Sora running around in the “CG” world of Tron is still a nostalgic sight to behold for those that remember the movie.This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Like the 1.5 Remix, this is the first time that Kingdom Hearts fans have had a chance to experience all the storylines on one platform-excepting the newest release Dream Drop Distance on the 3DS-and it’s still a world spanning adventure that takes players to some interesting places. It’s likely there are a lot of Kingdom Hearts fans out there that didn’t love the franchise so much they thought it was worth learning Japanese just to play an extra game, so this is a big win for English speaking fans. Old fans will notice some new cutscenes added to KH2 thanks to the “Final Mix” additions that were never seen in the Western release, Birth By Sleep never made it to the West at all, making it an extremely valuable addition to this collection. Square-Enix has once again done an impressive job of bringing these PS2/PSP games to the PS3 with a fine boost to the visuals and smooth framerates and a much needed resizing to the 16:9 aspect ratio of modern TVs. Still, this is the way Tetsuya Nomura decided to go with the series, and despite more focus on existential teen angst, it doesn’t ruin the main attraction, which is the graphical upgrade and tweaked gameplay.
None of this is particularly easy to get up to speed with just by jumping into the game cold, and it’s definitely arguable whether shifting the focus away from the Disney aspect to more soap-operatic anime plot convolutions was actually an improvement. The story of Kingdom Hearts gets extremely convoluted in this collection, branching away from the simpler adventures of Sora helping out Disney characters and bringing in even more of the byzantine soap opera that is Organization XIII and confusing origins of nobodies, key blade wielders and Xehanort. Unlike the first collection, it’s pretty much required that players either read up on the plot of Kingdom Hearts or, better yet, have played the first collection.
It also makes the effort put into the HD remastering that much more of a bargain this time around. That’s a bit easier to swallow considering these are PS2 era games, and you’re only getting two of them. One of the nice surprises is the drop in price, down to $40 from the $50 of the earlier collection.
Square-Enix seems to have learned some lessons since the release of the 1.5 remix in September of last year.
0 kommentar(er)
