Kingdom Hearts 2.8
KHX movie - Looks nice, seems to have some story importance for KH3, utterly boring. Makes Kingsglaive seem very exciting.
KH.02 Aqua story - Oh boy, I don't know about this. It's oppressive, dark, difficult and lifeless. Feels like a tech demo slice. The combat is WEIRD, it's like the BBS team took whatever slight depth/challenge BBS had and amped it up 10 fold to fight off the perception KH is button mashy. You cannot button mash in this. Enemies that are fire will set you on fire, water you can't hit, spiked enemies will knock you back with damage. You have to actually use magic to counter elements before you can attack, lots of parts, especially bosses are nothing but just defense & parry forcing like the Terra final boss in BBS. On one hand there some neat sprinklings of skill shown, and one or two of the boss fights is kinda cool. It's also better in the 2nd half of it where you have more combat options. On the other hand the camera REALLY sucks like KH cameras kinda do, especially dealing with fast moving huge bosses that hit-stun you constantly so you can't move or break out of getting hit until you're at 1hp over and over. The hit-stun and camera issues were really frustrating for me. There's a boss type you fight 3 times and all 3 times its a pain in the ass because of the camera. Definitely the hardest piece of KH I've ever played in the series. I kinda hope KH3 is a bit more "fun" in the combat.
Also graphically it's still a work in progress. It's unlocked hovering between 60fps->30fps with framepacing judder I think. Another lovely bit that effects the very tiny just defense windows that you miss and get hit-stunned into oblivion. :| When it is 60fps, it's pretty nice but I wish it was locked 30fps if they can't get 60fps. I don't know if this is different on a normal PS4 as I'm playing on Pro. Also while the graphics look like somebody's first month with UE4.0 stock environments, the character models are weird. The hair looks bad on everyone, like PS2/PS3 hair on PS4 doll CG model skin & clothes bodies.
I'm also not really feeling the CG doll people art style. Loading up DDD, even with 3DS graphics I really prefer the look of DDD to Aqua's story. The clean, colorful art style of KH1/2/BBS/DDD is a lot more appealing and works better with Disney stuff for me than CG looking Disney and Square. Definitely jury still out on this.
Story-wise, the Aqua .2 prologue is worthless filler that adds nothing and is literally just a tech demo for 2 hours with a bunch of heartless boss fights throughout. The KHX Movie has more plot movement/relevance.
I used to be huge in KH, but didn't care for this much. Hoping it's just the usual RPGs make bad demos thing and KH3 will be good stuff whenever it's done.