Beat Kingdom Hearts II the other day.

It's whatever. Definitely an objective improvement over the first game, but it's not blowing me away or anything. The combat is incredibly button mashy and QTE-heavy, and the story is kind of asinine, even though there are aspects of it that I appreciate. As a Disney guy, I feel consistently burned on that front, too. They way they treat the Disney stuff in these games is consistently disappointing. I don't want to experience a shitty, watered down version of a Disney movie that I LOVE, Nomura.

I could go on but I'm not sure who I'd be ranting to anyway so I'll just stop myself here.

KH1: 4/10
Chain of Memories: 3/10
KH2: 5/10

Bleah. Apparently, according to my KH-playing friends, I can be done with this franchise now, since I've played the best game in the series and decided I wasn't into it... but I'm a sucker for culturally-important video games, regardless of my personal opinions about them, so I might keep playing them regardless. They're certainly fun to talk about.

Just beat the 3rd game. Didn't bother with any of the filler between 2 and 3 because I honestly don't care, but watched a few summary vids. Putting aside the obvious incomprehendable mess that is the storyline (especially the time travel bullshit), I found the boss fights extremely lacking and disappointing. In a weird way, the worlds too. Even though individual loaded areas were bigger/more expansive, which was pretty cool, it really just felt like there was so much less. Once you've traversed through an area, that was basically it for most places, there's no real reason to go back except to maybe farm resources or completion stuff. I also disabled all the extra flare animations pretty early on and avoided using the "ride attraction" abilities because it was just too much for me and they get old fast anyway. Obviously that's where they dumped a lot of their budget/development, but it really seems like the rest of the game suffered for it. Also goddamn the characters repeat the same dialogue too much during gameplay sometimes. If you thought "get up on the hydra's back" was bad...

Still managed to enjoy it despite the weird shit, bad writing, horribly awkward characters and the other things that bothered me, and I guess it could've been worse? Honestly the writing was just downright painful sometimes. Whatever, the little kid in me was happy that the game finally fucking exists. I'm still really disappointed that there weren't more good boss fights though. Almost seems like maybe the studio wasn't equipped well enough for the new engine or something. Also all the flashbacks in the old graphics, seriously? Couldn't even redo those to match the new graphics? lazy mfers



Can I recommend the series to a new player? No lmfao, it's a fucking stupid convoluted mess.
If you played the originals as a kid, sure. Wait for a sale or use Game Pass or whatever. But it's definitely not as good as 1 or 2.

Quote from: ಠ_ಠ on June 02, 2021, 05:36:49 PM

Just beat the 3rd game. Didn't bother with any of the filler between 2 and 3 because I honestly don't care, but watched a few summary vids.

Yeahhhh, my Kingdom Hearts friends were ADAMANT that I avoid doing this, because it turns out that all those weird spin-offs are actually integral to the storyline, and being able to follow along with their convoluted mess of a story is meant to be super gratifying, and you're meant to forgive a lot of the dumb stuff because you've just been with these characters for so long and whatnot. I dunno.

The last thing I did was watch an entire LP of the DS version of 358/2 Days, rather than the abridged version of the game that's available on the collection I bought, and it was a colossal fucking waste of time. It's basically just a slow burn that leads to nothing but some cringey cryporn that doesn't really add anything substantial to KH2's story in my opinion.

Chain of Memories, too, was probably the worst game I've ever played from beginning to end—but I honestly really enjoyed the storyline to that one, because they play with some interesting concepts, and it's actually fairly mature and self-contained for the most part. It's the one that takes place between 1 and 2,

Spoiler

you get to know why Naminé is part of the story and everything, and why half the organization is dead by the time you get to KH2, among some other pretty important things.

I don't know if you've experienced that one. Might be worth watching cutscenes of it on YouTube or something. Otherwise, the gameplay is just fucking horrendous and not worth the trouble.

Quote

Also all the flashbacks in the old graphics, seriously? Couldn't even redo those to match the new graphics? lazy mfers

I don't know how it's executed, but I think I could possibly give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. Presenting scenes you remember as you remember them could make those flashbacks feel all the more nostalgic. I actually kind of like that choice, but perhaps not if it doesn't seem purposeful.

I know what people say and how they think it's super important to play the filler games but I honestly couldn't give two shits. And frankly I'm glad I didn't bother.

I played CoM as the GBA game. For what it was, I remember it being pretty good. I'm assuming you played the remake for console, which I could never imagine translating over well.

As far as the flashback stuff goes, I really think they were just cutting corners because they would've had to remodel a loooot of assets. It's really jarring to see PS2 graphics though when it's mixed with places that both have and haven't been remodeled for current gen.

I would've suggested you just skip KH1 in all honesty.
Even I haven't finished that.

KH2 is the one everyone loves and adores for good reason, it's not without it's flaws but it's definitely not without its passion.
Disney story aspects suck, but try to enjoy the actual Kingdom Hearts story as much as you can (the Heartless, the Nobodies, Keyblade wielders, etc.) And if you feel it's too hard you're probably not the right level for it until you reach the real endgame.

The Original secret ending of KH2 represents what KH is to me. I just wish they'd embrace that side way more.
I'd share a clip but I don't want to spoil the absolutely best part of the entire series for you.