"This is a report for the Kingdom Hearts Premiere Party held at the Pacifico Yokohama in Minato-mirai today, the 26th. I tried out Kingdom Hearts 2 and Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories.
Square Enix held the Kingdom Hearts Premiere Party today, the 26th. Both Kingdom Hearts 2 and Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (now officially coming out November 11) were playable, and there was also a gift shop and a stage event with costumed Kingdom Hearts characters.
There were 100 demo stations for Chain of Memories and another 50 for Kingdom Hearts 2 on hand. This is the first time the public has gotten the opportunity to play KH2, so the wait times after the stage event approached 60 minutes. As written below the stage show wasn't anything big, so if you're the sort of hardcore gamer who reads QUITER then it would've been best to play KH2 several times.
Kingdom Hearts 2
There were two sections available for play: one in Olympus Colosseum, and another one in the Beast's Castle. I chose the Beast's Castle, but the Beast was acting a little strange and my fifteen minutes of play time weren't enough to investigate the cause of this.
The facial motion in the event scenes appears to have been further improved from the original. The exaggerated motions of overseas cartoons are superbly recreated here. Also, the voice of Sora, the hero, seems more voice-actor-like than previously, and the general idea I had was that the voice actor has changed. I forgot to verify this, however. There were lots of event sequences, as before, and you couldn't skip them in this version, so the event scenes ate up my play time (just like they did at TGS two years ago).
As for differences in the battle system, I noticed that: Fire has gone from a flying targeted attack to a protective circle around the player, it's easier to juggle an enemy with combo attacks, and you can choose the Drive (Brave?) command to make Sora wield two swords, go into a red costume, and become faster and stronger, like Goku using the Kaioken in DBZ. Apparently you can launch the Drive (Brave?) for a certain amount of time upon filling up a gauge; you can return to normal in the middle of a Drive.
Overall the feel of the battles hasn't changed much, other than the juggling adding more excitement. I got the impression that I could probably just plow through everything like I did in the last game. The only ability available was Guard, so I couldn't enjoy any of the new moves.
Other things I noticed: there's a map displayed in the upper-right corner that marks out exits and makes things easier. I was also a little annoyed by the load times, but that was probably because the kiosks had no HDD and I was used to playing the original off my hard drive. That's about it. The people who picked Olympus Colosseum went through a cave-like area before fighting Cerberus.
They said that the release date still hasn't been set, and there was no indication that they were announcing it at the event. I didn't get a chance to fight a huge number of enemies at once in the demo [like in the KH2 trailer released way back when], which was kind of a shame.
(This version did not let you view the Status screen)
...I received several emails stating that Sora's voice hasn't changed from Ms. Irino. I guess it was my mistake.
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
Two areas, Olympus and Agrabah, were available for play. This was actually the first time I had ever touched a GBASP, and that was more moving to me than the game itself. The battles are card-based, but I could still bash the buttons and fight without too much of a handicap. Of course, I'd probably get bored after a while if they're all like this, but...
Stage event
I wasn't paying close attention to the stage event, but it looked like costumed versions of Sora, Goofy and Donald came out and were saving the lady hosting the show from something or other. Mickey Mouse himself came out at the end, which really stirred up the crowd, but he didn't say anything about his performance in Kingdom Hearts 2... in fact, he didn't say anything at all.
You could only get into this event if you sent off for and won an invitation. There weren't many people above 20 years old attending; I think it was mostly girls between high-school and college age. I bought
this pouch as a souvenir."
