Kingdom Hearts

I thought the Organization stayed hidden and avoided people since that was Xemnas' way to stop new connections being made and the nobodies forming new hearts, so then Master Xehanort couldn't use them as vessels.

Why not both?

...Makes me curious: Wouldn’t they form their connections among themselves?

Maybe they can, but its much slower due to no hearts being present? Maybe that's why Axel/Roxas/Xion friendship formed more quickly due to Roxas having a chunk of heart at the start.

God this final boss gauntlet in KH 3 is such a pain in the ass on crit. It's so long to get through and at the end you're hardwalled by what might as well be two dm's in a row, the second one of which you basically can't afford to get hit once and it lasts for so long. With some practice I can get through the rage form one fine, but the lasers and org shadows are obnoxious as hell. You don't have enough time to toss a potion and maybe just barely have enough time to use Cure. I always get clipped by something and just die. I also really hate how my camera just spins around all over the place when I guard which means sometimes I just don't get to see where the laser is coming from and just have to rely on a sound cue.

Had to call it quits for tonight, not looking forward to having to go through this whole thing again tomorrow.

Edited by Draghinazzo on May 7th 2021 at 12:58:35 PM

Actually, was the Masquerade still kept up by those that made it back from Traverse Town in KH 1? I guess they wouldn't be believed that much though.

So I just kinda got annoyed with the final boss and grinded up a bunch of levels yesterday night in the battlegate 0 near the gate to Scala out of frustration.

On one level I don't really regret that since I was very underleveled (I was only at 35 or so and grinded up to 46 which was the world battle level). The Combo Boosts and extra stats made a huge difference, but on another level it kinda just feels like I leveled my way past the problem since I didn't even manage to dodge the DM properly but lucked out and tanked through it somehow.

It's kind of hard to talk about my overall feelings of this game since up until the finale they were mostly pretty positive but I did notice some problems that made it easier for me to understand why some people were disappointed with this game.

I wasn't really expecting any detriments to the story to significantly impact my enjoyment because I haven't really been satisfied with it since the KH 2 days and from there it was just more and more caveats until I realized it probably wasn't for me anymore. So I didn't think there was a whole lot KH 3 could do storywise that would disappoint me because I was already checked out of it mostly.

And from that perspective I was enjoying the game quite a bit for the most part because it actually significantly improves upon one of my biggest criticisms with the series that left me so disillusioned, which was how lackluster and forgettable the disney worlds tend to be. Like, KH 2 FM is a great game for example in terms of gameplay, but in terms of story and level design the disney worlds in that game are mostly forgettable at best. Most of the time they're either a bland rehash of the movie story that really just exists for Disney fanservice. Even when they do original stories they're usually very half-assed and uninteresting.

But KH 3 has Toy Box, Monstropolis, and San Fransokyo which easily are far superior to anything the previous disney worlds offered in terms of story and character beats because they actually deal with a somewhat interesting concept that ties it into the greater KH story; I might not be super invested in the original lore and story overall but it is still kinda fun to see SDG play off the world and I'd rather have that than just a bland retread. The fact they didn't advance the overall story wasn't a huge problem to me because a) again, I was checked out of it already and b) most of the time in KH they don't advance the overall story anyway, at least the Disney worlds were fun and interesting this time around which is the least that can be asked for. Even the worlds which don't do as well in terms of story usually have redeeming qualities, like Caribbean being a very fun mini Black Flag and the only Disney world where you get the main disney villain of the world directly (Davy Jones, although his boss fight is a bit lackluster, at least you do fight him).

But honestly, the finale in this game does feel pretty rushed and puts into perspective how almost nothing happens to move the story for like 90% of it. It's very jarring. Like I've often made the criticism of KH 2 that it feels like it has a beginning, a middle, and an end interspersed by a load of filler and I stand by that criticism, but KH 3 actually feels worse because it doesn't even have a middle really. In that respect I agree having a "middle" like the Hollow Bastion revisit in 2 would have been a lot better.

I don't really want to comment on this too much because I fully admit that I only know the broad strokes of what happens in 3D/BBS and so there could easily be something in these games that ameliorates or invalidates this criticism but:

The farewells to Ansem and Xemnas feel a bit weird to me. Like, I don't mind the idea behind them really but to an extent they feel a bit out of nowhere. Like, why would Riku ever tell Ansem he's gonna miss him when he's been a miserable devil on his shoulder that fucked up his life and his friends' lives and been a pain in the ass ever since trying to get him to submit to his darkness again? Xemnas getting a sentimental send-off makes somewhat more sense emotionally because 2 at least had some element of pity to him (him not being able to remember anything but negative emotions is kinda sad), but why would I ever be given any reason to believe he cared about the rest of the Organization at all when that was never suggested and none of his past actions or dialogue even suggested this? Again, maybe Riku and Ansem have moments in 3D that indicate their relationship changes or Riku begins to view him differently and that would make this scene feel a lot better, but otherwise it's a bit ???.

I do have to confess that while the fact that Dark Riku is a time-displaced Riku Replica is like one of the best examples of the ridiculous lore of this series, the send-off to Repliku actually got to me a little. Co M was my first KH game so seeing Repliku give up his life for Naminé kinda hit different.

