#and the parts where you can actually hit things with a keyblade seem fun

[oveliagirlhaditright]

I'm super late talking about the Kingdom Hearts VR Experience, I know. I was a bad fan and only skimmed a video of it when it originally came out. But I finally watched all of it and I love how you get different camera angles of scenes we've seen before with it! That might be useful for video editing.

[painfulbass]

☾ ˚⊹  ❛❛  GENERAL QUICK CROSSOVER GUIDE

So crossovers are usually difficult for a lot of people. So, because I tend to think about these things, I thought I would make this comprehensive list/guide to writing crossovers with me. This isn’t anything in concrete, but to get the ball rolling or to help make it easier for both sides to contribute to plotting. It can be hard when you don’t know the fandom.

FNF, or Friday Night Funkin’ is a rhythm based game around rap battles. The Protagonist (known as BF) is trying to prove himself and win over his Girlfriend’s (GF) Dad, and it spirals from there. Gameplay style, it is very similar to Dance Dance Revolution, and the music is a fast pasted dubstyle/chiptune soundtrack.

What a lot of people know FNF for, however is the Mods. Due to it being on Newgrounds, and the creators having it be open asset, many creators are able to make their own “weeks” for players to challenge their skills in. Ruv, and those within Mid Fight Masses, are one of those mods. You can find most of their lore scattered in the scenes of their week, or by going on their official FNF Wiki.

Now, what does this mean for crossovers? I put it under a read more, simply because this is going to be a lot. I’m going to explain crossover verses I have. How I make them, and how YOU could have your character be in the FNF verse quite easily. So go under the read more to continue reading.

☾ ˚⊹  ❛❛  RUV IN OTHER UNIVERSES

Here are some just ideas that I came up with. While not EVERY interaction will work with these, they are ideas. They’re meant to kick start ideas and inspirations. I do not consider these full verses until I’ve talked with the other mun to make sure that they are okay with it. These can easily be changed, and swapped out for different things. My main goal here is to try and keep Ruv down to his core elements while fitting into a new setting.

POKEMON- Ruv, along with Sarv run the church- which she has turned into a sanctuary and a Nursery. Much like in Canon, Sarv is supernatural, and Ruv as a run away criminal vowed his life for all eternity to protect her. With church’s going out however, the next next step would be a PokeNursery.           Ruv acts as protector of the Nursery from trainers and groups alike. He usually is seen sitting on the roof, throwing pebbles at kids or passerby’s who irk him in some way. You can always find his Onix, his Low-Key Toxtricity, and his Absol around him or the nursery at all times. He does still have his strength, speed, and other abilities. The “face” he has is also a mask- an attempt to hide his identity as the wanted criminal.

OWL HOUSE- Ruv was a wanted criminal for the longest time. His magic, due to where he was born was a lot less like those around him. He could fit into the covens, but anything he did reflected back on him. Living alone, and learning to just modify himself he became a wanted criminal with a bone breaking shout.            However all of those times soon came to a stop as he met the winged mistress he stays with now. Protecting her (though she is much more than capable of protecting himself) she runs one of the many sects in the area. It isn’t the best building, but it’s out of the way and he usually isn’t spotted. However, unfortunately his past comes back to haunt him. He has no choice, and begrudgingly assists the Guards to repay for his crimes.           Tied to Sarv through magical bonds, he has made it clear to those in charge and to her- should something come between his duty as a guard or her, he would chose her a million times over.

DUCKTALES- Ruv is the petrified remains of the guardian of St. Sarvente. Awoken as the earth was shifted off of it’s orbit and forced into something it’s not, the callous guard is in search of the one he calls Sarvente, whom he claims is the Ruler of Souls and the one he Vowed to Protect. He is, 100% made of stone.

TOONTOWN- Stickfigures aren’t uncommon drawings. One’s as complicated as he and Sarv though usually get a few eyes. Not only that, but video game characters are always treated differently in Toontown. Maybe it’s because of a developers history, or lack there of. The story of Ruvyzvat being a heartless killer however spreads like wild flower, and while he and Sarv will primarily stay at the church... sometimes curiosity becomes too much.

KINGDOM HEARTS- FNF is it’s own world. Keyblade turned into a microphone, Ruv & Sarv are some of the first that would be met. Despite their challenge, they are rather distanced from the troubles of the Darkness and Light and would be semi-good companions. 

THE BLACKOUT CLUB- Ruv is a 16. Any day will be the day that a voice will end up taking over, merging with his mind. That’s fine. Much like how Seed-The-Grudge would want, he’ll just get revenge.

HAZBIN HOTEL / HELLUVA BOSS- Ruv ironically enough is one of the few in Hell who does not make him dead. In fact, in some cases that can make him extremely rare. This crossover he IS able to accompany Sarvente into the Underworld, and follow her on her treks through it. While most assume he is a dead sinner, he usually just doesn’t answer. However something about being here and meeting those who reside within the land sets him off. He’s a tad more feral, and a tad more willing to go to the violent answer.

PORTAL- Violence core. What else is there to say? Alternatively, him being a test subject would be fascinating, especially if he was grabbed post-vow. The man is immortal, and therefore would have messed with the tests just by the fact that there is only way for him to die. Death isn’t the worst thing to happen to a man however, and he does still feel pain.

RWBY- Ruv has the ability to manipulate sound waves, specifically his own). Trained with great strength and and even greater speed, his form of combat is continuously dodging as he looks for a weak spot. Weapons of choice are shot gun snow boots, and his sickle that doubles as a short sword.

DOCTOR WHO- Sarv has the ability to create portals. While they are MEANT to be used to intergalactive travel, but instead parallel world travel that in of itself is monumental for a lot of DW plots. Ruv and Sarv can easily go from one universe to the next, however chose to stay in the church. Not to mention Ruv’s skills in target elimination and his abilities would make for some individuals to repurpose him into a weapon. While they have been approached by UNIT on several occasions, they always refuse. However, enough time has passed that they’re starting to notice that the couple in the church aren’t aging...

FNAF- RUVYZVAT and SARVENTE were creations of Fazbear Entertainments as karaoke machines... if we want to go the robot route. If we want to go the normal person route, Ruv was hired by Fazbear’s because it’s one of the few places that doesn’t do a background check, and when he said he wanted to wear a mask as part of the work outfit they were all for it. He runs the karaoke machine though. Stays away from quite literally everyone. While he isn’t the infamous killer of children here, he does have a reputation of his own that he is running from, and that does tend to make him silent.

BATIM- Criminal on the run stumbles into the wastelands formerly known as Bendy’s. Actually enjoys it at first because the cartoon was popular when he was a child. ALT. Stickman drawing of one of the artists come to life. Usually pretends to be Lost One, but when he’s alone with another (Sarvente) they turn into their stickman version selves. Has the ability to jump between 2 and 3 dimensions, but none of the strength or voice.

PSYCHONAUTS- Agent Ruvyzvat, Russian sector. Ruv is working for the Psychonauts in some weird, turning event. Mainly because the sole woman that he trusts and saved his life, Agent Sarvente brought him in. The two are inseparable, and despite Sasha and Nein being infamous for their clinginess, these two take it to a whole knew level. Ruve’s “loud voice” is actually a psychic ability he can use outside of the mind to jumble and confuse thoughts and has no damage on anything physically in the present.

GRAVITY FALLS- Sarvente is a Demon, much like Bill. Where sa Bill desires nothing but chaos and madness, Sarvente is trying her best to keep the world like it is and preserve it’s beauty. Seeing such beauty in a runaway criminal, she and he run to the forests of Oregon. Throughout Weirdmageddon, neither managed to be captured or turned to stone, however Ruv seemingly gained his incredible voice abilities. Now, they live in a semi-collapsed church out in the forest. Sarvente always asking those who come her way to join their church, Ruv is suspicious why such events would happen in such a small town, and is distrusting of most everyone he sees.

DETECTIVE CONAN / KAITOU KID / ANY ANIME OR SERIES LIKE THAT- VERY infamous criminal. Take his “Wanted Dead or Alive” that exists in all other verses, and ramp that up quite a bit. Usually wears a mask whenever he is committing a crime. He does seem to be in it for the fun, though it’s hard to tell with the stoic and expressionless looks. That being said, he does seem to have a very clear goal of what he wants. There are no patterns to where he hits, or what he takes. From wallets of people off the streets, to priceless artifacts. He’ll find where Sarvente went, and how they were able to change her mind in such a way.... how they could corrupt her.

MODERN / NON-EXTREMELY FANTASTICAL- Ruv is honestly a rather down to Earth individual, in some terms. He is untrusting of EVERYTHING, but also due to his own strengths finds little that fear or challenges him. Keep him mind he did make a deal with Lucifer (or his Lucifer) for Immortality for protecting her. While he will always be doing things on his own, a lot of his end goals and motives will come back to her. Without her involvement, he is a walking, talking, machine of destruction with no sway on which side he decides to tear apart.

☾ ˚⊹  ❛❛  GENERAL STOPPING POINTS FOR WANTING TO PLOT

DON’T KNOW THE WORLD YOU’RE FROM / YOU DON’T KNOW MY LORE. - That’s fine. I can get my hands dirty. I can research. In fact I usually would love nothing more to. I love learning about new fandoms, or new media to get into. You shouldn’t be afraid of that. As for mine- It should take someone less than an hour to get through all of the links I have posted in the RESOURCES tab in my bio. I’ve timed it. So if you have an hour to spare, or 15, or just enough time to read his wiki that’s fine. He’s not from a long running show, or anything like that. You can catch up extremely quick.

WELL WHAT ABOUT A BOOK/COMIC? HOW WOULD HE FIT IN?- If we are talking about Super Hero comics, then it depends. 90% of the time I will just play up his wanted status a lot more, and make it more of a reason for an interaction. You just ran into a man who has killed hundreds. If your muse is a super hero, or a vigilante? Would you let him go? What a villain? That might make a good partner.

TV SHOW? LIVE ACTION?- Again, it depends on the type of show. Superhero follows the same above. If it’s investigative, have him be a witness. Or a falsely accused man who can prove he isn’t the guilty party. Is it more supernatural- well he did make a deal with Lucifer and is an immortal now from it. There are a million ways to spin it. Don’t look at making him a big character. Quite honestly, side characters that you pass in the street have just as much backstory, and as long as there is a plausible chance of interactions then we can work it out from there.

☾ ˚⊹  ❛❛  GENERAL IDEAS TO BE AWARE OF THAT MIGHT HELP

HE IS A WANTED CRIMINAL.- Meaning his name Ruvyzvat is known. Despite his crimes going on for decades, he is on the run and never stopped. Several city, state, countries, and possibly nations are looking for him, and looking to take him in.

HE IS ALSO AN IMMORTAL.- While he hasn’t been around forever, and nearly not as long as Sarvente has been, he HAS been around for at least 100 years, give or take some. He can be injured, but even fatal injuries heal in an almost Deadpool like way.

HE ALSO HAS SUPERNATURAL POWERS.- His speed and reflexes alone is not something to be taken lightly. He does train and fight with Lucifer on what used to be a semi-regular basis. He has moved and adapted to be able to make sure no one but the singular person he trusts is able to lay a hand on him. That isn’t to say you can’t catch him off guard. You also have his inhuman strength to worry about, but most of all his voice. His voice which could completely demolish a building, and that isn’t the full strength. He has an amazing control over it, but that certainly isn’t a trait of his to ignore.

HE IS NOT ALWAYS IN THE CHURCH. I MADE SURE OF THAT WHEN I MADE MY BLOG.- He goes on walks, and he goes on errands. He also goes to the Gym on occasion, though not as often. He enjoys walks on the beach far earlier than anyone should be awake at. What I’m saying is running into him OUTSIDE of the church is possible. That being said, meeting him IN the church is your best bet for him warming up quicker. He feels safer in the church, and therefore usually wishes to stay there.

DOESN’T FIT THE STYLE OF CHARACTERS/WORLD? - If he doesn’t fit, then I can work to adapt him into something that WOULD fit. What characteristics about him doesn’t work. This is when I would need plotting help. If, lets say it was an all animal world, we can talk about what he is, his traits, and other such things. I am always happy to not use my icons- I just like to because I think they’re neat and I worked hard on them.

WHAT WOULD HE BE DOING?- Any number of things. He likes throwing pebbles at people. He mainly guards and protects Sarvente and her things, but I know we’re talking besides this. He cannot cook, but he does actually sew, and he does read quite a bit. Working on his fist to fist fighting would be a big one. He likes secluded areas, which especially work for explorer’s and people who walk off the beaten path.

IS THERE ANYWHERE HE COULDN’T BE?- He wouldn’t be at a bar. Ruv doesn’t drink, at all. I also don’t see him at any parties unless Sarv dragged him to them. Writing starters or plotting around those are perfectly fine, but do not expect his muse to be comfortable while he’s there.

HE SEEMS OVERPOWERED.- At times, he certainly can be, but only when he feels it’s necessary. He doesn’t flaunt his abilities, and most he has are out of self preservation. If you as a mun are worried about him and what he can do, the best thing you can do is read my information, look into his wiki, and then come and talk to me. Ruv isn’t someone who will 100% abuse what abilities he has, especially since now he is trying his best to be better for her since it makes her happy.

☾ ˚⊹  ❛❛  GENERAL IDEAS TO HAVE YOUR CHARACTERS IN HIS UNIVERSE

LOCATIONS?- The Church, the back alleys, the karaoke bar (that primarily does rap battles), the Alternate dimension that Sarv made so that he can be loud and not retrain his voice.

MOTIVATIONS?- If your muse is in the FNF world, then be ready for some sick beats to be dropped. Your muse could be rescuing someone from the BBEG and going through the slew of minions to sing against. There’s always the alternative side of this of “what the hell is going on?”

MY CHARACTER ISN’T FROM THERE, SO THEY WOULDN’T FIT IN.- Well I do have a “main” verse which replaces raps with fists. Looking for someone important to them, in the search of a deep and hidden artifact within the search, the rumors of a man born 100 years ago- theres a lot to be found in the library if you looked.

WHAT DOES THE FNF WORLD CONSIST OF?- It consists of Demon Daddies, Singing Skeletons and Pumpkins, Tankmen, a Demonic Lemon Demon, Sentient Video Game Characters, and if you take the mods in you also have Demon, Angels, Ghosts, Deadly Ex’s, Bomb Headed Men-- I promise your character will fit in at the end of the day.

ISN’T HE EXTREMELY AGGRESSIVE AND HARD TO TALK TO?- He can be. He talks in very short sentences, however I do my best to give my reply enough that you can reply to. Actions, and I chose to be very descriptive with his expressions in this case. Ruv spend many years alone, and sometimes with him, actions speak louder than words. When you or your muse figure that out is up to you.

WELL WE CAN’T DO AN ENTIRE THREAD IN A CHURCH.- I never said we had to. He is more than happy to leave the church should he want, and should there be a reason. Usually, (despite what it seems) he does like helping people, so you can lure him out that way ;)

[jcmorrigan]

001 - Kingdom Hearts

Favorite character: On the villain side: VEXEN IS BEST ORGANIZATION XIII MEMBER. Shoulda stayed evil, though. I like it when he complains and screams about everything and hates everyone. He's one of my favorite villains, just, like...in general. So fun to write. Also attached to Demyx, but I actually liked him more in III than II because it reminded me of my rawr lolspeek weeb days when I f/o'd him without knowing what f/o'ing was and then transitioned this to shipping VexDem like heck. On the hero side: MY GIRL KAIRI! But honorable mentions go to Sora, Riku, Aqua, Ven, Terra, Xion, Roxas, Lea, Ienzo, any Disney character I loved beforehand (this is way too fuckin many to list), Merlin (OKAY I WILL SINGLE HIM OUT), Yen Sid (I'LL SINGLE HIM OUT TOO), you know what let's also single out the Mickey+Donald+Goofy power trio...just...any KH hero who isn't part of the Yozora stuff or the KHUX stuff. ...Except I also LOVE Strelitzia, and she is the only KHUX-exclusive kiddo I care about but I care about her MANY. (Oh, and there's a least fave I have who's a "hero" but that's a debatable label). I would go on about why I love all of them but...that's too many characters to elaborate on

Least Favorite character: See, I think the real answer is Yozora, but the thing is I just tend to forget about him or not care (unless I'm doing a weird AU where he's Noctis' bratty Nobody, don't ask). He kinda represents the Shark Jump and I don't like watching that scene where he literally petrifies Sora for not being strong enough. But again, I can just kinda forget about him if he's not fed to me through a social-media unit. The one I LOVE TO HATE is Master Eraqus. The man actually triggered me back in the day. He is purity culture. He is the overbearing parent who will not accept you unless you are perfect. He is by and large the reason VAT didn't communicate with each other properly. He was the one who taught Aqua to think in absolutes. He lied to Ventus for years and then insisted to kill him was the only option, and then, when Terra tried to defend his brother figure/friend without knowing WHY Eraqus was doing such a thing, Eraqus didn't offer an explanation and instead switched targets to Terra citing that the problem was Terra's lack of OBEDIENCE. Eraqus is just very "my way or the highway" and uses his moral high horse to justify doing things that utterly lack compassion in any regard, which is something that GETS to me on a deep level, and let me tell you, I hated him for so long until I realized he was actually a super fuckin fun guy to imagine as a Bigger Bad in AUs that either have the KH protags teaming up or have villain protags needing a "greater good lawful evil" figure. And I just have found too many good memes about him cheating at chess and killing children. I have to laugh. Making fun of him is fun. He's a ridiculous character. That said, this recent trend of "erase everything bad he ever did and paint him as the ultimate hero of the saga" makes me raise eyebrows for SEVERAL reasons

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): VexDem, SoRiku, Kairi x Jaune Arc (RWBY), Aqua x Rosalina (Super Mario Galaxy) x Bayonetta, IsaLea, Ventus x Papyrus (Undertale), that was six but they all needed to be mentioned

Character I find most attractive: Ienzo. HOO BABY he is adorable. I saw someone make a Valentine's Day gifset of KH and FF characters shortly after III dropped and seeing his smiling face paired with a romance quote made my heart FLUTTER

Character I would marry: Probably Ienzo, see above. He's also a very kind guy. Favorite redemption in the modern era.

Character I would be best friends with: I hope the Destiny Trio would adopt me into their friend circle the way they've tended to do with every other inter-world denizen they've come across. I would love to have them as my positivity squad. Or, y'know, two positivities and one "it's okay to screw up" guy. Just. I would love to hang out with them. I often worry that I'm unlikable to my faves, but even though I would usually prefer to hang with the villains, I can pretty much guarantee these three would be open-minded about me. (Do I kiiiiinda wanna be friends with Vexen though? Of course I do. He'd hate me but maaaayyyyybe he would see me as one of his pet idiots who makes him look smarter, and we could bond over our fragile egos?)

a random thought: You ever think about that one NPC lady in Traverse Town who refused to tell you where she was from because it was none of her business? You ever wonder where she WAS from? What her world was like? How she ended up being the survivor of the Ansem Apocalypse when it hit her? All I know is that when I read her lines out loud (I used to read KH speech balloons out loud all the time), I gave her a Southern accent for no discernible reason and I stand by it. That woman has a twang.

An unpopular opinion: I don't want KHUX to be canon because I feel it's smaller-scale and takes a lot of mystery out of the worldbuilding. I always assume that the KHverse just includes ALL worlds in fiction, and that includes their thousand-year histories, meaning the Age of Fairy Tales should've happened long long long LONG LONG LONG ago and not five generations. And whatever screwed up the world should've been more than just five people having a fight, and whatever saved it should've been more than just five people getting along, and Daybreak Town really suffers from having to stick to mobile-friendly graphics and therefore is the least aesthetically attractive KH town ever, and I don't like that Lauriam and Elrena used to be such selfless people. I do still love Strelitzia because she's shy and relatable and quirky (sitting on the roof) and she questions authority and if you go with shipping subtext she's probably bi (or pan?), but I don't like the "Lauriam's dead sister for his arc's drama" bit. I liked when Marluxia was angry because he wanted to run Organization XIII but it was in the hands of an idiot who wasn't him. And more than anything I just like imagining that the Age of Fairy Tales was something bigger, further in the past, and more mysterious than something designed for a mobile game. Scala ad Caelum, however, I like a lot better because there IS a lot of mystery there and also it's a very pretty town with an amazing design.

my canon OTP: I really only count the Disney couples as the "canon" ones, so this is a question of picking my favorite Disney couple that shows up onscreen. I hope I'm not forgetting an important one, but I think the title has to go to Aladdin/Jasmine, which is always perfect in everything. (This would be an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT STORY if KH had ever adapted Treasure Planet, and if it ever gets the mind to adapt Treasure Planet then even if I don't care about that game I will immediately declare that Amelia/Doppler takes the KH canon OTP crown. *taps watch* Get on it Squenix)

Non-canon OTP: SoRiku, which I counted as "basically canon" after DDD until III decided it wasn't sure. But I'm just a sucker for how DDD is the two of them all "HE'S GOT MY BACK AND I'VE GOT HIS AND I'D DO ANYTHING FOR HIM SO LONG AS HE'S HAPPY." It's just the best kind of Friends-to-Lovers, except when you take all canon into account it's Friends-to-Rivals-to-Enemies-to-Friends-to-Lovers and that's a very juicy dynamic. BUT ALSO: VexDem, which is a nostalgia ship SO STRONG I had to accept that it eclipsed my former Vexen ships by a mile and I wanted to go back to my roots. That one, I have a much longer essay about that I'll just have you refer to so I don't repeat myself for pages. To make a long story short, their scene in III was JUST DELICIOUS.

most badass character: OOF THEY'RE ALL BADASS but in the end it's between Sora and Aqua, because Sora gets the widest RANGE of abilities across the series that he masters while Aqua gets the most POWERFUL abilities due to her Mastery (Command Styles seem like they'd be the most OP things ever in-universe and I'm here for it because flashy battle moves make brain go brr).

pairing I am not a fan of: SOKAI, Xehaqus, RikuNami, Vanitas/anyone not evil

character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): OH BOY. KAIRI THE MOST. YOU ALL KNOW WHY: lack of screen time, Fridging for drama, forced romance to invite death flags (they really wanted to milk that death to get people talking didn't they?), giving Alyson Stoner ZERO direction to actually follow up on Hayden Panettiere's performance. But then I remember that they made Vexen redeem and lose his entire personality and I just...uuugghhhh. I can't believe he died twice in this series. And then Demyx is FUN but also I know he's flipped sides as well, which means he won't be fun much longer! Xehanort seems to switch motivations to whatever makes him the biggest threat (and several of Eraqus' old flaws seem to be mysteriously glued onto him), Sora isn't a motormouth anymore, Riku just doesn't get anyone who cares about him anymore because everyone's distracted by Sora and Kairi, IS ANYBODY GOING TO ADDRESS THE ACTUAL ISSUES THAT DROVE THE WAYFINDER TRIO APART, oh God Marluxia and Larxene you're good guys now what have they done to you

favourite friendship: I really like each of the trios. But you know what's even BETTER than the trios? If you put...all of the trios together...meaning Sora, Riku, Kairi, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Aqua, Terra, Ven, Roxas, Xion, Lea, Hayner, Pence, Olette...and then you added Isa back in there...and you gave them Ienzo...and you brought back Naminé...and you say that Subject X is Strelitzia and you have her turn back up so she can have justice done...AND YOU HAVE AN ULTRA KEYBLADE GROUP OF FRIENDS. As for Vexen, any purely platonic relationship I have for him is a crossover but trust me I have many crossover pals for he

character I want to adopt or be adopted by: See everyone I listed above in the friendship question. They can either mentor me or let me be their big sis/mom. But also, I will GLADLY be Merlin or Yen Sid's daughter. (But also would I kiiiiinda wanna be a VexDem daughter? This is the worst idea. Still wanna try)

[cutegirlmayra]

Kingdom Hearts 3: Sokai Prompt

It’s birthday week! :D I’m celebrating it by giving presents to all of you! Here’s some more prompts, coming to you as fast as I can write them out this week!

