“Kingdom Hearts 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue” comes packaged with “Dream Drop Distance” “Birth by Sleep 0.2 A Fragmentary Passage” and “Unchained Black Cover” the last being a movie of the Unchained mobile game. I am writing this just for KH DDD though, as it is a much bigger game. With a lot more characters.
What is not a dream by day to him whose eyes are cast.
Goofy, Donald and Mickey: While featured, they take much more of a back seat role this time, mostly appearing in cut scenes through out, and only really near the end do they start showing up again. By now I think we can expect pretty good quality work when it comes to voice acting in this game. I don't really have much else to say about them, sad to say.
Moogle(s): These little guys are all that remains of the Final Fantasy characters that were once so prevalent in this game. In the past, Final Fantasy characters like Cloud or Squall were only really in Kingdom Hearts in order to help it sell more copies. Now that the game can stand on its own two feet, Square seems to want to keep the two separate. Personally liked the cameos of the characters and I hope to see a return in the future, but if that's not the path Square chooses to go, then I'm okay with that too. With the exception of Squall their stories in Kingdom Hearts 2 were steaming piles of horse shite. If Square is going to have more Final Fantasy characters in the next game please give them a cohesive story that isn't trying to prepare people for some stupid Final Fantasy movie (or re-make) for that matter.
In lieu of having pretty much exhausted all the “Final Fantasy VII” characters in “Kingdom Hearts II” this game decided to go with another game entirely. This time around Nomura chose “The World Ends With You” characters. They, as far as I can tall, are all voiced by their original voice actors from the game. It actually works with the concept of their game as the characters are dead and trying to fight their way out of limbo. All Nomura had to do was say that they were asleep instead of dead and it made perfect sense for them to be there. Depending on who you chose to play at first Neku is the first one you meet. Shiki, Rhyme and Beat, from the game also make an appearance. Joshua acts as a medium between the two worlds and is the only one able to see both Sora and Riku. ). I had never played the game before, so I forced myself to play it before I allowed myself to play this one. I use the term "forced" loosely, as I enjoyed the game, but got a little board with it near the end. Maybe I just wanted to get to playing Kingdom Hearts. I think it's an interesting concept though, and I wouldn't mind seeing other characters from Square Enix games make an appearance (STILL WAITING FOR SAMURAI MUSASHI SQUARE!!) Similarly to the Final Fantasy Characters, TWEWY folks are restricted to one world: Traverse Town.
Yen Sid: Being a retired Master Keyblade wielder, it's Yen Sid's job to give Sora and Riku, and all the other characters who turn up, the mark of mastery exam. He's also the one to send Riku back out there when Sora goes and gets himself captured like a dumb dumb.
Disney Characters: I think they all do a splendid job, though their stories are stripped down to the barest of bones. I'm not saying that's a bad thing but it's awkward when they use specific lines from the movies without the same visual context. This is most noticeable in the Hunchback of Notre Dam world.
How they creep through my fingers to the deep, while I weep- while I weep!
DreamEaters: There are two types of Dream eaters. The ones called "Nightmares" are the ones that you fight through out the game. Spirits or just DreamEaters, are what fight beside Sora and Riku throughout the game, all of which are brightly colored reskins of the enemies that you previously fought, with the exception of bosses that is. While on the subject of bosses I just want to go on record saying FUCK THEM ALL! Fighting them with Riku isn't so bad, but fighting them with Sora sucks ass. Okay so they aren't all bad if you've leveled up enough but most of them just suck. What's more, Sora ends up having to fight some of the more irksome bosses twice, just to piss you off more, and they aren't even the worst bosses. That title goes to the pelican boss that hides on floating rocks just out of reach and destroys you with lightening.
I wish I could say that the common enemies of the game were fun to fight, but alas, they suck as well. Every enemy has an attack that either stuns you, eats you, blocks you, or is just plain unavoidable. Sure there are a select few enemies that don't but they're usually in with the ones that do. Flow motion helps some, but in the end the fighting in this game is just not very fun to me.
Organization 13: They're back, and what's more, they have a plan to try to steal Sora and make him into one of their puppets. Riku and Mickey find out just in the nick of time save him, of course, but it gets pretty trippy toward the end. I also want to say that this is the last game in the series with Leonard Nemoy as Xehenort. His replacement will have some very big shoes to fill indeed.
