Kingdom Hearts Re: Coded

“We must return to free them from their torment”

The theme of this game pretty much says it all. Torment. Okay, so it’s not that bad, but it will cause you to rip out your hair in aggravated frustration whilst screaming out profanities the likes of which Tetsuya Nomura will hear all the way from Japan, which in turn will cause him to roll over in his grave bed laughing at you for even bothering to get this game. “But the game’s not that bad, and it’s part of the series, you have to play it to understand blah blah blah BLAH” fuck this game.

                The background for this game is this. Whilst Tetsuya Nomura and his team were working on the Great and Powerful Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, and on Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days, they were also making small episodic installments on mobile devices. Of course by mobile devices I mean on phones in Japan, which they apparently come out with every year, so I’ve heard. So the game ends finally, and Nomura said “Hey guys, I think there’s still some milk in there,”

                “No,” one of his developers says, “I think we’re done with this.”

                “No there’s defiantly some milk left in there,” Nomura said.

                “What else could we possibly do?” The developer asked. “More levels?”

                “How about we just port it to the DS,” Nomura says. “That way the Americans can FEEL MY WRATH . . . oops, I mean play it too.”

                “Okay,” the developer answered.

And thus Kingdom Hearts ReCoded came to America.  And the Americans bought it. And Square made a shit tone of money, which they shared with Nomura by letting him work on the next three Final Fantasy games, which he has been working on for TEN FUCKING YEARS, but that’s okay, we all know that when they come out, we will buy them because it has Square written all over it. Even if it’s a giant steaming pile of golden crap, people will buy it.

                Okay, so enough delaying the inevitable, let’s get this over with. Grab yourself your favorite alcoholic beverage and let’s gooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

The Characters

Jiminy Cricket is back home, now voiced by Phil Snyder, as the original voice for Jiminy has passed, rest his soul. Snyder does a fine job once he finally decides to drop the weird southern thing going on with his voice and just tries to sound like Eddie Carroll. So, yeah, Jiminy is back home copying his journals into Mickey’s Altair 8800 when suddenly he finds a strange message. As he has nothing better to do with his time he decides to get King Mickey, Voiced again by Bret Iwan. Goofy and Donald tag along because, why the hell not? They are voiced by Bill Farmer and Tony Anselmo, of course. Chip and Dale have to come too, just in case the computer decides to start smoking.  They are voiced by Tress MacNeille and Cory Burton. Mickey sees the message and at once decides that he needs to decode it. So what does he do? He creates a digital Sora, voiced by Haley Joel Osment, to unravel its mysteries.

Of course as it is based on the first game, we get to see Riku, voiced by David Gallagher. Riku acts as a guide to Sora through his journey. He leads Sora through all the levels and even somehow pulls Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy into the computer via the Matrix. Oh, another thing I should point out is how good Riku’s computer skills appear to be in comparison to Sora’s. Mind you this is a data version, so the real Riku might share Sora’s computer illiteracy but then again, it is supposed to be based on the real Riku, so it’s kind of up in the air on that.

Oh and guess whose back. If you said Ansem, then you were wrong, it’s Pete. Yeah that guy from the second game who wasn’t in the first game, but somehow found his way, not only to Mickey’s castle, passed all his broom security, and into the room where Mickey and his friends are, just around the time that Mickey and the gang were sucked into the computer, thus getting himself sucked into the computer, and this makes no fucking sense at all, but it’s what’s in the game, so we just have to accept it, even though by all accounts he shouldn’t even be here because he was in the second game and not the first. Oh and that’s not all. Pete can call his dear sweet friend from the computer.

And Maleficent finally gets her revenge on Sora, only it’s a data version of Sora, so does it’s not really revenge, it’s data revenge? I don’t even understand how she ends up in the damn computer

when Pete calls her? If Pete can call her anywhere, or she can appear anywhere she wants then why not show up in Mickey’s Castle again, or somewhere else to cause real damage to Sora. Pretend you’re his mother or something. Destroying a key made of data just doesn’t feel all that spite full, but hey, at least she’s a villain this time and not some half ass attempt at a reformed vigilante.

Now, while there are certainly more people in the game such as Wakka, Tidus, and Selfie (aww Square does remember them) none of them have any speaking rolls, so I will mention them when I get there.

Digital Levels

Each level of the game has its own uniquely, AGRIVATING mini game. What’s more, each level of the game you’ve already been to, a billion times now, so there’s absolutely no repetition at all when  are rerererererererevisiting these places.