Having said all this on the gameplay front I liked KH 3 a lot overall and I'd say it's easily a comfortable second compared to 2. I feel like the biggest problem to me is the fact that getting randomly chipped in mob fights can easily happen because of just how many there are compared to 2 and how spacious the environments are compared to that game. It's just easy to lose track of things.

I like the keyblade system in 3 a lot compared to previous games. I imagine there's probably still an optimal keyblade setup but it feels like you have more of a reason to experiment with the keyblades in 3 thanks to the form changes being tied to them, and the fact you can upgrade your keyblade's stats to make them more viable in endgame. It addresses one of my criticisms of 2 where 90% of the time you don't have much of a reason to use anything besides Hero's Crest or Decisive Pumpkin for actual combat.

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Having said all this I'm a little bit concerned about going into Limit Cut. I was excited for that and tbh that was one of my main reasons for playing through the game because I loved Lingering Will and Data Org but the fact I got walled so hard by MX and the fact the kh3 data org is supposed to be much harder than the KH 2 FM stuff makes me think I probably still have a lot of practice needed to understand how KH 3's battle system really works or for it to click for me.

Edited by Draghinazzo on May 8th 2021 at 3:54:32 PM

I’m not sure if this was in 3D specifically (I don’t think the Ansem in Chain of Memories was the real him, so I’d say it was), but the impression I get with Ansem was that over time he developed a sort or respect for Riku, which informs a lot of his dialogue here. Less certain on Riku’s side of things; someone else might have a better idea than I. I do think that this might be a scene that’s better read as looking back on the Dark Seeker saga as a whole, but that’s just one way to look at it.

I largely enjoy the final boss rush and the scenes we get, but I won’t deny that it backloads a lot of the actual plot, with no real midpoint (for what it’s worth, 3D was probably worse about this - you don’t get any scene with the villains in between worlds, and while there technically IS a midpoint, nothing actually happens). I’d say this is partially due to the nature of the final battle is that it all had to take place at the Keyblade Graveyard, which they established in BBS and 3D, but I won’t deny that makes things awkward. I’d have found a way to finagle it so that some of the battles could have occurred during the Disney worlds or in a hypothetical midpoint set in Twilight Town or what not, but I’ll admit that might remove a bit of the cool factor of getting to fight everyone at the Keyblade Graveyard. So I’m not really sure how I’d have resolved it.

I was mostly talking about Riku's reaction, I don't really find the scene as strange from Ansem's perspective. It's sort of implied in the game from the start he's mostly going through the motions and you can kind of infer he's a bit depressed, so it was clear something about him had changed and makes his perspective on Riku easier to believe.

Edited by Draghinazzo on May 8th 2021 at 4:09:14 PM

On Riku saying he'll miss Ansem, going off of how he words that line in the Japanese script I think it's more like "it feels like something's missing without you around anymore". Which I don't think necessarily means also yearning for things to return as they were like the phrase "I miss you" usually implies.

I also don't think you're meant to view Xemnas as having cared for the organization members. It's more that he regrets the fact that he didn't, because if he treated like friends instead of tools then maybe he wouldn't feel the loneliness he feels now.

Ansem was such an important part of rikus life even if it was a bad part. So he is saying goodbye to this part of him he can finally reconsile when it isn't possessing him.

When Riku did drugs darkness

ASOD knew a member had betrayed them but kept his mouth shut. He clearly didn’t care anymore about what MX wanted long before the final battle happened.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on May 8th 2021 at 2:12:22 AM

And xemnas seemed to be more about how he did actually want friends but knew he treated everyone around him like trash which is why his only friend was himself.

Meanwhile young xehanort gets to return in his own game so he just taunts sora instead of getting a respectful send-off

Xemnas had no friends. Not even amongst himself. He was a pawn who didn’t realize how empty his life was until it finally ended.

Young Xehanort was hilarious. "Well, that was fun. The last few minutes sucked but I won't even remember the last few minutes and, hey, I had a good time. Can't wait to do this all over again with you."

Edited by fredhot16 on May 8th 2021 at 2:20:37 AM

It’s kinda amusing that of the four the Heartless ends up being the most sympathetic by the end, while the other thrre(Including MX) manage to be huge dicks that overwhelm any sympathy they’re supposed to have.

There's a reason just a pancake's KH 3 recap had Young Xehanort's goodbye just be "Suck my dick."

Rude!

later loser!

[Pete's music starts playing]

An apropos video I just found on my Youtube feed where a human (I presume, he could just be a Nobody imposter) rambles about why Ansem the Heartless, Seeker of Darkness, is his favorite villain-in gaming. Period.

Edited by fredhot16 on May 8th 2021 at 3:07:29 AM

x4 Heartless? do you mean Nobodies or members of the Organization in general?

Heartless as in Ansem Seeker of Darkness.

Not the literally heartless.

I wanted this video that is prolly brought up here before. why mention that then? Because it reminded me that the Dark City has the interesting industrial Cyberpunk aesthetic.

Playing through Remind right now.

People weren't joking when they said this was mostly recycling the endgame with a few new cutscenes and playable characters here and there. It feels a bit shit paying 30 for this if you care about story lol.

Oh well. Explorable Scala is nice. Feels good to hear Edge of Eternity for more than five seconds.

Yeah, if you weren't interested in playing against the superbosses over and over again Remind doesn't have a lot of value.