Backlog Burning: Kingdom Hearts 2.8 HD – Final Chapter Prologue

No, you still don’t get to hang out with Goofy and Donald.

Kingdom Hearts 2.8 HD – Final Chapter Prologue 
Publisher: Square-Enix (2012, 2017)
Year Acquired: 2018 (Thanks, AJ!)

God help me, I’m so happy that my posts will have shorter titles after this.

At long last, I have finished the Kingdom Hearts series. Well, I’ve finished all of the HD collections for PS3/PS4, and that’ll have to do unless I magically acquire the DS games. I’m prepared for the long-awaited Kingdom Hearts 3, and I do intend to buy and review it around the time of release. But until then, let’s talk Final Chapter Prologues.

As absurd as that mountain of words actually is, it’s a fair description of the package that Square-Enix has delivered. The once-exclusive 3DS game Dream Drop Distance addresses plot points from every one of the other six games it follows. Didn’t follow the mythology in place in the other Kingdom Hearts games? Well, KH3D (I’m going with this to save keystrokes) isn’t here to hold your hands. You’d better understand what the Mark of Mastery exam is. You’d better know the full cast, not just Sora and company. You’d better understand the fate of Terra and Aqua, who were left to wander the darkness at the end of Birth by Sleep.

Once again, I’ve lost the non-Kingdom Hearts crowd, and I’m sure to piss off the fans. No matter, let’s proceed.

KH3D opens with Sora and Riku preparing to take the Mark of Mastery exam, which they must pass for Yen Sid to allow them the power to fight Xehanort. They are then sent into a dream state, and are separated as they proceed through a new collection of Disney -worlds before fighting a digital copy of Ansem. Yes, that’s a sentence I wrote.

 

The point of the narrative is to show how Sora and Riku are learning to work together after Riku’s stint as a Tim Burton Superman Lives cosplayer. They’re supporting each other’s efforts in each world while working in two different realities, experiencing different moments of each Disney story. If you’re currently thinking that this narrative would have worked much better if they were in the same worlds, learning skills that build upon cooperation, then you would be smarter than Tetsuya Nomura.

The real Zexion. Approximately 1/4 of the readers of this review get this joke.

However, the new wrinkle that KH3D brings to the table is built from the flesh of Lisa Frank Pokemon monsters called Dream Eaters. Dream Eaters are bred at will by the player from recipes and experimentation, and take the place of proper party members. They are raised using skill points on small trees, and can be boosted by playing with the monsters using the Dual Shock 4 touch pad to dangle toys, bat ballons, and play pinball. The inclusion of a Pokemon rip-off in KH3D, originally released on a Nintendo handheld, isn’t that surprising. The lure of a Pokemon-esque monster collector on the then-nascent 3DS hardware couldn’t have been avoidable to early adopters who were still waiting for a new Pokemon game in the early days of the console. I’m being cynical, and that’s okay; so was Square-Enix.

Otherwise, KH3D is another RPG-lite brawler utilizing a version of the gameplay mechanics introduced in Birth by Sleep. However, instead of the flexible and delightful skill crafting of BBS, KH3D requires players to breed a farm full of neon monsters so cute it’ll make you vomit a rainbow. Seriously, it’s hard not to crack a tiny smile when you make a patchwork tiger-thing roll over while trying to grind out bonus skill points by petting it with the touchpad while checking your twitter feed to see what John Scalzi is up to. Mind you, if you actually pay attention to what you’re doing with your thumb on the touch pad, you’ll probably feel a bit filthy because you’re basically jerking off a cartoon cat for experience points. And unlike the ability system of Birth by Sleep, you’ll rarely feel like the grind is worth the extra effort.

The high point of Kingdom Hearts altogether.

Mind you, it’s not the worst backbone for a Kingdom Hearts game, simply because it’s not Chain of Memories (yeah, I’m still beating that drum). It’s fair and solid enough to make for a decent game, but it’s nowhere near as rewarding. High level play requires hours upon hours of end-game grind and begging for the right loot drops in order to get The Good Stuff prior to tackling the usual crowd of super bosses that peppers the worlds once the final dungeon is unlocked. It’s not really worth it, however, as the final bosses can be faced after a simple, straight forward run through the game. Also, as a positive, the final bosses are actually a decent challenge despite the usual teleportation bollocks that defines the typical Kingdom Hearts boss.