Disney Villains: As stated above, the Disney villains are many, and all of them do a commendable job. I do have to wonder about Melificent and Pete. If i were her, I'd have burned his ass with green fire. Pete is a blundering idiot and I just don't really see them working together. Also, I'm not sure how Melificent got into Mickey's castle when in the second game Sora restored the Cornerstone of Light, which I thought was supposed to keep evil out of the castle, hence why Melificent could only appear there when it was full of dark thorns. Maybe I'm just looking too much into it.
With characters done, let's move on to worlds.
So this game takes place after the dreaded Coded game where Sora was data. Yen Sid has gathered the two boys so that they can become keyblade masters. To do so, however, they have to travel to various worlds and “wake them up” whatever that means.
I stand amid the roar of a surf-tormented shore
The first world Sora and Riku visit is
The next world you visit is La Cité des Cloches. Here Sora and Riku are confronted by Judge Claude Frollo, who thinks they're gypses and tries to kill them with Dreameaters. Phebus, Esmeralda and Quasi all help out the heroes. Actually, Riku ends up saving Phebus and has to fight the dream eater atop the clock tower which is really fun. Sora has to find Esmeralda and ends up leading Frollo straight to her, and has to fight that same DreamEater on the ground after Sora has clipped its wings. I prefer it in the air.
The Grid formerly known as Space Paranoid in Kingdom Hearts 2 is next. The whole level, obviously, is inspired by Tron Legacy. I have to say I love the level very much, but the story just didn't mesh well with what had already been established in Kingdom Hearts 2. Briefly: in KH2 Xehanort made a copy of Encom software and installed it into his own computer, thus creating the Space Paranoids world. Great. So in this game Jeff Bridges character shows up and talks about how he made this entire world blah blah blah, but here's the thing. How the fuck did he end up in Xehenorts computer? Unless the copies of the two software somehow join together, then I don't see how exactly they can be there. Nomura would probably explain it that "they were just in a data world it wasn't real" which is sort of a non answer but whatever. I enjoyed the world alot and thought it was really fun. Hoping for a Tron 3 one day.
Pranksters Paradise is Pinocchio's world. Well technically it's only one of many worlds in Pinocchio specifically the world where he turns into a Jack-a-mule (which in the movie they actually say Jack Ass and it still got away with a G rating). So, Sora comes here and helps Jiminy to find Pinocchio. The level is full of carnival rides and a roller coaster that's fun to just let Sora slide on. In fact, the whole level is really fun to just goof off in. At least on Sora's end. Riku gets to play around inside Monstro again (yet it's still called Pranksters Paradise with him, not sure why). It's not quit as gross this time as you don't have to play around in Monstro's bowels, but its still pretty nasty.
Land of the Musketeers comes after another romp in Traverse Town where we meet the
Symphony of Sorcery is based on the Fantasia movies and it is one of my favorite worlds. Part of that reason is that Sora and Riku don't speak in these worlds. Let me explain. In battle Sora and Riku say things like "Sorry" "This is it" "Take that" Which is all well and good until you realize that they say it after every finishing move. So by the time you get to this world you've heard them say it a hundred thousand times already. But in the symphony of sorcery world their words are replaced by musical scores. It's brilliant and I love this world so much and hope that it can somehow make another appearance in the series. That said, it's not without its faults. Aside from the extremely irksome enemies there are "musical puzzles" that the level requires you to do. That wouldn't be a bad thing if they weren't so easy to mess up. I had to do some of them six or seven times before I completed them, and I think the game only let me win because it was tired of me fucking them up.
The World that Never Was is the final world in the game. Here it is revealed that the organization have been with Sora since the beginning, and they were to some degree manipulating his journey. Throughout most of this world Sora is just driven by cut scene while Riku arrives to save him. At this point in the game we are also introduced to Time Travel within the Kingdom Hearts. Yeah, that's a thing now.
Is All that we See or Seem but a Dream Within A Dream?
