#but kh1 combat makes me feel like an idiot

[cometrose]

replaying kh1 is really interesting just from the sora riku kairi dynamics to sora donald and goofy becoming friends to the fact there’s no fucking map and moogle is only in traverse town but reminds me that kh always fills you with such nostalgia like i really want to rewatch disney movies now

[mellz117]

Nnnnnnngggghhhh it’s part 2 of Mellz plays KH2 on the PS2!

It’s been a while since I got around to working on this part but since we’re all in quarantine I thought I’d catch up on my commentary.

If this is your first time tuning in, why not check out part 1 before reading?? In there you’ll also find links to my commentary of KH1 and Re:CoM on the PS2

On that note, let’s continue shall we?

To recap. We lost some pics, we found some pics, Seifer is a bitch. We did odd jobs and fought bees, we got robbed at stick point. Roxas keeps having dreams that act as exposition dumps for anyone who hasn’t played KH1. Roxas met Namine and he followed her to the mansion but got lost on the way there and wrong warped to the Station of Serenity via sandlot. Oh, we fought this game’s version of the Darkside Heartless but this time it’s a wormy, white Nobody. I really, really hate it! Hayner thinks Roxas loves Seifer more than him because it’s the epitome of “it’s not what it looks like”. Today, we Struggle to rekindle our friendship.

The next morning? Afternoon? EVENING? Nobody knows because it’s always the same time of day from morning until night and from night until morning! The Struggle tournament is about to begin. Tensions still seem on the rise before the preliminaries start, Hayner has very little to say to Roxas at this time. I’m not ready at this point so I decide to delay the fight and talk the townspeople and fight Seifer once again for old time’s sake. Our combatants are relayed the rules and the first round is between Roxas and his best friend, Hayner. Both the boys are a little somber as the countdown starts. Roxas is still feeling guilty about yesterday, but Hayner doesn’t care. He’s not angry at Roxas, he’s been so quiet because he’s so concentrated on the tournament!

Battle ensues.

I win because that’s the only way to progress. Roxas and Hayner make up and be all cute again. The next fight is between Seifer and Vivi.

Rose: “This is like... any person fighting Yoda”

……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..

Seifer got MESSED UP!

His pride after this was so squashed he DROPPED OUT OF THE TOURNAMENT, leaving Hayer in line for 3rd place. Seifer was willing to throw away a place in top 3 because he lost to blue Yoda.

I like how Roxas is ready to fucking pummel Vivi here AFTER time runs out. No mercy.

…oh my gosh it turns out this Vivi was a Dusk Nobody all along who could have seen that coming...?

*gasp* It’s HIM

My favorite bastard!

Axel: “Talk about blank with a capital ‘B’...”

Rose: “Talk about BITCH with a capital ‘B’!”

I love Axel to death in case you haven’t guessed that yet but that doesn’t mean I don’t ever drag him. He moves like a goddamn weasel. He’s as skinny as one too.

I win the fight because I’m the protagonist, and then DiZ shows his pretty face for the first time to our boy. Axel knows who he is? I’m guessing from Castle Oblivion? Unless there’s some Days stuff I’m not remembering. Things get weird again, DiZ and Axel call out Roxas’s name and their voices warp all funky and I remember getting secondhand embarrassment every time I watched this scene when I was younger!

Roxas has a mild freak out and calls out for his friends, poor thing. This seems to make everything normal. What passes for normal around here, sure... and the real Vivi falls face first onto the arena and has no recollection of ever participating. He didn’t. A Dusk just unceremoniously dumps his unconscious body off in the middle of a tournament. We then snag first place, but to add one more rank, as reigning champion, Roxas has to win against this Crispin Freeman motherfucker, obtain a special belt, and bragging rights for a whole-ass year.

My strategy? As long as I have more orbs than my opponent I win so I just hit Setzer once and run around the stage until time’s up. Not that I can’t fairly win against him. Is this the only time we get to fight Setzer? Seems kind of a waste to make a model and moveset if he’s got such a miniscule role.

We actually CAN fail this and still progress but I’m not a quitter. I’m gonna get Roxas that belt. So I did. The Twilight Town gang are once again sitting atop the clock tower, revel in Roxas’s victory, and each kid gets one of the crystals fixed to the trophy. ICE CREAM TIME! But Roxas is an idiot, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree now does it? stands up in like, 2 frames, and slips off the clock tower to his death. Rest in pieces.

This scene ends and we see a young lady walking alone after school. It’s Kairi! This is my favorite version of her. So she and Selphie start talking about Riku, the island they used to go to all the time, and another boy nobody remembers.