Dream Drop Distance actually brings something else new to the table to give players a fresh edge against teleport spamming baddies with Flowmotion, or as I will eternally consider it, Tony Hawk mode. Flowmotion takes numerous forms depending on the world, but it ultimately opens up new combo options, movement tricks, and makes the game a little more fun to navigate. The new worlds of KH3D are far more open than that of it’s predecessors, giving room for Sora and Riku to grind and spin and fly freely at their leisure.

As far as new worlds are concerned…well…let’s keep this simple.

Cartoon Dark France  – The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Meh
Dark Tron – Tron: Legacy – Alright
In-N-Outta Monstro – Pinnochio – Meh
Awesome Cartoon France – The Three Musketeers – Awesome
Musical Acid Trip – Fantasia – Truly Mesmerizing
Kingdom Hearts 2 Ending Again – Kingdom Hearts 2  – Man, we’re recycling these assets…

Yeah, this game looks shorter than the previous games, and I wouldn’t have a problem with you suspecting that. But remember, the maps are actually big enough to give the feeling that the game is dense enough that it doesn’t feel like a breeze. Pair this with the ongoing timer that forces players to swap between the two ongoing narratives, and you’ve got a game that actually fills out its run time naturally, despite the mechanic being extremely unnecessary. It would still have been a better game if Sora and Riku were working together.

Yeah, you fight Fantasia-Satan again. And it’s a highlight!

KH3D makes up the bulk of the Final Chapter Prologue, detailing the last story before we finally get Kingdom Hearts 3. As for whether or not I can recommend it on its own…well…

No. I can’t.

Someone just threw their coffee cup on the floor and scared the hell out of their dog with their fan rage, and I’m sorry to your pup. This game baffled me when I first played it, having purchased it so I could have a full-on RPG experience on my 3DS in a rough first year. I would go on to trade it in for Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked, which had a plot that was accessible for anyone who could read rather than anyone who had read all of the necessary lectures and consulted with the professor about whether or not they were actually ready for Yen Sid’s exam. I could probably have handled the actual game part, but I wasn’t engaged. I knew Sora, but I didn’t know what I was trying to do in Traverse Town, much less Dark Cartoon France when I went to the second world. It’s impenetrable from the outset, confusing many of the people who I’ve spoken to about it. I get the point, but the execution is needlessly obtuse.

But most Kingdom Hearts fans weren’t buying this set for KH3D. They bought this set for the short taste of Kingdom Hearts 3, entitled…

Oh sweet Jesus.

Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep – A Fragmentary Passage

Taking place after Birth by Sleep, and before Kingdom Hearts Kingdom Hearts…Title Absurd is essentially a demo for KH3 in the Unreal Engine, depicting BBS veteran Aqua’s attempt to find Terra and escape from the darkness. There’s little to say about this sample. The gameplay is the typical brawler-with-magic that everyone has come to expect, but it’s smooth as butter. The level design has reached a new level of verticality and diversity that, for the first time in the series, depicts growth in the game design. After playing this, I am looking forward to playing the new Kingdom Hearts more than I ever could have before. Also, the writing is a bit better (while still handling the themes and jargon expected from Kingdom Hearts), and Aqua’s voice actor actually felt invested in what was happening to her and her friends. I will say that some of the puzzle bits are a bit naff, but it’s not a deal breaker by any means.

 

Kingdom Hearts gets to feel new again in 0.2.

Closing the set is Kingdom Hearts X: Back Cover, an hour long cut scene based on a mobile phone game. In this game, a bunch of masked weirdos are told a prophecy and die fulfilling said prophecy out of sheer ignorance. Unlike the previous cutscene movies from the other two HD collections, KHX:BC goes from bloated and occasionally enlightening to completely inconsequential. Add the fact that you don’t even get trophies for watching them (a fine bonus for watching three idiots eat ice cream for two hours in 358/2 Days), and I can honestly say that you can just leave that button unclicked on the home menu.

Good luck getting attached to faceless characters.

