Let's give Kingdom Hearts a fair shot! (Blind LP) FINALE!!

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Hello again. Well, since my LP of the French version of Final Fantasy VIII went pretty well and I actually got a few people to check it regularly, I am back with another one. I didn't actually plan on making another Let's Play so soon but I am suffering from Final Fantasy Withdrawal and I am so desperate that I am willing to try the cut-down dodgy stuff.

Alright, the thing is, this is also kind of a personal experiment thing. You see, I really despise the very concept of Kingdom Hearts. I'm sorry but I cannot take for a single second the concept of haphazardly mashing two completely unrelated franchise in one lump, visual and tonal consistency be damned. I wouldn't mind a joint effort between Disney and Square on an original work, Hell I wouldn't even mind classic Disney and Final Fantasy characters having small cameos as Easter eggs or something, but to have the two be squeezed into the same universe and asking me to pretend it makes perfect sense just isn't happening for me.

And I know some people might find that superficial but honestly, I think it's anything but. I'm not going to force myself through something I dislike on a conceptual level just because it features characters I have nostalgia for. And on top of that, I can't get it out of my head that the whole thing is just incredibly exploitive, like the two companies are saying "Here's a thing you like, here's another thing you like. We put the two together so give us your money". And it doesn't help that I tend to dislike crossovers in general as I feel it tends to reduce the characters to avatars stripped of their individuality and they tend to have the limitations of all franchises with the advantages of none.

However, I am also a curious man and I generally like to experience things for myself rather than judge them on a vague impression. I did try a little bit of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and I found the gameplay to be alright although nothing special and then Huey, Dewey and Louie appeared and completely pulled me out of the game and brought back all of my negative feelings about the franchise, making me lose interest almost immediately.

But now, I want to give this franchise a genuine fair shot and see what it has to offer while trying to cast aside my prejudices. Who knows? Maybe it could be a pleasant surprise! So yeah, I'm going to try and judge the franchise on its own merits and try to forget that I find its very existence abhorrently cynical. I will also try to watch my spelling a little more closely as looking back on my FF8 LP, I discovered it was riddled with typos, grammatical errors and other misspellings. Don't worry, I made sure to cut off my left pinky in penance.

As stated in the title, unlike the FF8 LP, this one is blind so you will get my reactions in real time and needless to say, I will probably miss some of the hidden stuff because I don't know in advance it's there. I do know a few small details as I have read some stuff on it (like Squall's backstory in this game which did not impress me at all, although I genuinely really like his redesign and oddly, his characterization is pretty good in spite of his backstory) and I did play a very small part of the intro to check that the game runs properly on the emulator I'm using for screenshots but for 99,99% of it, this LP is blind.

I am also warning you in advance that although I do intend to beat the game, if I really get too annoyed, I will stop playing because as I said earlier, I am not going to force myself to play through a game I don't like for no reason.

Oh and one last thing, much like FF8, I'm playing the French translation of the game so don't be surprised if some details vary from how you remember them. Alright, enough blah-blah, it's time to begin and finally give this game a genuine chance. Let's play Kingdom Hearts!

Part 1: Destiny Calls

Very nice music plays in the main menu as I set things up for my game. I'm playing this game in Normal difficulty so I don't want to drag this LP by getting stuck at a difficult part. The game starts with a really weird cutscene that involves Sora going towards another male character and being in the water... but also not? And at some point he sees himself falling from the sky. I assume this will make more sense later on as Square does like its flash-forwards. Sora does mention he's been having weird dreams so apparently it IS supposed to be bizarre.




One positive I can give the game right away is that I really like the character design and how expressive the models are. I know people like to take the piss out of Tetsuya Nomura's obsession with belts and zippers but I really do think he's very talented and this game really shows that. In fact, from some of the few bits and bobs I've seen from later in the game, it seems the visuals are its strong suit (you know, as long as Disney and FF characters aren't on screen at the same time and the visual inconsistency becomes immediately evident).

Sora ends up at the bottom of the ocean, which then becomes a floor and Sora ends up on some sort of giant stained glass window representing Snow White and the Seven Dwarves... *sigh* sorry, I'm really having a hard time taking the attempt at this dark and ethereal atmosphere they're going for with the seven bloody dwarves looking back at me. I mean that's just... deep breaths, Ssnake, deep breaths. Do not let your preconceived notions of this game get the better of you.

Anyway, a sword, a shield and a sceptre appear, all decorated with an outline of Mickey's head, because it's not Disney if there isn't branding every-freaking-where. I have to choose one, with the game telling me in a roundabout way that it'll give me bonuses in certain areas. I like to brutally murder things so I'm going to pick the sword. I then have to give up one of the remaining powers. I choose the shield because I still want to have decent magic.

I am then transported to another window, this one themed after Cinderella, for a tutorial on combat. This is actually a really nice bit of symbolism because you know how everyone's favourite part of Cinderella was the sword fights. All joking aside, the controls do feel good. After that, I am transported to another window, where a translucent door appears. Can't open it for now and this whole part serves as a tutorial on object interaction, telling I can push, carry and break stuff. This makes the door tangible and I can now open it.

This takes me to a much brighter area. Looks like a tropical island and here I find... Tidus and Wakka from FFX as well as Selphie from FFVIII. Huh, didn't expect to find Final Fantasy characters so soon. Oh and for some reason they're all children.




See, this is actually part of the problem I have with this franchise. They have all these Final Fantasy characters... but they are not the same age as in their game and have different backstories, so they don't even feel like the same characters, just people who vaguely look like beloved characters and have the same name (and sometimes not even that, right, "Leon"?) but can't possibly be the same people so... what's the point? Other than, you know, brand recognition. They might as well have used original characters and in fact, that would have been a lot better. Child Selphie is especially grating to me considering how important the characters' childhoods were in FF8 so that really throws pretty much her entire characterization out the window. Also, I hated Wakka and his stupid hairstyle in his game so I bet I'll love him as a kid here.

Anyway, this part teaches me NPC interaction. Selphie asks what matters most to me between being first, friendship and my favourite items. I assume this is more character customization stuff. I'm going with "friendship" because... I dunno, I feel like it. And I suppose it fits the major themes of FF8 so it's appropriate to say to Selphie. Tidus asks what I am most afraid of between growing up, being different and hesitating. Well, I am absolutely not afraid of growing up or being different so I'll go with hesitating. Finally, Wakka asks me what my dream is between seeing rare things, travelling around the world and becoming strong. Seeing rare things seems nice.

The game tells me that my journey will begin at noon and that I will progress at a steady pace until its conclusion. No idea if that's relevant to the choices I just made or if it's just flavour text but either way, I'm confirming it. I am sent to another window, this time being Sleeping Beauty-themed. This teaches me that I can open the menu by pressing START, which isn't exactly ground-breaking but what IS interesting is that I can't access it during battle, so I guess that means once I've started a fight, I'm committed to whatever setup I went with. I also learn that save point restore my health and MP.

Stairs appear, taking me to a Beauty and the Beast-themed window. Sora sees a ray of light and for some reason, a giant monster rises from his shadow. I assume that's also something that will be explained later.




I defeat the monster but Sora gets swallowed in its darkness. As the cutscene ends, some prophetic text about me being the one to open the door appears. Sora wakes up on a beach, so I'm guessing this intro was just one of the weird dreams Sora mentioned. We are also introduced to another character, Kairi:




Sora asks her what her hometown was like but she answers that she doesn't remember. Sora then asks if she ever thought about going back there. Sora, you dumb shit, if she doesn't remember where she's from, how could she go back there? Eventually, we meet yet another character, who doesn't get named yet, apparently:




They're building a raft and after a splash screen informs me that we are on the Destiny Islands, Kairi asks me to collect two logs, a rope and some cloth, which I can find around the island. Selphie, Wakka and Tidus are also here and I can talk to everyone. I can challenge Wakka and Noname McGreyhair to a duel but they both kick my ass.

This, by the way, gives me an opportunity to bring up the French dub, which is actually decent for the most part but is kind of creepy as it's obvious 30 to 40-somethings voicing barely pubescent children, which is especially distracting with the males who all have much deeper voices than kids their age should ever be able to have. The guy playing Tidus does seem to try and put on a child's voice, which only makes it more disturbing.

It also gives me an occasion to play "Overwatch bingo", where I try and spot how many voice actors from a French dub can be heard in Overwatch, strengthening my theory that there must be a grand total of about twelve voice actors in all of France and that said game hires them all. I have already crossed off D.Va and Lucio.

I quickly find all the items I need and go back to Kairi. She gives me a Potion + in exchange for the items. We get to a cutscene where the kids ponder why they are on this island and what worlds lie away from them. So they just ended up on this island without knowing how or why, then? interesting (also, that reminds me of ClaDun of all things). Also, turns out the grey-haired boy is called Riku. Huh. Kind of a random reference.

Afterwards, Riku gives Sora a starfish-shaped fruit called a Paopou fruit, claiming that if two people share one, they lives will be forever intertwined and teases Sora, claiming that he knows he wants to have some. Riku, the fangirls don't need your help with shipping. But there is no time to worry about that because the drugs have just kicked in:




So yeah, suddenly, Donald Duck wearing... that appears in another cutscene. He is walking around a castle and enters a throne room presumably meant for Mickey, whose egomania has clearly reached unfathomable levels. However, Mickey isn't there and Pluto brings up a note. Donald reads it but of course, we don't get to hear or see what it says. Donald freaks the f*** out over it and goes to find Dingo (Goofy's French name), who is sleeping in the garden. He is also wearing a suit of armour because sure, why not? Donald uses a lightning bolt to wake Dingo up, so I'm guessing Donald is a black mage in this game's universe. Donald tells Dingo there's an emergency and not to tell anyone about it, not even "Queen" Minnie or Daisy... who it turns out were right behind him the whole time.

... aaand that's the end of that, back to the island! Wakka says that he's going to explore a cave near an old tree with Tidus, Selphie repeats the story of the Paopou fruit. I also noticed that a window leading to the side of a cliff is now open when it was closed before. Gonna have to take a look at that later. I go to the bay where I find Riku, who asks me for name ideas for the raft, with him suggesting Hautvent (French for Highwind. Get it?!). Well, if we're doing references, I might as well get in on that and I suggest Hydre (check out my LP of FF8 if you don't get it. Ha ha! Plugs!). Riku wants to race to decide which name wins.

Sora decides to add to the wager by saying that if he wins, he gets to be captain. Riku, on the other hand, offers that whoever wins gets to share a Paopou with Kairi. Sora looks like he finds this as weird as I do. After a frankly embarrassing performance, I lose and so the ship is named Hautvent although Riku claims that the Paopou thing was a joke. I'm gonna stick around for a little bit as it looks like there's some interesting stuff in this area. For starters, I can see a treasure chest inside a recess and using a nearby box, I can access it.




There is also a small cave with a rock that I can push out of the way to find a mushroom and a path that takes me back to the beach. Kairi tells me to gather food for the journey: an egg, three mushrooms, two coconuts, three fishes and drinkable water. Well, I'll get right on that... in Part 2! See you then and don't hesitate to comment, give me tips and generally give me your thoughts.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Part 2: Maybe he's a Leon? Nah...

Welcome back! I'm not sure how often I'll update, I'm shooting for an average of once every two days but it'll depend on my schedule so I think I'll just write new parts whenever I get the opportunity, so there may be times when I update more often and there may be some bigger gaps. We'll see.

