#monkeycraft

[vgadvisor]

[cupcake-plays-a-game]

10th June 2024 - Over the past few days of Summer I’ve played through the first Klonoa game in Klonoa: Phantasy Reverie Series and, wow, it was a really great game! Great platforming, well-designed boss fights, colourful and cheerful visuals, engaging 2.5D level design, a depressing ending that was a kick in the gut, it was fantastic!

Hopefully I’ll get to the sequel sometime in the near future, since this only look me around 2.5 hours to beat!

[yaspup9000]

so.. I’ve been hearing about some glaring issues regarding we love katamari reroll and well, it’s very concerning.. mainly about how they reused assets from katamari reroll instead of giving the characters their design from we love katamari ie, Ace not being spikey nor Ichigo being strawberry shaped. They still have the same design as they did in damacy reroll. Okay I understand why in katamari damacy cousins like ichigo, Ace, and even Opeo would have their old designs from the first game since it was a remake of the first game however with this

they didn’t even bothered in bringing back their we love katamari designs in we love reroll, so it’s kind of worrying. And on that note, I’ve already talked about my friends about how young king of all cosmos’ blush looks off here let me just show you a comparison between Young king of all cosmos in we love reroll vs Beautiful Katamari

Okay soo, I’ve pointed this out to one of my friends awhile back about how the blush on the king doesn’t really blends very well to his skin, this shade of pink should of been more deeper and less lighter since well, compared to most cousins, most of the cousins/cosmics have a lighter skin tone. And again, I can understand reusing assets as a base while working on your games but it shouldn’t be used for the final product. And before some people say it, No Im not trying to pull a whole “sonic has green eyes so this game suxs now” crowd, No. There’s a clear difference between criticizing how some colors of blush doesn’t work well for some skin tones vs just complaing about a minor detail in a character that doesn’t really matter. Like say what you will, but at least with modern sonic (sonic with green eyes) at least some of the games still care about details and stuff (not talking about the newer modern sonic games tho they do not look good. I was kinda thinking like sonic rush at least.. and maybe even sonic adventure)

but that’s not all of the issues about we love reroll. So yea there was audio issues left and right and there were bugs. And how I know about all of this, is because there was a stream testing out the game and well.. it made me depressed.. like no really. I wasn’t feeling too good mentally as it is but it seems like some of the devs who were working on it Just straight up have the codes hold up in spaghetti string. And it’s really concerning since I don’t want another Pokémon SV again.. like Glitches the eye can see and stuff. Pokémon SV Already depressed me a lot and I didn’t even want to play the game.

The trend of Quantity over Quality with most games is very much concerning and depressing. Im sure that the devs would fix these issues before release and actually make things a little bit better? But I’m just asking too much and a part of me has this feeling that they don’t really care and they’ll ship it anyways regardless by how people people talked about this issues.

Im sure it still be good but not as great or better than the original We love katamari. If anything.. let’s try to not get our hopes too high…

anyways imma crawl back into my depress nap guys, sorry to bum you all out..

[satoshi-mochida]

Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series releases today for the PS5, Xbox Series, PS4, Xbox One, Switch and Steam(I think in NA, it’s digital only).

A demo is also available, as well.

[vgadvisor]

[vgadvisor]

[vgadvisor]

[miloscat]

[Review] We ♥ Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie (PS5)

A remake that's barely more than the bare minimum.

I hadn't had enough Katamari when I finished Rolling Live, so I nabbed this remake of the second PS2 game on sale and got rolling again. It's still Katamari, so it's still good, but even with some added bonus levels these remakes aren't doing enough to justify themselves to me personally.

While the first game had The Prince and his cousins rolling katamaris in order to replace the stars that The King had accidentally destroyed, this one goes a little meta with the King taking requests from fans who loved the original Katamari Damacy game and want more (also, it turns out there are more stars to restore after all). This sequel also mixes in some flashbacks to the King's early life as cutscene fodder: trying to please an overbearing father, a rebellious phase, meeting the Queen, etc.

As a sequel, We Heart Katamari closely follows the base formula of the original game (roll around with twin sticks, pick up objects to get bigger), and it works as well as it ever did, but they also start getting adventurous with the gimmick levels. Some of these are fun or a nice change of pace, while others are just tedious. Either way, it turns out I’ve played most of them already since many were included as “memory” levels in Forever on the PS3, which is cementing itself as my favourite entry.

This does tie in to my thesis about remakes needing to add value as compared to a hypothetical sequel. Fortunately this one does have the “Royal Reverie” bonus. These five new levels, set in existing areas from the base game, tie into the cutscenes by having you roll around as the chibi King at the behest of the old king. You don’t get stars out of them but each unlocks a new cosmetic item. These are a nice enough addition if not terribly substantial.

Aside from this bonus content there are the expected graphical and performance revamps. I was disappointed by some broken ocean textures in the new “gorgeous” graphic mode. Even more so by the game forcing a pause for a loading sequence when I changed size in certain levels, even with the power of the PS5! I assume this is just a drawback necessitated by its simultaneous release on weaker platforms, but again Forever on the PS3 didn’t have these!!

Aside from the water I didn’t notice much difference when swapping between the old and new graphics (it was nice to have the option). The look of the original game is timeless, everything popping in its low-poly glory. The soundtrack suffers a bit of sequelitis with a number of dud songs, but it’s possible to manually change the track.

I had a jolly time with this, even getting all the cousins, but as a certified remake hater I still feel they could have done more. Bundle in more games, remake the delisted mobile games that aren’t available at all anymore, add more bonus content. Make it actually feel next gen without graphical errors and janky loading screens. Reroll 1 was barebones and this barely clears that definition. I’m glad I got it on sale so I didn’t feel too ripped off to get a game that was essentially supplanted by Forever, 16 years ago. Ah well, if nothing else it was an excuse to get out and roll up some stuff and that’s always a good time.