Kingdom Hearts 2.8 HD: Final Chapter Prologue is the Ground Zeroes of the Kingdom Hearts series. Long time fans bought this set to see what the next entry in the series feels like, and little else. However, unlike Konami’s greedy cash grab, Square-Enix delivers a full game along with their giant teaser. But that game isn’t inviting new players to the world of Kingdom Hearts. It puts up a colossal barrier with the words Fans Only inscribed in forty meter letters. Those same fans should have cause for concern regarding Kingdom Hearts 3.

The first two games in the Kingdom Hearts saga came out with little complication for new players. They can be enjoyed by anyone jumping in with little to no explanation. This isn’t the case for anyone now, because the series has established enough of an internal mythology that if the next pillar entry to the series calls on as many of these concepts, characters, and overall plot beats, anyone who picks up the game having only played the two numbered entries will be shut out from fully understanding what is going on.

“Lea is a boy’s name if I pronounce it wrong.”

Players killed Axel at the end of Kingdom Hearts 2. Seeing him alive, working with the heroes, and calling himself Lea will no doubt make no sense to anyone but those who have indulged in every other title in the series.

But I guess we will cross that bridge when we get to it.

Backlog Burning: Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HD ReMix

Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HD ReMix
Publisher: Square-Enix (2014, 2010, 2005)
Year Purchased: 2017
PS3 version used for review.

Oh yeah, we’re gonna do this whole thing!

First and foremost, I want to put a disclaimer at the head of this article: I don’t hate Kingdom Hearts. I really don’t. In fact, I quite liked the first game in the series. The match was truly made in financial heaven; two entertainment behemoths coming together to milk the trinity of nostalgia, fan service, and accessibility to create a Final Fantasy game about Disney characters made for a fun game that could easily be enjoyed by anyone with two functioning thumbs and a penchant for melodramatic cartoon characters. The gameplay was simple as an RPG could get, the narrative simple enough to follow (Maleficent steals the pure hearts of Disney princesses to open a realm of untold knowledge and power), and is wrapped in enough Disney and Final Fantasy fan service to make your average Baldur’s Gate fan vomit.

And with millions of copies sold, the newly minted Square Enix did what any company would do with a hit: make a sequel. What followed Kingdom Hearts was undoubtedly one of the worst games I have ever finished in my life, Chain of Memories, which served as a sampler of the narrative insanity that was soon to follow.

Yes, I know that this is from 358/2 Days. Yes, I do hate myself for knowing that.

Kingdom Hearts, clearly, wasn’t intended to have sequels. The opening hours of Kingdom Hearts 2 are a clear indicator of this fact.

Note, from this point on, I will not be discussing much of what makes these games different in terms of how they are played. The reality is that Kingdom Hearts is a series of brawlers operating in the context of an RPG. There is little RPG gameplay to be found in this series, and it’s not mechanically sound enough to encourage much in the way of high-level play. The ability crafting system in Birth By Sleep is of merit, however, for giving some level of depth to the systems that are in place, but I still mostly hammered the X button while loading two Curaga’s into my loadout to keep the three protagonists of that game afloat. Oh, and Donald Duck still doesn’t give a damn about your screaming low health indicator.

Mulan was a pretty cool movie…God help us if they do a live action remake.

Now. Kingdom Hearts 2. 

The first hours of the long awaited sequel finds the player in the shoes of newcomer Roxas, who is Sora’s Nobody, while our heroes from the first game are in a state of hibernation to have their memories restored after suffering from post traumatic stress disorder after having to endure Castle Oblivion and poorly designed card game mechanics in Chain of Memories. I am aware that I’ve lost half of my readers as of this last sentence, a combined group of angry Kingdom Hearts fans and people who think that this story stupid at the mention of a Nobody.

And one of these groups is dead-on right, because the concept of a Nobody is a complication that a story about touring the Disney archives doesn’t need. Especially since the narrative of Kingdom Hearts 2 expects me to shed a tear when the blonde haired git gets the axe after five hours of minigames and walking around a bland starter town fighting the same small group of monsters while hanging out with uninteresting characters. When the most interesting thing that happens in the start of your JRPG is a fan favorite from Final Fantasy IX showing up, you’re not doing a good job getting me into your new schtick, Nomura.

