Kingdom Hearts: VR Experience Japanese Review: A Small (Unnecessary?) Treat For Fans
- Details
- Published on January 23, 2019 @ 03:11 am
- Written by Joey
It's not hard to imagine that fans wouldn't think much of Kingdom Hearts: VR Experience, now available as a free download from the Japanese PlayStation Store. After all, it was advertised as a 10 minute interactive video project and not an actual game. With an update to the experience slated to be released in Spring, it was expected for the content available within the game to be on the shorter side of things but with only three segments available upon release it still feels a bit short-handed.
Kingdom Hearts: VR Experience was developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. and Square Enix. The “Virtual Reality Projection Mapping” project expands the visual experience and invites fans to fully immerse themselves in a 10-minute interactive video featuring music from the Kingdom Hearts series. The experience is mostly static, with the only movement being the Gummi Ship segment where you travel through a portal.
The experience places you in the (larger than usual) shoes of Sora, as you go from the Gummi Ship to Destiny Islands, watching scenes from the entire Kingdom Hearts series go past inbetween those two segments. It's nice to sit back, listen to the music, and watch the history of the series fly past.
The best part of the experience is presented at the end of the Destiny Islands segment. Reminiscent of the Fantasmic light show at Disneyland, you watch various openings from the Kingdom Hearts series play concurrently with various particle effects accompaning the visuals. It does feel like there's a bit much going on at once, especially with three openings playing at once to try and keep your eye on, but despite that it was a gorgeous celebration of Kingdom Hearts.
Donald and Goofy speak to Sora on board the Gummi Ship
For a free experience, it's a treat. Being next to Donald, Goofy, Riku, and Kairi as you're placed in the middle of two scenes from the oldest and most recent Kingdom Hearts games (until Kingdom Hearts III releases in a handful of days) pleased this Kingdom Hearts fan, but with Twilight Town being included in the next patch despite being included in pre-release materials, as well as the strangely absent motion-controlled fight scenes from the reveal trailer, it feels like the content that should have been included has been removed to meet a deadline, leaving the whole experience in an unfinished state.
Maybe too much was expected from this, especially with it being delayed twice, but knowing that a lot of what was first shown is now absent has me a bit disappointed that there initially wasn't more. With only Twilight Town confirmed to be coming in the future, I have to wonder if they do still have plans to include segments like those interactive battle segments, or if we will get to go inside the Land of Departure or if we are put onto a Station of Awakening. There was another option on the main menu that was inaccessible, so hopefully come Spring there'll be a lot more there for people to sink their teeth into.
Overall, it was a nice experience to lose myself in. I was in awe of the beauty captured straight from the games and the feeling of being on Destiny Islands with Riku and Kairi was wonderful. The lack of content that is being saved for a future patch definitely makes it feel like this experience is not worth downloading until that patch, and even then who knows how much content will be delivered in that patch as well. It's a nice, small treat, but one has to wonder if it was ultimately a necessary one.
The Twilight Town expansion is teased at the end of the experience
Name: Kingdom Hearts: VR Experience
Release Date: January 23rd 2019 (Japan) / Worldwide release confirmed but no date given
Hardware: PlayStation 4, PlayStation VR headset, PlayStation Camera
Patch: Sleighted for Spring 2019
Length: 10-12 minutes
Price: Free
COMMENTS
I am interested in seeing a video of it, thanks Chaser! I realize it won't be the same, but I don't have a VR myself so I will need to go to a friend's place who does, and that will probably not be in the next few weeks. Maybe by then Twilight Town will be added anyway lol.
I am interested in seeing a video of it, thanks Chaser! I realize it won't be the same, but I don't have a VR myself so I will need to go to a friend's place who does, and that will probably not be in the next few weeks. Maybe by then Twilight Town will be added anyway lol.
It's up in the OP! It's still processing so quality may be a bit shitty for now. Sorry for all the movement. It's a lot smoother with the VR headset on, so actual recordings always look super weird.
Reminiscent of the Fantasmic light show at Disneyland
as I said in the other thread, a disney parks kh show needs to happen Dx! they got projections all over their parks now, it could be a fireworks or water show like fantasmic/world of color. Or a space mountain overlay T_T
edit: rip me trying to make a difference xD
[TABLE="class: outer_border, width: 500"]
[TR]
[TD]
[/TD][/TR]
[/TABLE]
Not to be insensitive, but why does this even exist?
Not to be insensitive, but why does this even exist?
they were probably like, there needs to be something kh in VR, it's the new thing?
Thanks for the video and review. I can only judge it by what I can watch on youtube and it's kinda meh, I got excited at the beginning thinking this was the connection between the ending of 0.2 and III, lol
It's up in the OP! It's still processing so quality may be a bit shitty for now. Sorry for all the movement. It's a lot smoother with the VR headset on, so actual recordings always look super weird.
Ah well I guess I caught it late enough that the quality was fine ha. I guess this is about what I expected, except I guess it says they will add more than one world? Or at least it implies that. I guess that could be interesting, though I wonder how spread out that will be lol.
Not to be insensitive, but why does this even exist?
That’s a good question. To celebrate KH3?
Not to be insensitive, but why does this even exist?
Not to be insensitive, but why does this even exist?
I had that exact thought when I played. To me, it seemed like something that was done for a Sony team to learn some new VR techniques. Like the OP says, this was some VR mapping project and they did a nice job with getting the opening videos into the Destiny Islands scenes.
But yeah, KH was the backdrop to a studio testing some tech out and it really shows with how bare-bones this whole thing is, especially since it launched without a lot of what was previously advertised.
Sitting at the clocktower and looking down seemed pretty neat! One of my favorite scenes and Roxas's sad music playing in the background would have got to me lol. I was hoping for more of that scene.
I don't have a VR but I think it's really nice to see free content like this. It's not deep or that amazing, but it's free and might even lead to more.
:biggrin:
[video=youtube;Mi1gKJVweEk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi1gKJVweEk&[/video]
Here it is in English
Chaser
January 23, 2019 @ 04:03 amOffline