Either way, let's get to collecting the food. We already have one mushroom from last time. Man, I am blazing through this! I find another mushroom near a wooden tower in the bay. There is a waterfall near the beach where I can get the water. Can't really find anything else right now so I'll check the cave Wakka told me about.

I find the third mushroom in there and I arrive to a strange place where the walls are carved and a door is at the end.




A cutscene is triggered, showing that the carvings were apparently made by the kids as it shows a flashback with younger versions of Sora and Kairi carving each-other's portrait (although I honestly thought they were portraits of Cloud and Tidus at first). Present-day Sora then adds a shooting star between him and Kairi. Aaaw! But don't steal Linoa and Squall's schtick, kid.

Sora is then interrupted by a hooded figure with a really cool voice who gives him a cryptic message about seeing the door to this world and claiming that this world will soon be annihilated. And then he disappears as mysteriously as he appeared. Creepy. And I've got to admit, this scene certainly piqued my interest.

I can't open the door, not yet anyway, so I guess I just have to go back and pay more attention to my surroundings. I talk to Selphie and she gives me a useful tip: look at the sky, if I can see birds, there must be a nest nearby. I can also now challenge her to a duel as well. Hm, curious if she still uses her nunchaku so let's give it a try. Turns out, she actually uses a jump rope instead. Okay, I've got to admit, that's kind of cute. It may be silly, but it's my kind of silly. Oh and I do beat her. Hurray! I can beat up little girls!

I find an egg atop a palm tree and by climbing a nearby, taller tree and jumping off it, I can reach the egg and collect it.




I also found out I can drop coconuts by hotting palm trees with my sword, but for some reason only the green ones, which drop much more rarely than the regular one, count towards the quest. As for the fishes, all three are in the beach area and I only have to swim/walk towards them to catch them. So, let's bring everything back to Kairi. She gives me another Potion + as a reward. There is another short cutscene between Sora and Kairi before going back to the Disney thing.

Apparently, we get to read the letter now. Turns out Mickey left to figure out why the stars are going out one after the other, an omen of catastrophe according to him. He tasks Donald and Dingo to find "a boy with a key" and that they need to go to a town called Traverse to meet "Leon", a.k.a. Squall. Minnie declares that Donald and Dingo will be accompanied by Jiminy Cricket on their journey. OH GOOD. That sanctimonious asshole is tagging along. Give me some bug spray.

Alright, alright, I'm kidding. He tells us that his world disappeared and he is the only one to have made it to the castle. Well that's depressing. Donald insists that once they get to another world, they cannot tell anyone where they come from. Not sure why that is, maybe it'll be explained later. They go to a room full of machinery, hop in a bizzarelly low-poly ship that I think is implied to be a toy (or at least designed after a toy ship) and in a moment that genuinely made me chuckle, they "take off"... by being dropped down a chute.

We get back to Destiny Island, where Sora is pondering what Kairi told him. Looking out the window, he sees a storm brewing in the distance and oddly, he seems to be in a room that's away from the island, implying that he's on another island, I guess? So do they use canoes to move between islands? Anyway, Sora springs into action as we hear a woman's voice, presumably Sora's mom (wait, these kids parents are around?) telling him to come downstairs for dinner. This is really weird and I'm willing to bet it's a dream.

Sora seemingly teleports there (so I guess he doesn't actually need a boat? Or maybe that just confirms my dream theory). He sees a huge portal thing open in the sky and monsters, presumably the infamous Heartlesses, appear. My first instinct it is to attack them with my sword but it doesn't do anything, so it looks like I just have to run. Interestingly, the path to the cave has been replaced by a door:




Before going there though, I want to check if the other kids are around. I do find Riku, which starts a cutscene. Riku doesn't seem concerned with the storm or the monsters and just says that the door is open, seemingly excited that they can go to other worlds, even if it means never seeing their parents again (so they DO have their parents there. Weird that this would only be brought up now). He also says he isn't afraid of the darkness, which is a good thing because he immediately gets swallowed by it. Sora also nearly gets swallowed, but escapes and his wooden sword is replaced with the keyblade.

Am... am I the only one who cannot take this weapon seriously? Like, I get that there's this whole thing about him opening the door and it's symbolic and shit, but couldn't they have tried to make it look at least a little bit like a sword? Hell, real-life keys look a bit sword-like nowadays so they could have made a design that works, but this thing really just looks like a giant key. To be fair, it's still a big chunk of iron so it WOULD do quite a lot of damage, but it still looks so silly to me. Jeez, and some people make fun of the gunblade...

At least I can hit the Heartless now so we have our first actual non-tutorial battle and like I said, the controls do feel good. I cross the door and find Kairi standing next to the one we saw previously. She looks rather withdrawn and she is blown away by a massive gust of wind that blows the door open. Sora tries to grab Kairi but just as she is about to touch him, she disappears. Sora is tossed outside and the giant monster we've seen in the tutorial returns.




The fight is fairly easy although it does get a bit tougher once it starts spamming energy balls at me and I have to start slaying the Heartlesses around for HP bonuses. I defeat the monster and it gets sucked back into the portal... and so does Sora.

We cut back to the Disney part of the plot, where Dingo and Donald arrive at Traverse Town (or just "Traverse" in French). They are wearing more casual clothing, presumably to fit in better, with Donald wearing his infamous zipper spiral hat. I really hope that's Nomura indulging in some self-parody here because if that's meant to be played straight, that's just cringe-worthy. Pluto looks like he's sniffed something and Dingo suggests following him, but Donald brushes him off asking him "What do you know about it?". Gee, more like Donald Dick.

Pluto still follows the scent he's found and discovers Sora, who he wakes up. Sora is understandably rather confused by his new surroundings. By the way, this cutscene confirmed something I've been meaning to bring up for a while: most of the Disney characters look fine, but some of them look rather weird. I already noticed Minnie's head was kind of off and I've got to say there's something a bit creepy about Pluto. It's especially weird considering as I mentioned before, the character design is great and the original characters as well as the Final Fantasy ones look very good.

Looking around, there are crates and barrels around, but those can't be moved or destroyed. I also find a red marking on some fences but I can't interact with it. Going further, it looks like I'll be able to visit the town and get some stuff there and once again, I have to praise the visuals as the designs are great.




I can enter a store, which is being staffed by Huey, Dewey and Louie. Clearly this town is corrupt as we already see evidence of child labour. On a slightly more serious note, I find it weird how tiny they are. I mean, I know they're kids but they still look out of scale compared to everything else. Also, aren't they Donald's nephews? Yet they come from a different world? Is that ever explained?

Walking around some more, I find another marking on the ground near a tavern, this one being blue. There is a chest near some tables but I can't open it, Sora saying that there must be a trick. Since there are candles on the tables, I thought the trick was to blow them all out at the same time but that doesn't seem to work so I'll leave it be for now. A female NPC tells me that all those who have nowhere to go come to this town and that everyone here has a dark past. Okay, so maybe I actually wasn't that far off when I said this town is corrupt.

According to another NPC, the town's inhabitants are people whose worlds were destroyed, and he ominously mentions that the town has been growing. Wait, does that mean the worlds the FF and Disney characters come from are destroyed in this universe and the characters who didn't make it are dead? Guess it's not as much of a fanservice game as I thought, then. "Hey kids, did you like Final Fantasy 7? Well, too bad! Barret's dead! Suck on that! And did you like the Hunchback of Notre-Dame? Well, you'll be pleased to hear that all of Paris is gone! Deal with it!".

In all honesty, I actually really like the concept of parallel worlds disappearing with the few survivors ending up in some kind of ragtag town whose growth actually carries sad implications. It's really dark while still being kid-friendly and it would be thought-provoking for children, but I cannot take it as its own story when it is directly linked to other works. I really think that drags Kingdom hearts down. As I've said before, it would be so much better if it were a fully original product, it would make it a lot easier to get immersed in this universe.

I also see a weird mail box with a giant tongue sticking out which tells me it'll give me a reward if I give it ten letters. I enter an accessories shop and a cutscene begins. Cid from FF7 appears to be the owner, who brings Sora up to date on what happened to him. There is also a green marking here. Walking around some more, I find a big lock although my keyblade can't do anything about it.

I get to another area where a cutscene shows a man running away from something and tripping.



He's not having a very good time of it.


And oh yeah, he gets his freaking heart ripped out. It gets swallowed into an orb, which then spawns an armoured Heartless. This starts a battle with several Heartlesses, who now drop munnies, the game's currency (as you probably guessed from the not-so-creative name). I love how there is no acknowledgement of the man getting killed, with Sora merely noting that those are the same monsters he saw on the island. After the fight, I enter a hotel, just as Dingo and Donald enter the area. Can't do anything in the hotel for now so let's go back.

Going a bit further, after another fight, I enter another building just as Donald and Dingo exit the hotel. This takes me to a clockwork room where there are more Heartlesses. I go through, taking the opportunity to grind a little. Once I exit, I end up in a small outside area with a ladder, but Sora refuses to climb it because it looks unstable.

I can drop down, however, and so I can keep visiting the area. There is another entrance to a building nearby so let's check it out. Once again, there is a near-miss with Dingo and Donald. Inside the building I am told that the 99 puppies got lost during the destruction of their world and to look out for them in the different worlds. Well, no ambiguity about it any more, the worlds of these adorable characters loved by the whole family are F***ING DEAD. Everything you know and love is doomed to oblivion, kids! Nothing you will ever achieve matters! heh, that's a lesson I can approve of.

Not much else of not here so let's keep going. Looking around, there is only one door left to check, next to a fountain, which according to the text takes me to an alley. Yet another Dingo-Donal near-miss. In there is a simple puzzle where, by placing a crate under one of the buildings' roof, I can get to a chest which nets me a pretty stone, which is apparently useless but sells for a lot of money.




I also noticed another chest hidden behind a wall of indestructible crates but I haven't figure out how to get there yet. I thought I could just stack up a crate and a barrel and jump over the whole thing, but the stack breaks as soon as I land. Looks like I've seen everything so let's move on to the third district.

immediately I get attacked by Heartlesses. There is a pipe with some electrical wiring poking out. Guess we'll have to fix that later. I also find a locked door with a flame drawn on it. Looking around, I see a blue marking. Seriously, I'm getting vary curious about what those are and I'm really hoping I find out soon. Surely they're not just here for decoration? There is also a different locked door with a big keyhole next to it. Again, can't do anything about it.

Well, I can't go further and I can't think of anything else to do so I guess my only option left now is to backtrack. I went back to Cid's store and sold the stone. As I left, I was only expecting to look around some more, but a cutscene starts so it looks like going back IS what I was supposed to do. Someone off-screen tells me that where I go "they" will attack me. The camera shows his face and it is revealed to be...




Yay, I found Squall! (Yeah, I'm not calling him Leon) He says he wants to see my keyblade and Sora takes it to mean he wants to steal it and refuses, prompting Squall to attack. Geeze, Squall, you never were very diplomatic but even for you, that's going a bit far. I've mentioned it before but I really like Squall's redesign here. I think it looks really cool and fits his style very well. I also like the little touch of him having wing patterns on the back of his jacket as a reference to Linoa, showing how important she is to him and that even when she's not with him physically, he is still very much her knight and fights in her honour.

The arm belts are a bit silly but I feel like they could be worked into his gloves or the sleeves of his jacket for a similar effect. I even like the fact that it's a bit more revealing as it shows he has grown more approachable, more open to the world. Only tiny nitpick: could use more fur. Oh and Squall would never betray his love of V-necks, maybe it's to make up for it that he has such a ridiculously low-cut one in the Dissidia games.