Prompts and commissions are open! But if you have submitted 3 prompt requests, please leave room for others to join in the fun too! <3

Prompt:

“So... this is where the keyblade wielders of the past called home.” Riku stepped into Scala Ad Caelum as the rest of the gang tagged along, all admiring it.

“Em, I’ve heard a lot about this place.” Aqua nodded, looking around, “It’s amazing. More than I could have imagined.”

Terra stepped into what looked like a decoratively designed city square, but noticed the circle format seemed more like a dueling field...

He summoned his keyblade, “I think I know what these symbols mean. Aqua, do you mind?” he smiled kindly to her as she was momentarily surprised by his request.

She looked at the symbols, walking towards him before stopping in realization at his request. “This is...” She nervously held her hand up to her chest.

“Heh, don’t worry. We don’t have to finish it. I just wanted to see how it’s really done.” Terra explained, comforting her second of hesitation.

“Wait, what is it?” Ventus came bounding up to them, but Aqua kindly gestured to the rings around the much larger tiles. “O-oh...” he stepped back, letting them occupy a circle. “But hey! Don’t leave us hanging.” He teased, putting his hands behind his head a moment as the others walked to watch around them.

Kairi was too distracted by the sights, but Sora stopped following the others to look back to her, “Huh?” He walked over to her, “Everything alright, Kairi?”

“Oh, yes.” she turned and nodded sweetly to him, then went back to marveling at the area. “It’s just... something seems... like I’ve been lost here before.”

He tilted his head, “Before?” The memory of finding all the pieces of her heart here in such a hurried time, panicking over if he was too late or not came back to his mind then.

He looked down, wondering if that feeling of ‘being lost’ was maybe related to that...

“Your heart... did wander here before.” He softly, almost unsure if he should say it, spoke out as Kairi turned her ear to him.

“Is that... what it is?” She smiled cheerfully to calm him and bent down so his lowered head could still see her eyes. “Don’t look so down, Sora. You did retrieve my lost heart again... for that, I’m really grateful.”

He leaned up and she joined him by walking towards the others who were forming a circle around Aqua and Terra. Placing her hands leisurely behind her and together, she lingered in her stride, waiting on Sora. “You’ve done that a lot lately for me... someday, I hope... to return the favor.” she nodded ahead of her, but then moved faster towards the others, as though not wanting to dive too deep on the topic just yet.

Sora watched her and smiled, thinking about all the times he has saved her before and flicked his nose, “Heh.” He felt confident then, but didn’t really know why...

Maybe it was because she acknowledged that he’s always been there for her... but he didn’t really give it too much thought. Right now wouldn’t be a good time to reflect on things anyway.

“What’s going on?” Donald quacked out, “I don’t see anything special about them.” He tapped his impatient duck foot that slapped against the ground a little too loudly to be polite.

Terra and Aqua nodded, deciding to not keep their ‘audience’ waiting too long.

“It’s an old tradition... or, um, well...” He gestured his hand out to explain, but seemed to trip up on his words as he looked to Aqua for assistance.

“The culture of the keyblade wielder has been lost for so long, it’s hard to explain but..” She gave him the nudge he needed, and turned to the others. “It’s a dance... and a battle... so to speak. But it’s all meaningful and creates a strong tie between two hearts... if completed properly, anyway.”

Terra continued, “In other words, Keyblade wielders would use this to form strong bonds between one another... but it was mostly done for rituals like-”

“It’s a wedding!” Ventus was on his hands and knees, looking at some symbols and seeing two keys shooting a white beam towards one heart. “If I’m reading this right, it connects two hearts into feeling like one, ultra powerful one!” he looked up at Aqua and Terra. “Terra! You rascal! What are you planning to do with Aqua!?”

Aqua shook her head, “It’s a powerful bond, but it’s different than--necessarily--a marriage.” she explained. “Although... many did perform the connecting of hearts through this ritual during their ceremonies... it can also be done with friends.”

“But... not likely.” Terra looked away and down to the ground, as though not really wanting to correct her. “Either way, I’ve only ever read about it in books. Wouldn’t it be exciting to see it actually done?”

“But not completed.” Aqua summoned her keyblade, “Right?” She cutely tilted her head to tease him, and he just gave her a slight scold with his eyes. “What? I thought it was funny.” She tried to joke, and Ventus laughed.

“Wait, wait, wait. Hold on a second, I haven’t memorized this yet.” Axel placed his finger to his forehead, pausing the explanation. “You’re both saying you’re--willingly, without restraint--going to try an ancient keyblade ritual you’ve never actually seen before... and are... hoping it doesn’t link your hearts infinitely together in some... ultra heart thing?” he shrugged, but Xion and Roxas just looked up to him, then to each other.

“Sounds fun.” Xion nodded.

“Yeah, let’s give it a go.” Roxas agreed, and the two walked into one of the other circles. “Axel, do you mind?” He gestured to him still being in the tiled circle.

“Wha... you... both of you!?” He crossed his arms, amazed they were going to try and follow along too. “Am I the only one seeing this possibly ending badly here!?”

He wildly gestured around to the others, and Sora looked to Kairi.

She didn’t say anything, but lightly looked to him as well...

“Count us in too, Terra.” Sora nodded to him, and offered Kairi his hand.

“Gworsh.” Goofy covered his mouth as he stepped back for the two, letting them pass him.

She giggled and took it without a second thought, as Riku folded his arms and shook his head. “Great, now you’ve got everyone pairing up.”

Terra and Aqua looked a little worried, hesitating as the two pairs summoned their keyblades. “A-Axel’s right. It is risky... And for novices it’s-” she held out her hand, hoping to dissuade them.

“We just won’t do the last step,” Roxas gave a confident look towards Aqua. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to see how it works, too.”

Goofy laughed, “This should be interesting, yehak!”

Donald’s impatience left him as he heard everything taking place, and pulled Goofy back to give them all more space. “Whha!! I gotta see this!”

“But we’re not even sure what the ‘one heart’ process really does. I think me and Aqua are more suited to discovering--through safer means--what they used to mean to keyblade wielders.” Terra didn’t really want to argue or convince anyone, but he did want to explain both him and Aqua’s reasonings.

“We’ll be fine!” Sora chimed up, then looked to Kairi, letting her take her place and situating himself where he saw Terra. “If we can’t keep up, we won’t activate the power, right?” He tilted his head, and Terra and Aqua both looked to each other in agreement, seeing some safety in that.

“That is true...” Aqua repeated in hopes that if they didn’t do it accurately, the process wouldn’t commence.

“You guys...” Terra shook his head, “Alright. Phase one.” He held his keyblade towards Aqua, and immediately, an air of seriousness took over the atmosphere.

Goofy and Donald looked to each other, Donald more pumped than Goofy’s worried expression before he seemed to concede that this was happening with the dangers and or not. “Be careful, Sora... Kairi, Xion... Roxas... and you guys too.” He slightly laughed again, but there was a bit of concern in his voice.

“Ahhh, they’ll be fine!” Donald waved a hand out, as though dismissing Goofy’s troubles.

Roxas and Sora, as though not really realizing it had already begun, scrambled to mimic Terra’s posture and placement as quickly as they could. They adopted the serious look and Xion had to hold in her laughter at it.

Aqua, surprisingly, took on a much more playful demeanor and swished her body to where her keyblade rested by her side, her wrist gently against her hip to let the keyblade linger out slightly towards Terra’s.

Kairi and Xion took an extra second to adjust themselves, but it was clear they weren’t as well coordinated as Aqua was masterfully demonstrating.

“We won’t make it easy for you... so if you don’t watch carefully, we’ll let you fall behind.” Although Aqua said that... it motivated the two girls, and they immediately rose their heads up, just as determined to match Terra’s expression as the boys were.

As though the world sensed the magic resonated in the three pairs hearts, sensing what they were going to do--the world began to hone it’s magic into one, central part of the square...

Lifting her leg, Aqua made the first move and followed the symbols, as though a rhythm of music was playing in her heart.

The second she moved, so did Xion and Kairi, and Terra remained still as stone.

“The first phase is to judge ones loyalty to your heart, it’s supposed to be aggressive, so don’t hold back.” Aqua, after a few gentle movements of turning her keyblade and up, seeming graceful in her light but long steps, suddenly swished it down with great power.

Again, the world resonated with power at the action.

“Prepare yourselves.” Terra smiled, and began to defend himself against her twirling hits and powerful slashes at him.

“A-ah!” Roxas wasn’t prepared for the harshness of the battle right off the bat, but braced himself as Xion came charging at him, then twirled to match Aqua.

Aqua slid her keyblade down Terra’s own and then jumped.

Following the pattern, he fell to a knee and helped her flip over him by giving her keyblade some support.

“Phase two,” He lowered both knees, “Technique and passion.”

Sora had seen Kairi in battle before, even joined her in it, but he was also awestruck at her following Aqua so naturally as he quickly tried to copy Terra and dropped to a knee, letting her cartwheel over him and then looking to see Terra on both knees. “What!?” He seemed shocked by that but even more so that Terra had one hand behind his back...

“Ahh..!” Sora quickly looked back to Kairi and watched the sparks as her Keyblade slammed into his own, she gave out a strong cry as she hit it.

Dodging more powerful hits, Roxas and Sora sweated slightly as they had to use one arm to block and their knees to continually adjust their upper-bodies to perfectly deflect the on-slaughter of hits.

Roxas squinted an eye closed when Xion jumped like Aqua into the air, and slammed down fiercely onto his own. “And this is to show loyalty?” Roxas gritted his teeth, impressed by how hardcore the keyblade wielders of the past were.

Axel whistled and folded his arms, “Or maybe... the girls were just that intense.” he nodded as if approving, but Riku just looked at him a moment, almost in a funny way.

“Or maybe, they all were. This is only the beginning, right?”

Ventus walked over to stand next to Riku, and hearing that, looked shocked and innocently startled at the possibility that this dueling dance could get more impressively complicated and difficult.

“Woah! I hadn’t thought of that!” He cupped his hands over his mouth to call out to his friends, “Don’t let up! Give it your all you guys!”

Feeling the burn, the boys were happy to see Terra--after bending his body back to dodge a sweeping strike, jump to his feet and begin to clang his keyblade over and over with hers in a swishing manner, but much lighter than an actual fighting force.

Roxas and Sora jumped to match, but Sora wobbled a bit.

Roxas flailed his arms but took a step back, making a mistake and falling on his rear. “Offph! Geez, Xion... you’ve really gotten stronger. Did you even hold back?” he rubbed his head as she came over to him, seeing he was alright and just stumbled, she placed a hand over her mouth.

“Hehe, I couldn’t resist the idea of making an effort.” She held out her hand and helped him up.

The power around their circle ceased... but the two continued to perform the ritual anyway, getting back into place and trying to catch up.

Sora... tilting as though he would fall... scooted his feet back to his center of gravity without moving off the symbol, and got up properly to his feet.

Kairi’s eyes blinked rapidly, impressed that he hadn’t fallen down, and nodded with an encouraging smile to not give up.

Sora looked to see Terra with both hands now on the keyblade, and quickly did the swishing motion to maneuver himself to the next phase, and Kairi followed suit.

“Technique, huh?” Sora raised a tempting eyebrow, as though getting into this, and Kairi giggled.

“Don’t hold back, I can take a hit.” She narrowed her eyes, not backing down.

Sora nodded, “Then I won’t look away!”

Terra’s moves sent sparks of magic over the tiles on the ground, the symbols each represented a type of magic that he summoned and shot towards Aqua. She was able to dodge but noticed that some of the symbols meant for her to simply block and not dodge. “Kairi!” she called, looking over to her after worrying that some of the magic might be too advanced for her to block.

But Kairi took them, and Sora didn’t miss a beat.

“Oh...” Aqua froze a moment, stunned by her determination and Sora’s trust in her abilities. ‘But she’s only just begun training...’ she thought to herself, before looking up at Terra swinging his keyblade down on her.

“Ahhh!!!”

“Hmph!” she sprayed up some magic that he blocked, knocking him back.

“Phase 3...” Aqua took a deep breath, “Passion and stability...” she took her keyblade and, following Terra’s pace, linked the tips of their key’s protruding edges and fell back.

The power it took to maintain a steady swing of their bodies without either one misjudging the balance and having their partner fall to the ground was for more masterful arts than what Aqua or Terra thought the other two pairs could mimic.

But surprisingly... Xion and Roxas performed it perfectly, while Sora and Kairi took the pace a little slower and communicated more.

“And...” Sora began, making sure their keyblades were perfectly locked.

“Go..!” Kairi dipped back as did Sora, swinging themselves in the bend before immediately transitioning to the next step.

Standing as close as their keyblades to their bodies could allow, they came in and out, and then Sora took a strong stance and only swung Kairi on the linked keyblades.

“Wait... are they even watching Aqua and Terra anymore?” Ventus looked to see Xion and Roxas still a few seconds behind, but Sora and Kairi were perfectly synced with them now. “But they were falling behind before.”

Riku also watched,... before flinching back, “Hold on, I think they’ve figured out the symbols.”

Axel also looked amazed by that, “Wahhh? Come again!?” he leaned his full height out and forward, gesturing to Riku to explain before looking to see Sora scan the ground while firing out a magic attack, running to roll as Kairi countered with another magical attack.

They both healed--although no one was hurt--and then turned to attack the other.

Terra also turned his eyes to them, but being careful to match pace with Aqua as they started--what appeared to be--a more realer version of a keyblade duel. ‘They’ve been watching the symbols as well as us..? No...’

He spun to dodge a hit from behind before positioning himself to walk within the circle at the same timing as Aqua, their keyblades now pointing towards the other again. ‘They’re learning the patterns... the repeating signs... they’re...’

Sora and Kairi paused and stood directly across from the other, their keyblades still in one, fluid motion dancing as they twirled, tossed, and continued the actions more like a dance performance now.

Once stopped again, Aqua and Terra panted, but looked over to see Xion and Roxas lowering their keyblades, all eyes... were watching Sora and Kairi.

“They’re like... moving as one.” Ventus arched his eyes, watching as Aqua and Terra also lowered their keyblades.

‘They were learning with their hearts...’ Aqua studied them a moment before sighing, “That’s it, before the last step.” Aqua stopped, nodding to Terra that they should end here. “They certainly had an odd way of showing affection.”

Terra was still watching Sora and Kairi as they were also locked onto one another’s eyes, breathing to a steady pace and closed their mouths after catching their breaths.

“...Terra?” Aqua spoke out again.

“Huh?” Terra turned back to her, “Oh... right.” He looked shaken up, and seemed to adjust himself on his feet to remember himself. “The last phase would be to barely move the keyblades, but just enough to unlock the other’s heart. However, the process was described as having to be done at the exact same timing... much like how the ritual is done all at similar, but exact pacing...” He gestured to the circle and the symbols. “The phases bring you closer and closer to the center, however...”

Aqua continued, walking up to him, “The last phase is to separate you both again... before making your heart one.” She looked to the others, turning to them to make sure she had their attention...

The circle beneath them dimmed in power, before all but fading away. The last circle remaining still carried glowing light, barely traceable to the eye, but forming direct magic beneath Sora and Kairi’s ring.

She was still surprised Sora and Kairi were keeping their eyes fixated on one another, their keyblades never lowering.

“Umm...” she looked to them a moment, but continued, “When the hearts are shot at the same time, then they unlock together. When the two keyblade wielders placed a piece of them inside the other’s heart, something meaningful for the both of them that they share, then the two hearts become connected as though one.”

“Rumor has it that this meant they could feel the other, whether troubled or being threatened, and if one heart disappeared... the other would feel their partner departing.” He looked to Aqua, “But such a ritual has been forbidden now. Due to it’s emotionally scarring nature... to feel someone you care so deeply about dying... or even lose their heart...”

“It’s like feeling the darkness engulf you forever.” Aqua clutched her own heart, before looking to the others. “And that’s it. That’s all me and Terra wanted to experience. Just... how they did it.”

Sora watched Kairi’s eyes carefully...

A silent communication.

Kairi never wavered in her intense stare... until she broke it with a smile.

Sora’s eyes lit up at it, and he closed his eyes to give her a returning, large grin.

Then... they watched.

“Umm... Sora?” Riku stepped forward, then looked to Kairi, unfolding his arms. “Kairi..?”

Axel watched their faces, then looked to their keyblades, “Oh no...” His hands on his hips fell... as the two keyblades slightly moved to the sides, and a beam of light pierced their hearts.

“Whha!!!” Donald scrambled his arms around as they fired out.

“Wait, hold on! Sora! Kairi!” Goofy held out his hand, almost moving into the circle but their hearts flew out before more could be done.

The two hearts, due to the power of the world suddenly blasting out from the circled tile, pulled the hearts together and for a split second... they were one in a flimsy line of lights from the circle.

Entering each other’s hearts, Kairi looked around Sora’s heart. “This does feel familiar.” she joked to herself, before forming out of light a paopu fruit, half bitten into. “My most treasured memory... and a promise I wouldn’t dare forget... that I made to you.” She closed her eyes, remembering the memory in a flash before letting the figurative image that was a piece of her heart fly into his stain-glass portrait...

The world burst to light again.

Sora walked into Kairi’s heart, admiring the stain-glass as he lightly bent down to touch it. “...Feels like its made of the same petals to your heart, Kairi.” He smiled at the thought, before leaning up and forming with light her Good Luck Charm: her Wayfinder.

“I have so many memories with you, Kairi... but this one holds the start of them all.” He gripped it tightly, placing a piece of his heart in it. “I know... that I won’t ever be apart from you anymore... I can feel what you feel too. You’ll never be lost from me again...” He found it hard to let go of... but soon... let it drift into her stain-glass portrait as well.

“-ra! ...Sora..! Sora, wake up!”, “Don’t do this to me!”, “Whah-hahah! You can’t leave us like this!”

Sora blinked his blurry eyes slowly open, “Ughh... Goofy? Riku..? Donald!” he pushed Donald up from him, seeing him about to go for CPR. He made sure his face was okay before kicking and flailing his arms out. “I’m fine, I’m fine! My heart’s still here, see?” He gestured to himself, showing he was fine.

He then looked around, and gently moved Goofy out of the way to see Kairi still passed out.

“Kairi!” He took off from the ground... but stumbled in his sudden weariness... “Ughh...”

Goofy, Donald, and Riku both held him up.

“It’s alright, whatever that light was, it brought your hearts together and then parted them again.” Riku explained, then looked over to Kairi, “Both of your hearts were brought back to their bodies... neither of you disappeared.”

“Your hearts were like- WAHHHA, then the light was like SWAHOOOHOOO, even before you hit the ground it was putting them back like WHAH-WHAH!” Donald animatedly demonstrated the process of what they saw. Although it had been seconds to them, Sora felt like it had been a bit longer than just that...

“Before we hit the ground..?” Sora tried to get back up, and finally found the strength to do so.

Then it happened.

He felt his heart, but then something separate from his heart.

Something that was woozily waking up.

“Ah! Kairi.” he looked down.

“It’s alright, Sora. I’m sure she’ll wake up soon.” Riku took one of his arms and placed it over his shoulder.

“No... I mean... she’s waking up.” without even looking at her, Sora knew she was stirring, and Riku looked up to see Kairi lean up, clutching her head and then her heart.

She looked to Sora before everyone began asking her questions.

Donald hugged Sora’s legs, crying, “You’re no longer a solo half-pint like the rest of us!”

“Golly... Ya-hak! You two are kinda like old-time married then, right?” Goofy seemed to be taking it well...

“Ma... Married?” Sora’s face suddenly turned red. “Ah! I forgot about that!”

“Wha?!” The three looked amazed at him.

“That’s the part you forgot?” Riku looked more shocked than the other two.

As Kairi got up, Aqua immediately began to drill her. “What do you feel? Are you hurt? How’s your heart? Is your body feeling connected to it still?”

“I-I’m fine.” Kairi lightly nodded and smiled to her questions. “I just... I feel Sora’s embarrassed by something.” she tried to look over their shoulders, but couldn’t see Sora over the mass of people.

For the rest of the day, Terra and Aqua informed Sora and Kairi of their reckless behavior and what it had done. Now, they would feel the presence and emotional standing of the other, and what kinda toll that could bring to them...

However, Sora and Kairi kept wanting to not be parted. The urge to hold hands--just to feel close again--was a lot to handle while everyone kept asking them questions.

The ritual hadn’t been done in centuries but...

Sora and Kairi looked to each other, and smiled sweetly.

That didn’t stop them from bringing it back.

They didn’t think twice.

“Crazy kids.” Axel rubbed his hand into his hair, before noticing something was off, and looked under his arms to realize that Roxas and Xion weren’t there again. “Wait a second... Ah! Don’t you dare! Get back here!” he stomped his foot down as he looked to see Xion and Roxas practicing the ritual again, trying to get it perfect this time around.

“Oh, come on! Give me a break here...” He slumped his shoulders down in front of him before pulling himself up into a pitiful laugh, “Having a heart is a strange thing indeed...” he went over and scooped the two up as they tried to protest, and brought them back with the rest of the group, not willing to hear their complaints.

[bearpillowmonster]

KH: MOM Review (Gameplay)

Every Kingdom Hearts game feels different. It's always innovating and always adding new types of gameplay. This is no exception. Rhythm minigames are no stranger to the Kingdom Hearts series but a whole game based on it is new.

I don't play a lot of rhythm games but I have played the infamous Atlantica section in Kingdom Hearts 2 as well as the Symphony of Sorcery in Dream Drop Distance and the Ice Cream Beat of Birth By Sleep, Guitar Hero and I'll even throw in the Honeybee Inn rhythm game in FFVII Remake. Out of all of those, Atlantica has been my favorite, that's right, I actually didn't mind it.

Now this system is entirely different than any of those, at least to me. It's definitely the most complex though but just hold on because I know how the word 'complex' can be triggering for a game, I just mean in comparison to the others is all. It's not a DDR right, left, up or down. So without further ado...(Nonspoiler for this part, it’s just gameplay)

This game begins with a stage. You're thrown into it without any notice, there were things that I didn't grasp until near the end of the stage, luckily it doesn't count towards a score yet, and after it is the tutorial but that's just the opening so if you're clueless and want to be prepared, I would say to try out the demo, I didn't even realize how much it helped me until I played the actual game. 

