before you as you must use one dangerous threat to overcome another, the simplicity of control keeping things clean and fun rather than frustrating or difficult.

And so, I give Klonoa: Door to Phantomile for PlayStation…

A GREAT rating. Committing to the wind bullet as the core focus of every interaction in the game pays off well for Klonoa: Door to Phantomile. While it can dip into a few level gimmicks that aren’t as focused due to their brief intersection with play, the throwing and grabbing of enemies is honed into a mechanic that fills the whole of the game quite well, the simple controls being tested by new level layouts and enemy types that don’t require more complex mechanics to be interesting encounters. With a story that’s trying to be a bit more than just a framework for the action supporting it, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile has a more pronounced identity that lets the game tie together into a neat package of enjoyable play and heart. Phantomile is a good fit for Klonoa in its design, and his skills are great for navigating it, making it come together into a fairly focused and well structured gaming adventure.

Klonoa’s star has faded in more recent years, and while it’s hard to say why Klonoa never took off like Namco wanted since his first game was definitely successful design wise, sometimes things outside a game’s quality can kill off something promising. Whether it was minimal marketing or it was a matter of subjective character appeal, it’s a shame that Klonoa: Door to Phantomile didn’t quite get the love that it deserves.