#this scene makes me insane. Eraqus when I fucking GET you

[blue-eli]

Ink October day 24: Discriminative

Drawing distinctions.

Marked by or showing prejudice.

[killscreencinema]

Kingdom Hearts:  Birth by Sleep (PSP)

I must admit, as annoying as it is that so many Kingdom Hearts games exist that seem to do nothing but muddle an already needlessly convoluted mythology, most of the little spin offs I’ve played, I actually quite enjoyed.  I loved Chain of Memories card-based battle system, even while I somewhat loathed the incredibly redundant story.  With Birth by Sleep, it also adds an interesting twist to the combat, while introducing a new feature to the KH series:  the option to play as three separate characters, whose respective stories cross-over and intertwine with each other.  

Kingdom Hearts:  Birth by Sleep, released for the PSP in 2010, before being remade for the Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix for the Playstations 3 & 4.  The game is set 10 years before the first Kingdom Hearts game and centers around three hopeful Keyblade wielder candidates named Terra, Aqua, and Ventus.  Incidentally their names correspond to the elements they specialize in, such as earth for Terra, water for Aqua, and large overpriced coffee for Ventus!  Rimshot!

Anyway, the game begins during their final trials, which Terra fails spectacularly when he is unable to control the powers of darkness in his heart.  This sets off a chain of events that send the three traveling separately to different worlds, while the evil Xehanort (in his original form before he becomes a Heartless and voiced by the late, great Leonard Nimoy) manipulates events from behind the scenes.  As Terra continues to spiral into the dark side, his pal Ventus goes rogue and follows his friend around the universe to help pull him back into the light, while Aqua (who passed the trial with flying colors) discreetly keeps tabs on them both on behalf of their master Eraqus (voiced by Mark Hamill!).  

Well, it wouldn’t be a Kingdom Hearts game without a ridiculously complicated plot!  I won’t even go into Ventus being the “key” (rimshot again) to forging something called a “Xi-Blade” or the mysterious masked boy named Vanitas who stalks all three characters during their respective campaigns like Protoman in Megaman 3.  All complaints about the story aside, I did enjoy certain aspects, such as how certain incidents from the perspective of the other characters make it seem like Terra is giving in to the darkness, but when you play as Terra you realize it’s all a misunderstanding and that Terra is being used.  So the mild “Rashomon” like elements of the story are interesting, albeit not quite developed enough.  Also, that these characters are basically carbon copies of Sora, Rikku, and Kairi is kind of lame and unoriginal.

Whatever flaws the story may have, at least the gameplay is solid, and that’s all that matters to me.  Birth by Sleep plays like every other KH game, with the exception that you don’t have party members for support.  I’m going to be honest - the metric fuck ton of options and nuances to the combat mechanice was overwhelming at first.  First you have the “Command Deck”, which works similarly to the card system from Chain of Memories, where you can rotate through a collection of Keyblade techniques, spells, and items that you load up via the menu before entering combat.  Also these spells and techniques can be “melded” in the main menu to create new, more powerful spells and techs, which if melded with a particular type of gem, can also grant you a permanent “ability”, such as “treasure magnet”, “air combo plus”, “Once Again”, etc.  

Confused?  I’m not done yet!

You can also shift to other “Command Decks” during battles depending on what types of spells or techniques that you use.  For example, if you use a fire spell, you’ll shift to a fire-based attack style that will eventually end with a fire finisher attack.  That not enough for you?  Well, you also have available something called D-Links (not THAT “D”, ya filthy animals), which are command decks based on characters you meet along the way.  Say you run into Micky Mouse during the story campaign - you’ll forge a D-Link with him and, provided the D-Link meter is full, you can shift into “Micky Mouse” mode, which contains a different move set and finisher.  

Personally, I never found these D-links to be particularly useful except as a way to quickly refill my HP.  Otherwise, they are actually quite bothersome, because many of them don’t have cure spells, so if you get low on HP while in D-link mode, ya better revert back to your command deck or you’re screwed, and many of the more difficult battles later in the game are way, WAY too fast paced for that kind of shit.  

Got a bunch of spells and techniques that you need to upgrade to their maximum level pronto without level grinding?  You have the option of playing something called the “Command Board”, which is Kingdom Hearts version of Mario Party but without those pesky minigames that make Mario Party fun.  I rolled my eyes at using the Command Board at first, but I won’t lie - i actually grew to rather enjoy it and it is a nice way to upgrade a ton of abilities without the monotony of grinding.