I wanted to say at just how friendly this game is to newcomers, it's literally all laid out for you. Nomura came out with HD remasters and collections of the previous games then a recap of the franchise on YouTube then put it IN Kingdom Hearts 3 and people still complained because they don't know the story and are too lazy to play the other games. Now Nomura's packed it all into one whole game to sum it up, explained from the perspective of Kairi herself so that you're still entertained while catching up. If there was ever an easy path to get into Kingdom Hearts, this is the answer. If I hear complaining about it from this point forward, I will be pissed. Now, as you can see, I didn't make it to story yet but that's not entirely what I'm talking about. All the buttons and functions are the same as a regular game, you basically have it all but the different keyblades (well you can collect them but not use them because they're cards). You can play as casually as you want, a song here and there. There are even options for a shuffle and sort function if you want to just jump to track selection but you'll need to unlock them individually in World Tour first. This may sound complicated but that's where the clean and accessible the menu comes in, I have to give props for that.

You're on a set track, it runs on its own, does its own thing except when you're gliding which is just moving left and right to collect notes. You use the normal KH abilities to your advantage because some enemies will be high in the air so you need to jump and slash at the same time but you can't just button mash any more, there's timing involved now. Once you get used to the gameplay, it's quite enjoyable, you may even get a song that you hit every note, my first one was 'Another Side', the first try too, I didn't hit all excellent though.

How do party members work? Well let's say you have Sora, Donald, and Goofy in a party. You have 3 buttons you can press to attack, Sora's the only one that can jump and the only one that can use the reaction commands so you need to pay attention to all three because there could be enemies on the floor and in the sky at the same time. The one thing I will say is a little bit of a complaint and that's that it doesn't tell you which buttons to press except on specific stages, it just has the symbols, I guess that's what makes it more combat oriented but it's definitely different and a little bit harder. But I guess it gets to be muscle memory, after a while. If you already know the themes, it gets easier for you to manage because you focus more on what you hear and less on what you see, that's how I started getting better with timing. I experimented with pretty much everything I could think of so I tried it with low volume and found that I missed a whole lot more because I couldn't hear it, which might be obvious because it's a rhythm game, but it just goes to show how important sound is. I even tried using headphones, I suppose that's up to you, it definitely made the music clearer but my performance was about the same. 

What do songs net you other than progress? Well you get materials. Also similar to KHUX, you get crafting materials except these ones you can use for potions and stuff, I did a potionless run because I didn’t feel the need (but I also didn’t do it all proud either) but I used a few summons and item boosts just for fun. You can also craft cards, which are really just for looks to see in the Museum after you finish one of the memory dives (which I'll get into) but the way you get the cards, grinds my gears because it's gacha, you craft them and it's a surprise what you're going to get...so it's essentially a loot box that you don't pay money for?? What the-

(notice how it says KH2 or Days at the bottom, you don’t even know. Of course I have Writhing Shards rn but that’s because I beat the game and didn’t open a whole lot of keyblade cards but the memory and scene ones are the annoying ones for me)

You don't even have to "finish" the song, just get it most of the way before you die then you'll still get credit and still get a ranking, just no exp. Now, there are also stars, stars are from 'missions' for each stage, if you play KHUX, it’s kind of like how it says “get this amount of Lux” or “use this type of medal” or “don’t use continue” so most stars are just “get this many points” and you need to collect enough stars to get to the next area. With that, so long as you have enough stars, you don’t “have” to play every stage, just like regular Kingdom Hearts and skipping worlds, I did though, just for sport, except Let it Go, just for spite. I could see plenty of fans going after those A+++ Proud Performer 3-Star rankings, I can't wait to see the hype it generates, same with the co-op.  

They went all out when they didn't have to. The Museum is where everything is collected, so all the cards you collect and craft. You can also just play the song on its own without gameplay through the Museum, so if you want headphones to just chill, it's really nice. You can also play the cutscenes and memory dives on their own without the gameplay. There are "feats" or missions such as finishing a certain number of songs, like Nook Miles or the ones they had in Re:Mind. You can collect profile pictures for your co-op or versus account, mine is Simba (even though I don’t really use it). But the co-op can get pretty intense as you can “sabotage” each other, which seems similar to a Smash or Mario Kart match, adding that much more to the gameplay.

A few more complaints, one is that certain enemies from a stage, (say, the Wyverns) won't have the same attacks as the other stages, sometimes they'll have it so that you jump to hit them and sometimes they'll just have them take a normal hit without the jump so you can't memorize what each enemy requires (there are too many to really do that anyway). The other thing is more just opinion based, particular enemies such as Large Bodies tend to carry a weight so you need to hit them more than once even if its just one enemy. How it does this is that you hit it and then the enemy gets knocked back as your next note so you hit them again. There were definitely times where I struggled because I knew I was hitting the buttons but nothing was happening, I would guess timing was the problem in some of those cases but the indicators can be difficult to keep track of because it has to be “just right”. I think even just a line on the floor to tell when you’re supposed to hit would be a major help but in a way, I feel like that’s on purpose. Also, in the Museum, you can view all the cards EXCEPT the Keyblades which is pretty shotty if you ask me, what's the point in grinding to get my favorite Rumbling Rose, if I can't even look at it properly?

(also new names for some keyblades (this is a zoom-in))

There will be a lot of things happening at once which can be daunting, I do appreciate that they included the easy, standard, and proud modes though. Keep in mind, each of those are used for individual songs, not playthroughs so if you want to change, go ahead, at least as far as World Tour goes. On top of that, there are different modes that also gauge at how good you are (to use on the track selection). There's the basic mode which I already explained, then there's the one button mode which should be self explanatory, and then there's the performer mode which is quite a lot to put on your plate all at once because on top of normal gameplay, you're adding new buttons and things in the middle of your attacks, I would probably only recommend that after you've got a decent amount of experience because I tried it day 1 and it seems like you would need a good understanding of the game and to be on the same wavelength before even attempting it. You can view a playthrough of each stage called a "demo" which is the little play symbol button next to the "play" button, it shows you how you should be playing to get an A+++ rank and giving you a heads up of what's to come, all excellent all the time. On top of that, when I was playing Xenoblade, one thing I proposed was flicking the analog stick in a certain direction for each move, that’s present here in the form of bosses and memory dives but if you want it to, you can go into the menu to enable it for regular gameplay. You'll find out if you want it on the very first stage, again, I would only recommend it after a lot of experience.

Your characters level up but it mainly just has to do with HP so you don’t die so easily but at the same time, you have potions so I don’t see much of a point for normal gameplay. All three of the party members only have one health bar, so leveling does come in handy for the bosses. However, I don't understand how each party member has a different level, maybe it's just based on the amount of notes you hit with that character but it's kind of weird because I don't think it matters. Even on the team selection part of the play screen, it has one compilitive level so why would they be different on the menu?

For bosses, you only encounter a few. If it were me, I would've made one per game but it is what it is. You don't worry about jumping anymore, it's just holding the attack button down instead and the amount of "dodge" notes that you hit will work in your defense whenever the boss attacks. Once the dodge section is over, it actually tells you how you did with the dodging section. The first time I ever did it, it said "Oh No." it has a sense of humor, it took me a while to nail those ones you hold down which is odd because I rock the gliding sections most of the time. 

There's only one more type of gameplay type I can think of, memory dives. It's similar to a boss but you're flying and there's a scene playing in the background, also some of the directional notes will have doubles, so you need to point the analog stick in different directions which is as difficult as can be because you have to use BOTH analog sticks (took me forever just to figure that out). You 'mainly' gain the memory dives from crafting which is a bit odd but you unlock the recipes and items as you go through World Tour and then play them separately in Track Selection, until you get to KH3 at least. 

Keep in mind that I played the demo on both PS4 and Switch and compared the two, my performance was about the same, though I will say this. With Switch, you can take it on the go and just do a few levels here and there as well as remove the joy-cons. The thing about that is that I feel the need to shake the joy-cons but there's no function that uses that in the game, I really wish there was though. And those directional ‘slide’ notes have to be way easier on PlayStation because the analog sticks are right next to each other.

[nadziejastar]

Terra’s name was carved on the handle of that wooden Keyblade. It was Ven’s most treasured possession. Both of his friends had gone off without him, though.

He whirled the practice blade around and held it aloft. Maybe it’s because I’m still in training.

When he spun it around once more, his hand slipped, and the sword tumbled to the ground. Someone else scooped it up.

“This yours?”

It was a red-haired boy about the same age as Ven, wearing a scarf with a checkered black-and-yellow pattern around his neck. Who is this weirdo?

“You still play with toy swords? That’s cute.”

Something about his tone irked Ven. What was this guy’s deal?

Yes, me too! I thought their reunion would be so awesome, but it was a joke. Literally. There was no sincerity to it. There was no emotional music or heartwarming dialogue. It was simply played for laughs. Ventus was like...oh hey, you’re that one dude I hung out with for five minutes. Cool. And Lea was just confused why he looked identical to Roxas. I got the same impression that you did. Lea was so close to Roxas because he reminded him of Ventus. Because he WAS Ventus! I mean, it’s just so obvious that the reason Ventus was the only one of the wayfinder trio to meet Lea, was because he was going to develop a relationship with Axel later. Duh!

“You scared of losing? C’mon. Hope you’re ready.” Ven could probably wipe the floor with this scrub if he used a real Keyblade—but he was probably supposed to use the wooden one.

“Yeah! Now we’re talkin’!” Lea’s enthusiasm was weirdly contagious.

“You’re gonna be sorry!” Ven shouted. Lea leaped gracefully into the air by way of response. Ven launched himself upward at nearly the same time, and the two met in battle.

Huh? This is kind of…fun.

While the sound of the wooden sword and toy discs clashing wasn’t exactly epic, he could still feel the force of each blow.

It had been a while since Ven had fought like this against something other than Unversed.

“Not bad, Ventus!” Lea said with a smile. Off to the side, the blue-haired boy—his name was Isa, if Ven recalled—observed them in exasperation.

After KH3 first came out, I made a post on Reddit saying I didn’t like how Roxas and Ventus were kept as separate people because they felt like the EXACT same character, and it would have created a deeper relationship if Ven had his memories of Lea from BBS AND his memories of Axel. And the amount of of people outraged that I could even say such a thing was hilarious. As if there weren’t countless hints in the story that Roxas had Ventus’s heart...

“Yeah! That’s more like it!” Axel leaped up and struck with the chakrams, then gave Roxas a flying kick that sent him sprawling.

Axel was far, far stronger than the Dusks. But there was something off about him, Roxas thought as he scrambled to his feet. What was it…? What made him seem so strange?

“Time to heat things up!” A gust of flame shot forth from Axel’s hand, knocking Roxas back again. “Ha-ha! Nice, Roxas!”

Axel was laughing—why was he having so much fun?

Actually, fighting him was kind of fun.

Roxas was so fed up with all these things happening to him, and he couldn’t stand this Axel guy spouting all this weird stuff with his smug know-it-all face—and yet, fighting him like this wasn’t all that bad.

What’s going on? How am I having fun fighting him? He’s obviously holding back against me… Why? What does it mean?

The fight scene from KH2 was made to be similar to Ventus play fighting against Lea. Roxas felt like fighting Axel was familiar, even though they never fought before. His heart remembered Lea. The original plan was for Lea and Ventus to rekindle their friendship after Ven got his memories as a Nobody back. All of these characters were supposed to be connected! Not segregated into trios that barely interact with each other. That defeats the whole purpose. 

Terra has a special connection to Riku, Lea has a special connection to Ventus and Kairi due to Roxas and Xion, Ventus has a special connection to Sora and Kairi, Kairi has a special connection to Aqua. The Xehanort Saga should have felt like one cohesive story. The characters meeting should have felt like destiny and all the trios would overlap. 

BBS and Days were sister games being developed at the same time. Ventus meeting Lea was the foundation for the way Roxas/Axel was written in Days. Terra and Lea had a special connection because Axel picked up his toy sword and took on the “big bro” role for a while. Ventus and Isa had a special connection because Roxas found the WINNER stick and took on the role of “best friend” for a while. But now it feels like Days is a self-contained story that has almost nothing to do with BBS and vice versa. 

“I get it… then I guess we may as well fight!” Roxas cried out, leveling the Keyblade.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way… Roxas!”

Axel launched a flying kick into Roxas. The force sent Roxas smashing into the ground.

I haven’t fought Roxas like this before. And, the Roxas I know isn’t the kind of guy who’d be knocked down by something like that.

“Let’s burn!”

Flames erupted from his hands. Taking the hit directly, Roxas was thrown to the ground again.

“Hahah! ‘Sokay, Roxas!” laughed Axel.

Maybe it would have been better to have fought him like this sooner.

Roxas stood, and came at him with force. Axel caught the Keyblade with his chakrams and forced it down, Roxas’ face in point-blank range.

“How like you, Roxas!”

I’m sure that Axel remembering meeting Ventus and having a play fight with him made it impossible to eliminate him. He met Ventus when he was still Lea, an innocent happy kid who liked to make people smile. Destroying that “stray puppy” would be betraying the very essence of who he is deep down. It would have destroyed him. That one single meeting in BBS made Roxas and Axel’s relationship much more interesting, since Axel was always so nostalgic for the past. Roxas was a relic from his past, as much as his memories of Isa were. Only Roxas was the exact same kid from his memories. Isa became corrupted and Norted. Axel was trying to recapture his lost friendship with Isa through Roxas. It’s why Roxas was such a perfect “replacement” best friend to fill the void of Isa’s absence. Axel clung to Roxas so much because he was everything he wished Isa still was.

I really don’t like the direction the series seems to be going with Roxas now. When he returned in KH3, he was talking in this fake sounding lower pitch than he did in Days or KH2. Like we’re supposed to see him as some edgy hardass now, LOL. Yeah, whatever. His reunion with Lea felt hollow in KH3, because it was just put in for pandering. There was no emotion behind it. There was hardly any dialogue, and what little there was had no substance. There was no mention of the WINNER stick or anything. 

It’s sad because Roxas and Axel’s relationship actually had a lot of emotion and meaning in Days, due to its connection to Axel’s childhood. And it was because Roxas was a sweet innocent kid, and NOT an edgy hardass. In KH3, I felt nothing when RAX reunited, unlike the scene where the wayfinder trio reunited. A reunion like that shouldn’t happen in the middle of a battle. TAV reunited after their fight. RAX’s reunion felt like it was inserted into the story at the last minute, which I am sure it was. It’s why Kairi and Isa got the shaft and why Nomura needs DLC to explain why the hell they’re even there in the first place.

He didn’t really understand the “icing” part, except that it was ice cream. Like Winner, though, it meant something special. So when Axel came back, Roxas would use the freebie and get him some “icing.”

Roxas left Axel when he was very angry. They ended their friendship on pretty poor terms. Roxas never ever understood Axel, not even a little bit. When Roxas was sitting on the clock tower, he was feeling regret over how he left, which I found so sad. You need TIME to repair this friendship. I would have preferred that Lea reunite with Ventus at Yen Sid’s Tower because we would have gotten a FULL SCENE of them talking and working out their differences with open communication and honesty. This is something Axel never had with Roxas. 

Roxas was thinking too much to taste the ice cream, and before long, it was almost gone. The stick was blank.

There was a lot he’d left unfinished with the Organization—and with Axel. But at the moment, the thing that concerned him the most was the stick that said Winner. Why had he held on to it for so long? He should have given it to him sooner.

Ventus could have learned who Lea really was for the first time. Not the facade he wore all the time. Axel was a person who laughed and smiled all the time to hide a lot of pain, which Roxas (and half the fandom) never realized. Only by learning this could their relationship move out of the babysitter dynamic and grow into something more mature and satisfying for both of them. Lea could finally be himself and not have to hide all of his suffering under a Mr. Rogers mask. This is exactly why I think Lea isn’t able to have a true identity in the sea-salt trio. He has to hide who he really is. Imagine a friendship where you try to solve all of your friend’s emotional problems, but you can never talk about your own. That’s what Axel’s relationship with Roxas (and Xion) was like.

Other than being told today’s mission, I didn’t really do anything yesterday. Maybe in reality it’d even be okay to have called it a day off. A holiday…

“Didn’t get to go in the end,” muttered Axel, and he got up.

Today I have to destroy Roxas. I cannot betray the organization.

From the little shelf at his bedside, Axel took a white envelope, and looked at it vaguely for a while. Putting it in his pocket, Axel got up off the bed and left the room.

A short while after Axel had entered the room, Saïx still hadn’t said a word. As he typed away at the keyboard, working, the pallid light radiating from the monitor gleamed on the already pale Saïx.

Maybe, this is the last time I’ll see Saïx, too.

Thinking, Axel looked at the seated Saïx’s back.

“We’ve known each other for a pretty long time, haven’t we?”

Ignoring Axel’s words, Saïx continued typing on the keyboard.

“Say something. Have you even thought that maybe I can’t erase Roxas?” Axel said, in a playful tone, and Saix finally looked up. “It’ll be all right. ‘Cause I’m tough.” Axel puffed out his chest.

“How stupid,” said Saïx, and for a moment he smiled.

How am I supposed to buy that Roxas and Lea are such close friends if Roxas never knew anything about the real Lea, his past, or his inner turmoil? The reason why he always lied to him, and why he didn’t come with him when he defected? I mean, come on. There was so much more potential for a genuine and meaningful friendship between Lea and Ventus. Lea could get to know the real Ventus. He wanted to bring back Terra, who was Norted. If he retained his memories as Roxas, he would have learned that Xemnas---the guy he promised Xion he’d defeat---was actually body-jacked Terra. We should have seen his reaction to that. I also think Lea would remind Ventus a lot of Terra. They are both very protective and caring. The reunion would be so emotional due to that.

Lea handed over some munny and took the two cones from Scrooge, one of which he gave to Isa.

“It’s cold…,” Isa muttered as he took a bite.

“What’re you talking about? It’s ice cream; of course it’s cold. Got it memorized?”

“Salty, too.”

“But sweet!” Lea added, and Isa smiled a bit. That was rare for him. Well, eating ice cream together, talking about silly stuff, laughing together—it was just what friends did.

Wonder what he’s doing now—Ven, was it?

Ventus could really empathize with Lea and offer him emotional support for the first time. Axel only lied to him to protect him, like Terra would have. They would reestablish their trust. Their relationship would be a lot less one-sided. It wouldn’t have to be superficial and totally revolve around ice cream and small talk, either. Like Terra, Isa was a Nort. Ven and Lea could understand each other’s pain. They could develop a deeper friendship on a more adult level. 

Ventus could tell Lea the story of how he was abused by Xehanort. Then Terra gave him the toy sword that Lea picked up when they first met, which was his most treasured possession. And Lea could tell Ventus about his past, and how he took him out for ice cream all the time because of his memories of Isa---which were his greatest treasure. Instead of letting Lea’s friendship with Ventus grow and evolve along with his character, they chose to have Lea regress his development in order to maintain the relationship with Roxas (and Xion), which was relatively superficial and based on lack of communication and dishonesty. 

[squiishiichaos]

Maybe a salty vanroku? They find they both are salty about a lot of stuff and bond

(Oof.  You mean just Vanroku in general?  Okay!  Let’s fuckin’ do this!)

____

People make mistakes–at least, that’s what the masters say–but Vanitas sometimes had to wonder if people themselves weren’t just mistakes by their very nature.  

Take this fuck-nugget for instance. 

Ever since being given a Replica body to live in, the Blonde dual-wielder had basically become a legend among the heroes of both Dark and Light.   Vanitas could still remember rolling his eyes a time or two when Xemnas would speak so highly of the Nobody who had single-handedly almost torn his entire organization asunder.  As far as the Unversed was concerned, that said far more about Xemnas’s leadership than it did about the kid who cheated his way through life.

What made Roxas special enough that the Organization would save him a fucking chair?  There was no guarantee he was even still alive, let alone that he would rejoin them, and even if he did, Vanitas didn’t see why they needed another half-pint to drag their team along.  Wasn’t he enough?  

Hah, he barked at his own mind.   Even he was aware how fucked that sentiment was.  He’d never be enough for Xehanort.  Never.   He could have single-handedly defeated every single last one of the Guardians of Light and still not have been enough.  

But no.  They had lost, and now, he had to pay the piper here, sitting across the way from his Other’s once empty Look-alike.  

Who the fuck decided he should be the one to guard me?  “What’s so great about you?”

“Excuse me?”   He hadn’t meant to say that, but now that the words were out there, Vanitas found no real reason to stop them.

“You don’t look that special to me,” he continued with a glare.  “So what if you can wield two keyblades?  That hardly matters if you’re just two-bit trash.”

“As if you’re one to talk.  You couldn’t even beat Ventus.”  

Vanitas snarled.  “He had help.”

“So, did you.  What’s your excuse?” This insufferable little–”if you can’t put your money where your mouth is, I don’t suggest opening it.”

“Give me back my keychain and I’ll gladly put your light-loving ass in its place.”

“Afraid I can’t.”

“Why the fuck not?  You afraid of what those third-rate Masters will do if they catch you fraternizing with the enemy?”  Further evidence this kid wasn’t Ventus rested in the twisted smirk that tilted his lips up on the left in something like amused disgust.   Almost like there was something about Vanitas that made him sick to his stomach.  

Good.  “I ain’t afraid of anyone��especially not you–but I’m also not stupid.  I give you back that keychain, you’re just gonna run right back to your Pops for cover.”  

Oh, yeah, this kid was definitely not Ventus.  “Why?  So he can tell me what a fucking failure I am?   I’d rather beat your ass any day…”

“Assuming you even could.”  Cerulean narrowed on him with a leer that was equal parts testy and amused.  

“I don’t see what you think makes you so strong.  You’re just another useless Nobody.  A shell without a heart, wasting away day by day.”

“I used to think that, too,” Roxas told him on a tone that was fretfully flat, “but I have one now.”

“How are you so sure the others didn’t just lie to you about that?”  How did they know what a heart was?  Not even Ansem the Wise had been able to pinpoint what made a heart a heart.  It was a mystery–just another question no one had been able to explain to him.  

“I’ve felt enough hurt to know it’s there.”

“Hurt,” Vanitas snarled, “that’s your answer?  A measly feeling?”

“Bet it’s more than you’ve ever felt.”

Vanitas couldn’t help his scoff.  “I wouldn’t be so sure, Doppelganger.”

“You’re one to fucking talk.”

“I didn’t choose this face.”

“And neither did I!  You think I wanted to be some sort of carbon copy pieced together by two lost hearts?”

“One of those hearts was supposed to be mine!”

Oh no.  

He’d said too much.  He could see it in the slight narrow of those blue eyes and the furrow of golden brows.  The scowl that fell heavy over his taut lips.  It was an expression that would’ve looked out of place on his Brighter half.  One that was touched by a hint of darkness so disastrously familiar it almost forced a ball of tangible bile up his throat.

