AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Eh, I've always liked platforming. It never bothered me too much, to be honest.

The way I interpreted it, is that the story and battle system aren't meant to be too complex. Just simple and fun. Then the later games did a complete 180 to this, which didn't seem to fit the feel of the original game and created a very bizarre contrast.

Steve Jay Blum.
Crispin Freeman.
Johnny Yong Bosch.
Dan Green.
Kate Higgins.

I disapprove of your post.

I'm not going to lie, KHII's combat wasn't much better The drive forms and limits just seemed... unnecessary. Yeah, they looked cool, but they just didn't seem to... fit gameplay-wise. I hated how they were basically a "skip" button for every battle you didn't really want to try very hard on, and how the game could be easily beaten without using any of them. It's as if they added a bunch of more stuff but didn't change the rest of the combat system to suit these added techniques, so basically you just had KHI combat with some unnecessary crap piled on top of it like an overly fancy unnecessary hat.

I feel like BBS's combat system is the way that KHII's combat should have been. You get an enormous variety of attacks, and you access what are basically that game's version of "drive" forms by using certain kinds of those attacks, which adds an interesting bit of strategy where you must make decisions like "should I wait for this attack to recharge and use it again so I have a better chance of accessing that one form I want to use, or should I just spam random attacks and stick with what I get? Or should I just say "screw it" and beat the crap out of everyone normally? (this is the option that gets you killed)". The forms don't last long, but you will probably access them several times in a single long battle and they are pretty much necessary for success, which is the way it should be. Simply mashing the X button until everything dies is a good way to lose.

However, one thing I did like about KHI is that the worlds had more of an... identity. Like, in BBS for example, all the different worlds are just different places to fight things. Like, the only real difference between them is that in one you are fighting unversed in a field and in the other you are fighting unversed in a stadium. In KHI, the levels were at least memorable, atrocious as the design may be, and the worlds all seemed large and unique.

...So... I guess I... kinda agree?

Although I personally feel that the story never really got all that complicated. At least, not more complicated than it started out as. I feel that particular aspect of the newer games is greatly exaggerated.

Oh geez the drive forms. I'd completely forgotten about those. Glad to hear they fixed that, at least.

The way I see it, the story in the first game was basically a kid finding out he has a special power and he goes on an adventure to save his friends after his home is attacked. Pretty cliche, but it had some pretty decent twists.

Then it turns out the kid isn't so special anymore because everyone and their grandma has a keyblade and half the people have a special pseudo-clone and the namesake "Kingdom Hearts" is ??????? (the definition of the thing changed every daisies game - IT'S A DOOR! IT'S A MOON!).

I don't own BBS, due to not owning a PSP, but I have played it, and it may be the best game in the series. The fact that there are three full storylines to play through and they intersect at points was a great idea, and the combat system plays a little bit like CoM, which I was okay with.
KH was a good game, and as Torizo said, it was a bit cliche, but it did have some interesting moments and twists.
CoM made a good segway into the second game, answering some questions and revealing others.
KH II, in my opinion, was decent for the most part, but there were some things (Such as the aforementioned drive forms) that took it down from good to average.
358/2 Days.....oh boy. I don't even know where to begin. Yes, it explained some things that happened in II, but that was all it did. The whole game seemed rushed to me, as if it was just there to explain things that didn't really need to be explained, and to provide fanservice (not that kind) to the people who just HAD to play as Org. XIII. Yes there were new enemies and such, but most of them were recolors. I just didn't like this game.

While some of the games are pretty can't think of a word right now, I'll always love the music.

Yoko Shimura(I think I'm wrong on the last name) is amazing.

Honestly the only ones there I like are Crispin Freeman (aside from Kyon, but he has a beautiful voice otherwise,) and Bosch.



And OH BOY BATTLE DEBATE.

I played them all in order except CoM (which I bought after starting KHII).

I really really disliked the story of KHI. I played it because it was quirky and I loved the battle system but honestly the story didn't do much for me. But the battles were A+. I loved how you could roll whenever you wanted (reminscent of Zelda,) and you had to have STRATEGY to defeat bosses. I mean seriously, you couldn't beat Riku's Ansem form by just going in and mashing X a bunch of times. I abused the hell out of glide and roll and my distance moves for that fight and had it down to an ART but it still took me over a month to defeat him. My HP bar was too low for me to defeat the final boss; I had to actually grind for days to be able to do it because you leveled so slow. The battle difficulty curve was intense.