Speaking of monotony, though, I would say Birth by Sleep’s biggest flaw is how repetitive it feels essentially playing through the game three times as each character.  They all visit the same worlds, albeit with access to different points of each world’s map.  Each character plays very differently, with Terra being the slow-moving, lumbering oaf but with great strength and stamina; Ventus being the best of both worlds, as he his fairly quick and moderately strong; and Aqua being the  weaker of the two, but fast as hell and with incredibly strong magic.  As a matter of fact, once you get Aqua all buffed up with her abilities, and a decent keyblade, she becomes quite the ass kicker over the two boys in my humble opinion.  Thankfully, each character’s story campaign is fairly short, which takes the edge off the repetitiveness a bit.  After playing through each character, there is a “Final Episode” that unlocks, provided you preserved each character’s post-game file, that wraps up the story... or wraps it up as best as one can expect any Kingdom Hearts game to wrap up.  

As a console game, Birth by Sleep is decent, but lets remember this was meant to be on a portable system!  So in that context, especially on a console like the PSP, Birth by Sleep goes from “decent” to “excellent”, as it provides just enough RPG action to occupy one’s time while on the go, but without being so much of a time sink that you’re rooted in one spot forever and miss your flight or doctor’s appointment or whatever it is you’ve brought the PSP to kill time at back in 2010.  I will forewarn completionists out there though:  this game is a goddamn nightmare to 100%.  Because of the way it is set up, you have to basically one hundred percent the game THREE TIMES, and beat the game at least once on “Critical Mode” if you didn’t already do so in one of those three slots.  That means playing through every mini-game, every arena battle, and beating every optional boss (who are insanely difficult, true to KH tradition) THREE TIMES.  It’s very tedious and it sucks.  As of this writing, I have 100-percented Aqua, and am currently working on finishing up with Ven and Terra.  May God have mercy on my soul. 

[madfictionland]

KHIII - Strengths and Weaknesses of Nomura’s Insanity

1. Xehanort Saga’s Closure

Great:

- Axel vs Xemnas sequence and that entire battle alongside Xion and Roxas, with Shimomura’s orchestrated music - Sea Salt Ice Cream Rules!

it was just golden and weighted heavily on me! Lots of emotions and great closure there

- Xemnas and Ansem... being awkward... it was extremely weird at first, seeing them on strange errands, behaving the way they did, no Darkness lines for Ansem, and overall the two of them kind of less important than Xigbar, for example.

But it was actually perfect and then it all came full closure with their defeats! They were taken from their own timelines (in which they were soon to be defeated or right before the final blow?), briefed on the current situation and assigned tasks under MX. And Ansem being the most awkward because...

no madness, no darkness showdown! Being approached by some children! it’s just aren’t his thing, clearly... Oh, and Xemnas handling the “benched” Norts as if they were his students, something that he does proudly. Pretty much the only thing that gives them both purpose after that time travel ordeal is the sense of companionship and MX’s goal which they feel obliged to pursue “because they are him” - only not really, actually. Because as it turns out... they found they did not really care, in the end.

So yeah, in the end it’s actually pretty sad... and they fade away to be ultimately defeated in their own timelines!

- Young Xehanort being an utter dickhead of darkness (although the bad thing is... no more backstory, explanation and only minimal amount of screen time for him, damn)

I mean, seriously, I enjoy the fact he turns out to be one of the most engaging KH3 villains, so focused and bitter. When you think about it, then it makes sense since he was given great power early on and explored through time... obtaining even more power. He never met Eraqus, he never created his bizarre self-rightous grand goals to begin with... He was just... alone, traveling through time, and exploring the outside world through darkness and his dark future selfs, the future that he embraces fully. He is the embodiment of everything what’s dark about Xehanort, in some aspects perhaps even more souless than the old man himself, and we even have him take on Ansem’s role... lol

I like his interactions with Sora, especially here.

- Goofy being smart in the Xehanort’s plot business, lol and they’re always debriefing Sora on Mickey’s encounters from BBS. Nice!

- Finally we know how Axel and Saix got turned into Nobodies - we really needed that backstory...

- The replica research plays a big part here and it serves to create vessels for hearts... with data!memories... and we even get glimpses of artificial hearts being researched now... nice, it REALLY does bring into closure all this data madness that Nomura had started

- Vanitas regenerated through negative emotions of children’s screams in the Monster world + his entire ending with Sora/Ven which was amazing - Vanitas was darkness and it was his own choice because his very nature was darkness... he wouldn’t have it any other way! but despite this, he appears to be actually humanized in the end, at least as much as a rebelious pure darkness plucked from someone’s heart can be

- Terra reveal and him being Ansem SoD/Terranort’s sidekick pet all this damn time... like, I never thought that’s a possibility... even though it does make sense...

Now that’s the kind of crazy Nomura reveal that I like!

- Yen Sid finally takes action! WOOOOW

- final battle with 3 main Norts, and Master Xehanort doing a fingers thingy!

