Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil (PS2)
Klonoa: Door to Phantomile created a delightful dreamworld that was a blast to explore, a story that was imaginative but serious when it needed to be, and a style of platforming that turned every enemy into an opportunity. Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil would naturally build off the strong foundations of its predecessor, but the question is what this sequel would do to set it apart from the original… and it turns out, it decided to pretty much do everything better than the previous game.
Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil involves the strange cat/rabbit creature named Klonoa getting called to a new world in need of help. Lunatea consists of four major kingdoms that each have their own bell designed to contain their kingdom’s important element. However, a new bell is threatening to enter the world, one said to usher in a new kingdom that will spell trouble for the people of Lunatea should it be allowed to appear. Klonoa’s good nature draws him to help those in need, but he won’t be setting out to save this world alone. Immediately on arrival Klonoa meets an almost human girl with what look like monkey features named Lolo, the priestess-in-training being one of the few people who knows about the bells and has been training to have the power to properly activate them. With her is perhaps an even stranger creature than Klonoa, Popka being a sort of dog/kangaroo thing with distinctive segmented eyes that, just like Klonoa’s design, surprisingly work to make it something unique but not out of place. While Klonoa and Lolo are kind and friendly types, Popka balances them out by being a much needed voice of reason, one that knows when to be aggressive and frank but still remains a valuable ally due to his good nature.
Even your main opposition have pretty distinct personalities due to the game making sure most levels feature some time spent on the story or characters talking with each other, Leorina the sky pirate being of a similar species to Lolo and having her own companion in the form of Tat, a strange puppet-like cat that can split into multiple copies of itself. Leorina and Tat are trying to get to the bells and their elements before Klonoa and his friends, and while at first there seems little reason to stop them since they sound like they’re trying to save the world too, her true intentions gradually become better known by the group. Still, early on it becomes clear that this really isn’t the story of Klonoa so much as it is about Lolo and Leorina, the two both having similar personal motivations for their quest to find the bells. Lolo, for example, struggles to prove herself worthy of being a priestess, and it’s not hard to get invested in her story as it unfolds over the course of the game. Klonoa doesn’t have Huepow powering his ring this time around either, Lolo now residing in it and serving as the way Klonoa will receive his special powers, and at times this dependence is tested or brought up as part of Lolo’s quest to find her self-worth.
The kingdoms you explore continue the Klonoa series’s bright and dreamy visual style, although it will darken when events get serious. In fact, there is one entire kingdom called Volk that is based around the idea of a city constantly at war that balances the bright fantasy setting with such a concept fairly well without sacrificing the integrity of either idea. Burning cities and underground war factories make surprisingly good platforming levels, but the kingdom of Joilant and its amusement park setting might be the showstopper of the kingdoms, the secluded snow kingdom Mira-Mira and fairly typical grassy kingdom of La-Lakoosha still having their own ideas for varying up their landscapes but not matching the energy of Joilant or the creativity on show in it. Some levels will take place in areas between kingdoms or in unaffiliated areas, and there are a few revisits as well over the course of the story where an old level is populated differently to change how you traverse it. Besides just getting to the end of levels, stages will include floating Dream Stones to collect for extra lives as well as pieces of Mommet Dolls that will unlock extra levels and goodies in Joilant, many stages packing in extra movement puzzles or reflex challenges to get these Mommet Doll parts. Lunatea is definitely a world fit for Klonoa’s special style of platforming, areas both old and new having distinct styles before you even factor in how important the enemy placement is to the puzzles and obstacles you face along the way.
Klonoa may have a jump and a brief aerial glide to get him from platform to platform, but his main means of doing most anything is using his Wind Ring to grab enemies and use them to get around or damage other baddies. When he’s close enough to a valid enemy, Klonoa can shoot out a wind bullet that will pull the enemy into his arms and inflate them, Klonoa carrying them around until he finds a use for them. While the action takes place on a 2D plane, the world of Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil is a 3D environment, Klonoa sometimes needing to throw enemies into the background or foreground to activate switches or deal with enemies. Perhaps the more common use for enemies though is their use in performing a proper double jump, Klonoa able to hurl them downwards while in the air to launch himself higher. Enemies will always be in supply where they are mandatory or even required for optional activities, so getting the hang of hurling enemies at the right time or chaining together double jumps allows for more involved platforming challenges and ones you can recover from so long as messing it up didn’t lead to a death. The need to put yourself at risk to even get the means to solve puzzles, navigate, or deal with bigger baddies makes Klonoa a constantly involved game of endangering yourself and then switching to having an edge against everything around you, and this style continue to see more creative use as the puzzles get more complex and enemies get more dangerous as the game goes on.