Then KHII came out. It was like Square told Disney to fuck out of the story room and took over, which was perfect. The story was beautiful and captivating (at least to my 16yr old self,) and kept me guessing most of the way. I fell in love with almost all of the Org and the way it played out was very good. The only thing I didn't like was you played the movies of the worlds and there wasn't much...creativity put into the world arcs. But that was a small price to pay for the intense lonely feeling I got from The World That Never Was. Then I started paying attention to the battles. The first thing I noticed was you did SO much damage per hit, even with Kingdom Key. Then the triangle flashed on my screen and I was able to drop the boss two colour bars in that one instant. What? What was this? I dropped boss after boss and my HP and magic grew so big it stretched across the screen. The final boss took me two tries to defeat because if you pressed triangle enough he'd just freeze. They took away your ability to roll outside of certain enemies' attack range, which made travel slow imo. The advent of the cheat button dissapointed me so badly that I almost didn't finish it (but around the time I got annoyed, the story kicked into full gear...) The drive forms were amazing (Master form ftw) but unnecessary because really, did you NEED to do more damage per hit? You already took out even the hardest bosses in a few minutes. Anti-forme was pretty interesting but I got stuck in it on a boss too many times and died that way because I couldn't avoid his attacks often enough to revert.

BBS is exactly what Zink said - what KHII's system SHOULD have been. It's got a proper difficulty curve that requires me to grind on occasion, it's fast paced but doesn't do so much damage that you wreck everything in your path (unless you're way upgraded.) You have "drive" forms that are nice to achieve and don't feel unnecessary and really assist you in a bossfight. I also like how the game forces you to play different classes - a "trickster," a brawler and a mage. It makes it interesting and forces you to change strategies when you hit another character's story. And the stories...they just get darker and darker and it thrills me how they're turned something cutesy like Disney into ...this. I adore storylines where you go so far into the rabbit hole that it completely changes your perception of the world around you.

HOLY FUCK that was long i'm so sorry. I love discussing games >>' It's ~my business~ so I take storylines and battle systems and such pretty seriously x:



And I've pretty much come to the conclusion that Kingdom Hearts is a moon and that moon is the place the Org are going to go and live one day because it's...full of hearts. Or something. But yeah. THE MOON.

I'm not quite sure, but based on BBS I think it's implied that Sora's keyblade is still special in some way. Most likely because of his connections to- WHOOPS SPOILERS.

As for that "Kingdom Hearts" thing, the moon is Kingdom Hearts, but the door you're thinking of is actually the Door to Darkness, which Kingdom Hearts lies beyond.

And, this probably just makes things worse, but nobodies aren't really psuedo-clones. They essentially are the person. They even look the same, save for Roxas and Namine, and they apparently only look and act different because of all the crazy shit involved in their creation as well as the fact that Sora- WHOOPS BBS SPOILERS.

...Yeah some of this stuff is pretty tough to explain without spoiling BBS. But hey, it did clear a lot of things up.

It may actually be the best KH game, now that I really think about it. Hard to say.

That's just it, though. It's like the nobodies were excuses to make more dry, boring characters because they are ~lolsodesu. Why are certain characters so special that they get shiny shiny pretty people as their nobodies while everyone else gets a rehashed white suit or armor?

I don't find the story creative or interesting in the least, it feels like it's just playing out for the fans at this point. Instead of coming up with a genuine, good story they just sat down and said, "well, what do the fans want? More pretty characters? Drama? Alrighty."

Of course, I am probably horribly biased because I've only liked a handful of Squeenix games post-FFVI.

I actually thought most of Organization XIII was fairly interesting but eh I guess I can understand why you may not like them.

But not Xigbar/Braig, because he's kind of the best character.

I can agree that Xigbar is a bro.

It depends on how strong their hearts were. which is kind of a copout really but if you think on people you know, i can definitely pick out the ones i think would turn into people and who would turn into slinky-things. it depends on the calibur of the person. I haven't got far enough yet but aparently in BBS you learn some backstory on the org and how they became nobodies (like who they were, what they did etc.)


and man i hated every FF game after X and X was almost ruined by Tidus' stupid booty in-game voice. why couldn't he talk like his narrator voice? ugh. I don't think I've played any other newer Square games come to think of it. Do they still do games that aren't FF? I honestly have not seen any that I know of.

I'd be more okay with the "strong heart" thing if it weren't for the fact that there are Organization members like Demyx. It seems that the "strength of heart" thing is merely a way of saying "importance to the plot".

It'd make more sense if they claimed it had something to do with how that person became a heartless. Like, if that person gave in to the darkness, they got a human nobody, but if they were transformed into a heartless by another heartless, then they get a generic nobody.

Lol Demyx. I forgot about him. Yeah idk how he ever became a human nobody much less got into the org.


Form of heartless would make more sense but then, Roxas? Naminé? Sora got turned into a heartless from another heartless (well, kinda,) and he got a human nobody. And Kairi had hers extracted by some weird phenomenon nobody knows about apparently and got a human nobody. And then there's Riku who, to my knowledge, doesn't have a nobody at all, and he DID give into the darkness. I would possibly believe that they did that before coming up with CoM/KHII and they just forgot those loopholes but I doubt that

Sora wasn't turned into a heartless by another heartless so much as he bodaciously tore his own heart out of himself.

But yeah even that explanation wouldn't work perfectly. It was just an example of a possible other explanation that they could have/should have used.

I think maybe the trick is not to think about it too hard.