Kingdom Hearts

Its different here, because even basic shadows two shot.

And the enemies are actually smart now, unlike in critical modes of the past where they just did more damage and weren't actually smarter.

I don't think you get two-shot by the dusks or Twilight Thorn. Dunno about BBS and 3D though.

You can get two shot by the big guys in BBS and DDD, But not the small guys.

I played KHII Crit recently, too. Only larger enemies did that much damage there, too.

Also, Flame Cores are literally the stuff of nightmares now, you have to use water on them or kill them before they go into flame mode, because not only to they now zip around the arena like crazy, they can gank you if a bunch of attack at once.

Did they make critical damage chip damage so you would be forced to eat meals to not do chip damage

Honestly sounds like it'll be beyond my old ass, but it sounds like it'll be fun to try.

Considering how the enemy AI in vanilla III acts, this is that less of an advantage over previous games and more of a fix of the original product.

Regardless, this actually sounds pretty good. Can't wait to try it when I have a chance next week.

Edited by Karxrida on Apr 23rd 2019 at 8:55:35 AM

You still do chop damage but I guess they had to make people actually use meals somehow

Goddammit.

Edited by Karxrida on Apr 23rd 2019 at 9:07:52 AM

Just eat the meals after finding the ingredients

Critical should be a test of your game knowledge and skill, not your gluttony and ability to constantly buy shit.

No it should be a test to use everything at your disposal to its best extent and that includes Stat boosts from items or armor or in 3 food

I want to agree, but your reaction is oddly satisfying to see.

I'm kind of disappointed that Critical Mode's solution to Attraction Flow was to just let you turn it off entirely. Like, it definitely wasn't a balanced mechanic, but I'm disappointed that they basically just threw it out instead of trying to re-balance it.

As far as I can tell, on Critical you actually do more damage per hit than Proud at the same level.

At least. On Darkside and the other starter enemies.

I died more to Darkside, but the fight itself still seemed shorter when I beat it somehow.

And this is on a new save file because I let my daughter delete the first one because she was mad.

EDIT: Side note, about Sora caring about titles vs. not caring about the title of Keyblade Master: Sora can brag about being a True Hero in Olympus and winning tournaments there because that's part of Olympus's Order.

I don't think, with the way the World Order works, he can talk about being a Keyblade Master with anyone that doesn't already know about Keyblades, which is mostly his friends.

And Yen Sid.

More to the point, when Phil talks shit to Sora about being a hero, Sora doesn't get upset, he gets mad. Sora's confidence doesn't really get impacted by it. Sora's actual self-worth isn't quite tied to the titles he has and the victories he achieves.

If anything, his self-worth is more closely tied to his friends.

It's almost like. His confidence is the sort where, as long as his friends are his power, he already thinks he's great, because his friends are great, so he doesn't have to care what anyone else thinks. But he wants to show people how great he is, almost to show how great his friends are?? Or something?

I dunno, Sora's pride and arrogance and overconfidence never seems insecure to me, while Riku's in the first game sorta does.

I think that. Donald gives Philoctetes shit too, but Donald and Goofy and everyone else always presses Sora to respect Yen Sid, be polite, so Sora has to move down the list of emotional responses from "fuck you old man" to "whatevs, cool beans, I already know I'm good so I don't have to prove shit to you."

EDIT: Also, the "explanation" that the Xehanorts didn't need Replicas in DDD because they were in the Sleeping Worlds and The World That Never Was but do need them in "normal" worlds like in KH3 sorta works for me? I guess?

Edited by unnoun on Apr 24th 2019 at 11:09:18 AM

Also worth noting that the Sora who blew off the "Formal Keyblade Master" title was quite a bit older in terms of both years and mileage than the one who threw a fit about the True Hero title.

Anyways, 0.2 A FRAGMENTARY PASSAGE GO-TIME

We open on the Keyblade Graveyard in what I can only assume is the World being consumed by Darkness. The entire Graveyard has been plunged into Darkness. Kingdom Hearts shines in the sky as the only illumination left in the world, drawing in and consuming the flickering Lights rising from the Keyblades scattered about - which I assume to be the Hearts of the wielders who killed each other here. It's a silent and somber scene.

