4/5 ★ – izacreynolds's review of Kingdom Hearts: 0.2 Birth by Sleep - A Fragmentary Passage.

Wow. Coming straight from DDD to this is like night and day. 0.2 A Fragmentary Passage is simply amazing. It's tone is dower and depressing while having moments of hope, it acts as a great sequel to Birth by Sleep and a great prologue to both Kingdom Hearts 1 and 3. It's perfectly simple in it's design. It has aspects that would later appear in KH3 but all the best aspect from previous KH games too. Whereas KH3 had too many limit bursts and summons that dominated every fight, 0.2 opts for more magic based and classic combo based combat which is just as satisfying as KH2's combat system. Using magic as Aqua and linking it with aerial techniques is so fluid. The world traversal is fun and simple too, nothing feels like a slog or a task. Due to it being an incredibly short game that I beat in under 2 hours, it hasn't got much in the way of progression but it does have a cute costume changer, so you can slightly change Aqua's appearance, which Kingdom Hearts has never done and didn't even bring it back for KH3. I liked the idea of it and the fact that new things were unlocked just through playing the game. It was so player friendly. It's so strange that one of the best feeling Kingdom Hearts games to play is this one. It is honest to god how KH3 should've felt to play, less is always more with stuff like this and I genuinely wish KH3 kept it this simple with it's combat. It fun, skill based and unintrusive. My only issue with this game is that it was far too short and because of that, it had no business being as good as it was.