I also like how during combat, he doesn't even bother running, casually walking with a hand on his hip, he dodges by just hopping backwards, his gunblade still resting on his shoulder and even when I hit him, he barely flinches and just sounds mildly annoyed. How much less of a f*** could he give? Sora of course cannot take the badassery and gets his ass handed to him, which greatly impresses Yuffie, who appears after the fight to congratulate Squall on beating up a small child.

Another cutscene shows us Dingo and Donald pissing about and meeting Aerith. Well, of all people to not be dead. back to Sora's plot, he wakes up to reunite with Kairi. She explains that the monsters are after the keyblade, but what they really want is Sora's heart because he is the one wielding the keyblade. Aaand it turns out Sora was hallucinating and who he thought was Kairi is actually Yuffie. She actually refers to Squall as... well, Squall, and he corrects her, saying his name is Leon. No it's not, Squall. No, it's not. He is also not impressed with Sora being the chosen one. Now that's the Squall I know and love!

They cross-cut between Sora's plot and the Donald-Dingo one, with Aerith explaining that the other worlds used to be a secret but everything changed when the Fire Nation Heartless attacked. Yuffie and Squall explain that they are attracted to the darkness inside people's hearts. We also learn that one Ansem discovered the Heartless and explained them in detail in reports. Unfortunately, the pages got scattered across the worlds and Donald thinks Mickey left to find them. Finally Squall and Yuffie explain that the Heartless fear the keyblade and that it decides who its wielder is, with Squall saying that it made a questionable choice. You know, I don't have anything against Sora but I love Squall just being annoyed with him. After the cutscene is over, talking to Yuffie has her tell me to try the keyblade on keyholes I find, so I presume that means I can now do that.

They want to accompany me to protect me and the keyblade from the Heartless, but I think we've done enough for today so I'll end this part here. I've got to admit, the plot is getting pretty intriguing. My opinion on the pointlessness of the crossover aspect hasn't changed and I still say it undermines the game's potential and that it would be massively improved by being fully original, but I guess I can see why other people would get into it. So I'll see you later for part 3, where I guess we'll work as a team with Yuffie and Squall. See you there and again, if you have any comment, even if it's criticism, do not hesitate to post your thoughts and questions in this thread.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

No update today, I'm afraid. I'm finishing up a sketch so I won't have the time to squeeze in another part. Probably tomorrow.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Part 3: Meet the team

Last time, the plot really got into gear. We reached the first proper town, got the keyblade, met Yuffie and Squall and were told that the Heartless are after Sora, or more accurately, his heart, and the keyblade. They have decided to accompany me, so let's get going.

squall wants to go meet Aerith, so her showing up at the same time isn't a coincidence. Just as we are about to leave, armoured Heartlesses show up inside the building. Sora escapes with Squall while Yuffie creates a diversion. As she dashes out of the room, we realize that Aerith, Donald and Dingo were in the next room the whole time. Okay, that's pretty funny.

Squall tells me not to waste my time with the armoured Heartlesses and to find their boss instead. He then starts running through them, making his walking pace during our fight all the more hilarious. I do want to try fighting the Heartlesses just to see what they've got and it turns out they're actually quite good for grinding as they give 3 experience points a piece (as opposed to 1 for regular Heartlesses) and a lot more munnies. They are also a lot stronger.

We reach the first district, which Squall explains he, Yuffie and Aerith are keeping safe so I can go back there if I need to heal, and he also tell me to go check what I can open in the other districts. You know, you'd think he could accompany me for protection considering I'm wielding the keyblade and all. I like to think Squall is hoping Sora will die and the keyblade would go on to someone else. Oh Squall, you ass, I love you.

Remember those things with keyholes I mentioned last time? Let's give them a try now.




In this one, I get a postcard to feed to the mailbox with the tongue (man this game makes me type weird things). I also find Aerith, who gives me a mégapotion. Going back to Cid's store, I just realized there's a chest on a shelf I can access by jumping there, netting me a piece of mithril, which can be used for crafting items. And in the grand tradition of JRPGs, Cid doesn't mind me stealing his shit right in front of him.

Time to actually get to work and thanks to my previous explorations, I know where to go. I get to the third district. On the way there, I find a second postcard. Once I arrive, it turns out Heartlesses were expecting me. Dingo and Donald are here and meet the creatures for the first time. And Donald is ready to kick ass and chew bubble-gum!




You know, Donald being badass just doesn't feel right... which is probably why he and Dingo immediately get bitch-slapped of the balcony and land on Sora, killing him instantly. Okay no, that last part doesn't happen. But we do have to fight and Donaldingo actually help! Unlike someone else I can think of, Dewey. After we defeat them, this monstrosity shows up:



By which I mean the attempt to make us take Donald and Dingo seriously as badass warriors.


This boss is tougher than the previous ones and actually gets me to use a feature I didn't know about: I can heal AI characters by using items on them. I actually saved Donald just in time that way. Eventually, I manage to whittle down its health and I manage to destroy whatever this thing was one limb after the other. In a cutscene, Donald promises that accompanying them will help Sora find his friends... while admitting to Dingo that he's making it up. Again, Donald Dick. Squall then tells Sora to go with them, especially if he wants to find his friends, strengthening my theory about him wanting to get Sora killed. Seeing how depressed Sora looks, Donald tries to cheer him up by claiming their ship works on joyful faces (at least I hope he's just saying that), causing Sora to pull the creepiest forced smile I have ever seen:



And we thought Tidus' forced laugh was bad.


We fade to a different scene where some people (?) who we can only see in silhouettes are observing the scene thanks to some magic hologram thing and they are angry at Sora's victory. One of the is clearly Captain Hook as, well, we can see his hook and the only one of them we are shown explicitly is Maleficent! So I take she is their leader?

Back to our group, Squall, Yuffie and Aerith and saying their goodbyes to Sora and they give me 100 munnies to buy items in preparation for our trip. I am then informed that I can access the ship via save points. Interesting, does that mean there's an open-world aspect and I get to go from one world to another as I please? on top of that, I can now use magic as Sora has learned Brasier (Fire). He also learn the skill Roulade (Roll) which I presume will allow me to roll out of the way of attacks, something I kind of wish I had during the previous boss fight, really. I can now wander around the town some more before we leave, which I will as there is still some stuff I'd like to check out.

I finally get some info on the marks I noticed earlier. Apparently, if Sora, Donald and Dingo are all near a blue one, I can activate it. In the case of the one shown to me, it teleports the group to a hidden place where I find a third postcard. Going back to the third district, I can finally interact with the keyhole, which unlocks a door to the first district so I don't have to take a big detour any more. Nice.

Now that I can use fire magic, I can also open the door with the flame pattern. It leads to a strange place with a small home surrounded by water. Behind it is a chest but I can't seem to access it by swimming. To access the island the house is standing on, I have to jump on some rocks. Looking around, I find a crack in the wall which allows me to access a place described simply as "empty room". This triggers a cutscene. We found Kairi! Buuut it turns out it was just Sora tripping balls again. However, someone else does come to meet us:




Merlin the Wizard! What are YOU doing here?! He says we arrived earlier than expected. Does that mean I sequence broke or is just what he always says? He says the King (meaning Mickey) has asked him to help us. After doing his magic schtick to instantly furnish the room, he explains he was asked to teach Sora magic. Then the Fairy Godmother also comes up and says she was also asked to help us. Man, this place is getting crowded.

So I gave the magic training a try and it's pretty much just clay shooting. You can pick moving or immobile targets and try your spells. That's a bit disappointing, I was hoping for mini-games to unlock new spells or something. As it turns out it really is just to try out new spells before going into battle.

After that, I decide to go check that clockwork room to see if anything's changed. It hasn't, but the street outside is a different story as the ladder ahs been moved to the opposite wall, allowing me to climb on the roof. I find a red mark behind some unbreakable crates and three pipes with bell symbols on them (there are identical ones at the fountain). Can't really do anything about any of this but there is a path that goes along the higher parts of the buildings in the area, allowing to run and jump along the roofs. Platforming? In MY JRPG? It's more likely than you think! This allows me to find a piece of mithril and a path to the third district.

Can't think of anything else to do so I go back to the first district to post the cards, for which I get some good items: a piece of mithril, a megapotion and a pavillon (which heals the group's HP and MP. I save and now that we're ready to leave, that's it for this part! I'll see you in part 4 and in the meantime, if I missed anything or if you have comments to make, go ahead and tell me in this thread. For example, I'm not sure if I'm going fast enough or not. If you feel like it's dragging, I'll try and hurry thing along. Bye!

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Part 4: Sora - Ace Attorney

Time for us to leave Traverse. I assume we can go back later in case I forgot something. From the ship, I can choose which world to go to. Oooh, branching paths, non-linear gameplay, I like that. And the game is even nice enough to warn me of the power of the Heartless there. I'll start with the easier one because... well, that just seems sensible, doesn't it?

Also, I have to play a StarFox minigame to get there and I somehow managed to crash on my first try.




But I eventually make it to the first Disney world: Wonderland. As we arrive, we of coursee the White Rabbit, who has pink eye for some reason. I assume he's been hanging around with the caterpillar. We go through the rooms you'll remember from the film and get to the talking door handle, which freaks Donald out because clearly that's the first weird thing to happen in this game.

The handle makes two bottle appear, a red one and a blue one but I can only drink the blue one. Sora drinks it and despite being the only one to do so, Donald and Dingo shrink as well. Dropping down, Heartlesses appear,including some new ones that fly.

Now that I'm small, I can access some new areas including one that I revealed by pushing a bed earlier. This takes me to the royal gardens where there is a trial where in a surprising twist, the Queen of Hearts finds her innocent and everything is alright.

No, of course not, she wants to cut off Alice's head and I have to find evidence that Alice is innocent of trying to steal the Queen's heart. I leave to try and do that and I meet the Cheshire Cat, who doesn't really help much. There are also flowers around that can make me grow back if I give them a potion. So no mushroom or potion or anything like that this time? Bummer. Another flower wants an ether for some reason. I assume it's gonna get me good stuff if I give it one but I don't have any at the moment.

By the way, there's a little problem that's been nagging me for a little while now. Remember how I praised the combat controls? Yeah, I'm gonna have to put an asterisk on that because while I do still believe it's very nicely responsive, I noticed the game has a tendency to make you aim automatically for certain targets even when you're not in lock-on mode, and quite often it's not the target you want, which can get very irritating, especially when you're in a tight spot. The problem can be slightly mitigated by adjusting the camera, but the camera controls aren't great as it tends to just stop when there is stuff in the way unlike in other games where it would zoom in, which seems far more logical.

There's also something weird going on with the graphics in this area as even though it's in a woods-like area as you might expect from Wonderland, it appears to have walls with the background being just pasted on it like a matte painting:




They didn't do it in any previous scene so it doesn't seem to be a technical limitation, so I'm guessing it's an artistic choice but I really don't get it. Admittedly I haven't watched Alice in Wonderland since I was a child but surely that wasn't a thing in the movie, was it? Anyway, during my search, I find boxes containing a thorn, a smell and footsteps which are all evidence to prove Alice's innocence. So when they said "find evidence", they meant literally find it like in an Easter egg hunt. I also find a box that contains three of the lost Dalmatians. There isn't even an animation showing them or anything. Sorry guys, but just "finding" things in chests like that does feel a little bit cheap.

