Kaze no Klonoa: Moonlight Museum
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Kaze no Klonoa: Moonlight Museum (or simply Klonoa: Moonlight Museum) is the second Klonoa game released in 1999 exclusive to the japanese Bandai Wonderswan, it is the first handheld game and puzzle themed game of the franchise.
Plot
Klonoa and Huepow come across a young crying girl who tells them that the Moon has been divided into fragments and stolen by a mysterious group of artists that reside in Moonlight Museum, once the determined duo come inside, they're greeted by a painter named Picoo who traps them inside a piece of artwork.
Gameplay
Similar to Klonoa: Door to Phantomile but limited to 30 two-dimensional visions, each one with a door locked by 3 Moon Stones, Klonoa and Huepow must explore their way through 5 worlds and restore the moon to the sky.
Bad Qualities
- Despite being exclusive to a less powerful console and not considered a direct sequel, it feels like a downgrade to what made Door to Phantomile a memorable classic, while most sequels end up being better or at least just as good as the first game.
- While vertical visions were an unique gimmick for the game thanks to the console, it doesn't really change the actual gameplay and ends up limiting the camera, making such feature pointless.
- Subpar soundtrack, some songs range from mediocre, repetitive or annoying to listen for too long.
- Barebones story, and every world's start and ending (save for the final and EX world) cutscenes are somewhat identical, the heroes meet one artist from the museum, said artist lets them go after the moon pieces while thinking they're trapped, heroes suceeds in collecting them all and go to the next area.
- The first character which Klonoa and Huepow meets and tells what's happening is literally named Girl unlike other characters from the game, which coming from a franchise know to have a cast of unique characters, that's a rather lazy move.
- Lack of boss fights in the game, and the bad guys gets away scot-free despite stealing the moon fragments just for their own artistic purposes.
- Sometimes the camera doesn't catch up with Klonoa, which is annoying to deal with in a slow-paced puzzle game.
- The game is a bit too short, lasting only 3 to 4 hours to beat, and the easy difficulty doesn't help that much.
Good Qualities
- The gameplay still remain fun despite the (reasonable) lack of 2.5D perspective.
- This game isn't that bad, it's just weaker than the other games in the series.
- Even with lack of colors the graphics do look quite impressive, including well made unlockable artworks for each world.
- More balanced difficult with Klonoa having 3 HP instead of 6 HP, which the next games would follow this change.
- It has a few decent or good tracks like Quiet Hometown, Palace of Clouds and Intro Cutscene.
- The last track got it's official remixes in Klonoa: Lunatea's Veil.
- It spawned the GBA duology which argually improved Moonlight Museum's puzzle theme.
Reception
Kaze no Klonoa: Moonlight Museums received mixed to positive reviews by critics, with a 6/10 from IGN who praised the level design but criticized the soundtrack and saying that the visuals doesn't push the console to it's limit.
Famitsu was more positive about the game, giving a score of 28/40, they said that the game was fun but not as good as Door to Phantomile.
Trivia
- Although the game is said to be a prequel to Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, due to the fact that Huepow gave Klonoa fake memories, whether or not this game is a fake memory or if it actually happened is debatable.
- On April 7th 2022, the game recieved a Fan-made Translation Patch, allowing players to be able to play the game in English for the first time.
- While the game also had a standalone release, Klonoa: Moonlight Museum was also released in a bundle pack with a WonderSwan Mono, although the console it was packaged with was in fact a regular WonderSwan, unlike other such bundles that had a special edition console.
- Although the characters exclusive to Klonoa: Moonlight Museum are never seen in color in any games, their official colors can be seen on the back of the game's box or on the front of the WonderSwan Mono/Moonlight Museum bundle package.
- The Maze of Memories level in Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil might have been intended to be an homage to this game. Both are set within strange art galleries, this game's intro music is sampled in the music of the latter, and the Momett Doll found in the Maze of Memories is designed to resemble the unnamed girl.