#I want to beat him. I’ve literally beat KH 2 KH 3 and BBS DDD and the

[kingdomhearts-and-soriku-trash]

Okay so change of plans since I’m impatient for some reason and fear how long this will take. I’m going to load the save I made before I did the final battles with Ansem, and I’m going to try and finish him and technically finish a whole run of KH 1.

Whenever I actually have the patience and time for it, I’ll finish this current run of KH 1 since I do wanna redo it, but at the same time I don’t😭.

[something-about-sunflowers]

*sora voice* I made it!

ohhh man this took so long but i managed to get it done in three days and i cant believe i managed it

this is the most characters ive EVER drawn in the same scene theres 24 of them! From very left to very right: Repliku, Vanitas, Aqua, Leon, Terra, Demyx, Ven, Pence, Ienzo, Hayner, Aerith, Roxas, Mickey, Goofy, Isa, Donald, Lea, Kairi, Sora, Riku, Xion, Olette, Namine, and Yuffie

i wanted to include everyone who’s had some type of impact on me throughout these games and i wanted them to be having fun, they deserve to have some fun. i put the paopu in the foreground because we’re all connected

(i also have a bit of my shipping biases in this lmao)

ok ok now on to the actual thing lmao (warning: text brick incoming): Kingdom Hearts has been a pretty constant thing in my life since i was like, six. I remember playing around on destiny islands and running rampant in traverse town cause i didnt really know how to play all that well when i was a kid. I used to watch my brother play well into the night cause he was older and much better at video games (funnily enough i handed him the controller a bit during my critical playthrough of KH3 and he was absolutely hopeless) and i wanted to see the ending (i actually only ever beat KH1 just last year and im still super proud lmao KH1 is HARD)

And then when KH2 came out we didnt actually have our own copy for a good while, my brother borrowed it from a friend of his. i sat in his room playing pretty much every day for a whole summer playing while my brother gamed on his pc KH2 was actually the first KH game i had ever finished on my own and i loved it so much

then i played Com and Re Com. i didnt finish either of them lmao i love them tho i just could never figure out the card system and id get pretty consistently lost

i got bbs a good bit after it had been out because i didnt have a psp. after much asking my parents got me one for christmas and i spent that whole day playing it (i think i went with aqua first cause she’s pretty and i was excited to be able to play as a girl)

i never actually played 358/2 Days cause i dont have a 3/DS (this also made playing DDD dificult) but i knew a good bit of the story from a friend in school who would bring his and play at lunch, that and the fandom

i played DDD tho (and 0.2) when i got a ps4 (in anticipation for KH3 lmao) and it was so colorful and fun i loved it

i still remember my giddy excitement with the first announcement of KH3 being in development. i was literally shaking and i had so much energy i just couldnt believe and then as we got closer and closer and it got more real, with trailers and gameplay footage and the whole fandom was so happy and speculative ‘what if . . .’ ‘ooh maybe we’ll get to see . . .’ i honestly think that was the best time to be in the fandom

and now that the game is out and i’ve played and beaten it (still gotta finish my 100% critical playthrough tho) and im still so in love with the series and all of the characters i had grown up with and who’d grown with me (just maybe not quite as much as i’ve grown lmao its been years for me and they’re all still the same age) im so excited to think of whats to come!!

~Chel

[kulvefaggoth]

HI THIS IS YOUR LOCAL GARBAGE GAY BOY AND HE WANTS TO VENT ABOUT KINGDOM HEARTS

A couple of days ago i had an enligtening talk about my favorite hot garbage series with a mutual and i kind of ended up realizing i had a lot of pent up stuff about it that i never really let out

While i did vent a little already i feel like i need to put this really out of my head because it’s been consuming me in a way. And since this site is designed for just screaming random stuff into the void i wanna take advantage of that for once

Now first and foremost this is meant as a very personal thing. This is not an elaborate critique or a well thought work. This is a vent and i want this to be read as a vent by a gay with a lot of feelings about video games. ESPECIALLY about Kingdom Hearts and some stuff about KH3. 