Having found everything I can, I give the flower a potion to make me grow. I can now hit a tree to make it spin (don't act like that's never happened to you) and I can eat a nut to make me shrink again (which sounds like an innuendo but isn't). After some really obnoxious platforming, I make it to a door that takes me to the room with the drinks... aaaand it doesn't seem like I can do anything about it.

Turns out what I really had to do was once I was big, step on a nearby stump of a tree, pushing it into the floor which, obviously, makes a plant grow, allowing me to access another path to the room with the drinks, make me land on a tap, allowing me to access the last piece of evidence. My God, it was so simple all along. The cat returns, basically just to tell me I've got all the evidence and gives me an item that teaches me Ice.

Back at the garden, I present the evidence although just before the Queen can check it, a fifth piece appears and gets mixed with the rest. To make matter worse, once the boxes containing the evidence are separated again, the Queen announces that I must pick one and she will judge Alice based on that. I suspect that no matter which one I choose, it's going to turn out to be the new, bullshit evidence that just appear which is just going to incriminate Alice even more, isn't it?

Er, actually I'm not sure but Heartless does appear and immediately fade away. Sora apparently does consider that evidence but the Queen decides that opposing her in itself makes us guilty and sends her cards after us. The cards keep spawning but once they're all down, I have a bit of time to attack the wheels on a machine that they used to raise the cage Alice is detained in, lowering it, and eventually I can destroy the machine itself. Alice's cage drops down.




... but Alice has disappeared! And I am now tasked with finding her. Guess the Queen forgave me quickly. I go back to the woods area and find the Cheshire cat again, telling me to find the private garden. Heartlesses then appear, including a new, enormous one that appears to be able to summon regular versions. I tried killing it the first time (I think he's vulnerable if I attack him from the back) but it managed to give me my first Game Over despite no boss pulling off this feat. On my second try, I just book it and find the gardens.

Said gardens happen to be home to the Mad Hatter's tea party! No one is there though and there is only a note wishing us a happy unbirthday. Nice to see Madlibs doing a cameo. There is also a house and entering it starts a battle against more Heartlesses. There are also two lamps and the cat did tell me to turn on the lights to see "shadows". After I do, he tells me that shadows will appear in this room, but elsewhere and if you look around, you'll notice it's the room with the drinks, only upside down. Clever design, it must be said.

So I go back to the normal version of the room and come face to face with this:




Again, really liking the character design. The boss is resilient but not too hard to fight. The trick is that his default target is up high so I have to use my surroundings or magic to reach it. Every few hits, it drops down though and I can wail down on it. After doing this a few times, it dies. In a cutscene, the keyblade shoots a beam through the sleepy doorknob, which spits out a gummi (an item for the ship). The cat then returns and claims that Alice is no longer there, she's gone with the shadows in the heart of darkness. Wrong gaming franchise, buddy. Anyway, Donald suggests looking for her in another world and that's exactly what we'll do in part 5!

Hm, I've got to say, after the last two parts made me warm up on the game a little, this one kind of hurt my opinion of it a little. The platforming was really annoying, searching for evidence was a very basic and rather boring fetch quest, the story felt more like a series of random events than a plot (and no, it taking place in Wonderland does not excuse it) and even the combat was a bit lackluster, with lots of cramped, awkward fighting and these new huge Heartlesses felt a bit cheap. Hell, even the graphics felt less inspired than usual, which is quite disappointing for freaking Wonderland. Here's hoping the next world is better.

[Deleted]

I hated everything gummi ship related in this game. You would think traveling by spaceship to different worlds would be fun, but it's boring as f***.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Nov 4, 2016 7:06:36 GMT -5 @vyse said:

I hated everything gummi ship related in this game. You would think traveling by spaceship to different worlds would be fun, but it's boring as f***.

Speaking of the ship, it's got a ton of items. I assume they can be used to upgrade the ship but the game hasn't explained anything about that. Is it worth it to look into it or can I happily ignore that?

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Part 5: Hercules Tarzan

Welcome back! Last time, we went to Wonderland and I was somewhat disappointed by it so here's hoping the next world is better. On we go! A new world is available and I'm sure it will continue the Alice plot but I really want to check the one I ignored last time, if only because the new one has a three-stars difficulty rating. Note that in order to access a world, I need to be on an adjacent one, I can't just skip straight to one that's far away, meaning that if I want to go further, I have to go from world to world, playing the flying mini-game each time. Hm, that's gonna get annoying quick.

Anyway, this world is the Olympus Coliseum. So that'll be set in the Hercules universe, then. Inside the coliseum, I meet Phil, who is making preparations for a tournament and am immediately told to do menial chores.



I really wanted to open this session with a beautiful image, so here is Phil's ass. I'm still amazed that Disney okay'ed this design and didn't have him at least wear a loin cloth or something.


He apparently thought Sora was Hercules (as Phil had his back turned) and after clearing up the misunderstanding, Sora claims to be a hero and Phil wants him to prove his worth. This is apparently accomplished by breaking a shit-ton of barrels in a short amount of time. This of course is the unknown 13th trial of Hercules from when he was a Street Fighter character who reached a bonus level.

I really freaking hated this mini-game as it's the worst kind of mini-game: just tediously repeating the same action over and over again with no real skill involved, the only challenge being that you have to do it fast and you are given barely enough time to do it. I really don't get why developers keep doing this. It really feels like tutorial stuff except it comes up long after the tutorials are over and brings the action to a screeching halt. It's in two parts and the first one isn't too bad if you use the lock-on system but the second level is just annoying, especially since the last barrel is on a platform and the awkward platforming in this game can easily screw you over.

After we are finally done, Phil... still doesn't agree to let us enter the tournament. Well, that sure artificially padded out the game, which I'm sure is totally necessary in a JRPG. On the plus side, he does teach me Thunder and agrees to become Sora's coach. Unfortunately, all that means is that I get to replay those super-awesome mini-games...

Gonna be completely honest with you guys, not very impressed by this part either. And sure glad this had a higher combat difficulty rating than the Wonderland part when there was no fighting involved. I mean, I'm guessing we'll eventually be able to participate in the games and then there will be combat but what's the point of even allowing me to get here so soon if I can't really do anything? F*** it, guess it's time to check on the new world. Which reminds me I have to do the boring StarFox-ish mini-game three more times. OH GOOD.

Actually, maybe we won't have to do that right away because once we go back outside, Hades appears:




He gives us a ticket for the Coliseum and I guess having an entrance ticket means we get to participate in the games? Man, remind me to be more careful next time I buy a ticket to a wrestling show. Anyway, since Hades is just the spitting image of trustworthiness AND he's being disturbingly touchy-feely with a small child, Sora seems to think all is well and happily takes the ticket. We show it to Phil, who finally agrees to let us take part in the tournament. First, we have to take part in an elimination round, which means fighting two groups of Heartlesses. Easy-peasy. Afterwards, another participant walks by:




Huh. No idea who that could be. Anyway, three more groups come up, after which another cutscene shows that Cloud is actually working for Hades, who wants him to eliminate Sora and Hercules during the tournament, because Cloud is apparently a goddamn hired assassin now. I really hope it's going to turn out that Cloud is playing Hades or something because if not, it's one more reason for me to hate his post-FF7 characterization where Square has inexplicably decided to depict him as an emotionless drone with a chip on his shoulder and a stick up his ass even though he was nothing like that in FF7. It's like he's had the exact opposite development of Squall, who started off cold and aloof but warmed up during his own game and has since been depicted in his post-FF8 appearances as stern but fair and a lot more approachable than he once was.

Well, after multiple attempts, it seems that I can't even make it past the elimination rounds so I guess NOW it's time to go bak and check on the remaining world. On the plus side, it turns out I was wrong about having to do the StarFox game three times as the four worlds form a circle, so I can go there directly from the Hercules world. Once there, Donald and Sora get into an argument because Sora wants to explore to see if his friends are there but Donald Dick refuses, saying that finding the king is more important.

Their argument causes them to crash-land and get separated and it looks like this world is based on Tarzan.




Sora is soon attacked by a tiger and after I defeat it, Tarzan arrives to chase it away for good. Despite some communication problems, he seems to know where Kairi and Riku are so Sora decides to follow him. Meanwhile, Donald and Dingo wake up somewhere else with Donald freaking the f*** out when he sees Tokina because animals existing is apparently terrifying to him despite being an animal himself. What is even stranger is that he doesn't freak out when he meets Clayton:



How's your neck doing, buddy?


Back with Sora, we follow Tarzan and get to an unusual sequence where we slide along tree branches like in the movie. We arrive at a scientific camp where we reunite with Donald and Dingo. Hurray for minute-long non-issues. It does have a little bit of point though as Donald and Dingo found a gummi thing, which makes them think the king (any particular reason they carefully avoid saying Mickey's name? Are we supposed to believe it's someone else?) may have been around. We also meet Jane, who wants to show Tarzan some pictures to see how he reacts. I have to find them around the camp, which is a very easy task.

Interestingly, Sora feels like he knows a building shown in the first picture even though he never left the island before the events of the game. Clayton suggests that Sora's friends must be with the gorillas as their lair is the only place in the jungle they haven't visited yet as Tarzan refuses to lead them there, but Sora's plight has made him accept, with Clayton volunteering to accompany us for totally not nefarious reasons, I'm sure. Also, now that I have more than two companions, I can choose which ones I take with me. I want to see what Tarzan is made of and Donald has been frankly useless so far so I'll have Tarzan and Dingo with me as much as possible, although I need Donald for the blue marks stuff. Speaking of that, I find one of those, which allows me to rescue three more Dalmatians.

Going through the swamps, I find three more Dalmatians and reach the gorillas with ease. Considering how close they were to the camp, I am beginning to question the thoroughness of Clayton's search.



First one to make a Harambe joke gets kicked in the groin.


Tarzan asks Kerchak, the leader, to help Sora find his friends, but Kerchak ignores him and leaves. I'm guessing we have to try and follow him and we can now swing from vine to vine. This allows me to find yet more Dalmatians. Eventually we return to Tarzan's treehouse, where Clayton is trying to kill Tok but Donald intervenes just in the nick of time. Obviously, this incident didn't score Sora's group any points with Kerchak.

Going back to the camp (wow, lots of back-and-forth in this part), Jane is furious at Clayton because she is shocked that a hunter might be into hunting. Clayton leaves but gets paranoid as he hears ruffling coming from the jungle and fires at something. We go outside to check it out and find a gorilla being attacked by...




... MONKEY. HEARTLESSES. Okay game, I was ready to give up on you but then you broke out the Monkey Heartlesses. There may be hope for you yet. I check everywhere and find more gorillas to save as well as three Dalmatians. After going on a second tour to check if I missed anything, I find Clayton's smoking pipe and another tiger attacks. After we defeat it, Tok arrives, apparently to protect Jane as the camp is once again attacked by the Monkey Heartlesses. Once we get there though, Jane is nowhere to be found and Tarzan says that she's in the treehouse. He knows that because... shut up.

We find Jane trapped in some makeshift cell in a tree and after a fight, she tells us all she remembers is Clayton entering the tent. Tarzan figures out that the gorillas have been captured and now we have to hurry to stop him. On my way to the treehouse, I accidentally fall off and end up in a dead-end I had previously visited... which turns out to be a good thing as it shows a cutscene of Clayton about to shoot the gorillas, with Sora stopping him. Tarzan says it's not really Clayton and whoever it is, they attack. Despite his Heartless backup, Clayton goes down fairly easily.