Destiny Islands

The first place the player visits is Sora’s old Stomping ground.  That’s right, the Station of Calling. It is the place where he gives up a power to gain a power. This game tries really hard to be the first game and just fails miserably for so many reasons. After the training session the player is taken to Sora’s real stomping grounds. It’s been a while since we actually got to play this area, so I’ll let it slide. I do like Destiny Island. Here we meet up with Sora’s old buddies, Wakka, Tidus, and Selphie, they tell us what they’ve been up to since Kingdom Hearts 2, turns out Tidus had some daddy issues to work out, and Wakka had to go off to a Blitz Ball tournament. Selphie was just busy tending to her garden. The absence of Kiari is conspicuously apparent, considering how important she is to Sora, and how integral she was to the story, but whatever; if the game doesn’t care than neither do I. Sora has to bust up some blocks to find all the strange anomalies on the island. At the end he sees Riku swallowed by darkness and Darkside coming to destroy the island. Sora puts a stop to it and ends up in everyone’s favorite place.

Traverse Town

I’ll avoid the fact that the player has visited this place at least three or four times now. When Sora arrives he is immediately taken aside by Cid and asked to find the twins Huey, Dewy and Lewy. Sora obliges, only because he needs to find some bugs. In searching the town for them he discovers plenty. Sora puts a stop to the bugs, and returns the twins to Cid. This is the place where jumping becomes a chore, and you thought it was bad in Destiny Islands. Well, here there is even more shit to worry about. Now you have moving platforms, a camera that is useless, and Sora, who will decide just before the jump that he doesn’t want to, causing you to fall down and have to do everything over again.  At the end of the level it tries to do something uniquely different. I will not sit here and tell you how this game tries to be like Nier, but I will tell you that it is kind of fun. It’s a side scrolling session in which you will find yourself falling down many a times, only to be dropped back down in a spot with no platform so that you fall again. By the time you reach the end battle, your health will be pretty much wiped out, and the game won’t let you heal. Fortunately the Guard Armor can’t aim worth shit and you will beat him.

Wonderland

The next area you go to is Wonderland. Alice is having an awful time trying to remember anything. It’s up to Sora to help her restore her memory. You will find throughout the level that there are clues, some of which belong to Alice, and others of which belong to other characters. Very soon you will find yourself within a maze area where you have to avoid the card soldiers. This is where the alcohol comes in handy. I made a drinking game out of it. Every time you get caught, and you will get caught at some point, take a drink. Eventually you will make it, and by then you should start to feel that tingle in your fingers. So once Alice gets her memory back, she will help you get to the queen. After that it’s off to the on rails shooter portion with, yep, you guessed it, Trickmaster. Not only do you fight him again, but you get to fight him three more times. Probably to make up for the three games that he has missed out on. Of course getting here will have caused you to take several more drinks of your alcohol, causing you to now feel very excited that you have even made it this far at all. In the end Sora does away with Trickmaster, likely not for the last time, and then heads off to another world.

Olympus Coliseum

This place is nothing like you remember. Here Sora is forced to fight like he’s in a real RPG game. Each enemy takes a turn. Then Sora gets his. As you travel through this maze like section you will eventually run into Hercules, who will join you. If you play your cards right, Cloud will join you as well. There is something like 10 levels to go through. At the end you fight Cerberus. Then, as if you didn’t get enough punishment, Hades comes in to finish you off. After that the game kindly tells you that you can keep coming back for more punishment. There is something like 20 floors. It’s nuts, I don’t know why anyone would want to punish themselves like that, Oh right, for the secret movie that you can watch on youtube. I was probably a bit inebriated at the time when I did it though I can’t really remember, I blacked out. If you decide that you do want to punish yourself further, then you are treated to a Behemoth fight and a Rock Titan fight, all in Active Time Style, of course.

                You would think, if we are trying to piece together what the fuck happened to Sora, than Jiminy would have written down what happened in every world, but apparently that’s not the case. Jiminy opts to skip out on Monstro, Atlantica, Halloween Town (which is surprising since every game accept for BBS has include them), and Neverland. Instead we head straight to:

Agraba

The game starts out okay, you meet some folks, you fight some heartless, then we have to find  Iago under a strict time limit while goddamsonofabitch Jafar chases after us, stealing away our precious time. After several retries, and several more drinks you will become numb to the tedium and finally just do it by sheer accident. When that shit is over your head straight to the Cave of Wonders. Here you are treated to several traps. In one particular trap it has you avoid falling, but with a shoddy camera this is impossible. You will fall, you will fight a million heartless to escape, you will have to consume a third of your drink of choice to convince yourself that it is worth continuing. When, finally you make it to the elevator, you will begin to cry. Here, the elevator slowly grows smaller. You will fall off and have to start over. This will be the billionth time Sora has fallen down. You will have to drink another third before continuing. At the end you fight Genie Jafar. It’s a pretty routine fight at this point. Once Jafar has been defeated, Pete shows up. He calls for Maleficent and she comes out of nowhere to destroy your keyblade. Bitch.