He swallowed the flood back down before it could be born anew in the space between them.   Roxas swallowed back his own demons where he stood pale across the way.

Vanitas couldn’t help a low growl.  “Go ahead,” he goaded, “pity me just like the rest.”

“No,” the Blonde sighed, letting his weight fall back against the wall behind him with a dull thud before sliding down to the floor.  

“But I thought you had a heart.”

“I do, and it wants pity even less than you do.” Vanitas actually chuckled.

“I’m not sure that’s possible.”

“Try me.”   At that challenging tone, the Shadow couldn’t help sitting up a little bit straighter and meeting that blue-eyed glare head-on.  

“What?  You wanna compare scars now?”

Roxas shook his head with a frown.  “All that does is make the wounds deeper.   I’m trying to work on this thing where I don’t pick at my stitches until I bleed.”

That was a feeling Vanitas could understand well.  “It’s a difficult stride to maintain.  Sometimes, the pain is more grounding than anything.”

“Reminds you you’re alive,” Roxas agreed.   Looking at his hand, the Blonde turned it this way and that in the sparse light of the room.  “It’s like that first breathless rush of adrenaline at the start of a fight.  For that brief moment, you feel invincible–like you could do anything and not a soul could touch you.”

“But then it wears off,” Vanitas drawled, “and you realize that death is still an inevitability waiting for you somewhere down the line.”

“I used to push myself until I was too exhausted to continue,” the Blonde told him.  “At least with all my muscles sore and protesting I knew I wasn’t dead.”

“For a Nobody, that’s all you can feel without a heart.”

“For an Unversed, too, I bet.”  

Vanitas let out a snort that was more painful than humoring.  “On the contrary, I always felt too much.”

“Ah,” there was a tone there that sounded like he might have actually understand, even if he didn’t understand anything at all, “the beauty of emotions, right?  Keyblades are easy to control, but feelings?  Not so much.”

“Is that how you feel now that you have your own heart?  My–” he swallowed down the word that ached at his throat and instead averted his eyes away from knowing blue, “I always thought it would end when I was complete.  That the pain and hurt would disappear and it would all come to a balance.”

“It doesn’t,” Roxas told him.  “I thought the same thing when I merged with Sora–but it remained there, deeper than before, and there was nothing I could do to assuage it.”

“Yeah,” Vanitas sighed, “I know that now.”

“Then why were you so desperate to merge with Ventus at the Graveyard?”

“That…” He pursed his lips and looked up at Roxas.  Would he understand?  Would anyone?  “It wasn’t me…not this me.”

“Well, I’m glad this you knows better.  The last thing we need is Sora coming back from his journey and wondering why Ven and you aren’t individuals.”

Vanitas scoffed.  “Like he’d even care–”

“It’s Sora,” Roxas argued with a glare, “he cares about everyone.”  

“Well, he’s the only one.”  The Blonde let out an aggrieved sigh and sank deeper into his seat.

“That’s a lie, you know.   Ventus…cares…sometimes…”

“I think I’d rather he didn’t,” Vanitas admitted solemnly.  “It’s easier when no one cares.”

“You’re not wrong…”

For a single beat of silence, neither of them said a word.   In this empty chamber located deep in the halls of Radiant Garden, the discomfort of soundless torment hit him a little harder when there was actually someone willing to indulge him.   At least that was better than listening to the voices in his head…

A part of him that had been alone for far too long, yearned for a connection to something.

“So,” Vanitas diverted with a sidelong glare at the Doppelganger, “why are you still here?   You’ve defeated the enemy and earned your heart, your keyblades…seems pointless to remain here.”

“Where else am I gonna go?”

“Anywhere.  You’re complete and whole.  There must be something you’ve always wanted to do.”

“You first.”  Vanitas rolled his eyes.

“I always hoped to get an actual look at Scala.   My…he never allowed me aboard the Islands…”

“And I’ve always wanted to see the Ocean.”  With a slight smirk, Roxas leaned forward onto his knees and met his gaze with a light that was so Sora and yet so not.  “Let’s go–together!”

“Hah.  As if either of us would enjoy that…”

“I would,” Roxas told him with sincere confidence.  “Would definitely be better company than Riku, for sure.”

“Finally,” the Shadow grinned–all fangs and malice–”something we can agree on.”

“So, is that a go?”

“You’re serious…”

“Well, yeah,” Roxas shot back, “there’re rarely times I’m not serious.”

Thinking on it a moment, Vanitas sunk back against the wall with a deep sigh and a glare at the blonde.  He doubted this would be fun, but compared to the alternative…

“I doubt your friends will let me go freely, even in your…capable hands.”

“Leave that part to me,” Roxas wore an expression only someone who had done horrible things could enjoy, “I’ll make sure we can leave hassle-free.”

“And Void Gear?  As legendary as your dual-wielding is, I don’t need some half-pint protecting me from weak-ass Heartless.”

“What, you mean this?”  Holding up his keychain, Roxas sneered at the look that came over Vanitas’s expression.  “You’re not the only sneaky half-pint around, you know.  Now, c’mon, my Stopza will wear off in a couple of minutes and we’ll need the head start without corridors to dash through.”

Alright, Vanitas could admit as he caught his offered keyblade and cautiously followed the Doppelganger, I suppose this could be fun…

It was the first time he almost felt happy.   Almost.

[vibranch]

The Keybearer’s Keychains (1/6) - Kingdom Hearts Fan Fiction

Rating: T Word Count: 2,319 AO3 link here

Summary: So many Worlds, and so many people. Each one was unique and an adventure to Sora. But one thing that was constant on his journey, was the keychains he received. An exploration of Sora's thoughts, experiences, and feelings for each keychain he received during his first journey in no particular order.

Part 1 of 6: The Jungle King, Lady Luck, and Fairy Harp Part 2

                                                  The Jungle King

This was the first Keychain Sora was gifted. At first Sora didn’t really understand what it was. A token from Tarzan to remember him by, presumably. But why a thin vine tied to a preserved butterfly?

It wasn’t until Goofy mentioned that it looked kind of like a keychain that Sora began to understand why Tarzan gave it to him.

Tarzan, being so inquisitive, was no doubt intrigued by Sora’s Keyblade. The jangling of the Keychain equipped to the bottom of it must have caught his eye in particular. So just as Sora was about to leave Deep Jungle with Donald and Goofy, Tarzan appeared and presented the, now dubbed Jungle King, keychain to him.

One day, mostly out of curiosity, Sora attached the gift to his Keyblade. He was amazed to find it had changed shape just moments after it was attached. Not only that, the very materials it was made from seemed to change too! His formerly metal weapon now seemed to have been carved from wood!

At first, Sora loved the Jungle King keychain. It served well in its duty to remind Sora of Tarzan. But after a while, and as more and more Keychains were collected, it started to become less special to him.

Especially on one day.

While attempting the Pegasus Cup, Sora felt something in his shoulder. He could feel it, small and round, moving slightly inside him as he swung his Keyblade. It made him uneasy and he couldn’t focus on the match at hand. Something the Heartless in the arena took full advantage of. He might have died, or lost his heart, had Donald and Goofy not been his side and ready to jump to his rescue.

“What is this thing,” Sora complained after the match, poking at it gingerly. It seemed to be buried underneath a messy scar.

It took Donald a minute, but eventually he recognized it. “It’s a bullet. Remember? When we fought Clayton and he shot you?”

That’s right… Sora hadn’t known cure yet. So when Donald instinctively cast the spell on Sora, the wound must have healed over the bullet. It was the first actual gun Sora had ever seen. Nothing like Leon’s Gunblade. Sora thought Clayton used some kind of magic when he’d gotten hit by it.

Looking at his collection of Keychains, the Jungle King stood out to him for all the wrong reasons now. Just a little closer to the center of his body and Sora would be dead now. Not a Heartless, just dead. And so close to what he could now realize was only the beginning of his adventure.

Too often, just the sight of Jungle King Keychain reminded Sora of Clayton and the bullet lodged in his shoulder, and not his friend Tarzan. And so, it was the first Keychain that Sora decided to retire. Left to sit in a drawer in his room onboard the Gummi Ship.

The first to be given, and the first to be given up.

                                                    The Lady Luck

“Is that… A playing card?” Donald raised an eyebrow as Sora pulled the object out from the chest.

“Not just any playing card, it’s the Ace of Hearts.” Goofy answered. “Say, uh, is it weird that a playing card is the last thing I’d expect to find on this world?” Goofy asked, scratching the side of his head with one finger.

Sora had to agree with him. Despite long since accepting that Wonderland was more a land of oddities than wonder, Sora certainly didn’t expect to find an actual playing card in this world. What would the Queen of Hearts or any of the playing card soldiers have to say if they saw him with this?

Feeling the card, it was made of the same materials as the rest of the card soldiers. Sora had learned what they felt like after shoulder bashing one of them, back when he was trying to help Alice get out of her cage.

A chill ran up Sora’s spine. Was this card the Wonderland equivalent of walking around with a toy soldier, or a shrunken head? Maybe a toy soldier made of human flesh?

Sora shook his head, hoping he could shake out these thoughts. He felt like he’d finally found something that would disturb the people of this world as he tucked it into his pocket.

“Best to not let anyone from around here see this,” Sora said

With not much to do with a single playing card, Sora fashioned it into a Keychain for him to use. Wielding the Keyblade with it, Sora felt like he had all the magic of Wonderland on his side as he fought. Not even the Spellbinder keychain that Merlin gave him compared to the magic inside this form the Keyblade took.

“It’s almost like Lady Luck was lookin’ out for ya when you found it!” Goofy said as they walked back to the Gummi Ship.

Indeed. If it hadn’t been for that Trinity mark on the ground, Sora would have passed right by it. Just as he’d done every other time he’d gone to Wonderland.

“You might be right.” Sora said as he took another look at it. “In fact, you might have even come up with a good name for it, too!”

“Gwarsh, I did?” Goofy exclaimed. “What’d I call it?!”

Sora looked at the new form the Keyblade had taken. Lady Luck.

                                                 The Fairy Harp

There were two interesting aspects about this keychain. First, it was the last Keychain Sora had received as a gift from visiting a brand new world. The second interesting aspect was that he’d gotten it from Tinker Bell instead of Peter Pan.

Sora expected some sort of charm or trinket from Peter as goodbye. Most places he went to, where he made new friends, usually ended that way. But Peter surprised him.

“Oh, boy. She’s gettin’ steamed again. Do me a favor. Look after her for me, will ya?”

It took Sora a moment to realize he was talking about Tinker Bell. “What?!” Sora gaped at the ridiculous request. His parents back on the Islands wouldn’t even trust him with a pet, much less a fairy.

She’s a person, right? Just very small and can fly. Is Tinker Bell even okay with this? Sora thought to himself.

But Tinker Bell was a jealous fairy, specifically of Peter and Wendy, and she must have thought Peter would get just as jealous as her if she went traveling the worlds with another boy.

At least that’s what Sora assumed. He couldn’t understand Tinker Bell’s fairy speak. So, any attempt at communicating with her left him feeling like he was talking to a ringing bell.

Regardless of if her ploy worked, Tinker Bell took some insurance with her.

Peter Pan’s signature red feather.

She stole it right off the top of his hat as she flew into the Gummi Ship. No one even noticed until they were halfway to Traverse Town.

Onboard the Gummi Ship, Sora studied the red feather. Realizing that he could turn it into a keychain, Sora got to work affixing a makeshift chain to it from parts he’d bought from Donald’s nephews.

The group watched with excitement as the Keyblade changed shape. All of them waiting in anticipation on what kind of form would it take.

The form it decided on was closer to a Key-tooth pick than a Keyblade. The thing was tiny, and Donald raised an eyebrow at it. “You sure you can fight with that?”

“Uhh, shouldn’t be too big of a deal.” Sora said. The Keyblade had taken many shapes and lengths before, but usually it kept his foes at greater distance away than this. “Peter could fight just fine with his dagger. Maybe it’s length is in reference to that.”

Donald spun in his chair to resume piloting the Gummi Ship. “If you say so. But you’d better practice with it before you take it to someplace with any real danger.”

Sora made a pouty face at the back of Donald’s head. “I’ll be just fine using the Keyblade in this form.”

Stepping in before anymore tension could grow, Goofy spoke up. “Whaddya want to call it?” Goofy asked. Ever the fun one, Goofy kept Sora company on the long flight back as they tossed names back and forth.

Deciding on the name Fairy Harp, Sora ultimately didn��t use this keychain very much. Firstly because, as Donald suspected, it was too small. On more than one occasion, Sora would fall flat on his face as he tried to fight with it.

Sora was so used to throwing all his weight behind his moves that when he switched to the Fairy Harp and his swing came up short, the momentum behind each swing would often cause Sora to fall on his face. A fact Donald found hilarious. Sora, less so.

The second reason being that Tinker Bell missed Peter more than she wanted to let on. Often when Sora went to grab the feathered keychain, Tinker Bell had already taken it from his room and flown off with it to someplace inside the Gummi Ship.

On the days where Sora was determined to use the Fairy Harp, he’d track her down and find her huddled with it, thinking of Peter and the secret hideout filled with all the Lost Boys.

Not that she could tell that to Sora. Only Peter Pan could understand her fairy speak. And she didn’t want to appear ungrateful at the opportunity to visit other worlds with this unlikely trio, but sometimes she couldn’t help herself from getting like this.

Fortunately, Sora could recognize the feelings of missing home, even if they couldn’t be said out loud. So even when he was determined to use the Fairy Harp, if he found that Tinker Bell had taken it for herself then Sora would let her have it.

Ultimately, Tinker Bell was far more useful as a companion than any single keychain would be on their journey. With Donald’s help she’d learned to preform Cure magic, and the mage even taught Sora how he to summon her from within the Gummi Ship for moments when they needed her help.

Sora looked over at the tiny fairy hovering between him and Peter Pan. As if sensing his gaze, she turned from the conversation she was having with Peter to look back at him.

Now that they had finally tracked down and defeated the Heartless they’d dubbed ‘The Phantom’, there wasn’t much reason to stick around on this World. But still, there was one more thing he had to do before leaving this world again.

“Ready to go home, Tinker Bell?” Sora offered. Fully expecting her to get excited and maybe wish him a farewell in those ringing tones he’d gotten used to hearing.

Instead, the small glowing fairy floated up to Sora’s eye level and stomped her foot against nonexistent ground as shook her head firmly.

“No? But I thought you missed home?” Sora was confused. Tinker Bell seemed so excited to be back when their Gummi Ship pulled into her home World.

She seemed to be trying to explain herself, but once again Sora couldn’t understand a word of her bell-like fairy speak.

“It sounds like she wants to make sure you’re okay for the last leg of your journey,” Peter translated. He floated down from the top of Big Ben and listened to Tinker Bell go on. “I don’t really understand most of it, she’s talkin’ ‘bout a lot of people I’ve never met. But she really wants to help when you take on some guy called Ansem.”

Sora looked back at Tinker Bell still floating in front of his face, just as she did when Peter first asked him to take her along with him.

Tinker Bell said more that Sora couldn’t understand, but fortunately Peter was still there to translate.

“Don’t forget, the Princesses said that once all the worlds are restored everyone will be returned to their original world. I’ll still be able to go home.”

Peter stopped translating and moved closer to talk to Tinker Bell directly. “Hey Tink, it sounds like Sora’s going to be facing some real tough challenges. You take care of him okay?”

Tinker Bell nodded.

“Pack them some extra pixie dust, just in case!”

Tinker Bell rolled her eyes but smiled as well. It wasn’t like Peter to get overprotective. Maybe fighting the Phantom with Sora and the others was making him more worried than usual? Regardless, Tinker Bell said one more thing to Peter before flying over and taking her place next to Sora, Donald, and Goofy.

“Hey, Sora,” Peter called out as the group started moving to the Gummi Ship. “Tink says that you’re her friend, so she wants you to call her Tink as well. Y’know, just like me!”

Sora looked at the little fairy. Sora chuckled slightly and smiled at her. “Tink, huh? No problem!

Sora and Tinker Bell watched from inside the cockpit of the Gummi Ship as Peter waved goodbye to them. “Hey Tink! When you get back, me and all the Lost Boys are going to throw you a big welcome home party! So, make sure you’re prepared to tell us lots of stories when you get back!

Tinker Bell nodded from behind the glass and watched him continue to wave goodbye until even the smallest green speck of him was gone.

Sora looked at the fairy and cracked a smile. “Hey, Tinker Bell- I mean Tink…” Tinker Bell turned away from the glass that separated everyone in the cockpit from Gummi Space. “Thanks for coming with us.”

She shined a little brighter and smiled back at him.

“And I hope you’re prepared for the last leg of our journey, because I think we’ll be needing your help.”

This time she smirked and gave him a confident nod.

[the-jellicle-duelist]

Ryan’s Top 10* Video Games of 2019

I don’t write blog posts but it’s time for Video Game Top 10 Lists for 2019 and I have no where good to put it! So congrats tumblr you get it. I’ll also tweet about it but in a much smaller scale. Anyways if you don’t care that’s fine! But if you do! It’s under that read more baby!!

*there’s always more than 10

First, some honorable mentions.

Dragon Quest 1 

Dragon Quest 1 is the oldest JRPG (I won’t check if this is true) and I finally got around to it this year when it come out on Switch. The nice thing about Dragon Quest 1 is that it is masterful in its simplicity: you are one person. You fight one monster at a time. You go to one town at a time (mostly). You are on one quest (again, mostly). There’s only a few handfuls of anything like weapons, items, spells, monsters. They all work really well in concert with each other, and the package as a whole is this cozy, comfy less than 20 hour JRPG experience that I really enjoyed.

Best MMO I Refused to Get Addicted to in 2019

Final Fantasy XIV

I sure did hear a lot about Final Fantasy XIV this year. From podcasts to people just talking about it on twitter it seemed to be in the cultural zeitgeist this year. I downloaded the client and put about 15 hours into the base game. If I would have had the right combination of time/money/depression at that time I know I would have gotten deep into it. I’m fine that I didn’t, I think. But the potential was there.

Okay list time here we go:

10. Baba is You

Baba is You is this a coding game? You’re manipulating verbs that are represented by blocks, and pushing them next to noun blocks, to make the objects in the world do things, so that you can get Baba to touch the win object, usually a key. It’s great fun! It got really difficult around the third world and I had to put it down but boy did I like messing around. There were several wonderful “YOOOOO” type moments, and the puzzles when you solved them were great for making you feel very cool and smart. 

9. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is From Software doing From Software shit in a way I wanted to like way more but ultimately it’s Here on this list. I liked Sekiro fine but it didn’t click with me like Dark Souls 3 or Bloodborne has in the past. The best parts of Sekiro for me were nailing difficult and tight blocking windows, which gave me an absolute rush every single time. I only got to what I assume was about half way through the game, so I don’t know if this changes later, but for a From game where the bosses were for the most part A Person, the boss encounters were interesting and varied. Also the world design was stunning.

8. Dragon Quest Builders 2

Dragon Builders 2 rules, first off. I wanted to put it higher on this list but I think it fell short because it was so heavily iterative and didn’t do a whole lot to progress itself from the first game. But, there were several quality of life improvements, and there was a big cool area to build in that was permanent and part of the story. I think if they added some more cool things, and made the dialogue not be such a slog to get through, this could have been way higher up on this list.

7. Kingdom Hearts 3

God, Kingdom Hearts 3. I was convinced for about 7 years that KH3 would not only never come out, but it would keep getting bad handheld games until I died. But they finally did it, they made the thing. It felt like a PS3 game which is the wildest thing. (It probably was a PS3 game for a while). It was very fun to play mechanically; the part of KH that was always pretty good was the action RPG stuff. The story is bad tho! The reasons you go to the different world’s is the thinnest it’s ever been, and there’s almost no real lore until the last two hours where you get all of it at once. KH3 was clunky, but I still liked swinging the keyblade and shooting fireballs.

6. Judgment

Shout outs to Judgment: I own it. I never played it. It is number 6 on my list. This probably says more about how I felt overall about games this year than it does about Judgment. Judgment comes from the Yakuza studio, and by all accounts it was so close to that vein, that I am confident and comfortable putting it at this number 6 spot without having ever launching the game. I have second hand accounts that it slaps, and will do for me everything Yakuza does for me, which is fine. I just ran out of time. 

5. MiSTer FPGA

I love MiSTer. Wow do I love MiSTer. It’s got everything: old games, tinkering, assembling parts. If you are unaware of the MiSTer device, it’s a custom FPGA board with add-on boards, that developers have written Cores for classic consoles that all run in this FPGA environment. As opposed to emulators, an FPGA as I understand it is mimicking real hardware and then running games ontop of it. It’s a great device, and plays the things it plays (NES, SNES, Master System, Genesis, Game Gear, Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, NeoGeo, loads of Arcade games,and more) really well. I have really enjoyed playing games on it, and tinkering with it this year. I spent a lot of my time this year with it. 

4. Slay the Spire

This is where the list starts to get Real. Wow does Slay the Spire rule! Holy shit. Rogue like, deck building, choice making, hard as fuck, big time strategy, unique characters. It’s really got everything. And it’s dense. This was absolutely my “just one more X” game this year. I put hundreds of hours into it. The way all of the cards interact with each other, the way you can really craft so many kinds of specific decks in each character, in each run, really worked for me. The ever-growing engines you could make, and the way that, even if you have a not great deck, it never feels bad. It’s one of the few rogue likes where you feel like when you’ve lost it’s your fault in a good way. It’s tuned to feel good no matter what. It’s tuned to feel tense. God Slay the Spire rules. And there’s a new character on the way? fuck.

3. Monster Hunter World: Iceborne

I loved coming back to Monster Hunter so bad y’all don’t even know. They added a ton, so many good monsters that I love to fight. Tigrex? yes. Zinogre? Yes. Velkhana? YES. The variant monsters are great, too. I just love Monster Hunter World so much. The clutch claw rips ass. This game is so good, and chunky, and feels good to play. I really mastered the bow this time around, but I started off with Hammer again because I will always have a torrent love affair with Hammer. Clutch Claw Grab with the Hammer is the best feeling you can get from video games. 

2. Pokemon Sword/Sheild

Good Pokemon games! They’re good! It was nice to go through all the motions of a new pokemon game this year: rumors, leaks, having a reaction to all the starters and their evolutions, getting my hands on it, catching them all. It’s just a good Pokemon game. It’s not the best one (Black and White still got that crown) but it’s good. And I like a majority of the new designs. I like how they culled the dex to a nice, satisfying but manageable number. Anyone who’s mad please fuck off.

1. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

WE ALL KNEW THIS WAS COMING. Anyone who follows me on twitter, you know. God where do I start. So, I played all the way through Three Houses six times. I did two runs of Golden Deer, two of Black Eagles, one Blue Lions, and one Church of Seiros. I love all of my students. This game hit hard for me for a few reasons: they did Fire Emblem again, but its bigger and there’s more moving parts. More need for spreadsheets, which is stuff that I eat up. Yum yum good. Adding an overworld even in the scope that was as small as, the Monastery School, to this Fire Emblem was a BIG risk because they have been down this road before, and have not really nailed it. But I think with Three Houses they struck a really good balance, and it never overwhelmed me. They took a big page out of Persona’s book here which did wonders for me. You have this big map and it LOOKS scary, but in reality with fast travel and the limited number of actual activities/quests, you can do everything you want very quickly. 

