2 new Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days videos

[granville]

And here's the TGS trailer translated:



I also found a scan:

Pete may be pretty ugly, but his ingame model is incredible!

I also found a trailer for Coded:
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v169454619CGJjGHt?source=embed

And several for Birth by Sleep:

 

[Joey R.]

Well, the game looks really nice and fluid, although I have no idea whatsoever about what this series is about

 

[granville]

I added some links to other videos from Coded and Birth by Sleep. I can't find an embed for them yet though. I only noticed them after I created the topic. Sorry.

 

[ganesh2]

It looks so awesome that I'm pretty sure that the romsize will be 2048Mb ... or MB, i dont know.

 

[granville]

It looks so awesome that I'm pretty sure that the romsize will be 2048Mb ... or MB, i dont know.

I agree. But one thing we've learned now is in regards to the music. KH 1 and 2 used orchestrated recorded samples. This one uses synth midi-style music during regular gameplay. It's great sounding, but still noticeable. Just compare the music theme Tension Rising to the original version:



Why mention this? Well, whatever the filesize, we'll know the music didn't contribute to the size.

 

[GameDragon]

Didn't expect the game to resemble KH2 this much. With more playable characters, I'm wondering how many skills or abilities will be learned and equipment, if any at all. If so, how much of that will transfer to multiplayer.

 

[granville]

I also noticed that your partner seems to be able to hit you during combat. It doesn't hurt you though. Roxas just reacts to the hit by stumbling back, but his life bar doesn't go down. Funny.

And then there's the 3D limitations. I've kept up with the impressions and hands-ons of this game so far. It seems like a common criticism of the game is the lack of enemies in multiplayer.

I believe it was 1up who stated that only about 3-4 enemies ever appear onscreen at once during multiplayer at once. That's also with 4 main player characters are on screen as well. Combining the enemies and players, that's up to 7 onscreen models at once.

And then there's the single player mode. With the Xaldin video I posted, a battle begins with the Tension Rising theme. 5 heartless appear at once and there are 2 characters (Roxas and Xaldin). That's 7 characters onscreen in all, enemies and characters together. Same total amount as the multiplayer.

I guess there MAY be certain parts where Roxas is on his own too. That being said, I suppose there could be 6 enemies at once since there's only 1 player model.

So we can assume that the total character models that can appear onscreen at once is 7. I guess there may be certain situations where it might be more, but that will likely be at the cost of speed. A common problem with many 3D DS games. I know Lego Star Wars Complete Saga, Final Fantasy 3 DS, and Final Fantasy CC Rings of Fate all suffered from that 3D model limitation. Phantasy Star 0 will probably be the same. Final Fantasy 4 managed to find a loophole around this: a cost of framerate. Whereas FF3DS played at an almost constant 60FPS (except for minor slowdown), the developers of FF4DS decided to trade in the slick smooth battles for more 3D models. Let me explain:

Final Fantasy 3 DS:

Maximum heroes- 4
Maximum enemies- 3
Framerate- 60

Final Fantasy 4 DS:

Maximum heroes- 5
Maximum enemies- 6
Framerate- about 20

So as you can see, FF4DS added more battle character models at the expense of smoothness. Go play FF3 and 4 and you'll see how different the battle speed is between the two.

Of course, this KH game is an action RPG, as opposed to the tradition turn-based seen in FF. So dropping the framerate was not an option. Speed and a good framerate are essential in a game that tests your reflexes. I dare you to play Half Life 2 on a 10 year old PC and see where it gets you!

Anyone understand where I'm coming from here?

 

[GameDragon]

Seems the game is full of unfortunate hardware limitations. Well, atleast it's a good attempt. We'll see how everything works out when it's released.

 

[granville]

Seems the game is full of unfortunate hardware limitations. Well, atleast it's a good attempt. We'll see how everything works out when it's released.

I wasn't saying those things to criticize the game. I'm doing what you call nitpicking. I really think the game will be amazing, but I just notice the little things.

The sound could have been orchestrated easily. Other DS games have done that. But it comes at the price of cartridge space, possibly having to cut out gameplay segments to make room for the large music files. But at least they're adding in voice acting and hopefully plenty of FMV. I still wonder how big this game will be. If they don't put it on a 256MB card, SE will look really stupid and cheap, considering their competition are quickly warming up to the bigger size (Tales of Heat and even fucking Star Wars Clone Wars DS used this size).

The 3D model limitation can't be helped. The only way they could bypass this was either:

1- make the game slower and choppier like I said. It worked for Final Fantasy 4 DS only due to the fact that you didn't move around during the slowness, having to mash buttons and make quick maneuvers. I actually heard rumors that they did this to 358/2 Days in the first stages of development. That was back when the game was first announced and it was said to have a very choppy framerate, but a lot of models. Unfortunately, I don't have a source, so I may have been mistaken. You can see it in the first 5 seconds of leaked footage from 2007:



2- make the overworld 3D, but the characters 2D. This is what they're doing for the mobile game KH Coded. But it looks kind of weird.The sprites seem to be motion captured from the PS2 game, making the game resemble the way Mortal Kombat looked. The result for the DS game using sprites would probably resemble Tales of Heart. And there could certainly be a ton of action onscreen at once (FF12 Revenant Wings could handle what seemed like hundreds of sprites at once). But I would be worried that the Kingdom Hearts feel would be lost from the game. Maybe not though.

Overall, there's nothing they could do about the model limit. And they did an EXCELLENT job at designing the character models that they could fit onscreen. The same goes for the environments. And that darkside boss looks awesome!

And in a partially unrelated thing, I'll tell you the controls in the game:

Dpad- move around
A- Attack or select command
B- Jump. Also used as a sort of air dash when you press it again while jumping.
X- cycle through the commands. Pressing it makes the selection go down through the list
Y- guard when standing still. When pressing left or right, performs a dodge roll. And glide while jumping.
L- used as a shortcut. You can press this in combination with the ABXY buttons as a shortcut to items or spells, which you manually set to those ABXY buttons.
R- position camera behind you. Also seems to serve as a lockon function
Touch screen- swing camera around.

I used several sources to compile these controls:

http://www.gamespot.com/ds/rpg/kingdomhear...eatures;title;3

http://www.gamespot.com/ds/rpg/kingdomhear...updates;title;7

http://ds.ign.com/articles/917/917820p1.html

As it stands, this is a real Kingdom Hearts game with the feel of the games. And for that, I applaud them!

 

[kevenka]

lst trailor was pretty good...giving the fact that we actually understood somethings

 

[granville]

lst trailor was pretty good...giving the fact that we actually understood somethings

Yep! And here's one thing I got out of it: (Major spoilers for Kingdom Hearts 2)

Spoiler

Riku wears his blindfold in order to suppress his Ansem/Xehanort form. Apparently, only by shielding his eyes can he retain his original form. I wonder how the circumstances of this weird problem happened. I guess the fight with Roxas was his final farewell to his form and the submission to his dark powers.

And I added embedded videos for the BBS gameplay videos, making this topic's name very misleading now. And a new scan for 358/2 Days showing Pete in all his DS glory. His ingame model is really impressive!