So I have a confession. You guys may not notice, since usually I'm pretty shy about it, but... I don't have a PS4. I know, it's tragic. I am looking for a way to fix it but, sadly, to no avail. But that aside, you can probably see where I'm going with this. 0.2 Birth By Sleep ~A Fragmentary Passage~ is exclusive to the II.8 Final Chapter Prologue collection, and as such, it can only be played on the PS2. But still, I've decided that I'm too stubborn to let my ignorance stop me, so I'll do my best to talk about this game anyway, going by the things I've learn by just aggressively consuming everything related to Kingdom Hearts.
(you guys have no idea how hard it is to find key art for this game)
0.2 is the final entry in what I like to call the Quickening phase of the buildup to KH III (with the original trilogy being the Beginning that's kind of its own whole, BBS, Days and coded being the setup stage, and all the things on the II.8 collection making up the quickening). It is very short, but that can really be attributed to the fact that this is a glorified demo to KHIII - it showcases the engine, as well as the battle system, which seems to be a mix of the KHII battle system with various additional elements introduced in the later games, e.g. flowmotion, shotlocks, command styles, etc. Apparently it plays very well, but I can't judge that, so I don't want to focus too much on the gameplay. I can see why SE did this - they wanted to let fans know that work was actually being done and tide them over for the new game that was coming along God knows when. And yet I can't help but feel this is kind of the Kingsglaive scenario - in that it feels that this should have been the prologue to KHIII that was part of KHIII, much like the Roxas segment was in KHII. Then again, the then-unknown Aqua game was hinted at since Birth By Sleep Final Mix, so it might acutally have been intended to be a longer experience. But I guess we'll never really know this stuff.
Storywise, this game serves as a nice exploration of the Realm of Darkness and Aqua's increasingly hard to bear loneliness, along with some pretty interesting connections to the first game. I like that fact that Aqua actually needs to mentally cope with the stuff that's been happening and that she's constantly being under threat both from the Heartless, as well as Xehanort, to an extent, who desparately wants to find out where the Chamber of Waking - the place where Ventus sleeps - is.
So what important things happen here?
Important story bits
- Aqua is alone in the realm of Darkness and explores the Castle of Dreams as it's been engulfed by darkness.
- On numerous occasions, she encounters the Demon Tower, which is this huge amalgamation of Shadows, and they're pretty dangerous.
- Aqua does go a bit insane along the way, as she encounters visions of Ventus and Terra, as well as fighting her own reflection which is kind of a manifestations of all the dark and lonely feelings within her? I don't know, I'm not exactly seeing all these scenes in their proper context
- Finally, she finds a friendly face in the form of Mickey! He finds the Kingdom Key D and informs her that Sora and Riku need to close the door to darkness, but she has to fight of waves of Heartless in order for them to be able to do it. Therefore, she is there in the background during KHI's epilogue.
- While battling the Demon Tower, Mickey loses his shirt, which explains why he's naked at the end of KHI. This is very important and I'm glad they explained that scene because of all the crazy things in the series, it was this that I was losing sleep over.
- Aqua later resumes her journey and eventually encounters Ansem, leading to Blank Points.
What are your thoughts? Did you play 0.2? Do you think it was too short or just right? How is the gameplay? Feel free to join the discussion!
~Play order~
KINGDOM HEARTS=>CHAIN OF MEMORIES=>KINGDOM HEARTS II=>358/2 DAYS=>BIRTH BY SLEEP=>CODED=>DREAM DROP DISTANCE=>χ=>0.2: BIRTH BY SLEEP ~A FRAGMENTARY PASSAGE~=>????