Hollow Bastion

This is where you will start drinking heavily. Sora ends up here with no keyblade. You have to go it alone for a long time; that is until Goofy shows up. Once he shows up the real fun begins. Now you get to find Donald. To do so, however, you must first cross through enemies and blocks, and a particularly infuriating timed jump that will make you drink about half of what’s left in your bottle, honestly who the fuck decided to put jumping puzzles in here, especially ones where lining up your jump is so crucial? So after that’s done, and you go back down to the base level to find Donald, then you climb back up the stairs to find the library, then you get to part take in more timed escapades. Yay for time limits! And by that I mean I need to take a break and go get more liquor.

                Once you have finally made it passed all of that, you get to fight Pete. He’s just there to piss you off though, because the real enemy is Data Riku, who you fight, not once, not twice, not three times, but four, each time becoming more frustrated. With each loss of the battle you take a drink from your newly acquired bottle of alcohol and keep going. Now, what happens after the Riku fight you ask? You get to do it all over again of course. The really sad part about sentence is that I’m not even joking. Once Riku is defeated we travel into his data to repair the damage. We have to go back to every single world and fix whatever the fuck is wrong. That’s three worlds, plus a fifth Riku fight. From there it’s back to the side scrolling adventure, then back to the on rails shooter with a Invisible at the end that will make you consume the rest of your bottle. Then you fight Sora’s Heartless, which is somehow now in Riku’s data, then you fight dark Sora. The fact that you’ve made it this far is a miracle, now do it all over again.

               

Or at least the game would have you believe that. After all that is done, the bugs return to the journal, stronger than before. Sora, who had to sacrifice himself, is now reawakened with no memory of his previous adventure. He wakes up in Traverse Town where he sees Mickey who convinces him that they were friends in a past life. Sora buys it and Mickey tells him go find the bugs. This time it’s different though. Now you end up in a mysterious castle where “to lose is to find and to find is to lose”. Yes, the final level of the game is:

 Castle Oblivion

 

The first few levels aren’t that bad. If you go back and re do them you can get different rewards. Once you get to the last room though, you will never want to return. The last room is all time limit bull shit. Let me be clear on this though, you are timed. You must make it to the other side, or across the room, or where ever, in the allotted time. You must not fail or be damned to do it all over again. You will be very very drunk by the time you finally get to the end.

                Something I should point out here is that if you get through all four or five of these areas within the allotted time, you will be given a special scene in which Yuffie and Leon show up. I got the scene, apparently, but I failed so many goddamn times (fuck time limits) that when I finally got to the scene at the end I skipped it, and ended up missing both the Pete scene (which I intended to skip) and the Yuffie and Leon scene, which I did not know even existed until I saw that I had met them in Jiminey’s journal. It’s on youtube though; if you feel you need to see it. All it is is Leon telling Sora not to be a pussy.

At the end Sora gets into a fight with Roxas. It’s the only time in the game I think I had fun, even though I died a lot. This fight is probably to cater to the American and European fans who never got to play the Roxas fight because Final Mix+ was only released in Japan at the time. When the fight is over Riku finds Data Namine who tells him she was the one who erased everything. Sora tells Namine Thanks, as per Kingdom Hearts 2 request and the game ends.

Getting the secret end

Throughout the game, the way to fix the bugs is to enter these challenge rooms. In these rooms Sora gets points for defeating enemies and for breaking blocks. By the time you reach Traverse Town the game is having you gamble your points. Sometimes it is worth it, like when the game tells you to block six times, but there are others like, ignite your enemies. That sounds easy enough, equip fire, problem solved. WRONG. Equipping fire does not ignite enemies. I could never figure out what did, so I just said fuck it. This was a mistake, as some of the things you can get at the end of the challenge rooms are crucial to not getting your ass killed in the game. Once the initial challenge room starts, you are offered to go back. To be honest though, unless you want the secret I wouldn’t. 