I'm going to go ahead and say that the story is what drives me to play this game. It picks up the slack with all the horrible bosses and enemies. That said if you were to ask me what the story in this game was about I honestly couldn't tell you. Sora and Riku are taking a test to become Keyblade masters. All of the stories within the context of the world, even within the games own worlds, make zero sense to me. There just isn't enough information in any world to give you a cohesive story. But what the hell, I'll give it a try:
Sora and Riku start out in Destiny Island to start their mark of mastery exam. After fighting Ursula they are split apart and yet both end up in a version of Traverse town where TWEWY character Joshua explains to them that the world has been copied, and Sora and Riku are each in a copy of the world. This must be the case with all the other worlds too because trying to make a cohesive narrative from this point on is impossible. Riku meets Quasi and saves Phebus while Sora finds Esmeralda. Frollo takes Esmeralda and sets the city on fire. Quasi saves Esmeralda and Riku rides the flames of the burning city to fight off the DreamEater. Sora fights the DreamEater on the ground after the flames have died down, but Frollo falls off the tower and into the flames, which coincidentally he did with Riku as well. Oh, and Sora has a vision of Xemnas and Venitus who give him some cryptic message about something or other.
After that it's off to the grid where Sora and Riku both meet Flyn, Sam and Quorra. They both are capture by CLU but escape. Riku helps to free Quorra while Sora helps Tron remember who he is. Sora also sees Xemnas again and is given some more cryptic messages about sleeping and waking and stuff.
In Pranksters Paradise Both Riku and Sora have to go on a hunt for Pinocchio, only Riku does it inside whale. Sora gets to explore a carnival. I'm gonna be honest with you know. I have no idea what the fuck happens here. Not a clue. I suppose I could go read a synopsis or something but that won't help me understand what the hell is happening in this game.
After this it's back to Traverse Town where we are told that Time runs differently in each iteration of the world. I suppose that's foreshadowing for time travel. If not, then I've got nothing. Anyway, Sora has to re fight all the bosses he's had until now.
I want to pause here for a moment. I don't understand why Sora, it seems has to fight the harder bosses. The mole boss in the next level is difficult to be sure, and that's solely a Riku boss, but for the most part, Sora, it seems gets pitted against the most aggravating iterations of any of the bosses, not to mention the damn pelican. Why is that?
Anyway back to story. The musketeer world is next. Pete does some shit to mess up Mickey's shit but Riku intervenes and messes up Pete's shit so that Sora can give Pete shit. If that doesn't make sense then join the club. Admission is $5.
In the Symphony of Sorcery world Sora and Riku find and enchanted Mickey. Both are tasked with finding a Sound Idea in order to free him. The Sound Ideas come together to create a beautiful melody (Kingdom Hearts Title theme Dearly Beloved) and there is a beautiful cut scene where Riku shows how much he cares about Sora. After that, Sora has to fight the pelican which kind of undermines any joy the scene might have brought.
Finally, in the world that never was we see that the organization have been manipulating Sora so that they can use him as a
While all this is happening, Mickey, Donald and Goofy are in Yen Sid's Tower when their castle is attacked by Melificent. Yen Sid knows at once something is amiss. Mickey and his friends hurry to stop the mistress of all evil. In the castle they are overwhelmed but Axel, who has awoken because his nobody and his heartless were both destroyed, thus finding each other in the either and bringing him back to life, i guess, saves the day. For his bravery, Yen Sid allows him to take the test, and he too, becomes a keyblade master.
The story ends with Kiari arriving at the tower to become a master as well. Mind you, that's a secret ending. Speaking of which, one of the things that this game does right compared to Kingdom Hearts 2 is that, in order to get the secret ending all you have to do is find all the treasure chests, which is pretty tough in it's own right. I'm just glad I didn't have Jiminy forcing me to to acquire a billion points on some trivial skateboard quest.
This part is hard for me. On the one hand the battle system is liken to Birth by Sleep, which was fun. There are even some link attacks that Riku can do that are copies of attacks from Birth by Sleep like Ghost, Light Sword, etc. I enjoy them. Building your own deck and being able to use whatever attacks you want is great. If you want, you could have a whole deck of heal spells, whatever works. Along with attacks there are new skills that you can learn as well, such as Glide for Sora, which allows you to move around the environments even faster, and that's along with flow motion abilities. All of that said, I find the game to be very trite.
Let me explain. As mentioned above, many, if not all of the enemies have some kind of stun weather it's Stop, Slow, Gravity, or even an attack that makes you unable to use your deck commands until the enemy who cast it on you is defeated. If it were just a few enemies through out the game, that would be fine, but it's not. It's Every. Fucking. World. It makes the game feel tedious and, honestly, makes it unfun to play. The bosses are a different story though.
