“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 is
Kingdom
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
khwiki.net
khinsider.com
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