                These Challenge rooms are very frustrating. Mostly so because when you fight the enemies are all black and fuzzy. This if fine for things like shadows, but when you start to fight large bodies and can’t tell which end is which, it is just a pain. God forbid the thing back into a damn corner too. Add to that the different verities, such as the red ones, which take more damage, the yellow ones, which move much faster, and the green ones which are ridiculously large, and it makes you want to eat your DS. But it’s totally worth it to get that secret ending right? RIGHT? It’s just not as satisfying to watch it on youtube . . .

                Oh, but we haven’t even gotten to the best part. You want to earn enough trophies to get the secret ending? You have to play the game all over AGAIN, this time with in a strict time limit. Admittedly you can skip over the scenes at this point, and Sora gets to keep his abilities, but even

still. I will admit, glide solves about half the camera issues in the game. Too bad it doesn’t make the game any more fun. But it’s totally worth it for the secret. Thank god I didn’t have to use the avatars to get the secret movie.

                That’s not even the best part. Once you do it all over, and complete all the levels in the time limit, and finish all three endings for Castle oblivion, then you have to complete certain challenge rooms. These ones will make you want to hurt yourself for ever playing this game. Many of these challenges are “don’t get hit more than once” challenges, that then end up throwing danger boxes at you as the enemies, as well as putting you into rooms which are full of danger boxes, and if that weren’t enough they add this “powerful heartless” which is like a Defender on steroids, and tell you that you have to defeat it. Doing these challenges makes a person wonder. Why the hell am I doing this? Why am I torturing myself? Why the hell did I buy this game? Why the hell am playing this? Why the fuck am I even writ

Conclusion

There are a few, and I do mean a few, redeeming qualities to this game. One is the music that plays while fighting Riku, it’s lovely. The other is the Roxas fight at the end. I’ll even admit that the Rock Titan and the Behemoth fights in Olympus were fun. Hell, even the side scrolling parts, the on rails shooter parts, and the rpg parts were fun for a bit. The only real problem I have with Olympus is the active time battle. I get bored with it after a while. Don’t get me wrong I love Final Fantasy and everything, but I’ve found myself dozing off while in fights. They are just boring to me. I need the action and speed of Kingdom Hearts to keep me interested now days. I blame games like Ninja Gaiden for that, but let’s be honest, if you are in a real fight, are you going to wait your turn so that your opponent can beat the ever loving shit out of you, or are you going to beat them first.

In the end this game feels like an excuse for Square to cash in on a good game. Really the story and the Roxas fight are the only thing that is good about this game. Everything else is utter rubbish. Thankfully Square decided that remaking this game in HD was not a necessity. Instead they opted to make it into an HD movie, which I am totally okay with. Perhaps they should have done that to begin with. My only concern now is that Square might decide to change the music during the Riku fight. If they do, then that would totally ruin the vibe of the fight, but at least I won’t have to play the damn thing.

The end result is a game that, in the end, just feels like an afterthought rather than something that was needed. Really, it’s just a set up into the next side game, which, around mid completion of BBS Square knew they would have to make another game for the lack of a Kingdom Hearts 3, so they added the end in. I have heard great things about Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance, and would love for a chance to play it. If Square can ever get their shit together, and somehow get it released before KH 3, then I will buy it. Until that day comes, however, I will have to wash the taste of this game out of my mouth. Hopefully we can all just pretend that the game was an illusion caused by an alcohol induced coma.

Most images are taken from:

Kh2.co.uk

Khinsider.com

Kingdom Hearts 358/ 2 Days

“I’m me, nobody else!”

When Kingdom Hearts 358 / 2 Days (hence forth KH Days) came out in 2009 I was afraid it would be another KH CoM. Not only was this game announced but it came out with promises of two other soon to be released titles, Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep (which looked amazing) and Kingdom Hearts Coded (which was on phones and I didn’t give two shits about). I knew right from the get go that if I ignored these games and just waited for KH 3 then I would, like before, be treated to a nice long cut scene depicting Sora doing some crazy shit and fighting some people then waking up from a coma (see KH2 intro). Of course back then I was sure it would only be a few years. Then there it was the next Kingdom Hearts game Kingdom Hearts 3 . . . d? Later the game was dubbed Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance. Wonderful, another consol I need to buy and never play. My PS3 keeps me plenty busy with the backlog of games that I have yet to play.

