The series of Kingdom Hearts is one of those with which gamers have grown up, going on since 2002, and which still does not find a clear conclusion. Waiting for Kingdom Hearts III, Square Enix announced Kingdom Hearts 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, which contains an HD remake of the chapter Dream Drop Distance (originally released on 3DS), the story of X (who) is an unreleased 0.2 A Fragmentary Passage starring Aqua. On the occasion of Milan Games Week, we got our hands on one of the stations present at the Koch Media booth (which we thank), in order to rehearse some sequences of 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue.
The fall of the dream
Unfortunately, unlike what has been seen in other fairs, at Games Week there was not even a taste of 0.2 Fragmentary Passage, the real novelty of Final Chapter Prologue, but only three small sections of Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance, HD remastering of the title on Nintendo 3DS. Here Sora and Riku, at the end of Kingdom Hearts Coded, embark on their journey to become Keyblade Masters in some "sleeping" worlds (which have never been freed from the darkness that pervades them and therefore remain in a sort of limbo) by order of Yen Sid, and to test if they are finally ready for the final showdown with Xehanort. During the journey, the two will clash with old acquaintances from the saga and you will have a first taste of the definitive battle that should come in Kingdom Hearts III.
The section we tested at the fair featured Sora in Traverse Town (La Città di Mezzo) during the first hours of the game. Here our protagonist meets Rhyme (character from The World Ends With You, another Square Enix title) who has lost his partner, and the two will have to try to find him in the city. The game portion was really short (maximum 10 minutes including the fight against a boss), but it gave us great information on the changes that Square Enix has adopted in a title created to take advantage of particular mechanics that used a touch screen.
First of all, the Reality Shift: this, in the original version on 3DS, allowed to use the lower screen to interact with some objects in the environments during the fight. In the Playstation 4 version, however, this work is carried out by the levers; these allow you to move, for example, barrels or stunned enemies to perform highly spectacular moves capable of inflicting great damage on opponents. The combat system, on the other hand, is unchanged, which mixes action elements with those from classic RPGs: our character will be equipped with a series of skills to be selected with the d-pad via a convenient menu on the left and to be used with the triangle button, while the most common attack with the keyblade can be carried out using the X key. Unfortunately, given the nature of the demo, we could not test how the Drop system, a real novelty of Dream Drop Distance in its original version, matched on Playstation 4. We refer you to our review for more details on the Drop and on all the elements of the title, originally released in 2012.
Kingdom Hearts 3D in 3D
One of the elements that made us curious during our test concerned the technical sector of the title, especially after the praise of the previous remastering, and we were certainly not disappointed. Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance earns, on Playstation 4, a really impressive graphic cleanliness, an improvement to the graphic aspect of a title that, already at the time, was also nice to see on Nintendo 3DS. Unfortunately, however, we were unable to test the section that should have impressed the most from this side: 0.2 Fragmentary Passage. We will not fail, in the review phase, to deepen the graphics engine that will be the basis of Kingdom Hearts III, and that has made this 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue an exclusive Playstation 4.
Comment Kingdom Hearts 3D, contained in 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, is one of those chapters that not many people have played (despite being fundamental to the plot), due to the fragmentation of the various "spin-offs-and-spin-offs-not. -I'm". Square Enix has done a great job with the remastering as far as the graphics side is concerned, while, instead, we await the full version to give our opinion on how the controls have changed compared to the counterpart on Nintendo 3DS. We are sorry, however, that we have not tried 0.2 Fragmentary Passage, certainly one of the reasons why to wait for this Collection in the almost infinite wait for Kingdom Hearts III. Pros and cons ✓ High-level remaster
✓ One of the best Kingdom Hearts arrives on Playstation x Some doubts about the adaptation of the commands