Now let’s get to the meat of this course of mind screaming

I’ve been into Kingdom Hearts for a very long time. The first game i played was Kingdom Hearts II (the original KH was kinda hard to find here for some reason) circa 2005/2006. Bear in mind i had no idead what KH was. Game advertisement wasn’t (and still kind of isn’t) a big thing here in Brasil specially if you were a poor kid like me. Hell consoles were pretty inacessible to most of the people i was close with and me and other 2 kids must’ve had a PS2 in the same time frame. The main way you would know about new or cool games was through word of mouth or recognizing brands like Castlevania and Mega Man. 

But i was always kind of a freaky little avant-garde child which meant i ended up having a very different taste from most of the people around me. I had like 1 other friend who had actually played a Final Fantasy around let alone something like Shin Megami Tensei for an exemple which i also didn’t even knew was a thing. And i’ve always tried to find something new. Something that gave me some new experience. I’ve ended up playing a lot of more niche games like Drakengard and the Atelier Iris games (god i still love 2 and 3 a lot) and it was this mindset that eventually led me into the game that had a bunch of random anime kids and disney characters in it’s cover.

To say that i was confused by KH2 is an understatement. I knew absolutelly nothing about the previous games. Who is this “Sora”? Who was the red haired man? Why the fuck am i fighting with a giant key? Again what the hell is up with the Disney characters? Also bear in mind i must’ve been 9/10 yo brazillian kid whose entire english vocabulary came from video games and a couple of songs. Some stuff wasn’t even the plot getting dense it was just me not getting the actual language. 

And yet it’s also an understatement to say the i fell very deeply in love with that weird little game. The combat was great. The plot had SO MUCH DRAMA and i knew only about 1/3 of what was happening at any given time. Keyblades where fun and ridiculous. Demyx was a bitch.

As soon as i’ve finished KH2 for the first time i used what little internet i had back then to learn more. I found out there was a game for the easy emulated GBA. It kind of sucked but it was more Kingdom Hearts. Being unable to locate a copy of KH1 for a while i did the only thing i could actually do: i’ve played and replayed KH2 to exaustion. I did most of the stuff except a couple of the minigames and gummy routes because they where boring. The feeling of learning how to fight against Sephiroth, mastering his moves and eventually being able to beat him with a Kingdom Key in proud was a big moment for me. Beating all the Hades cups felt great.

About a year later i was able to get a copy of KH1 and by this time Re:CoM was out so i got that too. Played both of them throughly even thought KH1 clumsy mechanics kick my ass to this day probably.

Then another year passes i hear two new games where coming out... to consoles i didn’t own and honestly i couldn’t justify the cost of to my parents. I was pretty bummed but still i kept getting invested. Hell i was already balls deep into this series and only dreamed of how it would take off in the future. I even remember kind of writing a “script” for a sequel that i tried to make with two other randoms in RPG Maker. Never went anywhere and i know in my heart it sucked but still. That was how into this i was. The prerelease hype for Days was killing me even. Member XIV? How?

Also side note: to my edgy ass 12/13 year old self the idea of playing as Organizattion XIII was literally a dream. 

Days came out and if you where like me in the good old days of youtube videos that had like 5 minutes at max then you know that video game let’s play were almost impossible to do. I had to get a LOT of info from second hand about what actually happened in Days. Then i ended up getting a “decent” pc and was able to emulate it with absolute WORST frame rate. Still it worked and i was able to know what was happening.

But BBS was a completly separate beast. PSP emulation was basically non-existant when it came out so it actually took me a couple of years to actually play it. I had a friend that had a PSP (and that to this day i feel only got a PSP because i kept raving about it having both a KH game and a Final Fantasy fighting game on it because he was 100% that little shit but that is completly besides any point) and of course he couldn’t lend me because it was pretty expensive around here and that’s a very useless tangent.