I was leery about buying a Nintendo DS (hence forth DS), now you’re telling me I need to but ANOTHER consol. SQUARE!!!!!!!!!!  Suffice to say I didn’t want to buy a DS at first. The reviews for KH Days were mixed to say the least. In fact most reviewers hated it. My thoughts were that I didn’t want to buy a DS for one game. Then, suddenly Final Fantasy III came out on the DS and I wanted one. Then, just to make me want one further Ninja Gaiden DS came out. Now my want had turned into a need. So I broke down and bought a used one. By the time I did this, however, Kingdom Hearts Re: Coded had come out, so I bought that instead. I would have enjoyed eating the DS better I think, but we’ll get into that later. So long story short, I finally broke down and bought KH Days. Wow. . .

Characters

Now I’m not going to go through the trouble of naming all these characters again. See my previous posts for that. What I will talk about though, are the characters that play a major role in this game. That is, characters that are cool enough to have voices. While there are cuts scenes in this game most of the voice acting is just this:

Huh

Ha ha

Hey

Ergh

Wha . . .

Etc.

So I’ll do my best to describe how the voice actors did. We’ll start off with the most obvious.

 

Roxas, voiced by Jessie McCartney, takes up the mantle of main character in this game. It’s the character you are stuck with, less you choose to play mission mode with the other organization members, but I don’t have friends with a DS, nor would I want to play if I did, so fuck that. KH Days goes through the 358 days that are Roxas’s life in the Organization. The last two days are where he fights Riku and loses, and the first day of the last six days of Roxas’s life in Kingdom Hearts II. Roxas is the only member in the Organization that can wield the keyblade. In his time in the organization Roxas comes to realize that everyone who works in the organization is a giant dickhead (think boss at your place of employment) and he quits. The problem is Roxas doesn’t know what to do with his life. What makes this character so good is the fact that despite being a Nobody (being without a heart in the KH world) he still acts like a human. The reason for this is revealed in the next KH  game BBS. Even in KH II I really liked the character of Roxas. And when he starts duel wielding Oblivion and Oathkeeper, I get chills. His voice actor does a great job too.  

   

Axel,Quinton Flynn, starts off a Roxas’s “babysitter” but learns to love him in the end. It gives his character a sense of humanity even if he is incapable of humanity. Axel, though it’s not seen in this game, does a lot of horrible things to Roxas, Xion, and the rest of the Organization (See KH CoM). Despite all his short comings, you tend to still care about him. He’s like that best friend who you just can’t stand but for some reason you keep spending time with them anyway hoping that things can go back to the way they were before you hated his guts, but knowing in the back of your mind that they never will. Yeah kinda like that. The voice actor, while the same one in KH II sounds a bit different. I’ll blame it on my DS speakers. Or the fact that all I can really remember him “saying” are the phrases above.

 

Xion, Alyson Stoner, is the fourteenth member of Organization 13 14 13 GAH! So she’s never a “member” even though she is. And her name is pronounced (she oon) not zion, strange. I don’t know why the Japanese have to make things more complicated, but whatever moving on. She is voiced by Alyson Stoner, who voiced Kiari in KH CoM. In this game they elude to it, but you only know for sure when you read the secret journals of the other organization members; that Xion is a replica (like the Riku Replica in KH CoM) only she was made first. Hence her name No I (number one) yeah I know it’s lame. Like the Riku Replica she begins to develop a personality of her own.  The problem with this is that she has some of Sora’s memories inside of her, more specifically, his memories of Kiari. Without those memories Sora loses his reason to fight. Once Xion figures all this out, she goes in search of Sora in order to help him wake up.

 

Riku, David Gallaghar, is living up to his expectations of protecting Sora. He fights Xion and beats the ever loving hell out of her, so much so that Xion disappears for a while. Then, when he gets his butt handed to him by Roxas (who so graciously gives him one of his two keyblades) Riku turns into Ansem. Riku Appears a few times through the game. He acts as Xion’s connection to Sora. It is him who eventually convinces her to seek out Sora. His voice actor is always good. I do so love Riku, unless I’m fighting him, then he’s just a dick.

 

Organization XIII While the organization is primarily made up of villains, this game doesn’t treat them as such. The organization members are all friendly towards Roxas, with the exception of Siax who seems to hate everyone. While it’s obvious they have other plans, like trying to get Roxas and Xion to wipe each other out, they don’t really do anything bad per se.

  

Organization Moogle This guy will help you synthesize and buy items. It’s the only Final Fantasy character present in the entire game. While it’s a bit sad, I like the moogle. He doesn’t say much but he’s useful. What’s more, if you talk to him before you leave he’ll say that he’s coming with you. Neat.

