#I started noticing a subtle shift in my skin's texture. It felt smoother and more hydrated

[merilly-chan]

(Pictures taken from the E3 trailer on YouTube, KH13.com )

This review is spoiler-free, though I will put it under the cut anyway.

I won’t say much about the story but I found it to be adequate for what the game is meant to be - a prologue. I’ve seen criticism toward the end and that people expected to see more, I mean we all do since we’ve been starved since 2012, but what cannot be forgotten is that 0.2 was originally meant to be the prologue in KH3. And it was exactly that. An introduction, if you will. There were no groundbreaking revelations, but prologues rarely ever do that anyway. For good reason. The Realm of Darkness does not affect the Realm of Light in a way that Aqua’s story would suddenly make a huge difference before KH3. It expanded a little on her time there, made a few connections to the future and that’s about it. And after I’ve played 0.2, I feel increasingly glad that they removed it from KH3. Not only because the atmosphere is very different in the Realm of Darkness but because Nomura basically confirmed that we will not start with top tier magic when playing Sora. Quite frankly, it would give me quite the hard time to adjust to different gameplay after three hours of playing as Aqua. Style changes may not be present in Sora’s part, top tier magic will be missing at first and it would feel very strange to start with just the basics after three hours of tough bosses and the corresponding gameplay mechanics to make them easier. Not to mention that she’s controlled differently in comparison to Sora. Then the atmosphere. We all know without spoiling the game that 0.2 will not be so lighthearted, even with customization around. Aqua is alone in the Realm of Darkness and the ones who played the game/demo or have seen some of the trailers know that there’s more waiting for her. That’s bound to take a toll on her. It’s likely that Sora’s start in KH3 will be slower and a lot brighter, a completely different atmosphere compared to 0.2. Roxas’ part already had repercussions on the atmosphere at the beginning of Sora’s part, so 0.2 would make me impatient to see Aqua again.

The visuals are my personal worry and 0.2 somewhat managed to give me hope but also made me think that they’ve been trying too hard for too long when they altered the lighting. Something which became painfully obvious was how the models fluctuate a lot in quality. Especially in Yen Sid’s tower, but also elsewhere, the skin is way too red and orange, possibly due to high contrast, despite the light. The skin is shining brighter than my future at times. And once skin shines, it appears to be inflated like plastic dolls and it looks unnatural and hard. Skin does not reflect the light like glass or PVC does so it should become smoother. Which it will likely become since the quality changes drastically from one camera angle to another at times. It’s disturbing to see such a difference in color and softness of facial features within seconds. The lighting is sometimes too much, and sometimes not enough. Scenes which made the skin look smooth and more natural in the TGS trailer suddenly appeared way too overlighted. Shadows often add to the inconsistent appearance and were seemingly overdone at some points. So much that it made the skin appear blotchy and uneven. Since this was not the case before, they basically made it worse. Which is the cause for my worry because there’s a difference in trying to make things better because it looked bad before, and creating something worse in the next step and thinking it’s now more appealing than the middle. For comparison, the picture on the right is the TGS 2016 demo image, the left is from the E3 2016 trailer and the last from the actual game. To me, the TGS demo looked a bit better when it comes to the texture of the skin. It doesn’t shine too much and looks like she actually has pores and not a solid layer of hard PVC. Don’t get me wrong, they are on a good way and very often, the models look absolutely fine and beautiful. But skin tones change from orange to pale way too quickly from one second to the next without the light source having changed. And the faces shine so much that they look like a balloon about to burst. As I said, not always, but the inconsistencies are very apparent. It seems like the developers wanted to improve the models too much by adding too many lighting effects to the skin, which is just as bad as missing effects. All in all, especially the skin needs more balance in terms of lighting, texture and color. They can make it look worse than before by adding too many shadows and making skin reflect too much, which was the case for some of the Aqua angles in comparison to the TGS demo. The skin should still look soft and like skin after all. Also, the paler tone of her lips from the TGS looked better since she currently looks like she is wearing lipgloss/lipstick all of the time, which is somewhat unlikely.

Another thing is that Aqua seems to stick out like a sore thumb at times because the environment looks too realistic. This is mostly the case in areas which do not belong to any Disney world. It’s not terrible, but at the same time it seems a little… off.

Additionally, I feel like the whole interface, including text boxes, are too small. My friend and I really had to strain our eyes to read some of the tutorial boxes and the subtitles. The command box could also be increased in size a little as well as items found and objectives appearing. The health bar, including focus and MP, could also be larger to make it more apparent when your partner is in trouble. Once again, it’s not utterly terrible, but if you have to strain to look at the menu, it’s not exactly convenient. DDDHD did not have that problem and it feels like they made everything smaller to have more screen available for the rest.

Other than that, the environments in 0.2 were gorgeous. The feeling of height was achieved amazingly well in some parts and I liked the diverse maps, despite its small size in volume. The game sometimes suffers from input lags and control issues which I could not remove by calibrating the controller. That was a bit frustrating at times, but not to a point where I would quit the game. However, it sometimes ended in magic being used again despite leaving the shortcut menu already. Which can lead to untimely deaths if you cannot heal because of that. I’d like it better if Aqua wouldn’t always tell me that there’s nothing of relevance anymore. I like exploring…

Another feature I absolutely loved were the objectives. It’s something I would like to have in KH3 as well. Before, it was mainly battling through Heartless, reaching the end of the room, etc. Now we actually have to complete certain objectives like gathering gears, solving simple puzzles, etc. to advance. It’s pushing players to explore a bit while not being exceptionally hard. I truly love that since it gives the game a bit more depth than just running from one area to the next.