IDK how this telepathy works, while Roxas is still falling in slow-motion there’s a three way conversation between him, Kairi, and Sora himself chimes in a bit. Roxas mistakes Kairi for Namine, Kairi corrects him, “you’re that girl he likes” he says, Kairi desperately asks for a name, Roxas tells her HIS OWN name, NO NO you dolt Kairi wants this other guy’s name, see this is how wingmanning works. Sora’s all like “gee thanks for remembering me. I’ll give you a hint”.

Kairi gently pollutes the ocean with a message in a bottle, somehow the bottle heads out towards the great unknown despite the tide coming IN? I would think the bottle would kinda just... float in one spot for a bit? Or at least back to shore.

Next we’re back in the computer room with DiZ and this black clad man, who we finally get to learn is Ansem. But uh... He ain’t tho.

……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..

My least favorite part of Roxas’s part is coming up... OK OK OK so falling from great heights during battle is perfectly safe but falling off the clock tower could kill Roxas? Seems legit.

A’ight Olette is really cracking down on the summer homework and uh. They got no topic for their independent studies yet. This was me during most of my highschool career. Roxas suggests the weird stuff happening around HIM, because the world revolves around him (little does he know...) and Hayner shoots that idea down IMMEDIATELY. Turns out, they’re gonna search the town tomorrow for answers, the whole town’s gonna help out. How sweet!  Roxas’s reaction here is so pure.

Wait so Roxas has been telling his friends about the dreams he’s been having? I would have liked to see that! Like, their reactions to them.

I went to check out the dart board and Rose starts laughing and says she read “examine” like how Namine is pronounced. Anyway, what is the gnag gonna study? The Seven Wonders of Twilight Town. *yaawwn*

……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..……..

Oof, another example of “couldn’t care less” being misspoken as “could care less”. If you COULD care less that implies you already DO care. IT’S “COULDN’T CARE LESS”, RAIJIIN!!!

*fights Seifer one last time for good measure*

“The time has come! Our hunt for the Seven Wonders begins!” Pence is such a dork. I love him.

KNOW WHAT WOULD BE AN INTERESTING WONDER? IF THESE STAIRS ACTUALLY DID COUNT DIFFERENTLY UP AND DOWN BUT NO RAIJIIN IS JUST A DUNCE!

The Wall. These legitimate answers are lame as hell. Oh someone must have been throwing a ball oh but we know the truth.

The next “mystery” are voices in the access tunnels. It’s Vivi! But no, it’s probably not considering our track record. Now there’s 3. OH NO THEY KEEP MULTIPLYING! The real Vivi arrives and lets Roxas borrow his struggle bat so he can practice fighting by himself but oh wait... That was also a Dusk. These guys just... really don’t know when to quit. Aaaand this is where we stop for now. My capture card stopped recording. Or maybe it was just my imagination. Yes that’s right. I’m recoding this with COMMENTARY! I’m putting all my favorite parts into a compilation. Hopefully I’ll get those up on my channel soon.

Ta-ta for now! The sooner I finish this game the sooner I can move on to the remasters on PS4!

[PREVIOUS]

[NEXT]

[hinasaki]

KH Thoughts because I finished the game a few days ago

Starts with no spoilers, then goes in depth.

Okay so non-spoilery thoughts first:

Pacing was…. Bad. We’ll get how later. 

There was a lot of variety in the combat system - like there was a lot I could do, but because there was so much it started to get stale very quickly? Like every other second I’m getting a prompt for a combo attack or a form change or an attraction attack. I loved the forms tbqh but the attractions ended up feeling… dull after seeing them all a million times. I feel like they would have been more enjoyable if they triggered less often. Also stunlocking frequency was way the fuck too high. It was easy to stunlock bosses and just whack them to death. On the flipside, it was easy to GET stunlocked, which was frustrating.

I’m conflicted about tying some abilities to certain boss battles. On one hand that’s good because it lets you do things like no exp runs or whatever without missing out on stuff like Curaga. On the other hand it gave me level anxiety? Like I didn’t get Curaga until REALLY late in the game, so I was worried the whole time that I was underlevelled and about to get destroyed (which never happened).

Gummi ship is bad. It’s always been bad but this was the worst yet. The controls were clunky as heck and there was no point in upgrading the ship. Kudos for trying something new with it but it didn’t work so uhhhhh no thanks.

There were SO MANY mini-games and gimmicks. I didn’t even touch Classic Kingdom and I was still annoyed at the amount of mini-games. Camera was cool but often didn’t register on the characters in the shot. Cooking is another mini-game and probably fun if I’d bothered to spend any time doing it. Game itself is really pretty but there’s not much incentive to stop and enjoy the scenery beyond looking for emblems. 

