YMMV / Klonoa: Door to Phantomile

• Alternative Character Interpretation: During Joka's death, he calls Ghadius's name. Is he expressing his sorrow, believing that he has failed Ghadius once more? Is he expressing anger at Ghadius for not saving him? Does he believe that Ghadius will save him, and is begging for his mercy?
• Anti-Climax Boss: Baladium is an important boss fight for the story as it takes place right after Klonoa's Grandpa's house gets blown up. However, if you're good enough, you can defeat Baladium in about 30 seconds due to his low health and the ability to destroy several of his weakpoints at the same time. Interestingly, a beta version of the game has a fully implemented second phase of the fight, but it was scrapped in the final release for unknown reasons.
• Awesome Moments: While the English dub of the Wii remake has gotten a lot of flak, Dave Mallow's performance as Joka deserves at least a little appreciation. He gives Joka a youthful, high-pitched voice, and consistently keeps an energetic tone throughout most of the game. Dave Mallow was 60 when the game was released, yet he sounds half that age at most. He also replicates the same sinister mood shift as the original during Joka's boss battle.
• Best Boss Ever: When he's not an Anti-Climax Boss, Baladium is one of the more memorable fights from the first game due to its importance to the story, its cool design, and the beautiful music.
• Broken Base: The Wii remake of Door to Phantomile. On one hand, it brought Door to Phantomile to a broader audience, completely remade all of the game's visuals in full 3D graphics, without touching the beloved soundtrack or level design one bit, and introduced several quality of life improvements, such as tighter controls. On the other hand, Klonoa can take way more damage than the game was balanced for, he was redesigned to be hipper and more modern with no real success or positivity towards it, and the entire script was rewritten and removes most of Klonoa's agency as a character in favor of Huepow taking the speaking lead more, with English dubbing and the Phantomile dub being hotly contested for whether it compared to the original well enough. The fan debates over how the versions compare and whether or not the Wii version lives up to the original still go on to this day.
• Complete Monster: Ghadius is the dark spirit of Nightmares and Darkness with a hatred towards the residents of Phantomile. Tired of living in the shadow, Ghadius led an attack on the light spirit, only to be defeated and imprisoned. Upon escaping from his prison, Ghadius kidnaps the diva, Lephise, to prevent her from singing the Song of Rebirth in order to have the world descend into Darkness and Nightmares. Ghadius would then have King Seadoph and Pamela brainwashed into becoming his minions, and has Seadoph reverse the water flow from Jugpot to kill off Forlock Forest and its inhabitants. Ghadius also sends his minion, Joka, to retrieve the Moon Pendant so he can gain access to the Moon Kingdom, Cress, killing Klonoa's grandfather in the process. Upon taking over Cress, Ghadius attempts to use Lephise and the Egg of Destruction to revive Nahatomb so he can have him destroy the world out of spite, uncaring that he and his own kind will be destroyed as well, all the while attempting to kill Klonoa to perfect Nahatomb's resurrection.
• Ending Fatigue: The final boss in Door to Phantomile has three forms, but each one gets a slo-mo destruction scene fooling you into thinking it's over (beating the second form even triggers a cutscene).
• Fake Difficulty: For as much easier as the remake was, it is noticeably a bit more loose and slippy on air movement, which can make it a little harder to precisely land where you want to. Which is bad in That One Level where precision jumps become essential. This is added onto with Phantasy Reverie Series making the Wind Bullet more precise and thus more difficult to use and time in tight moments, unless you set the game to Easy mode where the bullet is outright made larger and shoots farther.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: The Reveal that Huepow was the prince of the Moon Kingdom disguised as the Ring Spirit and he gave Klonoa false memories of their friendship in order to get him on his side. The former is disliked for their creepy looking true form being arguably one of the worst in the entire series and the latter for, despite being done with good intentions and Huepow clearly regretted it, being a needlessly cruel act that only served to make the Bittersweet Ending needlessly more bitter. Not helping (or helping) is all of Huepow's appearances since, many of which should have been impossible given the former, have ignored these details.
• Ham and Cheese: While most people find the English dub of the Wii game Narmy, it's generally agreed that JB Blanc and Dave Mallow had a lot of fun as Ghadius and Joka respectively. Ghadius does some dramatic speeches about how he sees the world as worthless, and tops them off with some truly magnificent Evil Laughs. Joka fully embraces his role as a Villainous Harlequin, keeping a silly and clownish, yet still menacing, tone of voice throughout the game.
• It Was His Sled: Most people who are familiar with the series know that Grandpa is killed by Joka in Door to Phantomile, considering how often that subject comes up when discussing Joka.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: A common complaint is that the remake made something already easy even easier. Not only can Klonoa take four extra hits before losing a life, but he can also summon a whirlwind which slows down every enemy on screen for no cost.
• Moral Event Horizon: Joka's cold-blooded murder of Klonoa's grandpa in Door to Phantomile is the moment it becomes clear that Joka is far more of a monster than his comical personality led you to believe.
• Polished Port: Phantasy Reverie Series makes several changes to the Wii remake of Door to Phantomile to bring it more on par with the original game, while keeping in what the remake improved, such as restoring the original dub and script, as well as using Klonoa's original design instead of his controverisal redesign, on top of having the option to use the original difficulty options. Beyond that, the visuals are also much cleaner and more colorful than the original. Special mention however, goes to the Switch version, which outside of some minor performance issues, is a very good port of the game that maintains most of these improvements, on top of being portable. If there's one downside, it's missing the exclusive content that was added to the Wii version. Still, a solid version of the game otherwise.
• Presumed Flop: The game is assumed to be an Acclaimed Flop by many due to its relative obscurity and poorly-documented sales figures. In reality, while sales figures are hard to come by, it did well enough to launch a franchise that spawned six other games over the following five years.
• Questionable Casting: While most of the voices in the English dub of the Wii remake work well enough, Eric Stitt is regarded by fans as being a poor choice for Klonoa, due to his performance sounding nothing like Klonoa's voice in the previous games, who is a boyish character that has a cute voice to match (with the same actor reprising for the Wii remake). The Wii remake's dub instead has Klonoa sound more like an impression of Sonic the Hedgehog in order to match the remake's more uplifted design.
• Special Effects Failure: A problem with both the remake and Phantasy Reverie Series, in that it's clear some animations and visuals were not quite totally polished through, especially in the cutscenes that reuse the animations from the Wii remake. The latter also has the issue that gameplay grunts are from the Wii remake, along with occasional cutscene lines that heavily contrast with the original PS1 version's old, scratchy sound quality. This is especially apparent in the game's ending sequence where its most signature moment is all remake but isn't even lined up with the lip flaps.
• That One Boss: Ghadius will be the source of many quick and cheap deaths if you aren't paying attention. The extra health you get in the Wii version does next to nothing to mitigate this.
• That One Level: The final level (6-2) in the first game is no cakewalk. One gimmick of the stage is jumping across several, very small platforms while a bunch of Moos chase after you, and if they touch you, you will be knocked off the platform to your doom. This section appears multiple times throughout the level, and it gets harder each time. The level ends with a boss battle against That One Boss, Ghadius.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The denizens of the Moon Kingdom Cress have this to an extent being far more human-like than any other characters while also having very large irises that give them something of a creepy lifeless glassy-eyed look. Huepow's true form is especially unsettling since his bright cyan bodysuit and proportions make him look somewhat like an oversized baby.

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