Klonoa 2 stars the namesake hero who finds himself in Lunatea. When he helps out the priestess-to-be Lolo, Klonoa gets involved in a quest to visit the Harmony Bells in each of Lunatea's Four Kingdoms. From that point, it's the player's job just to work through levels, called Visions. Along the way, you'll fight all sorts of minions, figure out timing-switch puzzles and hunt for hidden areas where you can locate each of the 6 stars hidden in each level.

Graphics
Visually, Klonoa 2 is bright and both easy and fun to look at. Designed with cell-shading the characters move with life and personality. Cut-scenes are often quite fun to watch. The one word that comes to mind when watching this game: playful. Level design is solid and grows more challenging the deeper into the game you get. After playing serious and dark games like Twisted Metal Black and Extermination, playing Klonoa 2 is a fresh change of pace.

Gameplay
Klonoa 2 takes the basic elements of the platform genre and utilizes them well. Klonoa runs around, grabbing enemies with his magical ring and uses them to smash open crates or to propel him to greater heights, where he can use his big ears to glide to higher ledges. The deeper into the game one gets, the more elements are introduced, so that by the end of the game, players are using everything they've learned to get through.

Some of the nicer parts are where the player comes into an area where there doesn't seem to be an exit. Take for instance the area illustrated in the top picture to the right. A pendulum hangs in the middle of a circle. To get out of the area, one must grab enemies and then face the pendulum and hit it with the enemies, causing it to know down the pillars behind it. It's this kind of puzzle-solving reasoning that keeps the gameplay in Klonoa 2 from getting seriously old.

Sound
The music really fits the upbeat tempo of the game and changes with each area you move into. The variety of music is nice and keeps from feeling repetitive. Sound effects are good and the voice-overs are sugar-sweet cute. Since the voice-overs are in Japanese, one will still have to read the text-boxes, but the hyper-cute voices can often make the casual gamer laugh.

The Bad
I really hate to say that there are things that are bad with this game, just a number of conflicting issues. It is obvious from the ease of play that this game would most be enjoyed by the younger, less hardcore gamer. Also, once you find all of the stars in an area, you get a doll that signifies what you've achieved. Only completists will find this reward enough to go back multiple times.

Klonoa 2 is a solid, fun game with great visuals and enough to do for gamers looking for a platform game. It's easy to pickup and get into. Older and seasoned gamers may blow through it in no time and younger gamers may find parts of the game difficult, but on the whole Klonoa 2 is a good effort, especially in a genre that's kind of thin at the time.

- - Kinderfeld