 

Pete, Jim Cummings, makes an appearance in the game as well, briefly. Roxas fights him once and sees him again after fighting the Master of the Skies heartless. His goal is to make as many heartless as he can for his boss Maleficent who he doesn’t realize is, as Sora puts it in KH II, “toast.”

 

Diz and Namine, Christopher Lee (YAY!) and Meaghan Martin, respectively, these two appear several times in Twilight Town. They are generally concerned about Sora’s well being. Really Diz just wants to exact his revenge on the Organization. He’s voiced by the amazing Christopher Lee again. Namine is voiced by Meaghan Martin who seems to have taken over full time for Britney Snow. They both do great. Christopher Lee for Life! (Ahem Sorry) Unfortunately, ths was his last performance in Kingdom Hearts. Rest his Soul.

 

King Mickey makes a brief appearance in a conversation with Riku. It is the last bit of voice work done by Wayne Allwine who had been playing Mickey for a long time. Of course you only hear his voice if you play mission modes and unlock Mickey as a playable character, which sucks, but oh well.

Siax is the only true villain in the game. While one could argue that the entire organization is made up of villains, Siax makes a point to be a giant dick. He plots with Xemnas to get rid of Roxas and Xion (who he doesn’t want there to begin with). He’s also too good to go on missions with you. Instead he just tells you where to go. In the end Roxas beats the ever-loving shit out of him and makes him cry like a baby.

 

Heartless in this game are . . . how do I put it, not fun. Most of the Heartless will feel familiar to you. The ones that aren’t will just piss you off to no end. The Large Bodies, for example, now have armor on. They are even more irksome than the Fat Bandits in Agriba. The larger versions of Rabid Dogs aren’t any better. Even the Zip Slasher, one of the few different heartless ends up being only a copy of the 1,000 heartless battle enemies from KH II. The most irksome of them all remains the Infernal Engine, Leechplant (or something like that) and the Master of the Skies (who I beat in one try, I think it was a fluke) but once you figure out that you can block, flame, and flame them (respectively) they become less irksome and more tedious. I could easily say that about all the heartless in the game. I don’t enjoy fighting them at all; which is a shame really.

Places to go people to see

I’ll skip the Disney Characters and just go onto the worlds. The first thing I would like to point out isKingdom Hearts 3d (Dream Drop Distance) instead. Castle Oblivion is seen a few times in Xion’s scenes, and once with Axel and Roxas, but we never get to explore it. The game does feature Neverland, not present in a Kingdom Hearts game, as of 2009, though much like in the first game Neverland is never present in the game. At least you get to explore some of the land around Neverland this time, and not just Captain Hook’s ship, and a clock tower that was never in Neverland anyhow; but that’s beside the point. Speaking of point I seem to have lost
 mine . . . oh right, so there are no new worlds in the game.

that this game doesn’t really feature any new worlds. Allegedly, it was going to have Pinocchio’s world (which Tetsuya Nomoura decided to put in

I hope you like Twilight Town because you’ll be spending the first 7-13 days there. The tutorial seems to drag on forever in this game. In Twilight town you play alongside all the organization members that will soon be dead in Castle Oblivion. Once the tutorial is over with and you finally get to go somewhere else, you end up doing the exact same thing in the other worlds as you did in this one. Only the thing is, these new worlds have characters to interact with. In Twilight Town the only person you ever really interact with is Axel. Sure other members come once in a while. Sure Hayner Pence and Ollette come into the picture (no Setzer, Vivi, or Siefer though, pitty) but their rolls are so minuscule that you’ll hardly notice them until the game forces you to remember. Twilight Town is the place where Axel, Roxas, and Xion have Ice cream. Of course Axel and Xion don’t always make it for ice cream. Roxas ends up spending a lot of his money on ice cream that he eats alone. The poor guy doesn’t seem to have luck with friends.  I know the feeling kid.

 

This world should have been the first world I posted, but really Roxas sleeps here, and he goes to missions from here. It’s not really a “world” until the end of the game when Roxas decides to leave. He comes back to this world after gaining Xion’s power by destroying her in Twilight Town. Great Friends huh? That’s when Roxas gets his two keyblades. He then tries to come back for Sora I think. He confronts Riku instead and ends up back in Twilight Town, forced to undergo yet another long ass tutorial ( See KH II).