But then, the cliff behind him just straight-up blows up and he appears to be floating in the air! After some more fighting, it is revealed that he is in fact riding this:




A giant freaking chameleon!! With this beast, he is more of a threat but we still defeat him. AS it dies, the chameleon falls on Clayton, killing him. Well, I think it's still not as brutal as his death in the movie. After that, Kerchak pats Sora on the head... and throws him, Donald and Dingo into the air, making them crash on an upper platform. Tarzan joins them and, looking at the vast area revealed by the destruction of the cliff, announces that this is his home and we'll be exploring that next time, in part 6!

Right, so... the Hercules part just straight-up garbage and I really hope it improves once we go back to it but frankly, considering it's a tournament story, I doubt it. It was nice to see Cloud, even if is the stick-up-his-ass version, and Hades is always fun, but the "training" was busywork nonsense of the worst type. The Tarzan part was better and is the closest thing to a proper plot we've had since leaving Traverse Town but I still fail to see a connection to the main plot, further making me wonder why the crossover aspect needed to be there when it feels so disconnected from the main story and overall, almost everything we've seen since Traverse Town has felt like padding to me, to be bluntly honest.

Then again, we now have Monkey Heartlesses and that alone makes it almost worth it.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Sorry, it's been a while. Been caught up with other things. I promise, tomorrow, there WILL be a new part.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Part 6: Stuffing holes

As promised, we are back with a new part! We start off inside a cavern, which I have to say looks lovely:




There's some platforming going on and I already told you what I think of the platforming in this game but it's not too bad here and while it's fairly linear, I appreciate that you can use different paths to find items. What IS bad and something I've been waiting for a good spot to mention is the camera. The default camera angle is terrible here and the big, big problem with Kingdom Heart's camera controls is that you can only make it turn on an horizontal axis, which you do by holding L2 or R2 and you have to stop at the right time to get it to go where you want.

To make things worse, if there is anything in the way, instead of zooming in or making the 3D models translucent or something, here the camera just stops, meaning that in very narrow spots like here, it's almost impossible to adjust the camera at all. Now you CAN at least look around using the first person view but you can't interact with anything that way and you still have to deal with the crap angles during combat and platforming. There is no good reason why Tomb Raider 1 and 2, which were made before Sony released Dual Shock controllers, should have so much better camera controls than a PS2 game. We couldn't make it so the right stick controls the camera freely like in a sensible game, oh no! The right stick is obviously meant to be an alternate D-pad for navigating the menu!

Anyway, Tarzan takes us to a huge tree and after some nauseatingly whimsical and hamfisted dialogue about hearts and needing to have one to see friends, we find another keyhole and Sora activates it, getting another gummi thing. We then fade back to Maleficent's group, with the reveal that one of her henchmen is Jafar, who doesn't have the same voice actor as in the movie, which is very noticeable and very disappointing. There is an interesting plot twist though...




They're the ones who took Alice! Oddly, they bring her up after mentioning wanting to use the princesses against Sora's group, which is weird considering Alice isn't a princess and I don't think she's even considered a Disney Princess... is she?

Anyway, back to Tarzan's world, he gives us a keyring, which I can use to upgrade the keyblade. Before I can do anything about it though, I am immediately transported to one of these StarFox sequences. So er... I take it Kairi and Riku weren't actually there, then? I mean, Tarzan seemed to know them and with his speech about friendship, I thought it meant we were about to find them and it feels like they just kind of forgot to mention them.

The StarFox thing turns out to be only a cutscene (at least for now as we do get to pick a world to go back to) where they ponder what the gummi piece is considering it doesn't look like the other ones and they figure Squall might know because of course a guy who isn't even from their universe would know how their ship works better than they do. And yes, I do realize that's probably the case because the plot says so, doesn't mean it makes sense.

I figure I'd like to start by going back to Wonderland, partly to check if we can make some progress on the Alice situation and partly because I want to delay going back to the Hercules world as much as possible. Welp, turns out that there is nothing new there so... *sigh* ... let's go back to the Coliseum, which means I also put myself in a situation where I actually have to play the stupid StarFox mini-game twice. But you know what? Since they mentioned asking Squall about the gummi nugget thing, I'll stop by Traverse Town on the way there.

Once there, I figure out how to blow out the candles at the same time (casting Ice blows out two of them at once) and get an item that permanently increase a character's defence by 1. Nice. Yuffie informs me that Squall (who she apparently now does call Leon, more's the pity) must be training inside a cave that's connected to the alley near the fountain. Huh, guess it reminds him of the good old days with Quistis. Though knowing this game Quistis is most likely 13 in this universe for some reason so maybe she's not his mentor here.

More seriously, I do find the path and it has a red marker, which I can now activate as that's an ability I picked up after the Tarzan stuff.




Inside the cavern, we do indeed find Squall "training", although his training seems to consist entirely of swinging his gunblade in the air every few seconds. Jeez, don't strain yourself, Squall. As you can see, Aerith is also with him. They explain that each world has a keyhole which leads to the centre of its world and the Heartlesses are going into each world through the keyhole to modify its centre, eventually destroying the world. Seems a bit pointless to block access to the centre of the world if you can just go through the hole but okay. They also say that this is what the keyblade is for: to lock the keyholes and prevent access to the centre of each world.

Again, seems rather odd that these things wouldn't be locked in the first place if messing with the centre of a world can destroy it and I'm not sure how one is supposed to lock a hole but we'll say it's magic. This ends the conversation, but we didn't talk about the gummi nugget, did we? So talking to Squall again has Dingo ask if he knows what to do... which causes Squall to silently facepalm as his only response. Okay, if this IS supposed to be him being baffled that they'd ask him of all people about an item from a different world than his own, then I'll have to actually give the game credit for being smarter about this than I expected.

Aerith suggests asking Cid about it and Squall does show his nicer side by giving us an "earth orb", saying that it's a good-luck charm. This is really weird to me as Squall's story in Dissidia also involves him wearing a good-luck charm (given to him by Bartz), first finding the notion of it ridiculous but eventually growing to like it. I don't know why Square seems to have decided to associate Squall with good-luck charms in his post-FF8 appearances because that was not a thing in that game.

The closest thing to it I could think of would be his ring, which he gives to Linoa, who jokingly says she hopes it will give her the bravery and strength of a lion but even then it was never said to be lucky and considering its original name is Griever, I don't think that was the intent. Sora asks how to use the orb, causing Squall to, well...



Yep, that just about sums things up.


My favourite part is that he stays like that and trying to talk to him again has Sora try to get his attention and Squall continuing his silent facepalming. No-one in FF8 ever managed to lock him into a state of perma-palm. That's how hard he is facepalming right now. I swear, aside from his backstory, Squall is the best thing about this game. And people wonder why he's my favourite Final Fantasy character. It's even better when you remember that in FF8, he spared children his snark and was generally nicer to them than to other people and even rather protective of them, so he really has to be unimpressed to treat Sora this way.

But anyway, back to work. There are a few interesting things here. For starters, in front of Squall is a long tunnel which ends with a bizarre decoration of a moon and stars on a night sky (the rest of the cave has a green tint so it really stands out). I'm guessing this may become important later but for now I cannot interact with it any way. Closer to him and Aerith is a stairway going up. I find a chest containing more Dalmatians and at the top is an alternate path to Merlin's room, although apparently there's no way to go back to the cave from there.

At Cid's shop, he isn't much more impressed with the group when they ask him what the gummi nugget is as he is shocked that they wouldn't know. He explains that it's a navigummi, apparently a vital element of any gummi ship, asking the group if they are out of their mind to go into space without one. Hm, so I guess that means that's the real reason why Squall was facepalming. Oh well, still good.

He also explains that it allows to go to more places. Alright, that sounds cool, the game world is opening up! Cid offers to install the navigummi for us but in exchange, we have to deliver a book to Merlin (he doesn't explicitly name him but I know from the location he gives that it is, so I'm guessing I really did sequence-break earlier and this is when I'm supposed to discover him). Then the church bells start ringing. Cid tells us to check that out after we are done with the delivery, then to go meet him in his house in the third district.

I give Merlin the book and he tells me some pages are missing and that finding them will reveal a great secret! So yeah, that another collection quest. the Fairy Godmother also informs use that the item Squall gave us is a summoning orb. And the summon in question is... Simba?! Okay, I was kind of expecting the classic FF summons like Shiva, Ifrit, Bahamut, etc... but apparently we're not doing that. Well, I guess being able to summon a lion is still pretty cool. The downside is that I need to have three conscious characters to summon a creature and I can only do it once for each summon per fight. She also tells us to come back to her if we find more orbs.

On my way to meet Cid, I get ambushed by heartlesses, but they are quickly defeated by...




Well, son of a bitch! After all that running around, I wasn't expecting to just bump into him. Unfortunately, Kairi isn't with him. Sora obviously wants him to join them but Donald refuses for some reason. Riku discreetly leaves while Sora and Donald are arguing. Hm, I'm getting suspicious. It doesn't seem right to me that he would just randomly turn up like that, especially considering his strange behaviour during the attack on the island. He also seems a bit too sure about Kairi being alright. There's something fishy going on.

Well, no time to worry about that, back to the game. This is as good a time as any to bring up a new type of Heartless that has shown up. Those are winged and wear some kind of vaguely steampunk-ish mask and goggles. They look pretty cool except for the propellers on their heads. Sorry but propeller hats weren't funny in the 80's, they weren't funny in the 90's, they were never funny period and are never going to be funny.

While I'm here, I also cast Thunder on the wiring I mentioned earlier, which restored electricity to the area but I don't know what that accomplished yet. I go to the house Cid mentioned and everybody's here as he Aerith, Yuffie and Squall have decided to make it their new HQ! Cid asks if we know about Maleficent. They explain that she is said to be in town and she is the one manipulating the Heartless, having destroyed many worlds that way. Well shit, from trying to kill one girl out of spite to destroying entire worlds. Quite a villainous upgrade for ol' Maleficent. Cid and Squall tell us that nine years ago, Heartlesses destroyed their worlds and they found refuge in Traverse Town.

Ooooh, so THAT's why Squall is nine years older than he was in FF8. Doesn't seem to be too bothered that his world has been destroyed and everyone he knew and loved was killed, including the woman he loved, gave him a reason to live and he had sworn to protect even if she should become the World's enemy. That's also why the FF7 characters look like they haven't aged a day, the FFX characters are younger than in their own game, Aerith is alive again and Selphie is 5 years younger than she was in FF8 despite being from the same world as Squall! NOW it all makes perfect sense if you've suffered a stroke!

They also bring up Ansem's notes, which... we already knew about so I'm not sure why they're explaining it again, but they do say that they believe that Maleficent has most of the pages. Oh and Squall mentions that Ansem was the ruler of this refuge world. We then have a short cutscene where Maleficent shows Riku that Sora is talking with the rest of the characters, telling him that Sora replaced him instead of looking for him and telling him to join her. Well, you held the suspense of Riku's alignment for a good two minutes there, Kingdom Hearts, good thing you didn't save it and made us think that maybe he wasn't going to betray us so the twist would have actually had an impact, that would have been a shame.

And of course, that's apparently all he needs to be convinced that Sora abandoned him (despite being overjoyed to see him and inviting him to join them earlier) and to help Maleficent destroy entire worlds over it. I can relate, it reminds me of that time I joined Al Qaeda because Ben Laden showed me one of my friends having a beer with someone else, even though said friend invited me to come have one with them two minutes earlier.

