Kingdom Hearts was proposed in 2002 as a Final Fantasy and Disney crossover. Since then, it’s plotline has continued to this very day, and earlier this year, Kingdom Hearts 0.2 released and gave a glimpse into the next generation of the series.

Part of the Kingdom Hearts 2.8 collection, 0.2 picks up directly after the ending of Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep, and essentially serves as a tech-demo for the long awaited Kingdom Hearts 3. 0.2 tells the story of Aqua as she wanders throughout the Realm of Darkness.

In terms of gameplay, 0.2 reprised many core gameplay elements that were lost after the release of the famous Kingdom Hearts 2 back in 2006, while retaining some of the clunkiness of the spinoffs that followed. A new gameplay feature made an appearance in 0.2, which allows you to unleash incredible magical spectacles after casting a certain amount of magical spells.

However, through a technical point of view, the game is held back by technical issues regarding framerate drops and stuttering and sluggish combos left over from Birth By Sleep, although I can praise the game heavily for its reprisal of Revenge Value, a mechanic which allows bosses to retaliate after taking a specific number of your attacks. This mechanic was lost in the games that followed Kingdom Hearts 2, and lead to infamously unpredictable bosses.

I give the game a 7.5/10, because despite its technical flaws, the game proves the current developers remember what made Kingdom Hearts 2 a famous action RPG. Many of its flaws can be passed off as tech-demo issues, as the game was made alongside an early build of Kingdom Hearts 3.