Buddy of mine got impatient and she imported the fancy starter pack.  I already like that set better than the crappy CE we got here, if only because of the higher quality chipboard packaging.  That said, I just wanted to get my hands on the games for a little bit before picking it up on Dec 2.  And lo and behold...Birth by Sleep is just riddled with problems.

 

Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix

-A mostly tight remaster, much like the first one.

-Load times are pretty bad when using Drive the first time in a given world - subsequent times are curbed.

-AntiForm takes almost twice as long to load.

-Framerate took a nosedive in the 1000 Heartless battle.  It does gradually and quickly improve though.

 

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep Final Mix

-World textures are pretty bad.  Like they barely bothered to redo them.  Yeah yeah, it's a PSP game.  Well, so was Peace Walker.  :<

-UI is intrusive.  Mostly the command deck/menu.  It takes up practically an entire corner of the screen obscuring the action.  It was like that in the PSP version because, well, PSP screens are tiny.  Big ass HDTV's are not.  They needed to scale down the UI, and they didn't.  What's really funny is that it's BARELY transparent, but just to troll us, they minimized the opacity.

-Camera is terribad.  One of the things I really liked about KH2 was that the camera was significantly pulled back from Sora.  When it's too close, it just serves as another factor in obscuring the action.  This version of BBS...the camera is even closer than it was in KH1.  It's beyond awful.  And given the insane difficulty of some of the bonus bosses, this was just a stupid decision.

-Load times are kind of unforgivable.  BBS is a very very linear games with sections of worlds being relegated to teeny "rooms" with not much going on.  Yet, the load time between these itty bitty areas is absurd.

 

Kingdom Hearts Re:coded

-Don't care for it, didn't watch it.

 

My suggestion?  Don't buy this for Birth by Sleep.  They didn't give a shit in putting forth any effort towards remastering it into a quality product.  Kingdom Hearts II is better than ever, but that's only half of the package.  And Re:coded is....well, you either love it or hate it.  So for me...I'm just asking myself right now whether I should spend $40 on a single game (of three) that I have not only played before, but even imported once upon a time...

To me, Birth By Sleep looks like its on the same level as Kingdom Hearts 2 now. 

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep Final Mix

-World textures are pretty bad. 

-Camera is terribad.  .

-Load times are kind of unforgivable.  

Damn it. I was worried about these things in particular. It doesn't come through in the gameplay videos and I'll have to judge for myself when I get the game, but this worries me especially.

So basically Birth By Sleep remains unchanged except that it's uprezzed.

 

Shucks if I'm not okay with that. It was a great game then, it'll still be a great game, even with some texture problems. Re:Chain of Memories and Days were pretty bad in the cutscene department, but going back and playing the originals makes me incredibly grateful for what we ended up with.

 

And spending 40 dollars on just one game is, go figure, still a good deal, when most games cost 60 nowadays. It definitely seems like you're fishing for things to not like; regardless of how "unplayable" BBS is (and really, is any of that game-breaking? Not in the least), you're still getting a massive, sprawling game that will consume dozens of hours of your time, if not more.

 

I mean, hey, if it's not for you, it's not for you. You have the luxury of owning an imported copy of the original, so maybe that's best for you. I'm in it for trophies, snazzy new looks, and a host of Final Mix goodies I've never gotten to play before. Plus playing one of my all-time favorite games.

Damn it. I was worried about these things in particular. It doesn't come through in the gameplay videos and I'll have to judge for myself when I get the game, but this worries me especially.

 

Same. Those are things (load times especially) I hated about BBS on the PSP and I've been hoping they'd fix them in 2.5. Now I'm worried!

Exactly the kind of counter arguments I need to marshal my "Let's not spend money on the collectors edition" thoughts.

LOL!!! Wow after reading this, I am more and more excited to get Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HE remix. I don't care about the long loads and stuff. All I care about is getting Kingdom Hearts 2 final mix and Birth by Sleep final mix. That's all it matters to me.

That's what you're worked up about? PFFFFFTTTT!!! 

 

The only things I've gotten worked up over from videos were the graphical issues the occasionally popped up. This stuff I've known about for a while and it's something that doesn't bug me as much. Sorry it bugs you though. 

I hope that some of the stuff that you mentioned are rare, but I guess I'll have to see for myself when December rolls around

Load times aren't a simple matter of loading the size of the room

 

They need to load all the data

and BBS as a LOT of data

specifically

all of your commands. Add that to enemy data for each room, your keyblade (and then loading said keyblade), your D Links, which character you're playing as, and that character's level, plus any data that they need to track for your journal

It's gonna be a lot of loading

especially since the textures are apparently four times the size in BBS

So BBS retains its PSP design basically, but I feel the world textures looked great at times in the trailers. And I've played the game on a big screen before using my PC Connected to the tv. They definitely put effort into this version.

Edited November 17, 201410 yr by Andrew Rowland

From what I've seen from gameplay, the game looks on par with KH2. As for loading times, the PSP had the same issue so I wouldn't be unnatural if this version didn't suffer the same problems in some cases.

It's just a HD Remaster, don't expect big diffrents like a Remake.

For BBS all they did for the camera was just map the 2nd camera option from PSP version (L+analog) to the R3 analog stick. The camera was very KH1ish

 

Also BBS did update most of their textures, but the low poly and small envirnoments still stick out indeed. This is a design flaw nothing that can't be fixed in a remaster, yes it's more noticible but w/e. The UI being the same is strange, they should have scaled it down especially since they changed the FOV a bit anyway.

 

For KH2HD load times are fault of 2x blu ray drive. Install your game to PS3's HDD please

 

Framerate in 1000 Heartless battle is laughable since it still uses the cheating of appearance of 1000 Heartless (like they were going to recode that anyways).

Edited November 17, 201410 yr by jadentheman

For KH2HD load times are fault of 2x blu ray drive. Install your game to PS3's HDD please 

Noob question:Can you just install the game on the ps3 right from the disc? Never saw such a feature but have neither really searched for it to be honest