Agrabah second place you go. Roxas sees Jasmine and Aladdin here, but never interacts with them. He see’s Genie, interacting with him several times. Interestingly, Aladdin talks of “fixing  up” Agrabah, and while it looks the same throughout the game it could be why it’s different in Kingdom Hearts II. Or it could have nothing to do with anything. Most likely it’s the former. In this game it resembles Agrabah from Kingdom Hearts. Roxas confronts Pete here, where we have to “follow” him. I wanted to choke him by the time it was done. We do get to fight him here though, so I suppose that will do. The last thing about Agrabah that pisses me off are the damn treasures. The game rewards you for getting everything, but the thing is most of the treasures in Agrabah are out of reach until Roxas can fly, which he doesn’t get until near the last “new” level of the game.  What’s more, even with the ability to fly there are still treasures out of reach. So fuck ‘em.

 

This place is one of the third place we go with Roxas. He learns a lot about love and friendship and how to get his ass kicked by an infernal Heartless (ha ha see what I did there). Roxas goes here with Xion and on many occasions and with Xaldin, naturally. One of the things I really liked about the castle was that Roxas gets to go up on the balcony in the ballroom. It’s something I always wanted to do with Sora, but never got to. At some point here you will be driven mad trying to sneak passed Lemure or Cogsworth. If not by them then by the giant Rabid Dogs, the little shits.

 

Halloween Town is where the Leechplant is. It will make you cry, I promise. It’s also the place where Roxas and Xion are pitted against each other unknowingly until Axel has an intervention Alcoholics Anonymous style. In this place Roxas will be confronted by two of the worst Heartless. The Leechplant being the first and the Search Ghost, who have gained the ability to completely drain you of your health come in second. To make things worse, the three little shits that live here (Locke, Shock, and Barrel) will constantly torment you even after you beat the crap out of them. Jack and the Doctor use the destruction Roxas leaves behind to make an awesome Halloween, or so it is said, we never get to see it.

Wonder Land maybe before Halloween Town, I can’t remember. You come with Luxord. Together you do a lot of stuff here, though mostly you just get pissed at the amount of flying Hearltess. There are a lot. What’s worse, you have to fight Trickmaster, again, what’s worse worse, you have to fight two of them. What’s worse worse worse, you have to fight them at the same time or one will bring the other back to life. How many fucking Trickmasters are there for Godsakes. The only real “new” area here is the hedge maze. It’d be really fun to explore if there weren’t so many damned flying Heartless.

 

As mentioned above this level should be called the islands that are somewhere near but not actually in Neverland. Captain Hook is looking for treasure on these islands but keeps finding Heartless instead. Tinkerbell (who was supposed to talk aperently) remained silent. Rant time! In the book and even in the movie (both of them) Tinkerbell never spoke. She rang, like a bell. I much prefer that. Not that I don’t think she should talk, but she doesn’t need to. In the book, Peter Pan, fairies are described as only being able to convey one emotion at a time. By giving her a voice I feel that removes that feature of her. That’s why I don’t want to ever watch the Tinkerbell movies, and hope Kingdom Hearts never uses them. If you don’t know what I’m talking about go and watch Disney’s Peterpan. Just watch up to the Mirror scene. I will wait. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 The ability for a character to express that much emotion without ever uttering a word or a sound is astounding. It’s one of the reasons The Little Mermaid is one of my favorite movies. They (the Disney Animators) are able to put so much into the emotions that they don’t have to worry about words. So anyway back on topic. Tinkerbell does ring here. Admittedly her emotions are recycled quite a bit, and not nearly as impressive as the movie, but it gets the point across. She tries to get Roxas to help but he doesn’t have time for her. This of course ticks her off. Pete discovers this place and sets up a trap for the captain. Enter Master of making you want to rip your hair out and cry in tormented agony the Skies.

 

When the Olympus Coliseum cropped up in KH Days I wasn’t sure what to make of it. At first glance it seems like a good idea. Roxas is spotted by Phil, who mistakes him for Hercules’s mysterious “new trainee” and has us do some practice. It’s very reminiscent of Kingdom Heart’s practice. When I first did it I got a score of like eighty. Phil says something like “100 would be better,” and my mind says challenge accepted. So I play until I get to a hundred. I finally do it with barely a second left and Phil says “oh 150 is your goal” at which point I tried to keyblade him to death, but the game wouldn’t let me. What kind of sick fucking joke is that? 150 my ass, you can go fuck yourself Phil.