The thing that shined that brightest was the characters. I love them all, even the ones that aren’t cool, and even the ones that are Bad. I love all my kids. I have a lot I could say about how having all of these story routes, with their inconsistencies and their only slightly subtle variations bummed me out, but I did think if you take a macro look at the plot, this is one of the only well-written Fire Emblems ever. There was like, magic and dragons and things like this, but the thing that worked for me was their commitment to keeping the story grounded in the people that were in it? It was a story about three lands, vying for power in their own ways, and the actions/consequences that would follow. They really leaned in to the human part of it. It was not as much Kingdoms doing Politics, it was people doing things, and I think that worked for me.

Honestly the weakest parts of FE:3H was the Fire Emblem parts. The classes are just okay, and they took out a lot of the limitations of weapons/magic and so it was really a class change system about skills mastery, which I think they didn’t hit a home run here, but it was fine. And I liked doing it, clearly. The maps were a little samey in, especially in the first Part of the game. 

All of this said, FE:3H slaps so much fat juicy ass and it is absolutely my game of the year for 2019. 

[mellz117]

Hi! I’m Mellz and I’m starting up Kingdom Hearts 2 on the PlayStation 2! 

Just below are links to the first parts of my previous Kingdom Hearts plays.

[ KH1 ] _ [ Re:CoM Sora ] _ [ KH Re:CoM Riku ]

It’s been a hot minute, like 3,155,763 smoldering hot minutes, which would be 6 years including leap years. Yeah it was 01/27/2014 last I touched this game, exactly 6 years ago to this day (01/27/2020) as of me starting up again. This was an accident.

Guide thingy: Things like long gaps between commentary and days will be separated by a line of dots like that ->  ……

Text relating to an image posted will have a blockquote either above and/or below the image

Dialogue exchanges will also be separated by a blockquote

Ok I'm playing on standard difficulty, if I'm having a hard time, then I just suck. If you’re reading this and haven’t experienced KH2 for yourself, why are you here? Go away, there’s spoilers for things that aren’t revealed until later.

SO LET’S JUST JUMP INTO IT

……………………………………………………………………………………………

I always liked this fancy CGI opening. There’s a lot of things I missed last I saw it.

IT’S HIM. Look how cute he is! 

So we start off with a recap of Kingdom Hearts via a dream it seems and our protagonist, my precious boy Roxas, wakes up his own home all alone because apparently DiZ didn't create a digital family for him. But KH is notorious for forgetting parents, so maybe they did. I’m not Cinema Sins so I wont ping this game for not giving Roxas fake parents lmao

In the next scene Roxas is more interested in his own hands than he is in his friends' conversation. 

blurry ring textures, blurry checker pattern. Not everything holds up well on a flat screen TV

He hasn't been paying attention so he's just as confused as the player is at this point when he finally takes his attention off his hands.

This dialogue is so early 2000's. KH1 and CoM avoided this but with the urban setting of Twilight Town it's DEFINITELY noticeable and outdated. So rumors have spread about Roxas, Hayner, Pence, and Olette that photographs are being stolen, and THEY'RE the theives. Who is the operator of the rumor mill? Seifer and his posse. Also the actual WORD is gone too, they try to say “photo” but it just DOESN’T EXIST. This is where the game gets a bit odd.

TUTORIALS GALORE. I JUST WANT TO PAUSE AND CHANGE THE CAMERA CONTROLS STOP TELLING ME ABOUT MY NEXT OBJECTIVE but no no it’s telling me how to lock on, control my camera, context sensitive buttons, etc 

This girl’s dress looks like shes wearing a bra over it 

I like how the animal AI hasn't changed at all in this entire series. And by like I mean hate, KH3 doesn't change that. Sven is as boring as this cat we have to look at.

The gang heads to the sandlot where Seifer, Fuujn, Raijin, and Vivi like to hang out I guess? Vivi is a little, solid black, wizard dwarf amongst all these regular humans and no one bats an eye. This shit is normal. Seifer with his stupid Seto Kaiba jacket, shows up to further accuse Roxas and his friends of stealing photos, one specifically of Roxas flat on his face and Seifer standing triumphantly over him (which we’re actually shown later). "That was undeniable proof that we totally owned you lamers" he says in regards to it and challenges Roxas to a rematch.

A+ dialogue

Seifer. My dude, ya dumb-dumb. If you think for one second that I'm gonna let my boy lose to you, you are sorely mistaken. 

“If you get on your knees and beg, maybe I’ll let it slide.” Seifer says and Roxas plays it slick, taking a knee and looking through a convenient selection of foam weapons. Battle ensues.

So of course I win because Seifer is a pleb, and Pence takes a commemorative ______ of Roxas's sound victory, but oh no! Something stole the camera right out of Pence's hands! Roxas gives chase, because apparently he's the only one who cares enough to do so, and confronts the actual thief, a Dusk type Nobody. Roxas is taking this creature encounter rather calmly. Like mild confusion at most.

I hate these things, they're creepy. When you do a reversal on them they like, plant their hands on the ground behind them and their legs wrap around their arms while they spaz out. Ughghdhahh

Of course Roxas's foam bat doesnt cause any damage to the Dusk, and suddenly a familiar giant key digitally manifests in his hands. DiZ is installing mods I see. I have a Keyblade mod in Skyrim, so we have something in common.

After we defeat the thief the next scene shows the gang at the usual spot with the recovered photos. Ok ok so was "photo" the only word deleted from the vocabulary or were any other alternative words taken away too? Like, if they could have said "picture" this whole time, they would have had much less stupid sounding dialogue exchanges. Whatever lmao.

“Tell us about the picture thief.”

“Not much to say. The pictures were just lying there.”

You liar. Tell them about how you fought a wormy, white boy.

Pence notices all the pics are of Roxas and speculates the picture thief wanted to take the REAL Roxas and Hayner is like

The best friendships are ones where you can take jabs at each other and know there’s no malice intended.

 In the scene thereafter, the kids go their separate ways, the evening(?) sun assaults Roxas's eyes, and whenever he closes them he gets another vision? Idk what time of day it is it always looks the same.

God ok as someone who hadn’t played CoM before playing KH2 for the first time, I must have been SUPER lost regarding who DiZ and Namine were and why Sora is in the pod. More recaps of KH1: I don’t know why they found it necessary to redub over the old voices with the new actors in these flashbacks.

Moving on. Roxas learns what the Keyblade is through his dreams. On his way to meet up with his friends, he tries summoning the Keyblade with a stick, when that doesn’t work he carelessly throws it aside and it hits this cloak clad man behind him. This dude is either completely unfazed by that is or so offended he can’t even say anything and walks away before he goes all Karen on Roxas’s ass.

We’re back at the usual spot and summer vacation is nearing it’s end. Hayner wants to go to the beach before school is back in session! You poor fuckers...

Same, dude. I’m waiting on my tax returns, looking forward to that.

SKATEBOARD

“TO DEFEAT THE HUNSSSSSSS!”

Pretzels at the beach? Salty and not refreshing. I got you fam, I’ll make enough money for a watermelon. Roxas is so poor omg... How much is 150 Munny in American currency?

Just BEAT the cargo with a foam bat. What’s IN the bag? Is it trash? Clothes? Is it potentially breakable? Next. Time to beat some bees!

So Poster Duty was my go-to job in this game in the past because you could get 100 Munny if you did well. But now that I’m older I realized how annoying it is. I had an efficient route planned out, hit as many of the 3 poster placements in that route, and be over and done with that in about 1:10....

But then Roxas goes aND DOES THIS!

FUCKING SKIPS THE ONE DIRECTLY NEXT TO HIM, DEFYING GRAVITY IN FAVOR OF THE POSTS BELOW

HE DOES THIS CONSISTENTLY!! I do have a live reaction to this but it’s too big for tumblr. I’ll have it up on youtube one of these days

Eventually I stopped sticking posters to walls and became a mailman until the game made me stop.

Black-clad man is back with his own stick! Oof, Roxas eats the pavement and is manhandled by cloaky boy. WAS THIS ROUGH TREATMENT REALLY THAT NECESSARY? You might wanna treat Sora's Nobody with a little more respect. AND YOU STOLE HIS HARD-EARNED MONEY! YOU BASTARD!

The gang is on the clock tower, very dangerously high up. Wtf what if someone falls?! Roxas feels so guilty about what happened and Hayner gets over this little fiasco pretty quickly and the next day he already has another fun plan.

……………………………………………………………………………………………

On his way to the station, Roxas crosses paths with Pence and Olette, the latter two freeze and Roxas meets Namine. Is her interest in Roxas linked to her desire to be Sora’s friend? A strange girl tells Roxas she wanted to meet him “at least once” and he doesn’t know what to do lol. Namine doesn’t stay long, leaving Roxas with his confusion. What is going through his head? A girl he doesn’t know seems to know him well enough to want to see him. Pence and Olette unfreeze after Namine is out of the shot. Pence and Olette have such a cute relationship, I’d love for them to be siblings. Pence goes shopping with her even if he might not want to. I can relate, I hate clothes shopping.

These Dusks don’t seem like too much of a threat tbh, they just kinda swagger slowly towards Roxas and grab his hand. Roxas hardly struggles to escape to the sandlot.

Chicken wuss

WE FINALLY GET SOMEWEHERE, we end up on the stained glass pillars in the Station of Serenity (?). Time to grind for like 5 minutes because this giant noodle boy already killed me once.

This thing really unsettles me. All the creature Nobodies do! They’re all twitchy and stretchy. DISGUSTING

DAMN THAT IS A HIGH FALL HOW DO YOU SURVIVE THAT?!

Upon defeat, this big noodle boy falls on top of Roxas and Namine saves him from being enveloped by darkness.

Namine really seems to like to silence him. First she shoves her hand in his face but that was too forward. This time she daintily places a finger over her lips and says her part. Black-cloak guy shows up, rough handles Namine a little bit but not as roughly as he did Roxas. AND SHOVES ROXAS INTO A PORTAL

SEIFER IS AN OPPORTUNISTIC SHITLET POSING IN FRONT OF HIS UNCONSIOUS BODY. Bitch you didn’t earn that. Hayner, Pence, and Olette see Roxas with Seifer’s gang, Hayner feels betrayed thinking Roxas ghosted him in favor of Seifer. He stays pretty salty about it for a good while

IM NOT WORKING ON THIS LIKE I SHOULD. ITS ALMOST A MONTH SINCE STARTING. In my next post we'll be "Struggling" to progress. Eh? Eh? Get it? Like the tournament?

I'm not funny.

Here’s the next part: [ _2_ ]

Below is a compilation of my live reactions and comments throughout this point of the game.

[derekscorner]

Between KH2 and KH3, which game did you like more, both story and gameplay-wise?

Ah is this that KH2 vs 3 debate I hear is ongoing? Well if you’re in for a sit I can answer that.

Gameplay:

From this angle I quite bluntly find KH2 Final Mix more fun. I’m not going to argue what was arguably better or worse, gameplay preference is a matter of…well preference no matter how many wish to deny this fact.

Not that you do but I”m sure some lover or hater of one will see this and try to retort. o3ob

Anyway; I felt Kh2 final mix was more technical and “harder” if I had to describe the feeling. Like 3 KH2 is normally overly easy but when put on critical mode it’s technicalities shine.I had to learn tactics, I couldn’t spam X or △, and I learned uses for summons. Which I found ironic since the 2 summons are far more useful when you dont initiate their moves.

Like if I let Stitch wander the screen he’ll deflect projectiles and keep my MP full. Chicken Little is a great early Magnet substitute and Peter Pan+Tinker Bell gives you a Phoenix Down.This was an improvement to KH1 in which only Tinker Bell was a spell with decent combat use. 1′s other summons had more supplemental uses imo.

KH3′s summons were nearly win buttons I felt. Simba in particular, while damn spectacle, felt broken. I never bothered to learn them as I didn’t need them. Which I’m sure they have their own uses but I’m not really fond of many control schemes for them so I opt out of it.

In terms of the magic system I felt 2 and 3 were opposites. In KH3 magic is far too powerful, something many have noted. And while you dont ‘have’ to use it that’s not an excuse for a problem. You should choose not to use it not force yourself to ignore it for challenge.

KH2 on the opposite spectrum made magic nearly useless I felt. Many enemies didn’t stun nor have elemental damage. Fire’s AOE animation was good for early Critical game and Blizzard helps that first Hollow Bastion visit but many enemies shrug the base spells off later.In contrast, KH2′s Magnet and Thunder spells can be OP. Reflect in of itself is practically the only spell you’d ever need to use due to it’s nature.

So while many have long rants on either’s magic system I dont really think one trumps the other. each one is equally flawed with issues I dont see ever being addressed.

In terms of keyblade combat I preferred KH2′s because I felt like Sora was automated in 3. I spam X cause I’m a scrub at timing presses (DMC5 is helping me overcome that) and due to this I noticed real quick that Sora’s combos just felt really automated.

Like I’d press X for one hit and get three. In contrast, KH2′s combat is harder. Sora animates combos as fast as my lazy ass can spam X and I’m not floating around like a final fantasy god.

I’m not really sure how to put this feeling into words but I do feel Kh2 keyblades are funner or snappier to combo whereas in KH3 I’m playing a watered down FFXV with it’s hold/press X for combo string.

Both games are so similar outside this issue that I dont see no reason to list likes or dislikes. If anything, from here, KH3 had great quality of life changes. The menu system was easier on the eyes and I’d be a damned soul if I didn’t admit I like switching keyblades mid-combat.

I also really appreciate KH3 finally using Re:Coded’s keyblade ideas. It’s been there since that DS game yet no one every expanded on making keyblades unique since. It was a very foolish step backward to me.

I love that keyblades level up, I love that each one has a preference and the only way that could’ve been better is if they adapted Coded’s system entirely and gave each keyblade (or most) it’s own unique combo.

KH2 quite frankly just falls short in a hindsight perspective since keyblades were “stat sticks” and you only ever chose weaker ones for an ability. Which, back then, was a huge step up from KH1.

So KH3 wins in this area I also dont really hate on Kh2 for it since KH2 is a product of the era. This idea of keyblades growing with you didn’t happen till Re:Coded.

As for Shotlocks…I dont like them. I hated them in BBS and I hate them here. It’s not even a comparison to KH2 type of opinion. I hate Shotlocks, I never use shotlocks so I’m going to skip those.

I mean sure, KH2 had limits but the only limits I use are Knocksmash so I can’t exactly praise KH2′s half of that either.

And when it comes to Forms vs Transformations I think both have pros and cons the other lacks. For example, some Transformations are really cool, I love the hammer weapons or the dual pistols.

I also believe the staff transformation is what KH2′s wisdom form should’ve been in terms of how it does magic or basic attacks.

That said, I also really dislike many second forms keyblades have. I never evolve the pistols into the bazooka, I never turn the hammer into the drill, I have those second forms. It’s to the extent I prefer keyblades that have one form such as the staff.

I’m also not fond of the Kingdom Key’s 2nd form change. It’s a neat throwback and I love the outfit recolor but I dont find it fun to use.

Between the two games my favorite forms are Valor Form, Anti-Form, and the Staff Transformation. Odds are I wont use anything else unless I feel particularly bored.

I might use others more often if KH3 forced me to rely on them for tactics but as of right now it does not. This may change with 3 gets it’s Critical Mode DLC. Similar to how KH2FM forced me to rely on forms I hate like Wisdom or Final.

As a concept I will admit that I dislike transformations. I dont like the idea of keyblades becoming magical swiss army knives. KH3 pulled the idea off better than I expected but I dont like it all the same.

The only, and I mean only, thing I felt KH2 did better was tie forms to a meter. In KH3 the commands appear randomly (and often) and I dont gain consequences for using them.

In KH2 this was tied to your Drive Gauge. You had to plan what you used and this is an issue I felt KH3 had as a whole. Rather than shotlocks, I’d have preferred that Focus Gauge to be reserved for my summons and forms so that I could have better control of what I picked and to reduce how broken they are in-game.

The rest is miscellaneous opinions so I’ll rapid fire:

Gummi Ships: always hated them, BBS did Gummi Ships best. Point goes to KH3 here since I can at least skip most of it.

Minigames: I’ve never found a KH minigame fun. No one wins here

Worlds: KH3 wins this aspect too. World towns have actual people in them and when it uses original plots the worlds are quite good. I also appreciate the power to explore and soft platform again. It gives me a more immersive feeling than later titles ever have. (although I feel KH1 was still better than both here)(entirely because of how many small details/cameos/secrets a KH1 world had compared to sequels)

I dont really have a more technical opinion than that. I do however think Arendelle was a horrendous world and I hate to even be there. For a myriad of reasons….reasons that would be a rant post of it’s own.

Lil Chef: I never use the food. I dont care if it’s a good spot for ingredients. If I want to cook stuff I’ll do some irl or play FFXV.

Enemies: KH3 used nobodies more than KH2 did and I find that a damn crying shame. I also felt Unversed were underutilized. KH2 still takes the point here due to the combat points I mentioned above.

KH3 fodder is prettier and can be more elaborate but KH2 is funner to play and destroy them in so KH2.

The Disney Rides: I don’t use them, they break the game. I do like the choo choo though since it’s situational to specific battles. KH2 has nothing akin to these so there’s no comparison, I just wish the rides could be disabled or that they worked more like the train. (set to key fights)

KH2 vs KH3 Commands: Eh both aren’t that good. KH3 spams you commands to shift through and KH2 has so many for spectacles sake that the games get easy. There is no winner here, if anything KH2 should’ve restricted these like KH3 restricts the Train ride summon.

Final Fantasy: I dont like FF games but I consider the ones of Kh1 part of the main cast. Their alternate KH selves are important to me. The lack and fading of FF over the years is quite honestly something I dislike and 3′s total lack of them is inexcusable to me. KH2 takes this point since I got to at least meet Leon and crew again.

Then there’s the story.

Anyone that’s followed the blog or met me knows I strongly dislike the direction of KH’s story. It’s not a matter of things others debate, I do not like it. I hate it and I’m still teetering on quitting.

I wont even go into the points cause I’ve made a whole series of posts about my story gripes. I wont link them since this isn’t a shameless plug, I just want to iterate that my issues with the story has driven me to make 20+ tangents plus the older more angry rants.

Others liking it is fine I think, I get easily annoyed if someone tries to excuse something out of nostalgia or adoration, but generally anyone that likes it while admitting faults or agreeing to disagree is fine. (you do you folks)

If I had to rank them I feel KH2 is where a lot of issues started and I feel a lot of issues got worse after since the sequels tried to “fix” that mess. If left alone KH2 would’ve been a poorly written entry and a good stopping point for any disillusioned fan.

KH3 as a contrast tied up everything after 2 up til 3 itself. I do not consider the story good, the pacing is very jarring because it lacks a mid point, it’s weighed down by all the BS prior to it.

I do not feel attachment for the “trios” of the series, I find the repetition of them annoying. I find it a shame most have more dev time than the originals they’re cloned based on.

And I frankly dislike Xehanort as a villain. He’s not interesting, his motives seem to switch with several report entries and I dont eve get the satisfaction of ending him like I did Xemnas or Ansem.

I was entirely indifferent to the entirety of this game’s narrative as I played it. Something that worried my friend @blackosprey because I was so tired I could not even care enough to hate it.

I did fine the trios reunions well done. I dislike them for a list of reasons but they were coming back anyway, their fates sucked prior, so those were well done. I finally felt hype when the LW appeared (only to vanish, fuck you nomura) and in the final battle.

The ending was confusing to me. So many got a happy ending so I fail to see the logic of Sora vanishing. The Luxu reveal, which I found fucking hilarious, was the only sequel bait needed.To have Sora just up and die felt like a stupid decision and I’m sure many more found it insulting.

And when mentioning Luxu I dont mean it in a sarcastic fashion. I genuinely find him funnier in retrospect due to this retroactive change. Nearly every line or scene he’s said is now funny as hell because he’s this ancient troll. I consider it the first legitimately earned twist Nomura has made in ages.

Still, KH2′s writing and story isn’t great either. I could rant why, I have ranted why, but despite it’s flaws it was an “ending” to me.So if asked 2 or 3 I will pick 2. The writing in Kh2 is bad for lots of reasons but if I ignore the Ansem reports it’s no a story about Xehanort.

Ignoring one KH2 report let’s me live this simpler story of Sora and a scientist gone mad and the journey to stop him. It had a lot of stupid things or one of the worst “twists for twists sake” moments ever in the ‘two ansems’ reveal.

But still, I can play Kh2 and be in a KHverse where Xehanorts, Keyblade Wars, Ceremonies, timelines, sleeping worlds, data world abuse, and clones upon clones dont exist.

It’s not nostalgia so much as everything I came to dislike was post KH2. KH3 was all about these things I dont like. My favorite for key and nostalgic reasons is KH1, my pick of the question is Kh2.

KH3′s best assets that can’t be contested was it’s graphical evolution. I played KH3 three times back to back due to this, I came away from KH3 wishing KH1 or 2 looked like this. No game prior contests the look.

So all in all, as I reread this, it’s largely a mixed bag. Neither game is grand but I prefer KH2 because combat is more fun to me and it’s not tied down by a narrative and mythology I’ve come to hate.

I can play KH1, CoM, and KH2 and never be annoyed about something I loved going in a direction I hated.

[boss-hoody]

A Kingdom Hearts 3: world-by-world review I guess

when I say “Area” I mean parts of the world separated by loading screen OLYMPUS Consisting of 3 areas, Olympus had itself a major upgrade from its past appearances. The Colosseum is nowhere to be seen, (same with the underworld), and has been replaced by a large town and Mount Olympus itself. The third area you visit in Olympus is “realm of the gods”, and the presentation of this area’s entrance was a legitimate “Stop and look at how pretty this is” moment The gameplay in this world was pretty varied, as it served as your tutorial world, teaching you the various forms of movement and combat the game has to offer, as well as showing you early that enemies can have elemental weaknesses. Story wise, Sora is there to ask Herc’s advice on how to regain the power he lost and ends up showing up at the wrong (right?) time as Hades has finally put his 18 year plan into action and released the titans (All four of them this time)

The (very nice) cutscene that brings us into this world is also the one and only mention and appearance of Final Fantasy characters (Cloud and Auron) in the entire game’s story, which is extremely disappointing and a mark against the game as a whole. 4/5

TWILIGHT TOWN I was really looking forward to jumping back into Twilight town, exploring the streets, the tunnels, and all that again. But sadly, Twilight town, while receiving an aesthetic upgrade, only consists of 1 area consisting of Tram common (Now called “the neighbourhood), the forest and mansion, and a single tunnel connecting them (the hole in the wall is gone). There is no exploration of the mansion.