Meanwhile, a man in a Black Coat overlooks the devastation from his vantage, gripping No-Name in his hands. The Master of Masters's eye is turned towards the scene, taking in the end of all things.

We've been told about this over and over. Warriors coveting the Light murdered each other to claim Kingdom Hearts for themselves and, in doing so, plunged the World into Darkness. It's the reason why Kingdom Hearts is buried in the Realm of Darkness, rather than shining brightly in the Realm of Light. Here, we finally get to see it for ourselves.

With Luxu! HI LUXU! HOW YA DOIN'? Man, I wonder what's going through his mind right now?

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT THAT BECAUSE YEN SID IS HERE TO BE AN ASSHOLE

We pick up right where 3D left off 'cause Kingdom Hearts is sequential even in its spinoffs like an asshole. Yen Sid explains that since the Princesses of Heart are Cosmic Keystones that will completely and utterly destroy the Realm of Light if Xehanort f*cks with them too hard, we kinda have to go along with his shitty plan and provide seven other Lights that can meet his thirteen Darknesses in battle.

Specifically, we need Keyblade Masters. We got Mickey, Riku, and Sora plus Kairi and Lea are on deck. That's five. Yen Sid himself doesn't count because f*ck you if you think he's getting out of that chair for anything more than one brief awesome moment in the Keyblade Graveyard that's quickly forgotten as soon as the labyrinth battles start.

We need Ventus, Aqua, and Terra. That makes eight. Which is good, it gives us an extra and that extra can be Terra, since excising him from Terranort ain't gonna happen until the Keyblade Skirmish is actually happening. Mathematically, we really just need Aqua and Ventus.

Point is, we need to rouse Aqua and Ven, which we know courtesy of Namine's psychometric data-hack is an entirely possible thing to do. Thank you, Namine. Specifically, possible for SORA to do. ONLY SORA. SORA CAN DO IT, and NOBODY ELSE BUT SORA CAN DO IT. Thus, naturally, Yen Sid is having this conversation with Mickey, Riku, and Kairi.

One of whom is one of those Cosmic Keystone Princesses but beggars can't exactly be choosers, now can they?

In any case, this prompts Mickey to exposit that he met Aqua in the Realm of Darkness, triggering woozy flashback effects. Here we go, it's time to finally visit the Realm of Darkness for realsies! Sleep-bubble doesn't count.

I mean we already know thats one of the lies about the War. Kingdom Hearts already resided in Darkness, and Gula was even thinking of summoning Kingdom Hearts(ie start the Keyblade War) to bring Mo M back to begin with.

But KH wants to be a NEET chilling in the darkness.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Apr 24th 2019 at 9:05:18 AM

Man, the Simple and Clean remix depicting both Ven and Terra turning on Aqua really drives home how badly she got f*cked in BBS. Between Vanitas and Terranort, it actually is kinda true that she had to fight both of the people she loved the most, only to wind up dragged into Darkness by an ill-conceived Heroic Sacrifice that only served to allow Xemnas and Fake Ansem to happen.

The Power of Friendship just flat-out betrayed Aqua in that moment. If she hadn't made that heroic decision to save one of her best friends, Xehanort's plans would have ended right then and there. I mean, Maleficent and Luxu would both still be a thing, but so would Aqua. And you know what wouldn't be a thing?

The Emblem Heartless swarm.

Any version of Organization XIII.

Time-traveling Baby Nort.

Pretty much the entire franchise as we know it never would have happened if Aqua took a step back and let Terranort die. But she made the hero call and every world is paying for it while Aqua herself was plunged into Darkness for ten years. The magic of friendship has not been kind to Aqua.

I like that Vanitas has Ven's face during the music video instead of his actual "Sora's Gothic Phase" look. Because he is a part of Ven and for the context of this video's message, that's the important bit. It's a quick visual shorthand for the meaning in Terra and Ventus abruptly spinning around and turning their Keyblades on her.

