Being a huge fan of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (PSX) and Klonoa: Lunatea's Veil (PS2), I was eager to jump into Klonoa's first GBA adventure. Klonoa himself is becoming kind of a second rate mascot for Namco, but Empire of Dreams does not totally match up to the standard of the PlayStation outings. Mainly because it's much more puzzley and much less actiony.
There are five worlds of several levels each, full of the regular cast of inflatable baddies (Moos, Boomies, Tetons, etc). Klonoa keeps his familiar magic ring powers here, although this game brings little Huepow back as the ring's power source... he was some kind of lost prince in the first PSX game but was completely forgotten in the second. By manipulating the enemies, blocks and switches, Klonoa must make his way through over 40 "visions." (including several optional boarding and scrolling levels.)
The levels themselves are clever labyrinths, as you guide Klonoa in search of keys (to open coded doors) and stars (to open the end-of-level door). Although his moves are platform standard - double-jump, toss enemies, ride moving floors - his purpose is not carried in a straight line. You'll be doing a lot of backtracking and searching, spinning rooms and opening doors to find your star set.
The toughest rooms require you to divine a complex strategy of throwing Boomies, timing jumps and positioning boxes. As I've said, the puzzles are the meat here, with the bonus levels and boss fights as a kind of fast-paced reward for slogging through the regular levels.
As for the bonus levels, they come in two flavors. The boarding levels are fast and fun, and a decent challenge to collect all the gems. The scrolling levels (where the game automatically scrolls the screen for you) are a major pain, requiring incredible perfection to survive - much less worrying about 100 goddamn gems. Luckily, you can skip right by them, an option I didn't fully grok until I got to the last world.
The storyline seems partially lifted from Phantomile: Klonoa is once again rampaging through someone's dream. The ultimate resolution doesn't carry the same melodramatic weight as the other games, but Klonoa and Huepow are their usual dippy selves. I do miss the patented Klonoa audio babblespeak.
When Klonoa truly shines is the boss fights. These are not the simple jump-jump-jump fights of the Sonic platformers. These battles are an amazing treat, pulling off lots of cool GBA tricks... like a frequent use of scaling. You'll be tossing ballooned Moos at the boss, when suddenly the camera will pull back, shrinking everything in the process, to reveal some kind of super big baddie attack. Then they keep the camera at this level for a bit, and you must control a Klonoa now half his usual size. It's wildly impressive; one of the first real jaw-dropping graphical moments I've had on a GBA.
The end boss is a suitable capper... a multi-tiered baddie with a complicated pattern. (And he drips Moos out of his nose!) Hope for a bit of luck here - he requires you to match random colors to do damage. And bring some very nimble fingers, which you probably have trained up on those obnoxious auto-scrolling levels.
What really killed Empire of Dreams for me was the overall sameness of the levels, and the intense difficulty of the last scrolling level. I got deep into that last world, put the game down for months, and then had to convince myself it was worth picking up again.
It's a pleasant enough platformer - particularly if you're already versed with the Klonoa franchise - although it's shelf life doesn't seem too great. Especially since it doesn't have any linkup or multiplayer modes to add replay value. Still, Klonoa's boss fights are unequalled by anything I've seen yet. It's a thinking man's Crash Bandicoot.