Its also home to the cooking mini game

2/5 (1 point for cooking mini game which is surprisingly fun, and 1 point only because of the atmosphere created by the NPCs and music)

KINGDOM OF CORONA This world is where the game really sines for the first time. Olympus was great, but it was clearly designed as a tutorial area, and Twilight Town lacked anything resembling gameplay content, but Kingdom of Corona makes up for that quickly with a vast forest and a small lively town to explore. Rapunzel constantly wanders off to look at things, which create a number of small character moments and not-quite-mini games you need to do to progress and also helps to make Sora seem more involved. The dancing actual-mini game in the town square was pretty fun once I got the hang of it and realized the symbols on the floor corresponded to buttons based on color, not shape.

Story wise it was a bit janky. The story follows the plot of the movie (Unlike Toy Box, which seems to take place somewhere between Toy story 1 and 2), but Sora becomes separated from Flynn and Punz a couple times, and story progresses without him or us present. At some point Flynn told Rapunzel his real name apparently? And Flynn was knocked out and tied to a boat but we never see it happening. He’s just suddenly tied to a boat an unconscious. Rapunzel’s healing hair comes out of nowhere, as does the song sung to make its magic work. When she rubs her hair on his wound and starts singing as he lay there dying, you might be extremely confused if you hadn’t seen the movie. And by “Might” I mean “WILL”

This world did something interesting with its music that I wish Toy Box had done. When you enter a certain area of the forest, the music (and battle music) change to suit the atmosphere of the area. It was a small touch but it was appreciated and missed once I got to Toy Box...

This is also the first world where we encounter the Nobodies.

4/5. It loses a point for the janky story, but everything else was great

TOY BOX Consisting of two areas, Toy box becomes massive as soon as you leave Andy’s room. It was bizarre running around in a photo realistic suburban street as a tiny toy, (and the fact that you’re a toy in this world is the only reason I like it) and the toy store, Galaxy Toys, is a massive 3 floor area full of toy mechs (seriously they spawn in with regular enemies, you can end up with 5 of them on you very fast).

The mech gameplay was surprisingly fleshed out for a one-world wonder. There are three types of mechs, red, blue, and purple, and they seem to work in a rock-paper-scissors type of deal. Purple has an advantage on red, red has an advantage on blue, and blue has an advantage on purple. Each of the mechs has a different amount of health and firing speed to balance them out further.

The world loses points with me however due to the fact that an instrumental version of “You’ve got a friend in me” is playing throughout the whole world. It became grating very fast and its still stuck in my head.

3.5/5

MONSTEROPLOUS  Taking place almost entirely in doors, this world feels a lot like Kingdom Hearts 2 in the worst way (Hallway, arena, hallway), broken up by rail segments. The “arena” sections at least try to keep things interesting though, with one becoming a  “the walls are a hazard” type of deal. This world introduces us to the Unversed and is actually the only world where they appear, so there’s not many of them.

The battle music in this world was also great. I don’t know, there was just something about it that jived with me.

Story wise, this world takes place after the first Monster’s Inc movie. Sully is the CEO, and laugh energy is the new hotness. Randal is back thanks to his new friend and literally wants to make all children suffer chronic depression forever because, while its not as strong as laughter, sadness is a far more abundant form of energy or something.

Other than that, there’s not much to say about this world. Its not bad, but its not great

3/5 (the fact that it has its own story instead of following the plot of the movie earns it an additional point.

ARENDELLE This was the first world where it really felt like “Disney shenanigans”. Sora was just kind of there while the plot of Frozen happened, and like with Tangled, the story progressed without Sora or us present, and again, if you hadn’t seen the movie, you’d be lost. Unlike tangled, it lacked little character interactions to at least make Sora feel connected in some way.

The boss in this world was a combination of amazing cinematic attacks and a rehash of Scar in KH2, and your Disney buddy for this world was a legitimate surprise.

I enjoyed the reindeer Heartless in this world too. Not only do they take huge damage from fire, but it also melts their antlers, preventing them from using their annoying attacks. However Donald the super-genius would often hit them with Blizzard which would give their antlers back...

2/5

THE CARIBBEAN  This world. THIS FUCKING WORLD Its so good. Its perfect. Its like its own game There’s a huge ocean full of little islands to explore, the under water combat WORKS and is FUN. The primary heartless you’ll run into under water is a fish that changes color, and is weak to a different element depending on said color, giving you something to think about while fighting it. You can just wale on it if you want, or you can use magic and work out its weakness to dispatch it quickly.

You get your own pirate ship. SORA FINALLY LIVIN THE DREAM! The pirate ship can be upgraded for more health and canons by finding white crabs (Can’t explain how that works without spoilers), it has its own reaction commands that devastate enemy ships, OH and there are ENEMY SHIPS. SHIP BATTLES. SHIP ON SHIP COMBAT

Again tho, like with Tangled and Frozen, the story likes to progress while Sora is off dicking around. However, the supporting characters do a better job of explaining what happened while Sora was AFK than anyone in Corona or Arendelle did. The fact that Sora is already familiar with most of the cast thanks to KH2 also helps this along a bit tho. Sora doesn’t feel completely tacked on despite being completely tacked on.

This world suffers even more severely from what it suffered from in KH2 tho. That being IT IS EXTREMELY JARRING AND IMMERSION BREAKING TO SEE CARTOON-ASS SORA, DONALD AND GOOFY CHILLING OUT WITH HYPER REALISTIC JOHNNY DEPP AND CO

Despite the negatives, the gameplay of this world makes up for all of it

7.5/5: Too much water

SAN FRANSOKIO The story does what Kingdom Hearts 3 worlds haven proven to do best and does its own thing. Sora arrives in San fransokyo some time after the events of Big Hero 6. Hiro has built a new Baymax but is still torn up about the original his brother built being lost to the void, and now weird robot heartless are attacking (Hint: Bring thunder) Sora makes fast friends with the crew (as he tends to do) and through helping them with the heartless, gives each member ideas on how they can upgrade their gear.

The world consists of 2 areas. Hiro’s garage, and downtown San Fransokyo, which is basically mini spider-man PS4. While in Hero’s garage, you can choose to explore the city during the day or night. Heartless do not appear during the day, so if you just wanna run around and explore, find treasure and hidden mickey’s, hit the town during the day. But if you’re looking to level up (and this is the final world with enemy spawns so you will be) then you should hit the town at night.

While the downtown area is small (especially just coming off the open seas of the pirates world), it makes up for it in both verticality and density.

4/5 (Extra point added for the presence of Thigh queen Go Go Tomago)

100 ACRE WOOD Its a single area with 3 almost identical mini games, it’ll take you about 20 minutes to get through, there’s a keyblade at the end, 0/5

KEYBLADE GRAVEYARD This is the final world of the game and serves as the site for the final battles with the organization. Its basically a series of arena matches where Sora teams up with one or more of his friends to take on multiple members of the organization at once. It dominoes into the final conflict with the 3 main Norts. Young, Heartless, and Nobody all at once while Old man watches and throws Keyblades at you occasionally. 

Gameplay is all boss combat. Story is all PLOT

5/5 on both counts

THE FINAL WORLD Okay no THIS is the final world. Literally. Its entirely main plot based so I won’t go into any actual detail. It consists of a single room which is a giant cube puzzle (Not like the movie “Cube”, like you’re standing on a big cube thing). Which would be SUPER cool if it weren’t for the fact that Sora’s flow motion abilities completely break it.

Plot wise 5/5 Gameplay wise 1/5

SCALA AD CAELUM OKAY NO THIS IS THE REAL FINAL WORLD FOR REAL A city located in the past, this is the site of the true final battle with Xehanort and his 12 selves. you go up against the 12 all at once (they seem to share a health bar tho so its not that bad) as they utilize their own weapons (Xigbar’s guns, Marluxia’s scythe, etc, etc) to just honestly beat the hell out of you. A small section of town serves as your arena, making this perhaps the most geographically diverse fighting arena in the game’s history.

Once those naughty bois are shut down, Xehanort is like “Wanna see something cool?” and tosses you into a legitimately disorientating arena for the beginning of the final showdown between peace boy and naughty grandpa

There’s no gameplay here outside of combat and plot but its a 5/5 none the less

FINAL THOUGHTS This game was at its best when it wasn’t rehashing the plots of the worlds it visited (Tangled, Frozen, Pirates), but either doing its own thing (you know, the Kingdom Hearts plot?), creating new plots set in the worlds visited (Big Hero 6, toy Story, Monsters Inc.) or somehow doing a combo of the 3 (Hercules)

I found it EXTREMELY disappointing that all traces of original Square Enix characters are just gone. We get a single mention of Cloud and Auron in an exposition dump at the beginning of Olympus and thats it. And before you mention the main Nomura OC cast: they’re owned by Disney, not Square.

The game wrapped up pretty much all the major plot points and answered a lot of long standing questions, but also didn’t answer one question in particular that I’m sure has driven a lot of us into the depth of insanity. It also posses a couple new questions, such as “Who?” and “How?” and “What the fuck?” 

Overall, this game is at its best when its focusing on the main plot, with everything in between feeling more like filler... So a standard Kingdom Hearts game.

In the end, despite the lack of FF, and the falling into disney shenanigans, this was a great game and an excellent ending to the dark seeker saga. Going forward, I hope the future games (and there definitely will be future games, this is by no means the end of Kingdom Hearts) don’t do what this saga did and spread the plot over 200 games on 200 different consoles over 200 god damn years. If thats the case I think KH3 will be my jumping-off point. However, if they’ve come to their senses and choose to release the next saga of games like normal human beings instead of depraved madmen, I am 100% on board. However, seeing as Nomura is a depraved madman (see FFXV development for details) I am extremely cautious in my optimism.

Final score from me is 4.5/5: WHATS IN THE BOX?!

[party-of-rpg-muses]

Mun Plays Kingdom Hearts 3

............. I finished Kingdom Hearts 3... For those who may be confused, I’m not upset or disappointed. If anything... I’m surprised. Speechless.

Continuing where I left off, I took the Leviathan and sailed to Shipwreck Cove, but found myself getting intercepted by Luxord and his army of Heartlesses. For the first time, I made use of the water wall, which I had completely forgotten about and it really saved me a few times. I just barely managed to beat Luxord with only a sliver of health.

Also, one thing I forgot to mention in my last post, I thought game was going to follow the whole Never say “Die” rule. In Monsteropolis, you can hear Randal saying “Why won’t you just fail already” and in The Caribbean, Jack says “Four of you tried to annihilate me.” when the line in the movie was “Half of you tried to kill me.” So I thought they were going out of their way to not have characters say “die” or “kill” or “death”. But when Jack was traded for Will, Elizabeth did use the word “die”. I just wanted to mention that.

Now, at Shipwreck Cove, I fought against the Kraken, saving the Black Pearl from both it and the Flying Dutchman, allowing me to use the water all even more to protect myself. The fight against Davy Jones was honestly rather difficult, if mostly because of the Kraken, but I managed to win. Not only that, but I won with STYLE!

I was interested in the fact that they didn’t show Davy Jones’ heart, but I understood why they couldn’t show it. Even then, you could just faintly heart his heart beating inside the chest. I was surprised to see them keeping Will dying and even Davy Jones dying as he fell overboard. A little disappointed they didn’t include the marriage between Will and Elizabeth. I also couldn’t help but notice that Sora basically had a hand in killing a normal human being and not a Heartless or Nobody.

After that was San Fransokyo from Big Hero 6. Brief mention: Didn’t care all that much for BH6. Didn’t hate it, but found it kinda average. I’ll say this, I had tons of fun exploring the city and I was able to practice Flowmotion and get used to using it in battle. Funny thing, while out on the town with the others, I forgot the chest that held a map of the area. Like, I saw the chest and planned on getting it after taking care of the Heartless, but completely forgot about it once I was directed to the top of a nearby building, so when I had to track down the Micro-bots, I had to backtrack my steps to find that chest. But other than that, nothing was really major. I know many people would be super happy to have the original Baymax back, but I didn’t really care.

But one thing that was of interest was seeing Possessed Riku from KH1. I’ll admit, I was actually confused about how he was there, but that’s kinda par for the course with a Kingdom Hearts game.

With that done, I went to the Realm of Darkness, YAY! I had the biggest grin on my face when the best character Aqua showed up, even if she was Norted. And I still had that grin while fighting the Demon Tower as Riku. It wasn’t hard, but it did kinda take a while. Then I got to play as Sora to fight my wife Aquanort. Honestly, she was quite difficult, what with her tendency to attack while offscreen and combo Sora for some good damage. But as time passed, I started to figure her out. But I managed to beat her. I want to bring up my theory again and as it turned out, my theory was half-right.

I couldn’t help but shed a tear when Aqua realized she was finally free from the Realm of Darkness, but I couldn’t help but wonder how she lost her Keyblade, but I think they might have been explained in a previous game that I didn’t play, but whatever. I also grinned when I saw Aqua return Castle Oblivion back to the Land of Departure. I grinned even more when I saw how beautiful the inside was, especially when compared to what little was shown in BbS. It feels much bigger than in that game and even more regal.

And I was SO excited to play as Aqua after so long and I was able to take to playing her almost instantly. And I LOVED the new animation for Spellweaver; the way she pirouettes and performs like a graceful ballerina is beyond graceful! Fighting Vanitas wasn’t too difficult, since he pretty much acted the same way as in BbS. I managed to beat him and I was SO happy to see Ventus finally wake up! And the way Aqua and Ven treated each other was adorable, much like an older sister and younger brother. I do wish Ven and Sora could connect a bit more, but I guess there were more pressing matters.

And in the cutscene after, I enjoyed Aqua remembering Kairi and Sora from when they were kids. Of course Sora and Kairi wouldn’t remember meeting her, since they were only children and it was a long time ago. And yay! Axel/Lea and Ventus still remembered each other and they’re still close friends!

After that, I went straight to the Keyblade Graveyard. My blood was pumping during that massive battle against the Heartless and Nobodies, which I called the Battle of A Million Heartless and Nobodies. It was tons of fun laying waste to countless enemies one after the other and once it was done, I continued onward.

While I was happy to see Terra, I instantly knew things weren’t right. Why would Terra just suddenly be there and unpossessed? What followed was the gang getting destroyed one by one while Sora was left in despair as the Demon Tide claimed him. I enjoyed seeing the Chirithy (I don’t know much about the other games, but I know he belongs to Ventus, so there’s that.) It was fun collecting all the different Soras and interesting seeing other people who found themselves in the Final World, clinging on the something in the real world. And going through all the other previous worlds was kinda fun, but the Lich quickly became a pain, what with his Aero magic and leaving behind afterimages that Sora sometimes focuses on, leaving me unable to get away in time. But I managed to get them all. Still confused as to how everyone was seemingly warped back in time to before Terranort and the Demon Tide attacked.

But this time, I was excited to see the Lingering Will return and protect Aqua and Ven. And even pull off these insane moves with its Keyblade that I had no idea it could do. I didn’t fight it in KH2, so yeah... And as for the Demon Tide fight, I was doing... decently until later in the fight. I got combo’d so badly, not even the Kupo Coin could help me and I got a game over. When I tried again, I learned I could damage the core while the tornado is spinning, just not when it turns orange. I eventually managed to win, which then brought one of the coolest moments in the game up!

The Keyblades of the fallen warriors came to Sora’s aid to help him against the swarm of darkness. And not the Keyblades of any fallen warriors, but the people who actually played Kingdom Hearts χ! There were so many names and so many Keyblades being used! And I want to say this; for those who lost their lives in the Keyblade War, I thank you. Your hearts may now rest and be at peace. Light shall prevail.

After that, found myself in Xehanort’s maze, deciding to help Riku against Young Riku, Ansem, and Xigbar. By accident, I focused on Ansem until he ran away, leaving only Young Riku and Xigbar. I focused on Xigbar, since he was always a bit of a pain; both in KH2 and BbS. But thanks to Sora’s amazing aerial combat skills, he wasn’t all that difficult. Young Riku, however, was a bit harder and rather aggressive. But I managed to win. After that, I helped Mickey out against Xemnas, Larxene, Luxord, and Marluxia. I ended up targeting Larxene, but after a few hits, Xemnas left the battle and Luxord captured Mickey, so I focused on Luxord and defeated him first before turning my attention toward Larxene. Once she fell, Marluxia was next.

Later, I decided to help Kairi and Axel with Saïx and a mysterious hooded figure. I focused on Saïx until his Berserk meter filled up, triggering another cutscene. Xemnas managed to defeat Axel (and somehow(?) took his Keyblade away) before having the hooded figure attempt to kill him. I had my guess, but I was so happy to see I was right! Xion is a vessel! Sure, she hasn’t been Norted with the orange eyes and white hair, but she was one of Xehanort’s Organization XIII. I was even happier to see her come around. And happier still with Roxas suddenly appeared to help his friends while Kairi was kidnapped. With Xion and Roxas, I was able to defeat Saïx almost easily. I then went to help Aqua and Ven against Vanitas and Terranort. I focused on Vanitas because he’s kind of a massive jerk and I wanted to see how Sora would react to seeing Vanitas’ face. It was nice to see Ven act so mature towards Vanitas and I was expecting him to accept Vanitas as a part of himself and absorb him back into his body. But honestly, this is fine too.

After Vanitas, I focused Terranort. I was really struggling when he brought the Guardian out and I couldn’t seem to do anything. No way to damage it and no way to avoid it, but I managed to survive. Terranort fell shortly thereafter, since he also got caught in the crossfire against Vanitas. I was surprised to see the Guardian resist Terranort, only to find that the Heartless in question was Terra himself, successfully driving Xehanort’s heart out of his body and reclaiming it as his own.

I then turned my attention to the Xehanorts. I focused on Young Xehanort, managing to defeat him despite having to also deal with Ansem and Xemnas. Once Young Xehanort was defeated, I felled Ansem, followed by Xemnas. My heart stopped when Master Xehanort up and killed Kairi and my jaw dropped when I saw the old man actually stop ULTIMA, AKA THE ULTIMATE MAGIC SPELL with Stopza!

I went into Xehanort’s heart (I think) and entered Scala ad Caelum. I struggled heavily against the masked enemies. Even Rage Mode could only help so much and I eventually got a game over. When I tried again, I wised up to some of their tricks and eventually managed to beat them.

Next cama Armored Xehanort... I barely knew what I was doing during the first phase, struggling to find my footing, but managed to beat the first phase, even making use of Flowmotion attacks. In the second phase, underwater, I was more cautious, since I was out of items. I also bought an Elixir earlier on to use in a desperate situation. I used it during that phase, so... yeah. At times, I would just run away and try to survive until Donald was either revived and healed Sora or my MP was filled again so I could use Curaga. I eventually managed to win as the third phase started.

Almost instantly, I was blindsided and instantly defeated, since I didn’t have time to heal. Now, during the entire fight, I feared that if I died, I would have to go through the whole fight again, but thankfully, I was just sent back to the start of the third phase. I managed to deal good damage and ALMOST WON but thanks to some bad luck, I lost... Rage Mode helped me out a bit. And for the third attempt, I FINALLY managed to win!

Then came the battle against Master Xehanort himself! Honestly, it was much more managable compared to the others and nowhere near as stressful. I did quite well until he summoned Kingdom Hearts, making for a great backdrop. I still fought against him quite well until he took Sora’s light, forcing him into Rage Mode. I wasn’t expecting it, so it took me a while to recover, but when I did, I managed to take back Sora’s light... and found myself in a grey area with the Organization XIII chairs surrounding the area. I was assaulted by hooded figures with weapons of the Organization XIII and barely managed to even gain a footing, let alone heal. And there were the massive lasers. But I managed to heal and hold my own until returning back to the battlefield.

Once the battle restarted, I returned to fighting Xehanort, eventually getting him down to trigger the ending. But he easily deflected Sora’s Ray of Light and countered with his “Ray of Darkness”. And during the struggle, I couldn’t help but notice a different version of Dearly Beloved. This truly was something major! And thanks to the power of friendship, Xehanort was defeated!

And with that, I BEAT THE GAME!!! I watched the ending cutscenes, Xehanort and Eraqus becoming friends again as their hearts pass on. And I liked how Xehanort acted at the end too. I was hoping that Sora could finally return home to see his mom after so many years, but with Kairi missing, Sora went on a journey by himself to search for her while everyone else went back home. AND Naminé is back too! During the absolute final cutscene before the credits, I thought that Sora had found Kairi and they were returning to greet everyone, but it seems Sora was gone somewhere, leaving Kairi alone, despite being with her friends.

And for the after-credits scene? Well... I won’t say~ But I’ll say this, my jaw dropped, since it revealed MASSIVE things! Some characters will be returning, but I won’t say who. I’ll also say this; the end of the beginning and the beginning brings about the end.

I look forward to the next game! Also, my total game time? 25 hours. Yes, if given enough time, I could start and finish the game in a single day, with an extra hour. Honestly, I’m a little disappointed that there were only 2 returning worlds: Pirates of the Caribbeans and Hercules. Sure, the new worlds are great, but still. And the number of worlds overall is disappointing. So few Disney worlds and all of the worlds don’t give much. Winnie the Pooh can easily be finished in a few minutes while the Disney worlds take about an hour or two to finish. But I guess they wanted to focus a bit more on story and wrapping things up. Still, the game felt short overall. I also hope that Final Fantasy characters make a return in a later game. I’m still bothered by the fact that they removed Final Fantasy characters, who have been present in every KH game since the first, 17 years ago! Again, oh well. Overall, I had fun playing the game and really enjoyed KH3!

[gwidener]

Kingdom Hearts III - Some Thoughts

I am coming to KH3 as a pretty big KH fan. I have followed Nomura's Wild Ride for a long time - multiple clears on KH1, then Chain of Memories KH2, KH2FM+, and BbS all comfortably under my belt. I tried 358/2 Days but it never clicked for me, got frustrated with Dream Drop Distance, and have never played the mobile game (but it looks like everyone is going to be checking it out, so maybe SE got what they wanted!); I am not a speed runner or everything, but have comfortably finished the games on their hardest difficulties and beaten most of the secret bosses (I actually still need to go back to KH2FM+ and finish the Data fights, but I have that save file on PS3, which is kind of a pain to go back to now. ANYWAY)

Going to try to go through gameplay first, then story stuff, so the major spoilers should be backloaded? 

One of my better notes is that KH3 plays more like a KH2 than KH2. I stand behind this now, another 10 hours later; KH2 is much more refined and takes the battle system in subtly more interesting directions than 3 does. To beat the hardest fights in KH2 (and also BbS) I sometimes found myself taking combo extensions off and working my way back in the abilities to find which ones were leaving me open to new attack chains from these harder fights. KH3 does not have this. Turn everything on and level a bit and you will get through fine; I need to start running through the gates but from what I have seen this is going to pretty much be the case all around, and that is disappointing from a series that has given high-level combat a puzzle box in the past.

For someone who lost their strength and abilities, Sora is pretty powerful even early on. Formchanges are really good and probably the one thing I think this game handles better than past titles - KH2s forms often felt random in terms of triggering and not always very useful until they were leveled up. 

