Ever since the Game Boy Advance came out I have been dying for a good platformer. I didn’t pick up Super Mario Advance because I’d already played Super Mario Bros 2 and if I wanted to play it badly enough I could just plug Super Mario All Stars into my SNES.

It’s rather odd how I came to love Klonoa. I was in Target, looking for GameCube pre-order info (mid October according to the sales rep) and while waiting for the electronics manager to come, I wandered over to their PS2 demo unit which was running the Klonoa 2 demo. I picked it up and played, having heard excellent things about the game. And frankly, I was floored. The PS2 demo was great and I immediately decided that I would have to get the GBA Klonoa game.

As of right now, I’ve beaten the entire first world of the game (there are 5 that I know of). For the most part, it was pretty easy. I’m hoping it gets harder later on. The graphics are average, a bit better than SNES graphics. For the boss fights, the entire battle field scales depending on how close you are to the boss (kind of like in Super Smash Bros). The sound is so-so. The music is nice and up beat and Klonoa makes little grunts. There could be much better use of voice sampling though. Control is tight and responsive. The D-pad moves Klonoa, A jumps, and B or R shoots.

If you’ve never played a Klonoa game before, here’s how they work. The goal is to get to the end of the level, like any platformer. The basic play mechanics work like this. You can shoot a little short range beam to grab an enemy. If you’re holding an enemy, you can jump higher. And if you press jump while in the air and holding any enemy, Klonoa gets a boost and jumps even higher. Basically, the idea is to use the enemies to get to the end of the level. In Empire of Dreams (I’m not sure about Klonoa 1 and 2) you have to collect 3 stars strewn about the level to open the exit door.

I’m quite impressed with this title so far. The simple play mechanics make it quite addicting. I’m hoping it gets harder, because the first world was a piece of cake. As of right now, I’d say Klonoa: Empire of Dreams, while easy, is one of the most solid platformers I’ve ever played.