See, stuff like this is what kills me about Kingdom Hearts. It COULD have worked, it's got good ideas and sets up intriguing concepts but it keeps f***ing them up by developing them in the most asinine of ways and seems to just flop around aimlessly with no clear direction, structure or build-up to anything. *sigh* Anyway, Cid says that the installation of the navigummi is complete so he is going back to his "real" work although he won't say what it is (and it's apparently not running his shop either).

Aerith brings up the clock and Cid tells us to go check on it and make the bell ring three time. Why specifically three times? I'unno. Oh and talking to Squall has him be surprised that it was a summoning orb, so... he didn't know either? Why was he so flabbergasted that Sora didn't then? Well, maybe he thought Sora was asking how to use a good-luck charm which, yeah, in this case, I can understand the reaction as well.

Also, this isn't really relevant to anything but this part has really made me realize how freaking tall Squall is in this game. Seriously, it's weird! in FF8, he was 177cm/5'10", so about average for a man, maybe even slightly below average (in fact, I remember thinking it was nice to see a male hero who didn't tower over everyone for once), with Irvine and Seifer being noticeably taller than him. Even taking into account the fact that he's only 17 in his game so he could still grow up a bit, I don't imagine he'd end up standing more than 180 cm/5'11". And yet in this one he is the tallest human character I've seen yet. He is almost a head taller than Cid! So yeah, random thought, not really a complaint, I just find it a bit weird.

Back at Cid's shop, he has been replaced by a generic NPC but can now be found behind the store, selling gummi ship upgrades. going to the church, I find that the clockwork room is now fully active. This moves platforms which allow me to press three switches, which did... er, something I'm sure. I get to the roof and find that the crates have been moved, allowing me to access the read marking. This in turn allows me to access the bell's rope. Ringing the bell once changes the decoration on the fountain and turns the water into fire which is a pretty creepy yet awesome imagery. Doing it a second time turns the fire back to water (booooo!) and changes the decoration again and doing it a third time...




... reveals a key hole! Of course, locking it isn't going to be as simple as just walking up to it and doing it as we are stopped by a familiar face:




It collapses surprisingly quickly for a boss... and of course, it turns out to be a trick as it reassembles itself in a new configuration. At this point, it pulls a Daft Punk and becomes harder, better, faster, stronger. One cool thing is that I recently acquired a skill that allows me to see the enemy's HP as a lifebar, making it a lot easier to target this boss' limbs one at a time. It does start using new techniques as I remove its limbs, blasting energy balls and dodging more easily, so it proves to be a decent challenge but in the end, we prevail and Sora locks the keyhole. It does appear to be magic so it does make some amount of sense, although it still begs the question of why these things are ever kept open. Sora also learns Wind.

Well, that's it for this part and while the writing is crumbling from all directions, I've gotta say Traverse Town once again proves to be the best part of the game yet because at least the gameplay is fun and varied here and I enjoy the atmosphere of the place. And I can't stress this enough, Squall is amazing. But anyway, I'll see you next time for part 7.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Part 7: A whole new world

A whole week without a new part? Why, that won't do at all! Right, so last time, we went back to Traverse Town, closed another keyhole and I complained about the writing a lot. And now, let us return to what is already my favourite part of the game: Olympus. But before that, right off the bat, there's something weird that I somehow missed last time:




Pinocchio... cowering from something with a weird rounded chest near him. Apparently he got turned back into a marionette as well so suck on that, Pinoc! They of course do the thing where he gets a lie boner. Sorry, that was puerile, I shouldn't joke about Pinocchio's wood like that. He wonders where Gepetto is and Jiminy argues that Pinocchio should stay there while he goes to search for Gepetto because it's too dangerous outside and clearly a cricket can take on the sort of dangers that a sentient wooden puppet can't. But to be fair he expects us to come along and doesn't even bother to ask us if we agree. Man, for a conscience, he's a dick.

So yeah, guess we're off on a side-quest. During it, I also figured out how to get the chest behind a bunch of unbreakable crates (remember the first marking I found? Yeah, that opens a path to it) and discovered that you can actually go back to the cave where Squall was training earlier from Merlin's room, which makes me feel like an idiot for not figuring it out sooner (then again, I have no idea why they made it so you have to ask Merlin instead of a more direct way.

Well, I looked everywhere I could think of and didn't find Gepetto. Maybe he's in another world. Maybe I don't care. Only one thing left to do now and that is go to Olympus and hope it gets a little bit more interesting... but before that! Remember how Cid said that I can now travel to more locations? Well, the map now shows "cosmic holes" (tee hee) and one is conveniently located right next to Traverse Town so let's give it a look. Also, when I place the cursor above a location, I can now choose between a "normal" and "hyperspace" variation. Not sure what that means, my best bet is that "hyperspace allows me to move to that location without entering the world every time so I can keep moving?

Well anyway, I go to the cosmic hole thing and somewhere during the StarFox segment, we enter the hole proper (tee hee again). This takes us to a much more difficult segment (I'm eventually gonna have to actually check into the gummi stuff, ain't I?) and eventually make it to...




Oh sweet! A new world! Here I thought it was just going to be a little side thing but nope, it's an actual new world and it's Agrabah, from Aladin, one of my favourite Disney films! Man, things are looking up. Please be good! There's a cutscene where Maleficent and Jafar are having a chat, saying they need to find Jasmine because they need "the seven Heart Princesses" to do whatever they're trying to do (take over the worlds, I presume). I still find Jafar's new voice grating but at least Iago is his old self so we get the dulcet tones of the French equivalent of Gilbert Gottfried.

The scene ends by showing Jasmine hiding behind a fruit stand that was right behind them. Glad they're being so thorough with their search and that even Iago didn't see her despite arriving from the air. By the way, even aside from the voice, something has been rubbing me the wrong way about Jafar from the start and I think I finally figured out what: he is massively undermined be being a lackey for Maleficent. In his movie, he was this imposing, charismatic presence that inspired fear just from his very presence and was a master manipulator but here, he comes across as little more than a replaceable henchman and his dialogue really makes him come off as not very bright as he is just a boastful prick.

Back to the gameplay, I am immediately attacked by a group of a new kind of Heartlesses in Arabic clothing and wielding curved swords. CURVED. SWORDS. I am also introduced to another new type of enemies as some of the pots you'll see in this area will sprout spider legs and attack. Whoooaaaaa?! Enemies that aren't Heartlesses? Whatever next?! But yeah, that's a pretty clever take on the mimic type of enemy. Climbing to some secret-ish area, I find this little fella:




Poor guy is stuck under a drawer so I move it and the carpet leaves for the desert without so much as a "thank you" or even a quick handy. Ungrateful bastard. I keep moving and find Jasmine but Jafar hears us talking and sics some more Heartlesses on us. After defeating them, I hop on a platform and find a small keyhole which opens a door on the other side of the map. It just takes me back to the previous area. I don't find much else so we might as well go check the desert. There I find the magic carpet, which does seem thankful after all and offers to take us somewhere. That somewhere turns out to be where Aladdin is and he is in a bit of a pickle:




He is stuck in quicksand and surrounded by Heartlesses. After we defeat the Heartless and give Aladdin a hand, more Heartlesses appear and Aladdin uses a wish to get rid of them despite the fact that we clearly had no trouble handling them. The genie (who unlike Aladdin, retains his original voice, yay!) explains that this was his first wish so apparently, this part is supposed to be taking place right after Aladdin went to
the Cave of Wonders, which he confirms himself. He then wishes to be made a prince like in the film, although we don't actually see it or the musical number that comes with it. More's the pity.

The reason for that is probably that we explain to Aladdin that Jasmine is in danger and so he wants to accompany us to go help her and he can now be included into the party, although they do confirm that the genie apparently did grant the wish as in the same cutscene, Aladdin promises the genie to use his last wish to free him once they've saved Jasmine. That's another problem I have with this game: they really want to go through the story of the films but since each part of the game is so short, they have to massively rush through them, which removes any impact they could have had even if we didn't already know how they end as there is no time for any character or story development and so we end up with stuff like going immediately from escaping the Cave of Wonders to talks of the last wish and we don't feel any connection to the characters.

On a more positive note, there's actually some pretty fun gameplay going on here as we have to unlock doors and jump from rooftop to rooftop. And yes, that does mean that even the platforming is pretty solid in this part. Hell, between the Middle-Eastern setting, the jumping around and the opening of doors and that are inexplicably far from the thing that open them, it even reminds me a bit of the old Tomb Raider games. I did get stuck for a little bit but I eventually figured out you have to get to Aladdin's house before you can continue. I also found a hidden small keyhole there though I don't think that's necessary as I'm pretty sure it just opens a secret door.

We find Jafar about to kidnap Jasmine. Aladdin asks the Genie to save her... which apparently is his second wish so I guess the prince thing wasn't actually granted. Either way, that one falls through as well... because Aladdin didn't notice Iago stealing the lamp and giving it to Jafar. WEAK. This apparently means the wish is cancelled immediately. Jafar then of course sends more enemies after us. It's actually a boss battle as while at first it seems like it's mostly the pot spider things ("pot spider" sounding like something very inappropriate for Disney), they combine with new creature to form some kind of centipede and shockingly, this stupid thing actually killed me! On my second try though, I am prepared and slowly take it out, piece after piece.

Well, that was actually a pretty neat boss battle that required a bit of strategy and I even took the opportunity to give summoning a shot (although it's really not that great)! After that, we hear Jafar laughing... which Aladdin somehow takes to mean he is in the desert. Truth be told, I have been rather enjoying this part but the one thing I don't like about it is that there seems to be a lot of back-and-forth between the various areas, which really feels like it's only there to pad out the level. So we get to the desert and guess what pops out of the ground?




That's right! The tiger head! Much to my disappointment, that doesn't mean we get to explore the Cave of Wonders as it is in fact a boss battle. It's rather confusing too as I have to target its eyes but they are out of reach. I try going behind it to see if I can climb it but no, that doesn't work. It shoots some energy balls at the party so I thought I might have to attack those to bounce them back at the eyes but that ain't happening either. What I actually have to do is wait for it to dip its nose into the sand to release some Heartlesses, at which point its eyes become reachable.

Also, if you're clever about it, you can climb on the Tiger Head's skull or nose and keep wailing on his eyes even when he raises his head again, although that does make it harder to avoid the balls of energy. Took me three tries but it became a lot more manageable once I figured out out the trick which admittedly is fairly obvious in retrospect.

And once again, that was a really cool boss battle which required you to think a little harder than usual and change up your strategy a bit! And the best part? Now that we've beaten it senseful, we CAN go inside the Cave of Wonders! Yaaaaaay!




Rather than a cave, this looks more like a temple or tomb or something like that. There are large boulders that occasionally drop and roll down a ledge and we can access a lower part where we once again have to activate various things which grant us access to other parts, allow us to find chests and stuff. Eventually we do have to go back up to progress though. This takes us to a bigger room and during the battle, I fall down a hole to another part of the lower levels which works the same as the previous one.

Going back up and moving on, I arrive at a room much more reminiscent of the Cave of Wonders I know and love as it is filled with gold. But also enemies. There is a way to the room of the lamp but a pillar blocks it and there is no way to move it. This is a point where I actually got stuck for a long time... and to be perfectly honest, it's on me because I did find the rickety base of the pillars in the lower levels and the game even told me I could interact with it but due to there being water in the way, I couldn't do so directly, yet it took me waaaaaay too long to realize that the key to doing it was to stand on a nearby platform and use Fire. You know, my one long-range attack. It's especially dumb on my part considering I tried other spells earlier and not that one.