That leads me to the attractions: they aren't really possible to use in a really strategic way other than giving you time where it is hard for enemies to hit you to let your MP recharge. I often used my formchange animations in the same way; free hits from an animation that leaves Sora in an invincible state. These are a big part of why the game feels so easy. (Kupo coins also make the game feel really really easy, but when you can just hit retry on the battle anyway, I don't think it really is actually easier.)

Outside of combat, I don't know how much really needs to be deeply looked at in a wrap-up post anyway: the gummi ship design is disappointingly regressive, but a good source of extra stuff to do; the secret emblems could have been really cool but end up being frustrating and a bad gate to the secret movie; the worlds are mostly really well-built and designed but some are way too long (Arendelle, for example, has a ton of variation in feel and how the player is guided but it is wasted when you are spending so long looking at the same color palette) and some are so disappointingly short - in particular, it is fun to run around in San Fransokyo but it is so small and really should have had a little more to it or been moved back in the game so that you feel more like you accomplished something heading into the game putting you on the track to the ending. Still, though, the worlds are far above what they have been in the past, to the point where I noted the Map Directors name in the credits (shoutouts to Yoh Miyazaki!)

One more thing I think I can get away with without being an explicit story spoiler is after 0.2 and KH3 I never, ever want to fight a Demon Tower again.

Alright, story spoilers follow.

Last warning.

Kairi is completely fucking wasted. I could write at least five paragraphs about how frustrating all the other keyblade wielders not really being a part of the majority of the game is but Kairi's story still being the same as it has been forever despite her being empowered with a Keyblade is just infuriating. Someone slap Nomura for this shit. It is glaringly bad in the face of almost everything else.

KH3 is as poorly paced as any of the previous games, but it is more frustrating here for some reason. A lot of this has to do with how much of this act of the overall KH story being in previous games - Dream Drop Distance and BbS 0.2 really are the first big chunk of KH3, which is extra comical because KH3 opens claiming itself as KH2.9. But really, the player and Sora do not achieve anything until the journey through the Disney worlds is over; the only real reason to have the recovery of these other characters start occurring in the final moments of the game is to stack emotion on top of emotion to ensure the reaction they want from the player. But these moments are going to be stacked with gravity wherever they fall in the game. If Kairi and Axel were to join up with Sora, Donald, and Goofy midway to tackle a considerable enemy or something, it would push the player more while giving them some reward halfway. Ultimately you get sick of the carrot on the stick only being at the very end of this journey.

Speaking of DDD and 0.2, the 2.9 portion of this - and those moments being split into their own games - feel like Nomura way overcorrecting from criticism of the KH2 opening being too long and somewhat boring. It *was* too long and kinda boring but that let Roxas build as a real mystery and something intriguing; KH3 forgoes that, putting those mysteries in other places, so that it can focus on a bombastic opening that draws players in from a gameplay sense. And it works! Olympus is really cool! But it is just one of several long pieces of nothing in terms of the overall story.

Similarly, stacking all of the real boss fights in the endgame kind of cheapens them as characters with regards to 3. I know the fight against Xemnas, Ansem, and Young Xehanort is cool as fuck because I have played the games to know that but if you are just coming to 3, these guys showed up to tease you a couple times and said some vaguely threatening shit in cutscenes. Not giving active confrontation to these enemies earlier on torpedoes the emotional resonance of the fights later, instead of adding to them which could have been the idea behind holding them all back.

So much of what happens in the end is not just predictable but the game straight up tells you it is coming. And any conclusion in this vein will feel like that, so it seems like I am grading it on a curve when I tell you that I did ultimately like the game and how it carried itself despite the above. But if it pulls too many twists on you, it would feel like it is moving the goalposts away from you but both you and the game know it has to go down.

It feels like I am being a little more negative than I mean so let me dive into something real quick that I absolutely enjoyed: the emphasis on Sora, Donald, and Goofy as a team and that being the way you spend the majority of your time in the KH universe. It feels like Nomura and his team read my exact criticism of old KH games for always having a final battle that is so laden with new mechanics and loss of abilities; having Donald and Goofy along when you go to Scala ad Caelum and for the majority of the final run of battles really makes it feel like you have come all this way together and that Sora draws strength from that (which buoys that as a theme as well.)

Finally (for now, I may revisit my notes later) so much of what happens before the credits roll feels kind of crappy. If you have played BbS, you kind of know Xehanort hasn't always been irredeemable shit, but having Eraqus show up and essentially forgive him, and having Xehanort hand Sora the x-blade, put positive feelings on a character that absolutely doesn't deserve it. He has murdered for his goals and had others do the same, throughout fucking time. He is a shithead and him getting to stand up and somewhat willingly hand power over after his defeat knocks the wind out of Sora as the powerful figure he is and should be at this point of his journey. Make no mistake: at the end of KH3, Sora is by far the most powerful character we have seen in Kingdom Hearts. He takes down a Xehanort over multiple forms who has the x-blade and has opened Kingdom Hearts; he reassembles his own consciousness and heart and body which is something nobody should be able to do, according to Chirithy. Xehanort does acknowledge this, but it still plays at deference to Xehanort instead of glorifying Sora and his success.

I know I said finally but secret ending stuff too:

I hope you like long stories is A HILARIOUS LINE in a KH ending. Looking forward to learning why Riku and Sora are in the Shibuya from The World Ends With You and why on earth the dude from Verum Rex and YET ANOTHER PERSON IN THAT COAT are there like what the fuck. Is this the only way Nomura can get to make another TWEWY because *I am okay with this*

[akingdomtheorist]

KH Catch Up: KH2FM The FINAL PART

THE FINAL PART WITH LESS THAN TWO MONTHS TO CATCH UP. HOLLOW BASTION

"I forgot how to play this game."

-fleeing enemies- "Because why deal with your problems when you can just nyoom."

SPACE PARANOIDS

"So how does it feel to be pewpewpew'd back?" "Is this what I do to people?"

"I give these Heartless a 3/10. Not a fan."

He went Wisdom Form had no pewpewers remorse after that.

"Is this way to the I/O Tower?" "Well if you walk up to the entryway it'll tell you. You may have to go through a few maps." "Well okay that's great but which way is the I/O Tower?" -literally walks up to the entrance- "I'm sorry."

"Why don't they just reformat the computer?" "That's what the disc is for." "You don't need a program to do that!" "You do when they're sentient!" "Why don't they just CTRL+Alt+DELETE the MCP then?" "He's Win10." "Even Win10 lets you do that! He's Win11."

"Wait, did Leon not put the fuckin' disc in the computer? Aerith put it in the drive?! Leons from a futuristic setting!"

-walks into boss fight- "I didn't save."

"Man, he did deresolution him, he's at 144P now. He's like a JPEG."

Poor guy has hit the Limit Break instead of Delete so many times.

"We just deleted System32."

HOLLOW BASTION IS NOW RADIANT GARDEN

I force him to try Assault of the Dreadnought with the ships I have.

And then we realized where the Full-Auto setting was after all this time and he laughed at my agony.

"This is the most StarFox this game has been." "You don't even KNOW."

"This isn't bad. I've played StarFox Assault and that's not bad."

"Sorry I'm gonna disappoint you with the panic." "Oh we're not there yet."

I got to Mission Level 3 for him to try. Just waiting for the moment... He died BUT MY ENGINEERING WORKED SO WELL! We created Code Rave and our new Teeny Ship 'MAXIMUM PEW' to take on this break in the story. After finding out we need the power of Neon Orb all day all the time, we go back to Atlantica.

ATLANTICA

"We kind of destroyed her (Ursula) last game. Right, that's a thing we did?"

"Did we just have a fight off screen?" "Nah."

"She's plagarizing her!"

"Way to go Eric, you really... really leaped into action there."

"Just kill her, you have a trident, stab her."

"Really? We're having a dance-off to save the universe?"

"Why didn't Triton just impale her? Like Eric just did? When his daughter was in danger?"

Now we need to come back later with Thundaga. Except we don't the game just kicked us out anyway.

There was some trouble that totally didn't happen  with the last song.

"Wait we didn't use Thundaga once."

TWILIGHT TOWN

"Oh it literally won't let me go anywhere else. Well at least they could give me a skateboard."

"Hey Mickey-wait guys stop everything I gotta restart Share Play."

"Well since that's the obvious direction of the plot, let's go the other way."

"Touch. The beam..."

"That's my data. That's me!"

Then he spent 5 minutes theorizing the name because clearly Xehanort is a Nobody name.

"Hi Axel. Why should we leave?"

"Ohh... it's just me..."

"Axel's just like 'don't mind me I'm just casually dying here'."

"Oh stop making puns while you're dying motherfucker."

"Aw he just wanted to bring his boyfriend back."

"Alright fuckin' wannabe Sephiroth." He's upset at Saix.

THE WORLD THAT NEVER WAS

"I'm betting it's Riku."

"Oh it's Roxas!"

"What's my dodge button? That's not the button-THAT'S NOT THE BUTTON!"

"You gotta dodge my dude." "Yes-thank you."

-tries Strike Raid- "OH NO THAT WORKED ON RIKU THAT DOESN'T WORK ON YOU!"

He died. Take 2.

He died. Take 3.

He died. Take 4.

Through the power of technical use of Limiting for more magic and drives, the lock on+dodgeroll tactic, FIVE TIMES THE CHARM.

The Two Become One has been obtained. I await the moment

THREE ANTI-FORMS IN A ROW. I made him try Master form and IT FINALLY HAPPENED. FINAL FORM ACHIEVED.

"Alright these mother fucker's got a giant flyin' saucer..."

"Namine's like, 'I'm bustin you out!'"

"Is this to the final boss?" "Nah."

"He's disguised! He's disguised, that's Riku. He's disguised right?" "Not exactly."

"Kairi's just like no, we're not- no, it's not happenin'."

"KAIRI GETS HER OWN KEYBLADE!"

"Is that DiZ? I mean I knew he was Ansem the Wise but I called that like ages ago."

"Is he gonna Luigi's Mansion all the Heartless into that thing?" "No." "But it looks like it does!"

"Organization XIII is real sassy for people without emotions."

"What are his weapons? How is he supposed to use them? Oh they're guns! I didn't think they'd give him actual guns."

"He doesn't have just a gun it's a fuckin' Halo Needler!" "Does this upset you?" "No, I just think it's a little cheap." "Oh it will though."

He died.

The second time around he abused the speed of Anti-Form to avoid ALL THE BULLETS and ended with a "FUCK YOU" to Xigbar.

"Did he (Berserker Nobody) just Minimize- did he just fuckin' minimize? No more of that."

"Oh Kairi just- cats outta the bag!"

"Riku took hair tips from Axel."

"Oh he's gonna Luigi's Mansion Kingdom Hearts!" "No he's gonna reverse ReBoot it."

"Ohh these are all the Organization Members I've killed? What's Marluxia the- oh of COURSE he's the Graceful Assassin."

Now it's time to play a game with Luxord. It was fairly easy though late on learning all the games was fun to watch in failure.

"Of course your weapon is called Soul Eater you edgy bastard..."

Time to go beat up angry moon barbarian.

"Oh what happened did you lose your weapon buddy?"

He did it first try.

"Yeah no Roxas didn't spend eight hours fighting this fucker."

"Too bad it's impossible [For Roxas to meet Sora] but I'm not gonna say it's 100% impossible, because this is Kingdom Hearts."

"Calling it now this is gonna change Riku back into Riku. I CALLED IT HIS HAIR IS BACK TO NORMAL. Back to his Axel hair."

"Riku get your bangs out of your face."

"Riku is a tol."

"We're finally working together! WE ARE GONNA FIGHT SOMEONE TOGETHER!" "Yeah, you are." "YES, YES-I can't shout because people are sleeping-BUT YES."

"He's- oh my god I'm basically playing as two people. I love this."

"Oh his sword- look it has an angel wing! I just noticed that! Riku dah best."

AND THEN THE GRINDING OF 8 HOURS COMMENCED

We are joined by one more friendo who has completed the game. They will be F2 in conversation quotes.

"Oh that's a lot of Heartless."

"You murdered people. You had a choice to not murder people."

"Okay, is this round one? Yeaaaahh..."

"Okay first round done. I've played the first game I know how this is gonna fuckin' end."

"Well he's dead, we can go home!"

It’s victory, or oblivion. "Well I have Oblivion so, it's just victory then."

"Is the castle fucking alive?"

"Oh we Dr. Strange now."

-uses slicer reaction command- "ALRIGHT Sora just, slice a building in half."

He thinks this is the best part, and he's only just begun.

"We're destroying the engines now? Oh no they're giant Death Star lasers."

"Of course this wouldn't be a Kingdom Hearts game if it didn't have you fighting an old man on a spaceship."

"Mickey uses his powers of darkness! No."

"Is Namine about to Cortana us--OH GOD OH GOD ROXAS JUST WALKED OUT OF ME."

"Roxas and Namine shipping Sora and Kairi together just because they wanna hang out."

"Riku, why do we always lose Kairi? Can we put a tracker on her so when we inevitably lose her again we can just find her?"

"Hey Riku do you wanna pick me up? This seems incredibly unsafe, I'm just standing on a platform."

PHASE FOUR INITIATE

"Did we do it? At least this phase? Are we onto the next phase?" F2 "-laughs- Oh ho ho we're only just getting started buddy."

"That looks bad. Hey Riku I don't like what's happenin' right now. This is a solid 3/10 experience for me."

"Okay Lich King wannabe round 2."

PHASE FIVE INITIATE

"Is it safe to use my drives? Is it? What if- OHHH FUCK." "Remember when I said what if you got knocked off the edge?"

"Oh whaaaaaat oh no."

"Let's just throw buildings at him, that seems to work."

"Hey remember how you have that reaction command that's a shield?" "Shhhhhhhhhhh."

"LET ME AT THE BUILDINGS!"

FINAL PHASE BEGIN

"Buddy... buddy... you are not the Aztec concept of nothing!"

"I can Limit Form!"

"Nope, nope nope, NOPE. STOP IT!" He isn't a fan of the lasers.

"Was he actually damaging me during that?? Let's just heal up!"

"You're gonna wanna spam Reversal." F2 "The DBZ fight continues!"

"Press the button as fast as you can." "Oh, OH IT'S A LIMIT OHHH."

"Oh hey we Roxas now."

"I think I did it?"

"I know you're in Kingdom Hearts 3 Riku, you won't die. Or at least you'll come back."

The final cutscene.

"Awww, Riku's a sap now."

"Sora how does your hair stay like that, you were underwater."

"Mickey just, Pikachu'd Riku." F2 "That's just how things work in this world, don't judge." "I didn't know Riku was Mickey's Pokemon Trainer."

"Riku get your hair out of your face. Don't you have a mom that can cut your hair?"

"Who are you? Some Anubis motherfucker-WHO ARE YOU? Why are we in Destiny now?!"

"Those are our keyblades..."

"Oh my god... that's a lot of Keyblades."

KH2FM has been beaten! At least, the main game anyway. I have a few more things I'm going to make him do first.

LINGERING WILL ATTEMPT TIME!

"Why is there a black hole in our castle?" F2 "I think we should go into that black hole."

F2 "Remember that place you saw thirty seconds ago? That is not this place."

"UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...."

"I don't like this."

"I'm not Xehanot, I'm not-I'm not-I'M NOT!"

"OH GOD HIS HEALTH WHAT THE FUCK?!"

He died in about thirty seconds. His second attempt was in two seconds!

"Well that's it for that boss!"

CAVERN OF REMEMBRANCE

-sees the car heartless- "Nope we're not dealing with these fuckers nope."

-takes look around the second room- "Help."

"Help. Help. Hlep."

Yes I helped him, I'm not a demon. No that third one is not a typo.

"That might have been the one time you wouldn't have wanted to revert." "Oh really? Whatever."

"Wait, is this the longest hallway?" "WELCOME TO THE LONGEST HALWAAAAAAY."

-beats first quarter- "Am I done now?" "Oh you sweet summer child." "You know you could just say no." "Yeah but that's boring."

Nothing says the longest hallway like eleventeen uses of Final Form!

"Fuck that place, fuck that hallway."

"Garden of Assemblage? Oh it's a place to redo all the boss fights!" "You're missing some because you need to do the absent silhouettes." "Aaaand we're done with this game!"

I made him to attempt Sephiroth.

"So a tip. When you fight Sephiroth, spam triangle." "Okay?" "While the cutscene is loading, spam triangle."

"Why do you have knee wings Sephiroth?"

He tried twice and gave up.

Well that's it, it's now 358/2 Days watch next! That’ll be all one part

[nadziejastar]

I love the idea. It completes the elemental theme since Terra is earth, Aqua is water, Ventus is wind, Lea is fire, and Isa means “ice”. Sora is sky, Riku is land, Kairi is sea, TAV are stars, Lea is sun, and Isa is moon.

Organization XIII’s Number VII.

If Saïx sees something he can use, he will—and without a second thought.

But also, it fits Isa’s character. I think he’s such a fascinating character. I think he wanted to be useful more than anybody. In the organization, you have to be strong or useful in some way. Otherwise you are annihilated. Treating a person to ice cream is how Axel commends someone for trying hard and doing their best. This seems to be a special tradition for him because of its connection to his youth.

“You hate troublesome things, right, Axel?”

“Well, Roxas—why do the three of us eat ice cream together every day in that place? I have no use in doing that either, do I? If you think about it, it’s troublesome, right? Do you want me to tell you?” Roxas looked at Axel, and waited for his answer.

“It’s because we are best friends.”

Axel specified that he had no practical use for eating ice cream every day with Roxas and Xion. But best friends don’t think of each other in terms of usefulness. From an objective standpoint, it might be seen as troublesome. But subjectively, it’s not. He goes out of his way to hang out with them because it’s fun and that’s what friends do.

Isa—A serene and self-possessed boy who always has time for a quick quip at his best friend Lea’s expense.

It doesn’t seem like Isa was a very “motivated” person, at least in the way the organization would desire. He was laid back and always had time for a quip at Lea’s expense. It seems like Isa was the one who was more motivated by hanging out and eating ice cream than anything.

“I’m a can-do man, so I got ready ages ago.”

“How exactly are you ‘can-do’, kupo?” mumbled the Moogle.

“Yeah, how exactly are you ‘can-do’?” Roxas repeated.

“In ways darling children like you don’t understand,” said Axel, scratching his head. Roxas and the Moogle looked at each other and laughed.

Roxas and the shop moogle made quips at Axel’s expense on the day they go looking for Xion.

If she went back only to report another failure, Saïx would know that she couldn’t wield the Keyblade anymore. And then…she might be terminated.

What do I do? What can I possibly do…?

That was the day Xion ran away because she was afraid of being annihilated for being useless.

“We can’t afford to spend any more chances on you,” Saïx was telling her. “You were a mistake we never should have made. A failure.”

Failure…? What was that about?

With one parting glance at Xion’s miserable, downcast face, Saïx turned and left.

More than any other insult, Saïx called Xion “failure” the most.

He’d failed the mission where he’d been told if he disregarded his orders he’d be destroyed. Disregarding orders and failing a mission were considered the same thing.

In the organization, failure to carry out an order is considered the same as disobeying the order. Axel knew this after he failed to bring Roxas back.

“You are to discover the identity of the outsider,” he told her. “Those are direct orders from Lord Xemnas. Failure is the same as insubordination. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Wha…?” Xion had no idea that Xemnas had chosen her for this mission. To the best of her knowledge, Saïx was the one in charge of assigning tasks.

And Saïx emphasized this when he gave Xion the order to capture Riku.

Day 172: Meaning Behind the Words

Author: Axel

There has to be something to what Saïx said. Why isn’t Xion qualified to be one of us? He said to just look at her, but at what? The fact that she looks like Naminé? Xion and Naminé must be connected. Whose Nobody is Xion, anyway? What is Saïx hiding?

After Xion collapsed, Saïx said she was not worthy to be an organization member. And Axel’s report entry refers to the “meaning behind the words”. Xion’s name refers to imaginary numbers. So, she’s not fit to be among the organization’s number because she’s not even real.

Day 7: Meaning

Author: Xemnas

A name defines an object. Describes the span of it. Gives it purpose. We embarked upon the Replica Program to ensure our new power stays ours. Now, our shadow puppet, “No. i,” lives. It needs a name. Something to define it. To give the hollow vessel purpose.

Names are given by Xemnas to impart meaning and purpose.

“As your flesh bears the sigil, so your name shall be known as that of a Recusant.”

Let’s assume this quote is about Saïx, which I think is the most likely scenario. He’s the only character with the Recusant’s Sigil on his flesh, after all. His name was given to impart the meaning of a recusant. And a recusant is a heretic or a traitor. The “X” is based on the crook and flail which is a symbol of divine authority in ancient Egypt.

“Saïx called Xion a failure…”

Hearing that, Axel also sucked in a breath. I think maybe Saïx hasn’t been paying attention to Roxas and Xion’s ‘specialness’. Yeah, those two un-Nobody-like Nobodies show emotional reactions that other Nobodies don’t. Abuse them with cold words, and Roxas and Xion react to them—just like they have hearts.

Saïx didn’t understand that. Despite the lack of a heart, he could imagine what it was like to have emotional responses based on what he remembered from his human life. And he must be able to remember how much trouble it was.

If failure is the same as insubordination to Xehanort, Isa’s scar might very well have been intended as the mark of a “failure”. A big scarlet letter right on his face as a permanent reminder of his purpose. In KH3, he said he awakened to a new purpose, which was to become stronger. Why did he want to be strong so badly, though? In KH2, he said he lost his true purpose. I think Isa was considered a weak failure unfit to be among the organization’s number unless he became stronger. And so Xemans assigned him that purpose so he could finally be useful for once.

“Is it true about Castle Oblivion…?” he asked, not looking his superior in the face.

Saïx’s response was icy. “That’s no concern of yours.”

“What about Axel?” he pressed. Hearing that name, Saïx narrowed his eyes faintly, not even enough for Roxas to notice. He wasn’t attuned to such subtle changes.

“Who knows,” Saïx finally said. “Perhaps he is among the lost.”

He’s BY FAR the most self-loathing organization member, in my opinion. The way he treats everyone is a reflection of how he sees himself. As a human he was made to think he was totally and utterly useless. He thinks it’s pointless for Xion to worry about Roxas since there’s nothing she can actually do for him.

“There’s nothing you can do even if you do go. Xion will not wake up.”

“That’s not the point!” Roxas snapped. “I should still be with her!”

Saïx didn’t have to talk that way. Maybe Roxas wouldn’t be able to do anything besides look in on her. That didn’t matter—he wanted to see how she was. Why was Saïx being so obtuse?

He says the same thing to Roxas when he was worried about Xion.

Roxas: Why were you working him so much harder than you do me? Is he that strong?

Phil: Well, sure. He’s a hero, kid. If I put a squirt like you through that, you’d croak on me.

Roxas: So people work you harder when they have expectations? The Organization expects me to do hard missions all the time. Aren’t expectations the same thing as orders?