However, Lunatea’s Veil manages to improve over Door to Phantomile in one key way, and that’s by having the enemies you grab have many unique traits. While most foes will turn into a balloon you can safely hurl when ready, in addition to the old ticking time bomb enemies, there are now foes that, when grabbed, will do things like give you multiple extra jumps, rocket you up towards the sky, and even an enemy that needs to absorb other foes to be the right color to break environmental barriers. The greater variety in what something does after you grab it allows for shifting level styles, and those already had plenty of ideas to make the base platforming enjoyable before these extra elements are introduced. Sadly, the bosses aren’t quite so creative, often having a new feature to their fight like one foe you have to hit through the ground and the flower clown who creates false copies, but most of these just end up being about moving around to hit them in the right spot. These are mostly serviceable fights but don’t feel quite as imaginative as the levels, but one boss does engage a different style of play in that it takes place entirely while Klonoa is snowboarding.
Every now and then, a level will shift away from the platforming style into one where Klonoa will ride a board, this sometimes being across water down a ride in Joilant, other times being a way to navigate the snow of Mira-Mira, and sometimes it’s just the fastest way through a dangerous area for Klonoa. Klonoa can control his speed here and jump and use enemies in much the same way as regular levels, but depending on where he is, sometimes he only needs to worry about when he’s jumping and others he’ll need to guide his board left and right to avoid pitfalls and danger. These levels put up a decent fight with the need to be quick to act, later levels especially offering many ways to fall to your doom if you get careless. These are definitely simpler than the main stages, but the quick action is an enjoyable break from the deliberate platforming you do elsewhere, its integration into a few boss fights also providing a decent challenge that set them apart from the more typical platforming battles. The board riding portions are actually a pretty good fit for Klonoa 2’s main play style, the game mostly about properly executing solutions and actions rather than figuring out what needs to be done. This can make things a bit easy at times, but this also means there is little aggravating to drag down the delightful experience.
THE VERDICT: Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil is a platform game that uses its enemies to excellent effect. Serving as your means of solving puzzles and fighting villains, each baddy you encounter is a way to interact with some interesting and distinct levels, the emphasis on properly using the enemies on hand rather than needing to suss out their potential uses making things stay forward focused and a good fit for a game that shifts into reflex-focused board-riding segments for some of its levels. The boss battles are a bit weak for not having much to them, but the mechanical variety in the normal enemies you find ensures even repeat levels can have new ideas, and with the story weaving through every stage to keep you invested in its characters, Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil continues to offer stages with fun designs and new and interesting interactions between its core cast members.
And so, I give Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil for the PlayStation 2…
A GREAT rating. Klonoa 2’s wonderful world makes its enemy-focused platforming and puzzling enjoyable and its sights and characters interesting to learn more about. It’s a bit strange the bosses are so disconnected from both of these elements, but they don’t really weigh things down so much as serve as small segments where the game could have continued pushing it creativity more. Even in the board-riding segments there are still plenty of interesting background designs, action challenges, and even story moments that don’t feel out of place. The potential of the wind bullet and the enemies who interact with it in different ways are definitely the main draw, but it still remains a game that is interesting play for multiple different reasons, the need to act quick at times being the main skill to see you through and creating a decent ascending level of difficulty without getting out of control with the potential of the wind bullet system. Still, the moments it does flirt with more thoughtful puzzles do show the potential of such involved thinking when it comes to the Wind Ring’s use, but it by no means felt like the game didn’t get a good amount of use from it with the ideas it did pursue.
Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil is a pretty big improvement over the previous game and one that includes both things that did seem like obvious additions like enemies reacting differently to being picked up and new concepts like the board-riding that fit the game’s style quite nicely. It still feel likes a platforming game design that has much more room to grow though, but without a doubt, Klonoa’s PlayStation 2 outing still makes excellent use of its story and mechanics to make for a wonderful fantasy journey.