Squall, give me the appropriate reaction, I deserve this:




So yeah, I use that and part of the pillar crumbles, opening the way. I go through and find Jafar and Maleficent, although she pisses off when we arrive. Jafar, now in control of the genie, orders him to destroy us after explaining that they need the 7 princesses to open "the door". The actual boss is Jafar himself, with him using Genie as a distraction. That said, Genie is actually very powerful and can do a lot of damage. Jafar himself is no slouch either but his attacks are easier to dodge.

What makes it a bit harder is that he frequently flies away so you can't deal a lot of damage at once especially since when he stops, he isn't always in a spot where you can reach him, although in some cases you can use the platforms to jump at him. He can also turn into a pull of light where you flat-out cannot hurt him while he flies. On the plus side, it gives you the impression that you're murdering Navi. On my second try, I defeat him, with Ice being upgraded to Blizzara. Also, I just realized by checking the KH wiki that what I've been calling "Ice" the whole time is actually called "Blizzard" in English. Whoops.

I try to check on Jasmine but it turns out he's not quite dead and like in the film, he wishes to be made into a genie himself, after which he freaking digs a hole through the ground! But yeah, we gotta take care of that before we check on Jasmine.




We follow him and find him like that and we are told explicitly to grab Jafar's lamp, which Iago is carrying around and another boss battle begins. Jesus, that's the fourth one in this section of the game alone! It's actually a very easy one this time as the only danger is Jafar's rocks that he throws at you but those are easy to dodge. I beat him, get Fire upgraded to Fira and obtain the first of Ansem's reports. Afterwards, Jasmine... still gets caught while we are away, much like Alice, but at least Sora gets to lock the keyhole. The place starts to crumble and we have to flee:




JESUS CHRIST IT'S STILL NOT OVER?! Come on, game! I beat four bosses to get to this point! This is essentially a rail section where we have to dodge stuff and we can pick up healing and mana bonuses. It's a short sequence and there isn't really anything else to say about it. Aladdin can't come with us because apparently there's some rule about taking people to other worlds but he still gives Genie his freedom and Genie then accepts to help us save Jasmine, and I guess it's okay if he goes to other worlds, because... yes.

There is then a scene where we find that Riku is the one who's been capturing the princesses. Apparently, he has a deal with the villains that they'll help him find Kairi if he helped them and we get the shocking twist that the guy with the hook hand we saw earlier was Captain Hook. Nobody saw it coming, truly.

Finally, we come back, I gain genie as a summon and a new keyblade. Well, that was definitely one of the best parts of the game so far, which admittedly isn't saying much, but it really was good. The fourth battle and the flying carpet stuff at the end felt a bit unnecessary and there were a few moments that felt like padding but overall it flowed very nicely, the gameplay was interesting, the boss battles required more challenge than just "bash the enemy until it dies" and even the platforming was alright. So with that, I will leave you for now and I'll see you for part 8.

Oh and by the way, if there is anything I should know about the hyperspace stuff, I'd really appreciate it if you guys could tell me. No spoilers, please, at least story-wise, but please do tell me if it's important or if it's just a side challenge or something. See ya!

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Part 8: Wait, was that a Hitchiker's Guide reference?

Welcome back, everyone! Last time, we went through Agrabah and while I had some issues with it, overall it was pretty good. And now... I don't know where we have to go but we'll see. Back in the ship, Sora suggests going back to the previous worlds to try the new Trio skill I got from last time since I can now do it with green markings (oh yeah, that's a thing that happened, by the way) and Dingo also says we should bring the page of Ansem's reports we found back to Merlin. At the same time, the map shows two new worlds we can get to, but they do have a high difficulty rating. Also, as I suspected, the hyperspace thing does allow me to immediately jump from world to world without doing the stupid StarFox minigame. Thank Hyne for that.

So here's my plan for this part: go back to Traverse Town and if nothing big happens there, re-visit the previous worlds starting with Wonderland and if still nothing major happens, maybe we can finally check Olympus which by now should be trivially easy (man, I just talked fate up, didn't I?). Also, this isn't very relevant but I just realized that I already closed four keyholes (Traverse, Jungle, Wonderland and Agrabah... at least according to the map since I don't remember doing it in Wonderland) and from what I understand, there are eight worlds to visit. Does that mean I'm already about halfway through the game? Seems a bit early. Maybe I am mistaken and the game is like twice as long after you've closed all the locks or something.

Anyway, I go to Traverse and head straight to Merlin's shack and... nothing happens. Talking to him of the Fairy Godmother doesn't accomplish anything. Huh. Well, I keep looking around town for new stuff and bizarrely, Heartlesses are spawning again even though they stopped earlier. Talking to Cid doesn't reveal anything new either but going into his shop allows me to use the Trio skill and access a workshop.




There are three Moogles there and it's actually a really good discovery as this allows me to use items I found in the various worlds to craft new ones. There's also a list where each item gets checked when I craft at least one of them. Don't know what happens when you check them all; I presume we unlock new stuff. I also find another postcard. Hey! I did think it'd been a while since we saw one of those!

Other than that, there isn't really anything new, so... off to Wonderland we go! There is actually even less to see there as while there are two green markings, they only get me items and no exciting new feature or anything. Boo. Oh well, time to go back to the jungle then, which turned out to be even more disappointing as there was only one marking and I found a piece of mithril and some health that I didn't need. Brilliant. Well, in that case I guess it's finally time to actually go back to Olympus.

As expected, the preliminaries are now way easier than they used to be and we make it to the finals, wher eour opponent is none other than...




... Cloud! Gotta say, even though the game explicitly told us we were going to face him, I'm surprised it happened so soon. I thought it was going to be during the actual tournament. Well, maybe we'll face him there as well. Of course, as I'm sure everyone agrees, Cloud is nowhere near as awesome as Squall so he doesn't have the kind of strength and skill necessary to beat a small child in combat and we easily dispose of him. One thing I haven't mentioned before is that much like Squall's, I really like Cloud's redesign.

I don't think it really would have worked for FF7 (especially since his outfit is oddly Vincent Valentine-esque) but it looks really cool as a different take on the character and I wish it had been an alternate costume in the original Dissidia (and even in duodecim, it was pre-order DLC). One thing I find weird about it is the Buster Sword being covered in bandages. It's not the first time I've seen stuff like that in japanese works either and I don't get it. Is it supposed to cover the edge so it's not lethal and can be used for training or something? In that case, it probably shouldn't be wrapped so loosely with large areas of the blade still being apparent.

Anyway, Hades is a sore loser and unleashes a Cerberus after us, squashing Cloud before the day is saved by Hercules, allowing us to escape because Heaven knows we have no experience fighting giant monsters. Phil wants to wait for Hercules to take care of it but we're not just gonna hide like cowards, right? So we go back in the arena, where Hercules is hilarious carrying Cloud like a barbarian who just kidnapped a wench.



And with that, I can never take Cloud seriously again.


Cerberus has Hercules backed into a corner but we arrive just in time to distract it, so this time it's us who allow Hercules to escape. We then fight the Cerberus, which as it turns out isn't that big of a threat. I did take that opportunity to see what Genie is like as a summon and he's pretty sweet, I've got to say. He distracts the enemies with his antics and can then launch an attack against them. Really nice stuff. Even his summoning sequence is really fun, cleverly mixing sprites with 3D models to recreate the look of the movie.

Phil proclaims us apprentice heroes, claiming that we still lack what it takes to be real heroes. After we leave, Hercules tells Phil that he'd actually exhausted the Cerberus before we arrived, so we basically just finished it off. Sure, Hercules, you keep telling yourself that. Outside, we find Cloud brooding (shock of shocks). He explains that he is looking for someone, which is why he accepted to work for Hades as he promised that he'd help Cloud. Yup, becoming a hired assassin for the Lord of Hell seems like a perfectly reasonable way to ask for directions, I get ya, Cloud. After Sora tells Cloud that he wants to give him a fair rematch later, Cloud says that Sora is too strong for him. Wow, Cloud, I know I like to take the piss out of you but that's just sad.

We leave and we get a cutscene where Hades is furious that Hercules survived but calms down as he realizes that he still has all the cards and can take both him and Sora out during the games. One thing I find very interesting is that unlike every other major villain we've seen so far, it looks like he is NOT working for Maleficent and is in fact very annoyed when she appears and he brushes her off. Apparently, I cannot join the games yet as Phil tells us he has to clean up the mess before they can take place, so we'll have to come back later.

And by "later" I mean "immediately" as once we go back, we can finally participate in the bloody games. I'm guessing the idea was that I was supposed to complete the preliminary stage earlier and then do more stuff, but that's not how I did it. Screw you, game, you can't tell me what to do! And the games are more rounds of fighting. So er, that's something that bothers me a bit... I have never seen Hercules so I don't know how it went in the film, but at least here it certainly looks like they got the Olympic Games, which even back in ancient times were sports competitions, confused with gladiatorial combat. Either that or the developers got lazy and didn't want to make a bunch of sports minigames (which admittedly would be surprising considering we've already seen multiple minigames).

After a bunch of fights, we get first place and for that I learn Demi. I can also unlock various different modes by redoing the tournament. Well, that's all there is to do here for now apparently, and we are just waiting for the Pegasus tournament to begin (and no, leaving the world and coming back doesn't immediately do it this time) so let's take a look to the easier of the new worlds we unlocked. And after another StarFox sequence (we still have to do those for places we haven't visited yet) we find that it is...




... a giant space whale. Of course! If you know your Disney classics, you know where this is going: it swallows us whole and we end up inside its digestive system after a flashback to Sora and Riku discovering the Destiny Island door as children. Pinocchio is here but leaves before we can talk to him. It doesn't take long before we catch up to him though, and we meet Gepetto as well. Pinocchio catches what looks like Riku out of the corner of his eye (man! This whale's insides is the most popular spot for all characters!) and decides to got follow him, so we have to go find him before he gets shat out into space and WOW!!




This place is trippy as balls! Amazing! We find Pinocchio AND Riku, with Riku being passive-aggressive about Sora having the Keyblade because irrational jealousy as a motive for villainy is just such a great and compelling character trait. Seriously, even as a kid I always hated those plots about a character randomly turning heel because they suddenly become resentful of another character even if it goes against their usual personality. It always feels forced and it never feels like there is anything of worth at stake because there is such little reason for this situation to have arisen in the first place. And this is the worst way to do it: when a supposedly good character straight up joins the bad guys and is now okay with committing atrocities just to get back at someone else.

But after that, we are introduced to a new type of Heartless, these ones looking like ghostly puppets.




They look really cool. I have a lot to criticize about the game but man the designs are awesome! The place is kind of maze-like with a lot of similar-looking area and you have to move a lot of barrels around to access high platforms and progress. It's not too difficult but it does take a while because there are a lot of enemies and the thing is, they're not very difficult to beat so it does feel a bit like it's there to pad out the level. I eventually find Pinocchio and Riku again, with Riky whining some more about Sora having the keyblade and the cutscene ends with a woman's off-screen scream.