--

SPOILERS AHEAD

REALLY, STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS

I’M WARNING YOU AND LEAVING LOTS OF SPACE

READY?

OKAY, spoilers below--

--

The game was short. I’m not usually one to complain about game length but for a game that was supposed to be the end of a saga it felt… rushed. The Disney stuff was very separate from the KH stuff. There wasn’t any FF stuff at all. I feel like it would have been better if they’d interspersed the KH stuff between the worlds because everything happening right at the end made endgame feel very rushed.

Speaking on that, I feel like the game banks overly much on us having our own investment in the other characters already. What should be emotional moments are glossed over. Wayfinder trio reunited after a decade? Sure, we’ll do that mostly offscreen. Sunset trio has the closest reunion to satisfying but even then it feels… off. It’s mostly just Xion crying and some hugging. Are we also not?? Going to talk about Ven and Roxas basically being twins??? They look at each other awkwardly but that’s about it.

Sora’s story in the Disney worlds felt like it didn’t matter. Okay sure we’re looking for “the power of waking” but it’s a flimsy-ass excuse when we could have been actively investigating the whereabouts of our missing members. It’s kind of the same complaint I had about FFXV actually: that the viewpoint characters have too limited perspective on what’s happening in the wider story. Honestly it felt at times like it would be 500% more interesting to be focussing on what Riku was doing rather that going on Sora’s irrelevant tour. Like I legit forgot what the point of visiting the Disney worlds was. I shouldn’t forget. That’s bad writing.

On a similar tangent - what the fuck was the point of Kairi? Axel/Lea gets shafted to a lesser degree (also… why are we back at Axel… I still don’t understand why the insistence there. Sentimentality for Roxas and Xion? So they match? Maybe spend some more time on this and it would make sense!). She has one scene before endgame and mentions she and Axel are gonna fight to end their training. Which we don’t see. Then she does SFA in the endgame and “dies” for man-angst. What happened to “I’m tired of waiting and being left behind”? What happened to “I’ll fight too”? Sure Kairi hasn’t had too much of an active role in previous entries but this felt…. Worse.

Similarly, they gave Aqua the idiot ball far too often for my comfort. Oh Aqua’s weak after being in the realm of darkness for 10 years - okay! But this literally isn’t an issue for any of the male characters and their various situations. Whenever anything bad happens Aqua immediately gives up in this game. That’s not Aqua. That’s bullshit. I might have accepted it if they’d spent time on it and had a whole arc on her regaining hope but they didn’t so it just sucked.

Xion has like 1.5 scenes and mostly is there to cry. Namine doesn’t show up until the end cutscene. Nomura write women well challenge.

Endgame goes on for a million years. Underwater Xehanort fight is bad. I did like the scene with Eraqus. “The Final World” is terrible and I hated it. Gathering bits of Sora was boring. Same for chasing the Lich. The first time was cool! The subsequent 6 went from meh to boring. Time travel is still stupid and Nomura needs a gotdamn editor.

Ending was…. Eh. I liked everyone hanging out but how did Sora find Kairi? What happened there? We got hints on a “price” for using the power of waking but like… okay. Feels like we lost a good few hours of story there.

Epilogue was okay I guess because it was literally just a hook.

Anyway it kind of felt like after sitting in dev hell for so long once they started it SE wanted to rush out the game. It doesn’t have any of the emotional resonance that I loved so much about the other games. Some things were fun! Like the mechs in Toy Box. A lot was pointless, like the entire ship upgrading thing in the Caribbean.

Even the worlds themselves were mostly underwhelming TBQH. There was the whole mention of Toy Box being a copy of the real toys’ world and that just… didn’t go anywhere. The Caribbean had a whole ocean that you had no real incentive to explore. Frozen made me climb the same damn mountain three times. Also, Disney, no one over the age of 10 likes Olaf. Stop trying to make it happen. Corona was fun but I felt like I was just running through so much without being encouraged to look around. BH6 was GREAT but the city was underutilised - it was a huge map and I hardly spent any time there. I’m probably forgetting other worlds but that kind of hammers home my point - they were forgettable. There were some great things I remember from the old games - climbing Oogie Boogie’s treehouse in KH1, the first time I made it to Hollow Bastion, the Traverse Town music, Christmas Town in KH2, the animal forms from Pride Lands, the entirety of the World that Never Was. I could go on.

You can’t go to Radiant Garden. We don’t see the restoration team at all. It’s a world they spent a lot of time building up and showing off in previous games and not being able to go there felt really bad.

TL;DR I feel like the game had potential but felt super rushed, tried to over-complicate its plot, didn’t spend time on emotional moments, and completely failed its female characters. BYE