Honestly Fragmentary Passage has been the first Kingdom Hearts title in a long time for me to show legitimate promise. Though it may be a glorified tech demo for what KH3 was to become, it's a sign that the KH team seems to understand that a no frills combat system coupled with a more focused view of the lore is what makes this franchise interesting.

There isn't much to love about Fragmentary Passage, but there isn't a lot to dislike either in its ~two hour runtime. It's pretty, scored well, plays well, and honestly thats all I wanted out of it before I start the third mainline game.

Kingdom hearts is a series known for two things: Mickey Mouse doing anime shit and its brutal boss fights in its hardest difficulties. KH2's longstanding reputation comes primarily through how its 14 secret bosses challenge the player in different ways, playing around with various systems that colease into a game that demands high execution from its players. It's never impossible, but learning how to work through their mechanics and besting them by appreciating and understanding the combat engine is one of the most satisfying things in any game and makes it stand on top as an incredible action game.

I have also never beaten one of them.

So playing through KH 0.2 as a warm up to my KH3 playthrough was very interesting because this is the most Kingdom Hearts has ever approached being an action game. There's no customization, no decisions, no gained abilities outside the first area. It's just you, the enemies, and the designer trying to see how it all ticks together. While most of the game is a generally easy slide that prepares you for KH3 by showing you what the team can do now that they're on a playstation 4, its secret boss gauntlet was genuienely one of the hardest things ive ever played in an action game, and it all comes down to its final boss.

Zodiac Phantom Aqua is, from my understanding, kinda meligned by the general KH community. Her attacks are very reactive and you can't get away by spamming magic or grand magic or whatever it is you want to beat her. You need to learn the timings, the animations, the general flow of the battle and experiment to find those windows for yourself. Some of them are dumb, like the slow walk, others are pretty ingenious, like learning you can jump out of a block to do two full combos. Learning these patterns throughout my 4 hours grinding her was really, really fun and it made me understand what truly makes a Kingdom Hearts boss special. That ebb and flow of the systems mixing together and learning to fight a boss on its own terms, besting it in what it itself is good at, is a feeling like no other. I can't wait to get my ass handed to me by the data fights in 3.