The Kingdom Hearts VR Experience... Exists?

Published: March 21, 2019 1:00 PM /

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Kingdom Hearts! I thought I was done with it, and yet it pulls me right back in. After I finished my review of Kingdom Hearts III, I figured I was finally done with the series. Then, surprise, the Kingdom Hearts: VR Experience launches to no fanfare. But you know what? It's fine. It's all fine. How bad can it be? I don't mind smacking around Heartless in VR and getting to spend time with my favorite Disney characters. That has to be fun, right?

Well, it turns out you do absolutely nothing. Remember that trailer for the game, the one that showed you swinging around a Keyblade and knocking around Heartless? It implied that the Kingdom Hearts: VR Experience would sort of be a "greatest hits" collection, that had you performing some mini-games between watching recaps of the various games. The end result is nothing like that at all. Instead, you just rewatch a few cutscenes. That's it.

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This is cute I guess

I'm not joking. At the current time, there are two sections you can "play". The first is the Gummi Ship, which lets you watch the ending of A Fragmentary Passage. I will admit, it's kind of neat getting to watch a cutscene in VR, actually looking at Donald and Goofy as they talk. After it's over, you then watch a little music video with scenes from Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep playing in a weird kaleidoscopic hallway that you slowly fly down set to a song. It's pretty, I guess, but difficult to tell what's actually going on.

After that, you can play the Destiny Islands level. Here you watch the cutscene from the original Kingdom Hearts that plays before Sora, Riku, and Kairi decide to leave the island, just from Sora's perspective in VR. In a particularly neat touch, the game uses the original PlayStation 2 assets for this bit. After that, you watch the intro for Dream Drop Distance displayed over the ocean like a light show. It includes fireworks.

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NOT CUTE NOT CUTE REAL CREEPY HELP HELP

Following this, you get a brief look at Twilight Town and a tease of a cutscene from 356/2 Days. Then, you're booted back to the menu screen with a message saying that more is coming later. Yep, Kingdom Hearts: VR Experience currently consists solely of two cutscenes, and it's not even done. So... it exists, I guess? It's free, so that's something? A super fan may get a kick out of seeing a couple of cutscenes in VR? I probably could have spent the ten minutes doing something else though.


TechRaptor experienced Kingdom Hearts: VR Experience on PlayStation 4 via PlayStation VR with a copy freely downloaded by the reviewer.

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Samuel Guglielmo TechRaptor
| Reviews Editor

I'm Sam. I have been playing video games since my parents brought home a PlayStation whenever that came out. Started writing for TechRaptor for 2016 and,… More about Samuel