X Back Cover was only really there as filler to begin with.
If this justification works for you, more power to you. I think it's misguided and, yeah, kind of insulting for the KH team to waste an hour of content on filler when they have a lore-heavy project to build a meaningful story off of, especially when that project was not intended to be central to the mythology at its inception and was structured in
both of its iterations such that it would be neither accessible nor probably very appealing to the wider player base. Wasn't it one of the goals of the Remix collections to make the entire KH story available on (ultimately) one platform?
At the very least, It's a fantastic visual taster of how Kingdom Hearts III cut-scenes will end up looking like.
I sure hope it isn't a taster of how they'll be written and directed. The jumbled timeline of the thing could give someone whiplash: I was consistently playing catch-up to determine what was a flashback and what was part of the proper narrative, which was itself segmented into chapters which are just barely identifiable such that it seemed more like some half-hearted clip show than a cohesive visual affair. These so-called Keyblade Masters play "idiot ball" better than the BBS trio ever did, some of them literally forgetting plot points they were made aware of
as a matter of premise. The dialogue is littered with nonsensical jargon and grammar that would make a third-grader blush, not to mention the many leaps of judgement the audience is expected to buy into in service of moving what little plot there is along-- I mean, within like the first ten minutes Ira is literally pleading with Ava to "trust him" as he formulates an argument with no bearing in fact or reason.
All that said, I finally got around to it, and
0.2 was really good. If
that's what we can expect from KH3, I'll likely be satisfied. I think there's a good deal that looks and feels unfinished and it irks me that a game people are paying for as part of a package isn't done, but the flaws in any KH game are weighted against its rights, and
0.2 gets a lot right that a lot of KH games haven't since probably
Chain of Memories. I liked the gameplay, I liked the boss fights, I liked that Proud Mode felt difficult without feeling punishing, I liked everything Aqua did and said and that her model was properly gorgeous and I really, really liked the music and the environments. Honestly,
Back Cover looked like a cheap toy commercial by comparison-- which is fitting.