The Story

The game starts out on day 255. Roxas and Axel are on the clock tower. Roxas recalls his days in the beginning. Luckily he doesn’t remember anything before day 7. At this point the game becomes a giant tutorial until Roxas is teamed up with Xion. The two of them can wield the keyblade. The pair of them become friends and soon eat ice cream with Axel on the tower. Roxas travels to many worlds with Xion until she passes out one day. The problem is she’s forgotten how to use the keyblade. Roxas helps her out until she remembers. But Xion is never satisfied with the keyblade she wields, jealous of Roxas’s many different keyblades she sets out to find her own cool looking keyblade. This is where the story gets interesting. Axel goes away to do his duty at Castle Oblivion. He comes back all secret like. Roxas doesn’t like it, but accepts it anyway, maybe because he doesn’t want to believe that things have changed. In the mean time Xion loses to Riku in a fight and he even says that her keyblade is shit. Now, more determined than ever, she sets off, leaving the group to find Castle Oblivion. There she comes to the realization that she is only a replica. Like the Riku Replica, only I think it was supposed to be a Kiari replica. Well by now Sora is asleep. Namine tells Diz that she cannot piece back Sora’s memory completely, because something is interfering. Sometime later Xion has a very confusing dream in which she is Roxas, or Riku, or Zexion, fuck I dunno. I didn’t even know it was a dream until I read the damn secret reports. Anyway, after that dream Xion wakes up in Riku’s arms. He tells her that he’ll take her to Sora. Xion says yes and she and Axel get into it in Twilight Town. Roxas stops them. Later Xemnas decides that Roxas is getting weak, and that he doesn’t need two keyblade wielders, so he tries to dispose of them. Roxas goes on a mission and fights a powerful heartless who turns out to be Xion. He only figures it out when Axel intervenes. Roxas and Xion both quit the organization around the same time. Xion just does it a day or so sooner. I guess I should mention that we are on day 356 when this happens, but I figure it’s not important, really, in the end.

                I’m going to stop here for a bit. There are two versions of Kingdom Hearts. In version A Kingdom Hearts bears its soul with some heart wrenching dialogue and tear jerking moments. In version B the game forgets its story and fills the game with epic moments of cheese. This game is the former. Its story is beautiful. Roxas’s decision to leave the organization is sad, made even sadder when he has to fight Xion in the end, made even better by the battle music Vector to the Heavens. My God this scene made me sad. To me, these scenes are the best scenes in the game. Maybe I just like the unforeseen. Maybe I just like sadness. Life isn’t happy. It’s depressing. Moments like this in games give me an odd sense of joy. The Last of Us is the only exception to that. It just made me depressed. I loved it, but, really I was sad for like a month after that game. Perhaps a better, more appropriate analogy would be to Avatar the Last Airbender, or The Legend of Korra, all of which stir me deeply.

                Of course in the end, after Roxas is teleported to the fake Twilight Town and runs to get to his friends so that they can go to the beach is the real kicker because we all know he won’t make it to the beach . . . ever. 

It’s not over

In the end I’m glad I got this game. It’s very beautiful. Aside from the wonky camera and some infuriating Heartless, I have to say it’s enjoyable.  I know that a lot of people were upset by the lack of Final Fantasy characters featured. But let’s be honest here. The Final Fantasy characters have always been more of a “thank you” from Square. They were never intended to over shadow or over take the main characters. You’re really just mad that you didn’t get your Cloud fix. If you need it that bad go play Final Fantasy VII or Kingdom Hearts. I’ll wait . . . . . . . . . . .

 

                The thing is, Kingdom Hearts can do well enough on its own now. Look at Kingdom Hearts II for example. That game had a shit tone of Final Fantasy VII characters and none of them really mattered at all accept for Cloud and Sepheroth. Really, there were way too many Final Fantasy characters in Kingdom Hearts II (Yuna, Rikku, Paine, I’m looking at you) where as in this, there is a moogle. Now, strictly speaking moogle’s have been in Final Fantasy since 3 where as Yuna and Rikku have only been in two games. So you tell me, if any Final Fantasy character deserves to be in a Kingdom Hearts game, wouldn’t a moogle qualify more than any. Hell, a chocobo would be cool too; they’ve existed since Final Fantasy II.

So suffice to say I really like this game. I didn’t think I would and am pleasantly surprised by the deep story. Will I go back and play it any time soon? Probably not, but I have the option at least. Anyway, why would I play this when I can play Birth by Sleep. That game takes depressing and beats you with it. God I love it!

Sources

http://tcrf.net/Kingdom_Hearts_358 2_Days

http://lparchive.org/Kingdom-Hearts-3582-Days

khwiki.net

khinsider.com