Saïx has the most problems with people who remind him of his past in some way. He has BIG issues with Axel, Xion, and Xigbar. And in the manga they really show how much he hates Demyx. He comes with Roxas to Olympus Coliseum several times, and on Day 153, a few days after Saïx berates Xion for failing her mission. And it’s to show that Demyx is not good at fighting nor is he very motivated. He is barely useful to the organization. He is always asking for a vacation and constantly slacks off.

Roxas: What kind of missions do you usually work?

Demyx: Me? Recon stuff, mostly.

Roxas: No taking out Heartless?

Demyx: Nah, it’s rare that I do anything that strenuous.

Roxas: But aren’t you expected to?

Demyx: Ha, they know better than that. They wanna keep the machine running, they pick the right tool for the job.

The organization has low expectations of Demyx and therefore doesn’t assign him any task that is too difficult.

Day 153: This Is Gonna Be a Hit!

I’ve got me a new hit single! X-face is always barking at me to work, but what’s he expect me to do against a monster like that? I mean, stop and think about skill sets when you divide up the labor already!

But Demyx wrote this in his report on that day. Saïx is always barking at him to work, even though everyone knows he’s not the right tool for the job. This suggests a personal issue, because Xemnas never complained about Demyx being a problem. If he wasn’t contributing in some way, he’d have been erased already.

Saïx’s estimation of Xion seemed to have plummeted lower than ever. True, she’d lost badly against the Organization impostor—but that was Riku. Defeat was all but inevitable against him.

Failing to carry out a mission was unacceptable, of course, but not impossible. She could always challenge Riku again. If the mission was so unsuited to her in the first place, though, Saïx ought to know better as the one in charge of handing out assignments. And Axel was beginning to suspect at least some of the blame lay with him. Saïx held some particular grudge against Xion…

Saïx is a workaholic ladder climber, motivated to reach the top of the organization hierarchy. But more than that, I think he’s just desperate to escape the memories of his past. 

Axel: Ouch! Roxas, that’s not cool.

Roxas: But look at him! All he ever does is lie around playing that sitar.

Axel: Aw, he’s not that bad. He’s got his own missions to—Does he? Huh. I actually have no idea what he does.

Xion: You know, I’ve seen Demyx out in the field, rocking out on that sitar of his.

Roxas: What does that accomplish?

Axel: Hey, for all you know, he’s out there fighting Heartless and doing recon–just the same as you.

He doesn’t want to be looked down. He thinks he has to justify his very existence by being useful.

Roxas: But I’ve heard him say he wasn’t cut out for combat. I guess everybody in the Organization is good at different things.

Axel: That’s right. Everybody’s unique.

Xion: Even Nobodies? Don’t you need a heart to be unique?

Axel: Oh, I think we have other things that set us apart. Like our pasts. That’s one of the things that makes the Organization members special. Unlike lesser Nobodies, we remember who we were.

I think Demyx reminds Saïx of his past self, so he is especially harsh on him. On the other hand, Axel was very quick to defend Demyx’s usefulness to the organization, even though he couldn’t think of any ways that Demyx was actually useful. Axel just hates thinking of people as tools who are only valued in terms of their usefulness, and I think this had to do with Isa. 

If you cannot wield the Keyblade to its purpose, you have no place in the Organization. Keep that in mind and make sure to eliminate Heartless with the Keyblade.”

“…I see. I’ll be more careful,” she replied.

It was Saïx who told Xion she was useless without the Keyblade, and why she was hiding in Twilight Town. Axel gave them the idea to tell Saïx that working together would raise their motivation. And you can just tell that Saïx was annoyed as soon as they said it.

“If you’ve got troubles, you tell them to your friends… right? Roxas.”

Roxas nodded, and said, “We’re… friends, right?”

“At those words, Xion finally spoke. “I can’t… use the Keyblade anymore.” “I have to collect hearts. And so, if I can’t use the Keyblade… I… am useless.” Xion hung her head. Her melting ice cream dampened her hand.

This part of the story is all about best friends.

Axel cut off Saïx’s scolding. “It’s okay, isn’t it? Working together, these two newbies could finally work at least as much as one person, right?” Saïx turned to Axel with a sour look on his face.

“If we can go together, I think we’d even be able to handle harder missions,” Roxas added, immediately. Saïx shook his head slightly.

Axel was obviously drawing on their past to convince Saïx to let them go together. He even mentioned newbies coming of age.

“What did you intend to do?”

“What did I intend to do? Offer some friendly help?” Axel replied, and grinned at Saïx.

Saïx knew from the very beginning that Axel was covering for Xion. I definitely think Roxas and Xion’s dynamic reminded Saïx of Lea and Isa’s dynamic way too much for his liking.

“But, you’d have to try twice as hard from now on, Roxas.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Roxas giving a strong nod.

But, Xion looked worried. “…Is that okay?”

“Of course it’s okay!”

“But…” Xion cast her eyes down again. The ice cream in her hand was mostly melted.

The look on his face tells you he doesn’t like hearing any of this. He lets them go simply so Axel won’t talk about it anymore.

“When you’re in trouble, you can count on your friends, right, Roxas?” Axel said, and Roxas smiled, looking at Xion.

But the idea is that best friends will pick up the slack for you if they have to.

“Al, Al, A~l! If you can’t rely on your friends in this kind of situation, when can you rely on them? The Carpet says so too!”

This theme from Agrabah was continued into KH2.

“But Genie is good, right? Helping his best friend. I can’t do a~nything, so I can’t show my friendship,” said Iago, still looking down. “Naah. Friendship, it’s not about helping your friends, or not, or anything, I think it’s fine as long as you can have fun together.”

Flowing up in Sora’s heart, as he said that, was his own important friends. The important best friends he still hasn’t been able to meet.

Friendship isn’t about being useful. This whole concept feels tailor-made for a character like Saïx.

At that moment, Axel poked his head in. “Oh, is Roxas going to Beast’s Castle?” Xion gazed up at Axel, as if clinging to his presence. Axel glanced her way, and nodded to her slightly. “I checked that place out yesterday, and that Heartless looked pretty darn tough. I reckon it might be impossible for him to get that thing on his own, hmm ~”

“Are you trying to tell me to let them go together?” asked Saïx in a disagreeable tone.

Axel was also referencing their youth on Day 96. Roxas and Xion needed to work together again. Saïx knew he had no real argument for Axel because he used to rely on Lea.

Belle: I wonder if he’s off chasing those horrid creatures again. He’s had to do that every day for weeks… I wish there were some way I could help. Perhaps I’ll ask Cogsworth and the others. I’m sure that together we can figure something out.

Beast’s Castle was all about motivation. The Beast wasn’t just fighting for himself. He was fighting to protect his servants and Belle. And Belle wanted to spend more time with the Beast. In the manga she tried very hard to be useful and it’s actually funny since she’s so inept at fighting. Cogsworth and Lumiere’s reactions were probably similar to Lea’s worrying over Isa.

“Well, I think you can be inseparable, even if you’re apart,” said Axel. Roxas and Xion shared a look.

“Really?”

“It’s like, if you feel really close to each other. Like best friends.”

At first, Roxas didn’t know why they needed to fight the Heartless. He questioned whether they really needed hearts, but just went along with it. He didn’t feel that motivated, and wanted to know why the Beast was fighting so hard. Xion became motivated when she felt like she wasn’t alone. That’s how she got her ability to use the Keyblade back.

“But, you know, hanging out every day isn’t the only thing that matters. We’ll still have one another, even if that changes.”

“Really?” Roxas perked up.

“Yeah. As long as we remember one another, we’ll never be apart. Got it memorized?”

Roxas and Xion found their motivation by wanting to hang out together forever. In the manga, they tell Axel that they want to complete Kingdom Hearts so they can eat ice cream together every day. In the game, Roxas never states any particular motivation. He was happy as long as Axel and Xion were around. He didn’t really understand what having a heart would do for him. He just wanted the days hanging out eating ice cream and watching the sunset to last forever.

Xion turned to look at Xigbar. “Just Kingdom Hearts. I was thinking how pretty it is,” she replied.

Xigbar began to chuckle, then outright laugh. So Xigbar found something funny in what Xion said? I still don’t really understand how that guy thinks.

“Did I say something weird?” asked Xion, looking at him strangely.

“No—you’re growing up into a fine young thing, as they say,” he said, and laughed his head off.

It’s probably that… since the Keyblade returned to Xion, even though she hasn’t gone on missions with Roxas, she’s keeping calm and composed. If that’s what he means by growing up, then it’s true, but I don’t know why that would make him laugh this much.

The next chapter in the manga is titled “Sweetheart” and it takes place around Day 117 ~Secrets~. And it still involved motivation and work ethic. After Xion got her Keyblade back, she was very motivated. Everyone was commenting that she was fired up. Xigbar said she was growing into a fine young thing and Axel assumed it meant she was becoming more independent.

Demyx poked his head in between them. “Heya, what am I missing? Somebody tell a funny story?”

“We were just saying how Poppet is a lot more useful that you,” said Xigbar.

“Huh?” Demyx shrugged. “I don’t get it.”

Finally, Saïx intervened. “Xion.” She looked up and scurried to him, while Axel took the opportunity to get up from the sofa.

“You’re working with Axel today,” Saïx told her. “Don’t dally.”

And Saïx was acting like a drill instructor. In the novel, after Xigbar said Xion was growing up, Saïx interrupted when Xigbar said Xion was more useful than Demyx.

“You’re working with Axel today,” Saïx told her. “Don’t dally.”

“With Axel?” Xion turned to the Nobody in question.

Axel nodded jauntily. “Yup. We’re partners now.”

“Well, as long as you stay out of the way.”

“Excuse me? That’s my line.”

Saïx watched their banter with a withering glare, which actually cut Axel’s laughter short. Xion noticed, too, and quickly assumed a more professional bearing. In an attempt to break the suddenly oppressive mood, Axel asked Saïx, “Anyway, where’s Roxas off to today?”

“He and Xigbar will be taking a look at another new world.”

He also got very irritated at Axel and Xion’s banter before their mission. In the manga he does this too, but it happens later. I think he got so annoyed because it reminded him too much of his past self. The “unusually incensed” line also  seems to be a reference to Saïx’s past.

In any case, I don’t really get why I had to go on a mission with her right at this time. There are certainly a fair few Heartless, but with the force Xion has now, I think she could fight just fine without my help.

“That should be all of them over here, I think.”

“Hey, you’ve gotten pretty good at this.”

“Huh? What’s that for?”

“What? I’m just commending your hard work.”

“Can you not be so weird about it, then?” She laughed.

Suddenly, Xion’s face went hazy in Axel’s vision. He rubbed his eyes. What was that…?

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Uh, nothing…” For an instant, he thought he’d seen Naminé.

Xion was so fired up because she finally felt useful. Axel compliments her hard work and this happens in both the novel and the manga. Axel was asked to observe Xion and he thought she was incredible. She fought just like Roxas and he felt like his help wasn’t needed.

The sea… A seashell. To Axel, there was only one person that brought to mind. Sora. He thought he knew a thing or two about Sora’s memories, scattered as they were by Naminé’s handiwork in Castle Oblivion. You could hardly get away from the sea back where he was from—the Destiny Islands.

And that good luck charm, the symbol of Sora’s promise to Kairi… Wasn’t it made of seashells? So it wasn’t just Sora. It also made him think of Kairi, a Princess of Heart.

If Xion had some connection to Naminé, then naturally, that memory of hers pertained to Kairi somehow. Naminé was Kairi’s Nobody, after all. Or maybe it meant that Xion was related to Kairi herself. So whose Nobody was Xion? Now that he was thinking about this, he had to wonder if seeing Naminé in Xion during the mission was more than just random hallucination.

“But, Axel, you have memories, don’t you?” Xion asked.

“More or less. Not that they’ve ever done me any good,” he replied, looking over at her.

At the end of the mission, Xion and Axel discussed their memories. Axel knew that Kairi’s good luck charm represented their promise to each other.

“Hey. Sorry I took so long.”

“You sure did,” Xion told him with a grin, slipping the seashell back in her pocket. “We finished our ice cream ages ago.”

Roxas sat down beside her. “Xigbar cut and run. I had to finish the mission on my own.”

“Sounds like you earned yourself the treat,” said Axel.

Not wasting any more time, Roxas dug in. Axel pocketed the stick from his own ice cream.

Axel treated Roxas to ice cream after Xigbar left him with all the work on their mission together. And he also put the popsicle stick in his pocket after Xion put the seashell back in hers. Axel was sentimental about the WINNER stick long before Roxas ever gave one to him.

Xigbar, listening in with his arms folded, finally had to make a remark. “You’ve been working so well, Poppet.”

“Uh, thanks,” she mumbled.

“What’re you thanking me for?”

“Well, you gave me a compliment… Or did you?”

“Ha! I guess it was a compliment, wasn’t it?” Xigbar held a fist to his mouth, not quite covering a laugh.

“What did I say that was funny?” Xion looked uneasily up at him.

“Oh no, nothing. You’re completely right.”

If Saïx was interested in their conversation, he gave no indication.

Axel gave Saïx a knowing glance when he said Xion found her motivation. In the novel, Xigbar was teasing Saïx by saying almost the exact same thing Axel said to Xion when he was praising her. Apparently the organization was monitoring the memories that Xion absorbed from those around her. I definitely think that’s why Xigbar bullies Saïx so much. He must have seen a memory of Lea treating Isa to the icing on the cake as “motivation”.

“Yes. It seems that unless he completes some task before the rose withers, he’ll remain a beast forever.” Xaldin smirked at his own cleverness. “A beastly curse and a rose… Heh-heh. This will prove useful.”

“How?”

“Trying to explain it to you would be a waste of time. Let’s go, Roxas. No more dallying.” With that nonanswer, Xaldin left the chambers.

Roxas dallied anyway, peering through the doors again. The rose, the thing he treasures, is his weakness? Nope, I don’t get it. I wonder if Axel will know what it all means…?

After Axel leaves, Xion bungles a mission. And Axel returns just in time for her to get in trouble and start avoiding Roxas. The morning Roxas hears her being scolded is the day called “Fear” where he asks Axel if he has anything he can’t bear to lose. I think Isa was considered “useful” to the organization in the same way Xaldin considered the rose and Belle useful. He was useful for his ability to harm Lea.

Day 171 ~Love~

Before returning to the castle, Roxas saw Beast, wounded from protecting what he cares for, with Belle there to care for him. Love had grown between the two. Xaldin declared the power of love to be worthless. Roxas asked what that power was, but Xaldin said that explaining the concept to a Nobody with no heart would be pointless, and departed.

Left alone, Roxas contemplated what love might be. At their usual spot, Roxas asked Axel what love is, but got no answers. Perhaps completing Kingdom Hearts and gaining a heart would offer some answers. Roxas watched the sunset with these thoughts on his mind.

Xion collapsed on Day 171, the day about love.

Day 172 ~Sound of the Surf~

Before leaving for a mission with Luxord, Roxas heard that Xion failed another mission and fell into a deep slumber. Roxas disregarded Saïx's order to not worry about a failure like Xion and went to her room.

Roxas found out the next morning, and Saïx told him not to worry about a failure. It’s similar to Xaldin saying that love is worthless, and the stuff of poetry, not practicality. Roxas’ worrying won’t actually DO anything for Xion in any practical way. And I think Isa’s feelings were probably belittled in the same way. There was nothing he could actually do to help Lea. His worrying was “useless”. He felt like he had nothing to offer.

“So, Saïx, what am I doing to—? Oh, boy. Awfully early for such a bad mood, don’t you think?” Saïx had whirled to face him with a rather pronounced scowl.

“…Nobodies do not have ‘moods’ to be ruined,” he said at length.

“Well, sure, technically…” Of course, with no hearts, they couldn’t have moods or fits of temper. If something went frustratingly awry, their faces might reveal shadows of remembered emotion, no more. Still, for a remembered shadow, that was a mean glower on Saïx’s face. “Did I miss something?” Axel wondered.

“Xion has collapsed again.”

Now Axel frowned. He sure had missed something. “Did she get hurt or what?”

“No,” Saïx replied, any hint of expression vanishing from his face. “It’s just that the failure was functioning better than expected until recently.”

“‘The failure’? Is that what we’re calling her now?”

The weapon representing Isa’s personality is Bunnymoon. It’s a symbol of the power of love which is “worthless”. Lunatic is the weapon which brings out Saïx’s “true worth”.  And a lunatic is someone who is dangerously mentally ill.

“I want to go with you,” she told him in no uncertain terms. A slight frown of concern came to his face.

“Don’t you need some more rest?” Maybe he was still worried. But she wanted to get going.

“I’ll be fine. C’mon, let me tag along.” Roxas took a few reluctant moments before giving in.

“All right.” Xion immediately jumped out of bed. Now they just had to persuade Saïx. They discussed it briefly and stopped their superior just outside the lobby.

“Saïx!” He glanced sidelong at Xion.

“Well, well. It lives. There’s just no keeping you down.”

Xion was also "particularly incensed” on Day 193, and in the manga there is very similar dialogue to the novel on Day 117. Saïx was also annoyed at their banter on this day. Day 117 was the first time Xion and Axel worked together. Day 193 was the first time Roxas, Xion, and Axel all had a mission together.

“Let me go, too,” Xion entreated. “I could use the exercise.” A pause turned into a silence just slightly too long.

“What’s the problem? She’ll have me looking after her, too,” Axel finally said.

Still, Saïx made no reply. He and Axel appeared to be in a staring contest—and not an entirely friendly one. It made Xion nervous.

“Fine. Go, if you’re so determined.” Saïx capitulated.

Saïx also seemed to know that Xion was going to collapse on this day, just like how he expected it might happen on Day 117. Axel definitely was remembering a specific incident related to his past on both days. And Day 193 is called “Memories”. I think Saïx was so dry and sarcastic to Xion because she was being treated so similar to how Isa was.

“You’re not wrong…but don’t let your guard down,” Axel told them, bringing up the rear.

“Quit being such a worrywart, Axel.”

“Maybe I could if you two would quit giving me so much to worry about,” he retorted. Xion and Roxas exchanged a look and laughed.

“So…where are we headed first?” Axel asked.

“Station plaza,” Roxas replied.

“Any particular reason?”

Roxas and Xion were having too much fun and not taking the mission seriously. They were more concerned with having fun and eating ice cream afterwards.

“We want to be able to get back to the tram common to get ice cream, right?”

“Huh?” Axel wasn’t following.

“So we’ll start at the farthest point away from the tram common and work our way toward it. That’ll make it easier once we’re done.”

“That’s smart, Roxas!” Xion exclaimed.

“It is…?” Axel mumbled.

Axel isn’t getting it, she thought. But that doesn’t really matter. Working together as a trio, here in Twilight Town—it just makes things more fun.

Axel thought they were letting their guard down. And in the KH2 manga, Axel temporarily knocked Saïx out and said he still had “the same holes in his defenses”.

“Xion!” He called her name, gently setting her down, but she was unresponsive. He’d been so careless.

He had no idea exactly why Xion seemed to collapse so often. But he knew that she did, so why would he let her go on a mission immediately after she started to recover? As he berated himself, something occurred to him.

Axel knew that Kairi’s good luck charm represented their promise to each other, which was also discussed on Day 117. After Xion collapsed, he remembered that she said she had no human memories. And he also knew that Kairi was Sora’s light in the darkness. Sora was the only person besides Xehanort who became a Heartless and retained his self-awareness. Axel was interested in him because of this.

Day 193: Dreams, or Memories?

Author: Xion

I finally wake up, just to pass out again? Why? Because I'm a failure? I dreamt the whole while I was out. It was something nostalgic, but what? Why can't I remember? It could be a key memory from my human life. All I can remember is the sound of waves, gentle, in the distance.

Xion had a feeling that her dream was really a memory and a key one, at that.

Naminé: But what...what if he needs those memories in order to wake up? What if they're the key?

Sora needed his most precious memories to literally awaken  from his slumber. Naminé said this on Day 224 ~Anomaly~.

Day 224: Xion

Author: Axel

Even if Xion is a replica—a puppet—she's still Xion. I understand that in my head, but how do I interact with her now? Riku Replica was just a tool, but I can't just use Xion. No, I was wrong to have just used Riku Replica in the first place. How is a man-made puppet any less worthy than a Nobody that was never meant to exist at all? They're both ambiguous. Tenuous at best. And she's my friend. Even if neither of us should exist, that doesn't invalidate the bonds we form. Next break we get, I told her we'd all go to the beach. I hope we get the chance. Our little summer vacation. I know if we can get together and laugh about stupid stuff, this nagging doubt will go away.

Axel had a report entry on this day. He talked about how he was wrong to use the Riku Replica as a tool, and wants to take Xion to the beach. 

Saïx: I'm sending you with Demyx today. Try to inspire in him a little of your work ethic.

Day 224 took place at Olympus Coliseum with Demyx, and Roxas fought Xigbar. It’s never explained the reason Xigbar was there, though.

A memory. My first memory. Saïx took me by the hand and brought me out of Castle Oblivion. “This is the last you’ll see of these walls… Xion.” Yes, I remember what he said to me. And I remember where I was. Castle Oblivion.

Xion also almost falls off the clock tower on this day, like Roxas in KH2. In the novel, we learn that she remembered being taken out of Castle Oblivion by Saïx when that happened.

Secret Report 1: Recollections

Secret Report 1 is obtained after clearing Battlegate 1 at Olympus: Realm of the Gods / Courtyard.

Am I alive? I awoke in a cell, alone until the researchers came with their tests and their prodding to uncover my identity. I had no answer to offer them. I was simply called "X" there. One day, a man came to take me from the prison. I could not see him for the darkness, save that he wore an eyepatch.

I really don’t understand what was going on between Xion and Saïx, and it makes me sad that we’ll never learn the truth. But their memories definitely seemed to be connected somehow. And because she was causing him to relive certain memories, he began to hate her and call her a failure non-stop. I think there was probably a connection between this report from KH3, which is found at Olympus, and Xion’s first memory.

Saïx: Well, that didn't take long. Did it break again?

Roxas: She's not an "it"!

Axel: Keep your mouth shut.

Saïx: You have changed...Something at Castle Oblivion changed you. Does the past mean nothing to you now?

After Axel came back on Day 193, he was cold to Saïx and it scared Roxas.

As Axel fanned Sora’s curiosity, he fell into thought himself. Nobodies were guided by their memories. But that was precisely why they might lose sight of what those memories meant. Maybe it could really happen.

“You’ve lost sight of the light within the darkness. And it seems that you’ve forgotten that you forgot.”

“The light within the darkness…,” Sora murmured, as if it reminded him of something.

Axel seized on that. “You want me to give you a hint?”

Just like Sora needed his memories, Axel needed his memories to awaken from his figurative slumber.

“But be forewarned… When your sleeping memories awaken, you may no longer be who you are now.”

That’s why he changed. And it’s why he felt compelled to tell Roxas and Xion that he got ice cream with them because it was fun, not because he got any “use” out of it. Isa was considered useless and worthless. I think Isa deserves a Keyblade to redeem himself.