Anyway time passes as it must and just as Sora fell deeper and deeper into the realms of sleep i too fell into as much Kingdom Hearts stuff as i could. The complex theories, the AMVs (GOD the AMVs), the plot summaries for games i didn’t play, all that good shit. So for years i’ve built within myself this... tension i shall call. The grand plot momentum that mr Nomura seemed to be building. The misterious indentities the hinted at hidden plots. The nature of stuff that seemed very vague and opaque. And as the new games where released it seemed more and more that they where building blocks into the grand prize: Kingdom Hearts 3.

Now here’s the thing. I don’t 100% agree of the narrative that we waited “13 years” for KH3. I think if you where actually a fan of the series back then then each game in it’s own way seemed to be it’s own event. With that i want to say the while we ALL waited for KH3 for me at least it seemed it needed time to build up. 

Now here’s the thing. Between BBS and DDD being both in consoles i didn’t own and me getting an Xbox 360 (PS3 prices where absolutelly INSANE here) i seemed to drift a bit away from KH. While before i waited for new game releases with baited breath i now found myself very blasé about DDD. I was getting used to it i guess. Also high school came and a lot of stuff started changing. KH felt like a bit too connected to my childhood too i guess. I was still a fan and still loved it to death but KH ended fading away a little for me even if it lighted a fire in me when people talked about it. This must’ve been around 2010.

I think it wasn’t until KH3 was formally announced that it all came back to me. The drive to find and consume and engage with as much of KH lore and theories as possible. Also i didn’t really get into “proper social networks” as a whole until 2012/2013. Weirdo i know. By then consuming these thing was a lot easier. Internet was a lot more acessible. I could just open up a tab of a KH wiki in my phone and read away from there.

And there was this rush y’know. This thing of finally seeing a finish line. Not that actually expected or even wish for KH to end but it was KH3! The big one! And remember the tension i’ve mentioned earlier? It was always kind of present and it ended up skyrocketing during this period. I was already knowledgeable about KH but during this time i was almost a goddamn lore master. I knew the whole gig inside and out. Even the weird shit from DDD. The stuff they added to the collections just kept it going too. As did X/UX (which in my grand KH tradition i too didn’t play but i think most people feel me here).

All a big ball of complex yarn and plot and madness that would SURELLY burst with KH3. After all this time all this tension it would come. Release. Answers.

But to me that was the aspect in which KH3 failed.

Now don’t get me wrong i actually like KH3. Quite a lot. And Nomura did apparently tied up a lot of arcs. The lost are found and saved. Piss Grandpa Xehanort is dead.

But it didn’t release my tension. It didn’t burst it into the magic fireworks and ecstasy. The tension is still here. Hell the tension seems even stronger now.

And a lot of it has to with how KH3 seems to still be hiding so many fucking cards from us. Literally in one case. It was a vague feeling of unceartainty before but when i came through the Sleeping Worlds theory it just RUSHED onto me. The story doesn’t feel complete.

Now this is not the same as FFXV. I have a couple of... harsh opinions about it and it’s plot and story are front and center on the list. That story was absolutelly unfinished but not in the same way. To me it feels like Nomura just HID parts of the story. We are not getting the full picture. A lot of shit is really really REALLY weird. I’m still not over Riku’s sudden haircut.

But here’s the real gag to me. Nier: Automata gave me the same feeling the first time i played it. But then i came upon route B. And then Route C. and that’s when the TRUE game showed itself. Nier kept a lot hidden but it was hidden within itself. If you just keep playing you actually can access those hidden parts and eventually you reach your true goal. The actual ending. An ending so final that you might even like giving up your save data to help somebody else achieve it too is the only true option.

Yet KH3 has no such crowning grace. At least not for now. And that’s half the reason i made this. 

KH3 feels incomplete but in a way i could really love if the game eventually completed itself. Reading the Sleeping Worlds theory i was like “omg this makes VERY much sense. but if it makes so much sense why isn’t it in the game?”. And then it clicked. DLC. It’s 100% possible the actual plot may come as DLC. 