With a glorious MAD score and mix of all three bosses themes! YESSS

Bad:

- Kairi situation... although to be honest it was expected so it doesn’t weight on me too heavily, personally

- very few cutscenes/very few long dialogues and NO backstory cutscenes... now that’s a BIG flaw

- none of the time travelling stuff from DDD gets explained... we don’t know why Young Xehanort is still here despite (apparently) dispersing at the end of DDD... and we don’t even know which Norts are time travelers... and we don’t know their backstories either... how they got Norted? When? How many are there??? It’s not even clear if all of them (those that we meet in game and cutscenes) are present at the final battle because 13 figures showcased with MX prior to battle... all of them with hoods! And we know Demyx is not one for fight so maybe he bailed? Plus Vexen betrayed them? Also, Marluxia, Larxene, Demyx and Luxord were all secondary vessels... kept only due to their Keyblade War connection... so I would assume they had other more serious Norts in store? So who exactly was fighting and who wasn’t? Who was a time traveler and who wasn’t? Who was in a replica body and who wasn’t? Also, is Xigbar a Nobody or somebody Braig with Xigbar’s features? Just FUCK IT. I really like all these convoluted little details but none of this was discussed... which is so unlike Nomura...

- very little presence for MX, no backstory explored and... overall VERY anticlimatic final boss fight and weak ultimate resolution to his “big” saga

- Vexen is just too good at pretending... he really does seem like a bad guy again, who just wants to do research, I don’t buy his sudden redemption and I actually thought he was going to double cross Ansem and use him as his puppet! How can Vexen even feel anything, especially redemption desire, as a freshly cooked Nobody? lol

- Big big flaw is that many Norts were... not really Norts. What’s the point of them getting Norted if they don’t get a slight change in personality and aren’t driven by Xehanort’s purpose? It worked so well with Saix... only think what kind of Demyx or Larxene we could get if they were actually Norts. Seriously, that was disappointing. Frankly enough, we even have Demyx say this line...

which is EXACTLY the case, he would make an interesting vessel, and I assume one capable of good fighting skills or intimidation... if only they were influenced by the entire process and written as actual Norts - important to the plot - not just some toys and Keyblade War Legacy research project for Xemnas...

2. Union X / more...

Good:

- Ephemer and all the Keyblade wielders coming to help! With players’ names shown! Just wow, this was super powerful, and great soundtrack for it too. Also, it kind of confirms my suspicion there were two Keyblade Wars? The “Lost Masters” one and “Union Leaders” (the one in which Ephemer fell, thus he is there with the “spirits” of the wielders).

- Ven’s Chirithy, such a cute little detail :)

- The Final World - atmoshere, music and design... all of them GREAT. It makes sense in the lore + some of its design/animation reminds me of data worlds... Hmmm, could it be... some kind of bin folder on the MoM desktop?

In any case, the future of Nomura Mindfuck seems bright

- the ending with Sora vanishing (to another plane/world?) and Secret Movie with MoM fucking conceptualizing Kingdom Hearts under the normal’s moon light, all of it in a remake of the newest FF title......

I mean, we are one step closer to ultimate shit, right? Which would be Nomura self-inserting himself into the game as Master of Masters... and I’m all for it! XD

- seems like the time travelling Ven + other guys from Union Cross will be progressing places... diferent worlds, planes, realities? And I like it, this seems more interesting and like a fresh surge of madness from Nomura that he kind of wanted to do with Xehanort (hence time travel) but wasn’t really able... in the end. So maybe, just maybe... MoM will get a better conclusion?

- Xigbar makes it to another game. What can I say? I like him, he’s entertaining, that’s all

Bad:

- Xigbar being Luxu seems to be poorly explained, like... he ONLY pretends? Even in those Braig scenes from BBS? And when talking with YX? Really? Even though his BBS scenes were short and we knew nothing about him... it could have been done better, like maybe Luxu planted a piece of himself into Braig and pointed him towards Xehanort, but he wasn’t actually Braig? Hence the guy who gets Norted - Braig - isn’t Luxu? At least not yet? But then Luxu can take over? Well, I think that would be much better... unless there is more to it that we don’t know but i really doubt

- Maleficent, the Box, Xigbar searching for the Box... (wtf even? what MX has to say about this? what’s that box Xigbar? and how dare you hide shit from me?)

All of this... is quite different than earlier KH hints or reveals. It’s just extremely CRYPTIC. It leaves you with nothingness because the characters themselves feel like nothingness when they are forced to speak about this. I could understand it if it contributed to KH3 plot in any major way, like the box being a catalyst in MX’s plans maybe, but it wasn’t - it was pointless, so the attention it got, and they always speak about it in such vague terms... what’s the point? because that’s hardly a surprise and we knew about the box...

