I've been playing Klonoa Heroes a lot lately. Before I began playing it, got to this one enemy on Guntz's vision in the temple place, and gave up after several minutes of wondering the hell I'm supposed to do. Just recently I began playing it for a review, and I've quite enjoyed the game. Currently I think I'm around 5 or 6 hours in, at the third or fourth vision in 5th world I believe. I've really enjoyed the plot.
In comparison to his other incarnations, Klonoa's much more brash, arrogant, and frankly stupid personality came across just plain childish and generic. While in Door to Phantomile he was very impressionable and free-spirited, he comes across in this game like the kid who mom leaves at baseball practice so she doesn't have to parent him. At first, at least. Soon enough, however, the presence of other characters, most notably Guntz (more on him later), he becomes very likeable. Particularly when he and Guntz depart, it becomes fantastic. Guntz is possibly the best character in the game.
I appreciate how unrelenting the writers were with the character, and his disregard for others really strengths his character. When you compare his character in Dream Champ Tournament to this, it really shows how talented Klonoa Works really are at storytelling. I haven't seen much of him, but I quite like Pango. Nothing to really say on him yet. I really enjoy the themes of heroism and what that entails.
Again, I don't think I can comment much on the story of Klonoa Heroes, but so far, it is fantastic. One thing I will say as a Klonoa fan is that this really feels like the next big Klonoa game after Klonoa 2. While it is very different tonally and thematically, it still feels very Klonoa-ey in a way that the other GBA games simply don't. I am very impresssed. As someone who typically doesn't like or play dungeon crawlers or RPGs, I found the game very satisfying and addicting. Seeing how far you can take the simple moveset Klonoa has at his disposal is very fun, and exploring the visions is engaging as well.
There isn't much to really review here, as everybody reading this has already played the game and most are fans of it, so just take this as me saying I enjoy the game. Well, on the whole, anyway. The lack of a map feature is very questionable, especially considering the giant box at the top right corner of the screen, which is only used to display status effects. If Metroid can have a minimap, I don't see why this can't. I also must ask why, WHY, there are so many f**king fake chests! I know this sounds like a nitpick, but they are everywhere! I swear like half of the chests are fake! When fake chests are one of the most common enemy types in the game, they aren't exactly surprising, and surprise is the entire point of fake chests in the first place!
So good game.