But an even darker thought crossed my mind and it’s filing me with actual rage: This is meant to be another game. This is the Powers That Be (Nomura, Disney, Square-Enix, take your pick...) unaturally extending this “Saga” beyond it’s ending point. If it does turn out that KH3 had some dream hijinks going on then it was 100% possible and BETTER to include that in the actual game. But since KH is known for having so many side games what is the harm in doing another right?

Well you harm the integrity of your plot. I know we say the plot is hot garbage but come the fuck on that is what is holding us here. Or at least it’s what is holding me for so long. Setting up another saga is absolutelly fine but breaking away for you ending like this is even worse. How? Why? The why is probably money but still.

Or maybe KH3 is just meant as that. There is no twist not weirdness. Maybe all that is by design y’know. 

This is long enough already. I’m tired. I started writing this at 2:30 am. It’s about 4am now. I slept very little last night.

This is a big colletion of nothing i guess. Not even sure it helped me. Oh well.

[jmkitsune]

lyraeon

replied to your post

“took me 7 years…but i finally finished Dream Drop Distance :3I somehow...”

Not to be like that but I'm fairly sure all of KH is so convoluted that nothing shy of actually watching a playthrough or at least the cut scenes COULD spoil any of it :P

I know you said- not to be like that but I’ve seen A LOT of people shitting on the convoluted story with KH3 just released and I’ve kept quiet til now cause  “meh whatever let em think what they want” this is not meant SPECIFICALLY AS “rawr don’t shit on my game series” but more a “I hear people...but a lot of people are looking at it...MAYBE too myopically)

so yeah sorry Ly...this is not directed at you...but also yeah XD I have been wanting to say something like this since....well probably a LOT longer than I know because I’m surrounded by people who either SHIT ON the series OR admit- they just button mash and thats it- they dont care and it breaks me inside as a story teller SOOOOOO INCOMING RANT TO THE VOID

I’m going to be honest, 

I’ve played the games since release, and I streamed BBS, KH1, 2 CoM on twitch (play throughs are on yt for anyone who wants to binge those :D- shameless self plug here) and JUST finished Dream Drop Distance (when I streamed the other ones I played in chrono order not release) so as of now I’ve played from BBS-3D in chrono and release order, I still gotta do the last two parts of 2.8 before starting 3.

and before I dive too deep I’m gonna preface this all by saying

when people say its convoluted-

YES it is, no question, this is a series told OVER a decade spanning many games. Its gonna be messy for a lot of people especially those casual gamers who don’t play games for deep story they play to escape. I get ya- this isn’t for you, have fun gaming ^.^

BUT is it SO convoluted it takes too much to understand if you WANT to? 

ok now that I made sure to not DESTROY people’s dash boards--- ON WITH THE SHOW

I don’t think so

I’d even argue FF7 and KH series ON THE WHOLE (like when mapped out beat for beat story wise) so far are pretty equally convoluted but yet EVERYONE LOVES FF7 in spite of its extremely deeply convoluted story. 

I think the MAIN difference was that FF7 relied heavily on explicit unreliable narration. In Cloud being the (redacted reason for spoilers) protagonist (seriously, it may be an old game but I’m not gonna spill the beans go play it to find out, this allowed for A LOT of exposition to be given naturally and also for “plot holes” to be filled in as the game progressed when we see “what really happened” when we did. I truly think that HINDSIGHT and that revealed knowledge is why SO MANY clamor that FF7 is the BEST in the Final Fantasy series when to many- its really not, its a great game but certainly not the best (as seen from the STARK as fuck divide in the fanbase over it’s expanded chapters (crisis core, dirge of cerberus, Advent Children, etc)

