Welcome to Storyview, the review show that appraises a video games' story. Today, we're looking at Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep 0.2: Fragmentary Passage. This article will contain spoilers from the first 30 minutes of the roughly 4 hour game, as well as spoilers from previous kingdom hearts games.
Kingdom Hearts 0.2 is Square Enix's way of whetting the appetite of kingdom hearts fans the world over while we wait for Kingdom Hearts 3. Unfortunately, Kingdom Hearts 0.2 does not achieve much in the way of it's story, and instead relies on it's graphics to pull it's way through its very short game time.
Plot
If you were expecting Kingdom Hearts 0.2 to be required reading for Kingdom Hearts 3, 0.2 will unfortunately not be what you were expecting. 2.8 Kingdom Hearts 0.2 picks up after the events of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, with the keyblade master Aqua wandering the realm of darkness. When aqua starts to see her friends, Ven and Terra, she chases through worlds consumed by the darkness in order to reunite with them. The plot is fairly one dimensional and does not give any new information about the overarching plot of kingdom hearts, save for one small area of the Kingdom Hearts timeline that does get filled in. The only part of the plot that may have small influences on Kingdom Hearts 3 is the ending, but even then nothing revealed is earth shattering.
Writing
Kingdom Hearts 0.2 does make accomplishments in Aqua's development as a character. Aqua's trip through the realm of darkness serves to explore Aqua's Insecurities and the toll the realm of darkness has had on her. You'll hear Aqua's voice telling her about her failures, you'll see visions of how aqua wants to see things. 0.2 gives some much-needed depth to a character that previously had no struggle to fight against, unlike her friends. The downside is that there isn't very much writing or dialog in Kingdom Hearts 0.2, which is mostly due to the fact Aqua is just talking to herself for about 90% of the game. Only at the very end do other characters make an appearance to offer story arcs.
Voice Acting
Kingdom Hearts 0.2 boasts the same great voice cast we've come to know from the Kingdom Hearts Series. It's a tad unfortunate that the story focuses so heavily on Aqua as I feel her voice actress is not quite as strong as others in the franchise. Many of the characters, besides Aqua, only get one or two lines in the whole game, but they still sound as great as ever.
Immersion
The realm of darkness you explore in Kingdom Hearts 0.2 is a complete 180 from the worlds Kingdom Hearts games are known for. The usually bright and colorful worlds are replaced by dreary caverns and dark forests. While you are still technically visiting Disney worlds, they lack the distinguishing landmarks and iconic characters we've come to expect from Disney worlds. with that being said, the worlds are still gorgeous though a couple of times the framerate did stutter, which brings you out of the story. It's unfortunate that you can feel that the development team was very pressed for time with the enemy development of the game. Bosses get reused multiple times, and when it's such a short game, it does make the battles feel less epic.
Conclusion
The collection that Kingdom Hearts 0.2 comes in, Kingdom Hearts 2.8: Final Chapter Prologue, has a bit of a misleading title. it's not so much a prologue as it is a side story in the Kingdom Hearts universe. While it is amazing to see how great a Kingdom Hearts game can look on Playstation 4, unless you’re a hardcore kingdom hearts fan you're probably better off looking up the ending on YouTube and saving yourself a journey through the Realm of Darkness.