kingdom herats 0.2 birth by sleep ia fragmentary passage is the worst name for a video game since kingdom hearts thre hunndred and sixty ficve over two days. as of the time of this writing, it is onkly playable as part of the kigndom herats HD tweo point eight final chapter prolog. it’s really fucking hard to defend this series when you can’t even finish naming the games before people stop giving a shit
kingdom he- this fucking game is a demo for kigndom ehrats 3 basically, except that it’s not a demo because A) i paid thirty dollars for it and 2) none of the content in it will appear in kh33. if you paid for metal grear solid gorudn zertoes you’re already intimately familiar with the exact feeling you get when you complete the story and realize that you bought a game that’s only two hours long
as usual the screenshots are taken directly from the official website so you can blame the shitty jpeg compression on the frozen corpse of walt disney himself. apparently he was so proud of these screens he signed his name on the bottom right like it’s his new fresco or something
the plot of khbbs0.2afp follows aqua, a character who only appeared in a PSP game from 2010. aqua is a popular character because she is the only character in the entire series who is not a moron or completely useless. this review will contain spoilers for that game, but it had a pretty loose plot anyway so i wouldn’t care too much about that
following the events of kingdom hearrs birty by sleep finnal mix aqua is dead and in hell. this game picks up an eternity later as she wanders the vast empty hellscape as the last drops of hope in her heart evaporate like a bottle of dasani on the surface of the sun
luckily interesting shit starts happening so that you can play a video game. basically she finds a bunch of areas from old disney movies that have also fallen straight to hell and she fucks around in them for a while and then other stuff happens. the plot is kind of interesting because it’s extremely focused on the one character and her emotional state, but i have low standards so take that with a grain of salt. i will say though, it was weird to occasionally replace the voice actress with a soulless homunculus who has never heard of “emoting.” not my favorite directorial choice
the game plays like a halfway point between aqua’s homegame birt by sleep and the best game in the series kigndom haerts 2. for the most part you mash X to do various weapon combos and occasionally throw in magic when you’re really pissed off and you want everything to die as fast as possible. one cool addition was situation commands which activate when you fill a meter in combat. depending on what moves you used to fill the meter, you get a different special ability. spells trigger a fuckhuge super duper spell, physical attacks trigger a transformation, attacking while in a transformation gives you a special finishing move.
for some reason they didn’t take a screenshot of this even though it’s the most visually impactful thing in the entire game so i had to take a screen from a youtube video instead. thanks walt.
these are all really fun to use and triggering one during a boss fight is extremely gratifying. the mega spell attacks are especially great because they all feel like dropping a nuclear bomb directly on the haters. if you ever played noted embarrassing disaster finial fnatasy 15 you’ll remember the magic spells in that basically feeling like a one-button apocalypse level extinction event. the full power spells in this game are like that except that they also have gameplay depth so they don’t feel hollow and boring to use. if you set shit up really well you can get access to multiple situation commands at once and dump a giant fireball and lightning storm simultaneously before activating a transformation. long story short they’re really cool and interesting and you’ll naturally try to use them as much as possible as you play the game
there’s like four areas and four main bosses, but there’s a good amount of content in each area and you fight some of the bosses multiple times. they try to vary things up so that each level plays a bit differently. the cinderella level is platforming focused, the snow white level has some cute puzzles based around mirrors. it’s nothing mind-blowing but it’s nice to have occasional breaks from the combat.
when you’re done the game, so like midway through the afternoon on the day you buy it, you can go back to complete challenge missions. some are just braindead things like level up a lot, use fire attacks, use a finisher, but some are a lot more involved, having you beat bosses without getting hit or go on a game-long sidequest to unlock the secret boss. that boss is a nightmare by the way and i cannot even conceive of beating it on anything above normal mode. it’s a fair challenge, every attack has a counter and it’s fun to learn what works and what doesn’t, but if you aren’t completely perfect the entire time you get thoroughly eviscerated. i think i spent a combined two hours trying to beat it and i barely scraped out a win
near the end the actual plot starts to present itself. it turns out that the whole game took place during the last level of kingdom hearts 1, which is kind of cool but also pretty dumb? it’s like when a comic book goes on too long and they start rewriting past events like “yeah spider-man it turns out your parents were secret agents and now they’ve come back to life as cyborgs!” mickey fucking mouse shows up at the end because of course he does. he whips out his sword and him and aqua go on a violent rampage through hell, basically recreating the end of DOOM with a cartoon mouse. this part of the game is 😎😎radical😎😎 and culminates in the two teaming up to fight against a massive wave of monsters called the demon tide. the demon tide is insane and would be worth the price of admission alone, if the price of admission was like a third of what i paid for it. i won’t spoil it too much but i’ll include a link to its theme music because it kicks ass
as with every game in the series, yoko shimomura composes the music for this game, and she’s as brilliant as ever. most of it is slow and moody to accompany wandering through the lonely plains of inferno, but the battle tracks are exciting: menacing when they need to be, with a touch of cartoony charm so that you don’t forget you’re watching a cartoon mouse flip around shooting energy blasts out of his toy sword
speaking of mickey he’s an utter cunt in this game. without saying too much, the ending is bittersweet at best and pretty much entirely his fault for being a dumbass. playing other games in the series, you’d know that he’s doing pretty well for himself and aqua is not doing too shit hot. this game shows how that happens, and sets up for kingosdm hearst 34 where shonen protagonist boy will try to save the day. he makes a short cameo right at the end as he heads off directly to his next game, so if you want to know what he was up to half an hour before kh23 you’ll need to shill out the money for kigndom herats high defnitnon two poitn eight fninal chater poglrogue.
on the whole, i had a lot of fun with this game but i should not have paid so much for it. if you can get it for like ten dollars i’d say it’s absolutely worth it, but as it stands this game is only worthy of the Master Hank, Keyblade Wielder of Propane Town award. better luck next time.
