WOW let's just start off with the fact that I will probably make a terrible liveblog. I wanted to play through the tutorial and then sum up my reactions but then my room was getting too cold and I was getting sleepy, so that went nowhere...
HOWEVER. I do remember my basic reactions so I guess I'll list them to the best of my abilities.
I had previously seen the opening cinematic on You Tube, but it was WAY better seeing it on the 3DS because of Mickey conducting on the bottom screen. And then he disappears on the bottom screen when he shows up in the video on the top screen! So cool.
For this first playthrough, I'm doing Standard Mode. I spent a long time thinking about choosing between this and Proud, but in the end I'm new to the system and a lot of the mechanics in the game. I'll play on Proud next time, whenever that may be.
Onto the actual game!
To start off, we had a flashback to when Xehanort pretty much ruined everything for everyone. I wasn't expecting that so early in the game... isn't this game supposed to be accessible to people new to the series?
Next off, we have Sora and Riku on the island, building their raft, which quickly shifts to them fighting Ursula for some reason. WOW the tutorial sucks. When they show the instructions, they show all these different images, and they overload my brain. Usually, I like to have some basic guidance and then mess around.
And on a note related to the raft, I heard Kairi doesn't appear in this game at all. I love all the female characters in the KH series, and I hate it when people bash them. However, it doesn't make it easier to defend them when one of the main girls never appears at all... Whatever. :/
So I beat Ursula easily, as a lot of her attacks mirror the attacks from the first game. After that, both Sora and Riku close the Keyhole, and by close it, I mean create a crack in some sort of dataverse?
After that, I'm offered a choice to view a flashback with Yen Sid explaining the situation to Sora and Riku. Is this how they want to integrate a new audience into the series? By making these flashbacks seem optional?
After darkness, light, darkness, dreams, darkness, Sora ends up in Traverse Town! And he handwaves his new clothes as Yen Sid's magic! Lame. And did he not notice anything about his age? Laaaaaame.
However, all my previous dissatisfaction is immediately forgotten at the appearance of one of the reasons I wanted to play this game so badly! For the next several minutes, my train of thought is "Neku Neku Neku Neku Neku Neku Neku Neku Neku Neku Neku etc." And oh man, their interactions are amazing. I don't know why Neku is always compared to Sora; they have such contrasting mindsets. But it makes watching their dialouge extremely fun.
After Neku runs off, I get to learn about Flowmotion. Honestly, it's really cool! Hypothetically, if you could manage to hit a wall before you run out of flow energy or whatever, you could stay in the air for a long time! After five minutes of bouncing around walls, I go after Neku. No wait, before that I tried to get into every single Traverse Town place that I remembered from the first game. None of them worked, sadly. THEN I followed Neku.
We encounter some Dream Eaters and HAHAHAHA Neku's Dream Eater appears in a poof of pink hearts! That is amazing. Bluh bluh bluh game stuff bluh bluh fight dream eaters bluh and I get to make my own Dream Eater buddy! And...
And...
OH MY GOD IT'S SO CUTE WHEN YOU PET IT I SUDDENLY UNDERSTAND THE APPEAL OF THE NINTENDOG/CAT GAMES. The way it rolls around... I just... <3
I named Sora's new buddy Marshmallow, after a stuffed cat that I love dearly.
...
MOVING ON I go after Neku again and NO SORA DON'T GO TO SLEEP I DON'T WANT TO PLAY AS RIKU and yup. Too late. There he goes.
And now I'm Riku! Great. Yeah, I don't like him as much as Sora because of his neverending battle with the darkness. Hey, you think that Riku finally found a balance at the end of Chain Of Memories? NOPE he succumbs to it. Do you think Riku's battle with the darkness is over at the end of Kingdom Hearts II as he finally chooses the path of light? HAHA NOPE he still has to deal with the darkness this game. Goddammit.
However, all of my annoyance towards Riku is immediately forgotten when Joshua appears. The voice actor is different, so it took some getting used to, but this voice is smarmy in its own way, so I'm fine with it. We have to find Rhyme (!) for some reason that I forget because I played this all last night, so okay let's do that.
In the next area, OH WOW BEAT AND JOSHUA ARE TALKING TO EACH OTHER THIS IS AMAZING. They never talked to each other much, if at all, in the original game, so this is pretty much the best thing ever. After Beat stops trying to kill me (and not Joshua...) with Dream Eaters, I go back to Sora, and the Drop Gauge mechanic is fully introduced. Alright, so I have to make sure that I move quickly enough so I don't get stuck with Riku when I'm doing something important.
However, the next room makes that nearly impossible! I needed to get to the green rail to leave the room, but I end up falling off it an embarrassing number of times before I finally reach a save point and stopped there.
And then I went to sleep. Fun times.