- Maleficent and Pete are pointless, especially pointless because the only way for Maleficent to be interesting was to explore some of her hidden (?) memories regarding her time travel experience (which she does not remember, I assume?). Instead, something was “etched”... and a black coat told them about the box... and replica Riku has an akward encounter with them... but nothing is explained or actually said in clear terms. OK, so it sucks, why don’t you skip their cutscenes then - it does NOT create a *Nomura mystery*, it just says “here is some random gibberish that won’t be ever explained because it doesn’t mean anything and doesn’t introduce anything new” A Nomura mystery would be to explain to us whether Maleficent actually remembers the box from her time travel experiences and THEN introduce a new solid mystery, like: she doesn’t remember, but there was a mysterious black coat guy who said there was a box (and there would be a flashback of this past encounter!). But at this point it seems like Nomura just completely doesn’t care, at least not in KH3

The Final Judgment: KH3 was quite a letdown (as the Xehanort’s saga conclusion) but still enjoyable and with grand potential for better mad shit in the future.

PS: Also, it delivered the greatest score in the history of KH... so that’s a win!

[olivemeister]

alright more kh age shit bc this series is insane and i like jotting this shit down even if there’s no answers.

without the ability to do something like lining the models up, it’s pretty tough to get a height comparison between characters like riku (canonically 16 in kh2) and terra (unknown, but based on scenes in ddd somewhat significantly taller than riku and therefore presumably older)... which throws everything re: axel/lea into complete chaos especially once you add in nomura saying nobodies don’t age. that makes axel’s physical development frozen at somewhere ~16 based on lea being roughly ven’s age in bbs. and the question of how long it took certain nobodies to start developing a personality makes axel’s mental age a goddamn enigma.

but then there’s the infamous spanner in the timeline works ienzo, who is blatantly a child in bbs but would presumably become a heartless and create zexion a year later. and zexion is very clearly not a child. indeed, when ienzo is restored to a full being he’s not a child either, so either he magically managed to age ~5 years over the course of what should have been about 1 year, or nomura changed his mind on nobodies aging/the timeline from the secret reports of how long it was before kh1 that ansem’s apprentices became heartless. there’s a retcon in there somewhere, we just don’t know where. lea (and isa by association) is schrodinger’s teenager. if nobodies don’t age, he’s about 17 at the oldest. if they do age as implied by ienzo/zexion, then he’s ~24 and that would make him prrrrobably the oldest member of a “trio” in the entire series*.

i do strongly believe that axel’s (unstated) age went through a retcon and that he was initially intended to be an adult character for com. that would mean he was quietly aged down as he became incorporated into a trio, so that he’s not a dude in his mid-20s hanging around with a pair of 15y/os. which makes sense to me even if i’m not totally pleased with it, since it seems sssort of obvious that he was not envisioned as being part of a trio from the start. nomura outright said that xion hadn’t been conceived as a character until kh2 was already in development, and axel debuted in com so there’s very little chance that axel was originally intended to be a riku figure (unless nomura originally had planned for namine to be the kairi figure of roxas’s trio, which imo would have... made more sense... than creating xion to fill that slot, who i do love don’t get me wrong but it’s hard to deny she made things a lot more convoluted).

i’ll accept lea being roughly 18 (the timeline is clearly not very rigid no matter how much i want it to be) since riku is a precedent for “how old? Okay I Believe You”, but it’s very reluctant.

when it comes to terra and aqua i think we’re meant to accept that they’re just barely young adults and might actually still be technically teenagers... just to fuckin’ cement the fact that age in kh is just a big question mark if said age isn’t stated outright.

i always got the feeling that terra is supposed to be somewhere around 18 just bc of how his plot is basically him thinking he’s a totally-independent and fully-capable adult and railing hard against his dad who isn’t treating him as such. and the fact that while eraqus is treated as slightly coddling him, his concerns are quickly vindicated to the audience by uh... well, everything, helps cement terra as someone on the cusp of true adulthood.

his narrative doesn’t work unless he’s around that age, because it’s that “not a child but not an adult” state that terra is in that xehanort is preying on. just based on their character dynamics (both with each other and with eraqus), aqua is certainly very close to terra in age and possibly a little older than him.

so if i were to have to pin (physical) ages down on lea, terra, and aqua, i would call them all 18 or 19.

*except for ven, who alongside vanitas is technically possibly the oldest character in the entire fucking series given that chronologically both of them are an indistinct age over 100 years old since we don’t know exactly how many years elapse between union cross and kh1. either way, physically speaking ventus and vanitas are 15 during bbs.