Unfortunately for Aqua, the Power of Friendship only works for the hero...and I mean the main hero, not the hero of a Prequel or Side Story.

For everyone else, it's a fickle and traitorous punk.

I'm not sure Aqua ever saw Vanitas's Sora face.

Hell, maybe not even in KH3. She was offscreen fighting Terra-Xehanort or. I honestly don't know if you beat Terra-Xehanort first, lol.

I suppose if she did, she'd have immediately punched Sora's face in.

....damn, I would have liked to see that actually. And I like Sora.

I mean, it eventually paid off in the Second Keyblade War, right? Good things came from it, right? Eventually?

Edited by fredhot16 on Apr 24th 2019 at 9:37:57 AM

Isn't the second Keyblade War only good for Luxu and the other bad guys?

Not sure if it's good that paid off.

So we join up with Aqua discovering Castle of Dreams, which is now in the Realm of Darkness. I'm not 100% on what point in time we're at, but Maleficent's work has clearly begun.

Aqua asserts that there is no time in the Realm of Darkness and I'm not sure whether she means that literally or figuratively. Like, is the Realm of Darkness literally frozen in time in perpetuity? Or devoid of time entirely? Can I use a Dark Corridor to travel to thirty years in the past?

I don't know. This might actually connect to the whole time-travel thing, where you have to abandon your body to travel through time. There's a certain logic to how these could be two connected metaphysics.

But I don't think she meant that literally. Until further demonstrated, I'm going to assume she's referring to the perceivable, measurable passage of time. As in, there are no days or nights in the Realm of Darkness. It's impossible to know how long she has been here because nothing in the Realm of Darkness moves forward to indicate that time is progressing.

There's "no time in the Realm of Darkness" in the same way there's no time in a sensory deprivation chamber.

Aqua walks the ruins of the dead city surrounding Castle of Dreams, waxing poetic about how she never appreciated the joys and wonders of her life until it was taken from her and applying it to the denizens of the city. She delivers a verbal essay that boils down to "A Million is not a statistic, yo!"

She moves closer to the castle to find its clock tower frozen motionless. And before I even have time to go, "Okay, that's a datapoint that—" the clock speeds up super-fast and accelerates the collapse of a bridge in front of her. Okay, that shit doesn't happen by chance. Someone's f*cking with her.

Possibly herself. I've played Silent Hill. I know how torture dimensions work.

She reasserts that time doesn't exist in the Realm of Darkness, then demonstrates what she means by turning back the clock. This gesture rewinds the bridge's collapse. That doesn't mean time doesn't exist, Aqua. That means time is fluid. It progresses and even regresses at an individual level, independent of physics or causality. But it's clearly still a thing.

Remember how the laws of physics are weird for Realm Between worlds? Well, they're super-weird for the Realm of Darkness. As one might expect.

Y'know, if the Realm of Darkness f*cks with time, that does actually kinda connect to why The World That Never Was, which is a nothing-world in the Realm Between that rests closer to Darkness than to Light, has wonky temporal physics that violate the Realm of Light's time-travel rules. Something to think about.

Yeah, I've checked and KH 3's Critical definitely has a better damage multiplier/damage scaling than Proud.

So. No chip damage. Or, less chip damage, at any rate.

Part of me is kinda sad that they halved starting MP instead of reducing MP gain, but I'm already melting through some enemies with Fire spam, so.

...Granted. I am leveling up, and I've got the Amazon 7/11 keyblade and I'm using it and it has Fire Boost and Firaza.

And, of course, even with what levels I have some of these mob Heartless can still one-shot or two-shot me if I'm not careful.

Especially since I picked Mystic and don't have Withstand Combo at Level 4.

The Fire Cores are really tough.

Overall, I broadly like "everyone dies in one hit, you and the enemy" best as far as it goes.

...I think the A.I. actually is slightly different, wow. Wasn't expecting that, honestly, tbh.

Aqua is a Keyblade master and a skilled warrior, but she's not exactly an expert on temporal physics.

Now we know. One half down.