“I’m going to design a terrible Batman figure someday!”

Eventually, the plot actually wakes up and puts the party most people actually give a damn about back in the spotlight, and it’s off to a series of new worlds, fighting a collection of Nobodies (or as you should call them, silver heartless), and heartless (saying Black Heartless sounds bloody racist doesn’t it?) and Organization XIII members. Our cartoon trio whittles the cloaked mustache twirlers down in a series of increasingly gimmicky boss fights before making their way to The World That Never Was, a frustratingly named oxymoron of a place where the finale takes place.

If this sounds like a skinny plot for a thirty-five hour role playing game, it’s because it is. It’s one of the thinnest excuses to go adventuring beyond “the barkeep says that a man in town is having trouble with rats in his basement” that I think I’ve ever heard before, and honestly, I’d be up for pest control if I didn’t know the truth about Kingdom Hearts 2.

And if you’re still reading this, you’re either getting ready to blast me in the comments or you’re just having a good time seeing someone criticize this game.

The best part of the entire bloody series.

Kingdom Hearts 2 is shallow enough that the better parts, the real attractions, shine through.

I can honestly not recall a single moment in the second act of the game where the plot makes an impact other than the, admittedly, exciting battle in Hollow Bastion. I do recall replaying bits and pieces of 1930s Disney shorts, sequences from The Lion King and Mulan. I’m not the kind of person who really reminisces of these movies with excitement, but playing Kingdom Hearts is honestly not the worst reminder that Disney used to make excellent movies. Sure, the Pirates of the Caribbean inspired section is pretty awful, but the Tron bit is a blast. I mean, think about the weird layers that having Tron in here implies, given that it’s a movie about a guy in the real world getting sucked into a video game that this video game takes you into. It’s stupid, and I kind of love it.

So, yeah, Kingdom Hearts 2 is a really fun game, and I had a great time playing it, even though the boss fight gimmicks were really irritating. It’s not a bad game, and if you can swallow the mythology that it’s trying to spin, you will probably have a good time. Unless you hate Disney movies and silly Japanese melodrama. But if you don’t dig either of those things, you weren’t going to buy this game anyway, and I’m not sure what you’re looking for here.

I challenge you to find a sillier collection of weapons.

However, Kingdom Hearts 2, much like Chain of Memories before it, is guilty of complicating the simple narrative that started in Kingdom Hearts. That game did a couple of loopy things about a deus ex machina villain possessing a classic Disney antagonist for some symbolic heart theft, but it wasn’t quite as indecipherable as the concept of a Nobody to a newcomer to this series. Mind you, I followed what the game was trying to tell me (when a heart is separated from the body, a nobody is formed, and is a separate entity from the normal human that it spawned from oh sweet Jesus why did I write this out). However, this entire addition to what passes for the Kingdom Hearts mythology has lead to not just a needlessly convoluted pair of sequels (one of which is just terrible if I haven’t made it clear to you and your cat and Square-Enix already). The blood that this game spills in the form of a dead red herring character was later reshaped into the terribly named Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, a work of pure fan service made to make fans of Roxas feel better that they’d been duped into caring about a character that I was ready to have off screen so I could get back with my much older and fun anthropomorphic Disney pals, Donald and Goofy. As best as I can tell from watching the cut scenes included on 1.5HD, 358/ 2 Days is one of the most unnecessary games ever added to a snakes nest of dangling narratives for anyone but the most stalwart of ice cream eating spectators in the world, most of whom I’m sure are probably Kingdom Hearts fans after suffering that moaning Z-list anime for as long as it probably ran for. I’m still not sure what I was supposed to get out of this half-step prequel that took place alongside The Worst Kingdom Hearts Game, but I do know I got some trophies for it. So I guess there’s that.

No doubt you’ve noticed that I got off track trying to describe the mess that series director Tetsuya Nomura made trying to get this story off the ground. He and I share the distinction that neither of us can sum up the mythology of Kingdom Hearts without rambling like crazy people. The difference between us is that I’m sleepily writing about the series to get all of the noise out of my head regarding the plot before going back to working on Dream Drop Distance, while he actually conceived of this train wreck, one game at a time, while ignoring the long anticipated third entry in the part of the series that people actually give a crap about.