The gameplay was solid in my opinion and a good hybrid between KH2 and BBS. The controls are mainly the same in comparison to other KH games, which made getting into it quite a lot easier. People who have played BBS will see a few crossovers, with 0.2’s Command Styles (though they are now reaction commands with sufficient time to activate them), Shot Locks and Double Jump being present. However, the pacing in 0.2 as well as gameplay mechanics being thrown at you makes it seem like it wa specifically intended for those who are familiar with the gameplay already. The tutorial can help becoming accustomed to it, but those who have played a Kingdom Hearts game already will be at a huge advantage. (Which is not really surprising. 0.2 is not meant to be played as the first KH game since people would lack the entire plot. KH3 could still use some improvements, though but since this is more or less a demo, a lot of things can be overlooked. Something which was quite harsh was damage calculation, especially when some bosses stun you and basically kill you immediately afterward since you cannot recover and they don’t provide good blocking methods. (They break through the barrier and it’s hard to evade attacks.) Even in Standard and Beginner mode, a particular boss was rather harsh.

DDDHD felt like a pleasant remaster/remake to me. Everything looked sharper, more colorful and it lines in well with the other games now. The only thing they did not remove was the fish face issue, though that was not to be expected anyway since they did not do that for the other games either. The game also suffered a little from input lags which was noticable during flow motion when you tried to climb higher places. However, apart from it being a minor disturbance, the controls were fine. Something I did not like was what they did to some of the Reality Shifts. While most remained the same, quite a few became victim to Quick Time Events, which did not make me want to use them again since they were actually hard to pull off. That became painfully clear in The Grid and Symphony of Sorcery. I know it’s not easy because the 3DS has two screens with one of them being a touch screen, but QTEs are not exactly a good solution for a mechanic meant to be used in battle.

Other than that DDDHD felt like a genuine remaster which made the game look on par with the rest of the preceeding titles. Graphics are smooth, the controls are overall satisfying and the changes were otherwise subtle. Apart from a few new things like new Dream Eaters, there wasn’t anything groundbreakingly new, which was fine by me since adding too many additional cutscenes could make things more confusing rather than understandable. I did not like the mash-up of two screens int he opening however. With Mickey blocking a part of the screen and credits blocking quite a bit, it felt cluttered. Generally, I did not like the excessive amount of credits since the openings are so beautiful and having large blocks of names appearing doesn’t create a fitting atmosphere.

KHXBC was not particularly revealing. We got two to three revelations which are relevant to the overall story, but otherwise there is not a whole lot to be discovered if you play X or Unchained X. I feel like the movie was meant to give the Foretellers and the Master of Masters a personality since it is a side of X we haven’t seen before. The Foretellers aren’t the focus of the mobile game so it’s actually good to get more insight in that regard, especially if they become relevant. (I still think BC was meant to introduce that box so people don’t question where that suddenly came from in KH3.) However, we cannot forget that the movie is not meant to replace the mobile game. SE still wants to make money from that, so revealing the entire story would jeopardize that. Why play a time intensive game if you can watch a movie with the KH3 engine? I love the Master of Master’s voice, even a little better than the Japanese one, but it’s kind of sad that the nicknames for the Foretellers could not be carried over. Which is understandable since I couldn’t think of nicknames which would seem natural in their case. The suffixes for Aced and Ira are inherent to the Japanese language and more or less used for nicknames and familiar to those speaking Japanese. But English speaking people may not get the cute reference, unless they read a lot of manga, watch anime or are otherwise related to the Japanese language/culture. English lacks that and the names are not easy to develop nicknames for.

My final verdict is that the collection is definitely worth buying. A lot of fans didn’t get to play 3D and it is a good game to bridge the gap between KH2 and 3. It has story relevant content and introduces flow motion, which will also be present in KH3. 0.2 forms a connection to Kingdom Hearts 3 while also explaining what happened to Aqua in the Realm of Darkness. However, it also shows that the models still need some work to appear consistent in KH3 and have the right amount of balance in terms of lighting, shadows and skin tone, including skin textures so it can appear soft like skin. Unreal Engine 4 excels in backgrounds and map design, but it should not become too realistic to prevent characters from not blending in with the world. The gameplay is smooth though and I’d be glad if we can expect a more extensive version of that in KH3. 0.2 was a demo of sorts so a lot can be forgiven for such a small entry, but KH3 should definitely fix certain issues, especially regarding models and frame drops. I got the feeling that it was better than the E3 content and it is going in the right direction, but isn’t quite there yet, which is understandable if we look at the problems they had with the engine so far. I am pretty confident that they will improve a lot when it comes to KH3, though I hope they are not overdoing it like in 0.2 at times and find the right balance. “Verschlimmbessern” is a good German expression for that when they try to improve something and make it worse than before instead.

#KH #Kingdom Hearts #2.8 #2.8 Spoilers #Review #KH 2.8 FCP