Kingdom Hearts

Well, it’d look out of place to have an older teen fight the exact same as when he was younger.

It's been 3000 years…

Honestly I don't think KH should ever had moved past the squashed cartoony look of KHI in favor of more realistically proportioned characters.

Not only did it give the series more of its own visual identity but the characters completely fit right next to the Disney stuff.

Edited by RodimusMinor on Sep 11th 2019 at 7:18:54 AM

Well, I’m all for wedding story to gameplay, but at the same time, I do prefer the game to...y’know, fun?

Besides, I think flashier combat is fine when the protagonist is more experienced. I don’t think it’d make sense for Sora to still be clumsy when he’s a veteran adventurer and his enemies are dealing out lightning fast attacks.

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Sep 11th 2019 at 7:26:20 AM

Oh God! Natural light!

The characters definitely had more charm with the more cartoonish style of the original, although I wouldn't say characters are much more realistic so much as they are just more anime stylized.

On gameplay for Kingdom Hearts, its a bit clunkier and less flashy then most of the games after it but I would be hard pressed to call it worse. Kingdom Hearts is still very fun and it had some of the more creative bossfights in the series, especially in the ways magic can interact with many of them.

Edited by lycropath on Sep 11th 2019 at 4:26:25 AM

I think that's ignoring that Kingdom Hearts was always Final Fantasy meets Disney. Both sides of that equation have changed in the interim. Final Fantasy indulges in quite a bit of anime bullshit that they used to have in at least a more subdued manner. Disney is hardly the same, too.

That said, I dont understand why you wouldn't expect Sora to improve after the first game. He has two full adventures under his belt by the time KHII starts (even if he cant remember one of them). He should be faster and stronger and what have you.

Edited by Zeromaeus on Sep 11th 2019 at 7:30:09 AM

Mega Man fanatic extraordinaire

The problem (for me)is less the gameplay and more the character hasn't evolved with it. Or, more particularly, the way the character is treated in story does not match the gameplay.

I'm not against Sora improving, he does that in KH through gameplay, actually! You unlock flashier moves that make him look sleek and professional with the Keyblade.

But you boot KHII up and Sora is immediately a combat god who can defy gravity and it's kinda... eh (especially since memory wise he's fresh out of the first game but still automatically a better swordsman). Mechanically it's better, but for immersing myself in the game's world (which KHII is a cavalcade of failure at in every way), I found it lacking.

Basically what I didn't like is the jump from "you're a normal kid wielding a magic sword" to "you are Dante with even sillier hair" with no middle ground.

Starting with Sora right out of KH 2 has you with only a 3 hit combo and Blizzard to your name.

Also Scan, Guard, and Aerial Recovery. Plus Valor.

Oh and the cool bonuses from playing Crit.

Edited by Karxrida on Sep 11th 2019 at 5:17:07 AM

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

Point is not exactly the stuff of legends. Its not much mote them what you get afrer setting off from traverse town last game.

I think sacrificing some functionality for immersion/ludonarrative consistency is perfectly valid depending on the execution, and I don't even think KH 1's gameplay is bad really, but in this case I think it was more of a happy accident if the clunkier, broader simplistic swings in KH 1 fit Sora's youth and inexperience. It seems to reflect the KH team's own inexperience a lot more. I certainly wouldn't compare it to a game as deliberate and, for a lack of a better and less pretentious term, "artistic" and deliberate as something like Fumito Ueda's games.

I said he was clumsy, not that it was bad gameplay. I prefer playing the first game to the second, even just with raw combat. KHII is way too samey except for the bonus bosses.

Yeah, exactly. It does work with Sora's character and I absolutely find that cool, but I'm not inclined to give the devs credit for doing it on purpose.

You can, however, do some flashy nonsense right out of the gate via reaction commands. That shit competes with drive forms for sheer level of styling on fools.

I don't think there are many crazy reaction commands til later in the game aren't there?

Twilight Thorn has some extreme flashiness.

Life is more fun with infinite MP.

To be fair, that's before Sora.

I do writing, feel free to check out my stories here! https://numbugwritingblog.tumblr.com/post/686233243868102656/numbugs-shared-heroic-uni

Still part-Sora.

Life is more fun with infinite MP.

Sora got flashier due to the muscle experience of children's card games and fusing with a skateboard user.

It's been 3000 years…

Roxas was partly made with a kid who used his Keyblade like a hoverboard in the first place.

Life is more fun with infinite MP.

KHII may have some that "gameplay depth" that almost everyone loves so much but I really like how you can interact with the world in other games. I even heard about how most KHII to Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, etc. although they are a lot more complex than KHII.

"Analay, an original fan character from a 2006 non canon comic. Do not steal!"

Man, Days challenge missions are super addicting!

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

Anyone know the best mission to farm Elixirs in Days? Trying to do the -ugh- Leechgrave SP Challenge and am getting my ass kicked.

The pig of Hufflepuff pulsed like a large bullfrog. Dumbledore smiled at it, and placed his hand on its head: "You are Hagrid now."

Well, that'd depend on what one considers crazy. Personally I found even reversal spam some ninja shit that I wasted a fair amount of time on in my first playthrough. But what I was thinking of is that you don't, strictly speaking, have to advance your abilities at all to use even late-game reaction commands. You just need to get close enough to the relevant enemy.

So apparently the demise themes for all the Organization members in KHIII are actually different:

Last oddly doesn't have the Organization XIII motif at all.

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.

I like how A So D gets the whimsical Disney villain string ensemble.

And Young Xehanort's "death" theme - even at the end he doesn't give a damn.

Edited by MarkIV on Sep 13th 2019 at 10:57:43 AM

Life is more fun with infinite MP.