But before we get to KH3D…eugh…that joke…Birth by Sleep.

Birth by Sleep is the thirty-five hour answer to the question “what was the deal with the cool keyblade graveyard at the end of Kingdom Hearts 2?”, taking place years before Sora ever picked up that steel key-shaped mallet in a weird shadow realm where he could safely stand on stained glass that accurately depicts his absurdly large shoes. Taking up the role of three characters, Earth, Wind and Fire…I mean Terra, Aqua, and Ventus…players explore the same plot from three points of view across three of the shortest JRPG campaigns to ever be conceived, exploring the same worlds and stories from those three perspectives, and finally fighting one more repetitive teleportation spamming boss in an epilogue that probably should have just been included in Aqua’s campaign. And the game should have also just been longer and about her because Terra and Ventus are quite ignorant, and I’m about to tell you why.

Terra faces Ansem.

To save myself some typing, I’m just going to sum the plot up as such; Birth by Sleep is a pre-Disney buyout fan-remake of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, featuring Terra in the role of Anakin Skywalker, Aqua as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Eraqus as Yoda/Mace Windu (depending on the scene), Xehanort as Emperor Palpatine, and Ventus as…er…Padme, I guess. Now that we’re all caught up on exactly what happens in Birth By Sleep, or after some of you have gone to watch Revenge of the Sith instead of listening to me ramble about Kingdom Hearts of all bloody things, let’s look at the sole reason why this game doesn’t work as well as it could have.

First off, numerous key scenes are repeated in each campaign. Second, the events depicted on each world are the same for each character, just with a slight difference for the sake of each characters personality. This means that Aqua is a heroic character, Terra is getting duped by every villain, and Ventus just kind of stands around and thanks Christ that Cold Mountain has saved his acting career. Doing all three of these campaigns back to back is simultaneously piss-easy thanks to the incredibly useful EXP Walker skill that turns level progression into a joke, and miserably frustrating because I just did that entire thing this morning!

The only adult in this game.

Despite it’s flaws, however, I actually liked Birth by Sleep more than Kingdom Hearts 2. Aside from yet another Heartless stand in (they’re Unversed this time), the tiny worlds made for a nice antidote to the winding repetition of Xenosaga III (whose time is coming soon on this page), and even though I ran over the same ground way too much, it was never long winded enough to really drain me of my patience. It’s fun. It’s probably more fun on the PSP where it originated, capable of being carried around in my pocket to allow me to escape from regular adult problems no matter I could have been standing. If anything, this is the best game of all of the sequels. The plot stands on its own without need of support from the mess made by the other five sequels that existed when it came out. Maybe I just like Revenge of the Sith too much. I don’t have any absolute proof to support my claims here. Because only sith deal in absolutes,  haha obvious Star Wars joke.

If you haven’t noticed by now, you’ll have seen that I’ve given rough recommendations for both of these games. That’s right. Kingdom Hearts is pretty fun. It’s pretty stupid most of the time, so don’t get too excited. The journey underneath all of the impenetrable jargon is about a boy, his talking dog, and the worst wizard in all of fiction going on a trip to several dioramas of better stories to fight alongside the heroes of those tales in a wash of chaotic fights that are over once you’ve spilled all of the jelly beans out of the bad guys guts and collected them to spend them at a moogle’s nearby shop. That’s not a bad setup for a video game. In fact, it’s one that I find appealing enough to have played through four of these bloody games from top to bottom, and continue on through a fifth one so I can be caught up in the screaming insanity that is the plot in order to play that supposed unicorn that is going to leap out of my PS4 later this year.

I’m the only hateful jerk on the internet who detests the idea of Pixar worlds.

I can’t explain to you why I think knowing the lore will matter at all. After all, I have watched all of the cut scene movies from the collections and finished those games, and I still have no idea why in the hell Sora and Riku are suffering from narcolepsy in Dream Drop Distance.

I would like to know who is naming these games, and why they felt the need to drink a bottle of drain cleaner before visiting the marketing department with their final decisions.

Oh, and don’t watch the RE:Coded videos. Just turn your TV off and collect your trophies. Read a book or something. Motor Girl by Terry Moore was really good.  Give that a spin instead.