They're fast and many of their attacks come out of no where and seem to deal massive amounts of damage. I remember having tons of trouble on my first play through, and on my second one, less, but I still find them to be annoying. I'll use the pelican as an example. He flies around the area making hitting him nearly impossible, and when he does finally land on a floating rock trying to get up to him is a joke. Even using flow-motion Sora will sometimes pass him without landing a hit, and land on the ground. By the time he finally does land on the rock the pelican is moving again. What's more, at the start of the battle, and once more in the middle and end, you have to flow motion to catch him. This means you are in a sort of on-rails shooter, only you can't shoot, only dodge. Sora's health is significantly decreased, and if you get hit by all the flying debris, he dies, making you start, not just that section over, but the whole damn battle. And that's not even the end boss.
Riku's end boss has a cool attack where he can drain your health to 1 and then, if he so desires, while Riku is still stunned from the former attack, he can do another attack right under you and kill you, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
Diving is another story. The goals are easy at first, but get progressively harder, especially when you are required to defeat bosses. The only way to do it while Diving is to wait for the bosses "core" to be exposed, but the game doesn't always like to tell you how to do it. It just says "defeat the boss" and leaves you to it. It isn't until you die, or have been fighting him for two minutes or so when the game finally gives you a hint, but sometimes, it flies by so quick that if you blink you'll miss it. Fortunately, there aren't too many boss fights when diving. I wish I could say diving without boss fights is fun, but that isn't great either. There is usually always a strict time limit and if you run out of time, you have to start over.
Rather than Donald or Goofy or any other Disney Character in your party, this time you get to use Dream Eaters. I heard someone describe them as dimwitted Pokemon, and I think that's a good description. The dream eaters can be helpful but they can be just as much of a hindrance. In the later levels you can flow-motion your way all the way to the top of a building or cliff side to get a treasure, but as soon as you reach the top, your DreamEater appears there and knocks you all the way back down again. In battle I've seen them just standing there. Sometimes, they'll even get stuck in areas and not show up until you've defeated all the enemies without them.
Each one has link abilities which grant Sora and Riku abilities as well such as Defense Boost or HP Boost. The problem is that some of the dream eaters charge you points to open pathways between those abilities. In other words in order to get new abilities for Sora and Riku you have to spend ability points on nothing to open a pathway that leads to something. Mind, not all of the DreamEaters make you do this. Some of them require your DreamEater to get to a certain level before you can gain access to all of their abilities, even once you've opened all their abilities on the board. This means you have to stick with the same DreamEaters throughout almost the entire game. That's not a problem if you don't give a crap about the other DreamEaters, but if you want to level all 100 or so of them up, it makes for a lot of level grinding, that in my opinion, isn't really worth it.
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam a lonely spirit guiding.
As far as music and voice work goes it's great. "Simple and Clean/ Passion" Remix is back for those people who like it. I do, but I'm just tired of it at this point. Fortunately we get a new son in Kingdom Hearts 3 so there's that. The world music is great. Once again I love that, in the Disney worlds they use music from that world. Tron's world comes to mind. Even the battle theme they used in the game fits perfectly.
I have only a few gripes, and they are personal gripes. I don't take points off for any of these next few things. First and foremost, is the Spirit Menu Music. Any time you go to train your DreamEaters, you are forced to listen to something liken to the Meow Mix commercials. It's sickeningly cute, and not in a good way. The song makes me literally want to throw up. I suppose they want these games to stay "E10+" which is why Nomura throws in cute songs or moments like this, but honestly, having grown up with this game, Some part of me was hoping it would grow up a little bit too. I'm not asking for an "M" Rating for Kingdom Hearts or anything, but maybe just some more grown up themes.
Second is some of the voice work. As mentioned above, Judge Claude Frollo's voice actor does an okay job, but there are lines from the movie incorporated in the game that without the visual impact of the movie just don't make sense. Example: In the movie Frollo talks about stomping out the Gypsies by crushing some ants with his fingers. Then picks up a brick and shows thousand more, crushing all of them as well, to which Phebus replies "you make your point quite vividly." In this version, it's just them talking. It just doesn't work for me. I don't want to say that the line was delivered poorly, but yeah, I didn't like it.
What though that light, thro' storm and night, so trembled from afar—
I really want to like this game, I really do. It has some great elements in it that, if done properly, could have made for a stellar experience, but sadly, with enemies that constantly stun you, spirits that knock you off platforms, and bosses who can attack even while you're stunned, the game play of the game is just subpar. I love the story, the visuals, voice work and music (for the most part) but I just can't get into the game play, and that's a shame. Fortunately, 0.2 has restored my faith in the series.