KH does not do this entirely, they instead rely on a “childlike” narrator (which is still unreliable but I’d argue a different kind) Sora is 14/15 in the first game, so through HIS journey alone we’re seeing the world from his perspective and ITS A LOT TO TAKE IN but even in DDD everyone kinda points out ...SORA IS A BIT OF A DUNCE lol I attribute the story telling to that, cause in BBS when we play as Ventus/Terra/Aqua- its not as confusing sometimes, cause these players are older, so the world is already understood by them, nothing is really NEW, whats new is their personal blossoming philosophies conflicting with the world they are now thrown into

they’ve studied it but never PARTAKEN in it vs Sora...who literally wakes up in another world carrying magic mcguffin after a giant mother fucking eldritch creature with a gaping hole in it’s torso swallows HIS home world (its not spoiling it’s literally the tutorial/prologue of the game)

the other thing- where FF7 had 3 discs (which back in the way back days) was SHOCKING (until Star Wars came out with their 4 disc KOTOR/KOTOR 2 for the PC) like 3 discs for 1 story? wtf man?

KH so far in their series has had - 

BBS (3 character’s stories over the course of I think a few weeks)

KH1- 10 years later following a new boy with no prior knowledge of what was going on prior to his story, and this takes place over nearly a year

358/2 days- runs relatively overlapping with Chain of Memories, buut starts 7 days before due to the fact it starts in the final act of KH1

KH2- picking up where said above two games leave off, wrapping up the arc of the Organization and reuniting Sora/Riku/Kairi together at home another year has passed

Coded (not needed but is part of the main timeline) happening I’m guessing in a SHORT as fuck span of time

Dream Drop Distance- taking place between 2 and 3 as a bridge cause it shows Riku and Sora finally hitting a maturing point- they take the tests to be LEGIT keyblade warriors

7 main games over 7 “discs”  honestly I like that what they did for us was gave us over time the 

1.5, 2.5 and 2.8 remixes cause that condensed ALL that into “3 discs” (JUST LIKE ff7- also mind you, the thing I’d even stress- imagine if Square Enix tried to compress ALLLL this story back when KH1 started, like it’d be too much, this story needs to be digested slowly. LIKE another LONG running series (that for the most part - MANY PEOPLE love (Game of Thrones? Homestuck? ANY anime that started back in the toonami days and isn’t done (look at you Dragon Ball) 

GRAND stories take time, video games just were normally NOT that format to showcase such a spectacle...hell Final Fantasy which is like...what? nearly 20 games (including side ones) but only...2 of the “main numbered” games have sequels, the rest are not connected plot/world wise. 

being a writer I probably could do all that Kingdom Hearts has done in the form of 

the five act plot vs the 3 act structure we are used to (see Dramatic Structure)

normally people are used to a 3 act structure (Exposition, Rising Action, Climax)

but so far I see KH serie as a 5 act structure (below)

Exposition - BBS (explaining the world and following 3 people well versed in it for the reader to fall into it and be ready for the next step)

Rising Action - Kh1/358days/CoM (Sora is plucked from his world and thrown into a larger one, on the way he learned about the dark and the light, growing and preparing to fight it as he feels he is part of something bigger than himself)

Climax - KH2/Coded/3D (this part is guess work) we see the “end” of Sora’s growth, the boy we started with is grown and all in, we see him and Riku raising up to their peak to fight the darkness only for the ending of 3D to reveal that the end isn’t the end,

Falling Action <- this part here I think is going to be ALL of Kh3, the falling action, that stripping away of all things built up with the end in sight

Denouement/Resolution/Catastrophe- and here is where the series will end...however that is be it ONE MORE GAME or...the climax of KH3? I dunno we’ll see

SO YEAH....long story short...Kingdom Hearts IS LONG but like ANY OTHER long standing story with deep, and expansive lore- consumption can’t be done in one go. It’s not for casual consumption, at least the story isn’t. Many people play it and give ZERO shits about the lore/story/etc....and honestly I can’t with those people I literally don’t comprehend it but thats on me not them

BEFORE I LOSE MY TRAIN I END THIS RANT HERE