I usually try to make it to the end of a world by the end of a part but because I did a lot of smaller things at first, I feel like this one is already running a bit long and I don't want it to drag so we will look into hat scream and continue our adventure in part 9! Sorry, this was a bit of a faffing episode but I hope you still enjoyed it!

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Right, so I'm finally done with any meetings and have finished my latest sketch so expect a new part tomorrow.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Part 9: Humanity hits a new low

We now return to the inside of a whale in space, because sometimes video games are like an acid trip. Last time, we found Riku who somehow ended up in here as well and heard the blood-curdling screams of a woman. Let's see what that's all about, shall we? And immediately, I feel like an idiot because it turns out the "woman" was actually Pinocchio. I'm kind of hoping he's at least voiced by a woman. He was screaming because he got caught by this thing, whatever the f*** it is:




I've said it before and I'll say it again, I really like the designs. This thing can hit quit hard but it can't take much punishment and ends up not being that big a threat. After the battle, it spits Pinocchio out and into a frankly gross sphincter. We follow him through it because it seems like a great idea and find Riku kidnapping Pinocchio and saying he needs to study his mechanism due to it being "a puppet with a heart" and hoping that he can "help someone who has lost theirs get it back", with Sora deducting that he's talking about Kairi. This prompts Riku to say "Oh, you care about her now?" even though Sora always seemed to care about her and even asked him about her as soon as they met in Traverse Town, so I guess he was just being whiny for the sake of being shiny. Man, there really is no personality to this little twat, is there?

Anyway, we also saw that the level of the water/stomach acid lowered so I guess that means we're in for some platforming. One thing that's really cool is that I found a chest that gave me a skill that allows me to jump higher, which is nice as it now allows me to access different areas (and I remember seeing a lot of those that looked like they required such a skill in other worlds). Unfortunately it makes the platforming even more awkward but hey, it's something.

While exploring, I accidentally went where I was supposed to and activated a cutscene where suddenly, Riku wants Sora to join forces with him to save Kairi (so what was with the passive-aggressive whining earlier?) but for some reason, Sora isn't very keen on helping the asshole who's been insulting him since they reunited steal kidnap people and steal their hearts, even if it supposedly is for a friend (and I am still not clear on how the hearts are supposed to help or what exactly happened to Kairi). And I guess that's all Riku needs to give up on Pinocchio as he doesn't even bother grabbing him before sicking another creature like the one we beat before on us and teleporting out.

I beat this one as well and learn "Stop" for my troubles. Then another cutscene shows Riku talk with Maleficent next to a comatose Kairi. At last we learn a bit more about what happened to her. According to Maleficent, her heart was taken by the Heartlesses. She goes on to explain that if he finds the seven Princesses of Heart, he will be able to open a door to every world's heart and access incredible wisdom, which will no doubt help him find out how to save her. Oh, he's doing all that to save Kairi, well that sure gives him a personality.

Wait no, it doesn't, he's a moron for blindly believing the obviously evil Maleficent (She's called Maleficent for crying out loud!!) who is barely hiding the fact that she's manipulating him and he is especially a dumbass for still not seeing it when she gives him the power to control the Heartless. You know, the beings that took Kairi's heart? Maleficent basically just admitted to being the one who controls them, Riku, you stupid idiot.

Speaking of stupid idiots, turns out I screwed myself out of a few treasures as now that Monstro has sneezed us out, he is gone. Also, Chip and Dale inform us that a new tournament is available in the coliseum. Anyway, when I went to check if Monstro was still there, I instead found this:




Well, might as well check it out, shall we? Now of course, since the place is completely underwater, you may be wondering how we're going to be able to move around there without, you know, dying. Donald says that he's got this and while I don't really trust his abilities, I guess we don't have much of a choice now, do we? Alright, Donald, show us what you can d...





...




...










... And with that, I am ending the Let's Play! No, seriously, that's it. I can take a lot from you, Kingdom Hearts but I draw the line at f***ing Merboy Sora, Octoduck (which, incidently, is also the title of the next Asylum movie) and Affront to All Known Gods Goofy. Just... f*** everything. There are people having fun playing Final Fantasy XV right now and here I am looking at DeviantArt's nightmares. So that's the end of that, I am ending the Let's Play, goodbye everyone and I'll see you whenever I find a more productive use of my time. (language warning)







*Sigh* Okay, not really, but seriously, that is one of dumbest and most grotesque things I have ever seen. It almost made me take back what I said earlier about the designs. You just know that if I did a Google image search for these things, there isn't a single picture of them that wouldn't show them f***ing, even with SafeSearch on. And people take this game seriously? Christ on a cracker.

F*** it, let's just speed through this. Sebastian teaches me the new swimming controls that actually aren't too bad and fairly easy to understand in an entirely too long tutorial. Then we get attacked by jellyfish Heartlesses. We go to the palace to make sure the Heartless don't invade it, and we get bitched at by Ariel's father because she left the palace and he's an overprotective ass. We immediately leave and Ariel wants to show me something in her hideout.

We get there and while you can pick up a few items, there really isn't anything important. We leave and in a cutscene, Ursula is shown plotting to capture Arial using the Heartless. Yes, it's truly a shock. With the help of a dolphin, I eventually make it to a sunken boat. Going a bit further, I find some weird thing which, when I hit it, created a big current which blew a large chest that was stuck in the ground away and creating a shortcut to Ariel's hideout. Anyway, back to the boat, I find a switch hidden behind a smaller boat but I can't access it yet. Inside the wreck, I find a trident-shaped crystal and hm, there WAS a trident crest in the hideout. Surely that's not a coincidence. Oh yeah and we get attacked by a shark:




We beat the piss out of it and it leaves, so presumably he'll be a recurring enemy. We go back to the hideout and place the crystal on the crest. It seems to be doing... something but then the king blows it up and after Ariel storms out, he gets all pissy because he figured out we're from another world. Finally, somewhere else, we see Ariel fall for Ursula's tricks. We go back to the palace, where Ariel has helped Ursula enter and steal the king's trident. However, her mooks cannot find the keyhole and as she sees Sora's group arrive, they teleport out, so we have to find her and get the trident back, with the king warning us that in order to defeat her, we must use magic on her cauldron, which is the source of her power.

To continue, we have to go back to the wreck, where we can now get Sebastian to press the switch for us, which lowers a large rock, granting us access to a much darker and cooler-looking cave with what looks like lava formations and WHAT THE F*** ARE THOSE THINGS?!!




Jesus Christ this is easily the fourth creepiest thing I've seen today! Anyway, we get to Ursula and as you probably expect at this point, there is a boss fight. It's a pretty interesting one as, as the king said, you have to cast spells on the cauldron, with the colour of the light emitting from it giving you clues as to which spell to use. Do it correctly enough time and it'll cause some kind of magic overload which will knock Ursula out for a few seconds, giving you an opportunity to strike her. Let her do it enough times though and it'll allow her to use a devastating on you. This creates a magic tug of war which I've gotta say is pretty intense. I do wish she didn't also have that annoying spinning attack, though.

After defeating her, she teleports out again and we learn an ability that gives us a dash (would have been nice to have that from the start of this world to more easily and quickly avoid the many, many, many, many, many tedious and annoying fights) which also allows us to swim against the current, which is a big clue as to where to go next as there is an area with strong current. We find Ursula in a hidden cave and start another boss fight.



What a beautiful sight.


While she is more dangerous, there is a lot less strategy involved and the fight is a lot more boring. I won doing nothing but spamming attacks and healing, with my strikes generally making me regain enough MP to heal whenever I needed so there wasn't even an issue in that regard. Ursula dies, we get the trident back, Thunder is upgraded to Thundara, we get another Ansem report and King Triton explains that the crystal he destroyed has the power to make this world's keyhole appear. He now wants us to lock it and fortunately, his trident can make the hole appear as well. He also says that the hole is at Ariel's hideout so off we go. We lock the hole and obtain an absolutely disgusting new keyblade.

Well, that's the end of that as far as I'm concerned so I'll be seeing for part 10 where we'll probably be checking on past worlds now that we have the super jump ability. I certainly know Wonderland has stuff I wanted to check on. We will also go back to Traverse Town as it feels like it's been a while since we've paid the place a visit and then the Coliseum for the latest tournament and if all that doesn't take too much time, we'll check one of the two remaining worlds.

Oh man I hated this part. I really did. Easily the worst one yet. Don't know if it really showed in this part but it was very tedious and annoying to make any progress because there were so... many... damn... enemies. And it's not like they're hard to beat, they just take a long time to beat, and it was often of those things where after you beat one group, another one spawned. I ended up skipping them as much as possible, but some of them could still hit you even if you tried avoiding them, so if you didn't fight them, you lost HP. Once again I felt like it dragged on with the final battle being completely unnecessary as it didn't add anything and the first fight against Ursula would have made for a much more satisfying conclusion.

Oh and one thing I didn't really mention but I certainly felt was how obnoxious the place was to navigate, with all areas looking so similar, you could end up going in circles for ten minutes before realizing where you needed to go, a problem compounded by the fact that the game usually didn't tell you where to go, forcing you to guess.

And of course, the very existence of Merboy Sora, Octonald Duck and Abomination Goofy. If I never see that again, it'll be too damn early.

[Deleted]

Honestly every time I play Kingdom Hearts 1 I'm reminded of how much better 2 is. Removes a lot of the frustration both from the navigation and the combat and it's a lot more streamlined. A BIG part of what makes it better being that by the time of 2 they learned that just because an enemy is standing there doesn't mean you want to snap to fighting it. It makes getting around and especially collecting items you've missed way, way less of a chore.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Dec 3, 2016 6:51:32 GMT -5 Lizuka #BLM said:

A BIG part of what makes it better being that by the time of 2 they learned that just because an enemy is standing there doesn't mean you want to snap to fighting it.

Yeah, it wasn't too bad early on but I've really started feeling it recently. It's really annoying when you're just looking around trying to either find hidden stuff or just getting to the next place (and considering the game often doesn't tell you where to go, you end up backtracking quite a lot) and waves after waves of enemies come after you and don't even offer a challenge but just slow you down. It's not even that easy to just skip them because they usually still hurt you and/or get in your way, forcing you to figh them anyway.

But enough about that, let's get to the actual Let's Play

Part 10: What's this? What's this? This is Halloween!

Like I said last time, what I'm going to be doing today will depend largely on how much new content there is in the worlds we have previously seen. First up, let's go back to Wonderland. So in the royal gardens, I find some gummi ship stuff and more Dalmatians (in case anyone cares, I found 45 so far). Just to check, I went back to the lotus forrest and it was actually a good idea because I now managed to get to a hard to reach area that takes me to a "mystery room" which is in fact the usual room with the drink, but tilted on its side. This in turn takes me to another room, where I can activate a tap:




The water falls into a flattened pot, causing it to grow and gain a third dimension. Gotta give credit where credit's due, this kind of nonsense actually makes it feel like Wonderland. Going into the pot takes me back to the royal gardens... in a spot I accessed using to the super jump. Whoops, guess I was supposed to do that earlier in the game. I also find two lamps I can light. One gives me a defence bonus and the other unlocks a path to a hidden area of the lotus jungle. There is a white marking which I unfortunately cannot use yet, so that's something to keep in mind for later. I also tried to get to three chests in the garden with the Mad Hatter's table but I still can't get to them. So I think that's all there is to see here for now so let's head back to Traverse Town.

I remember seeing a chest one a ledge on the church so let's begin by checking that out. Actually, I lied because I totally checked the first district beforehand. I bought some new equipment, found another postcard and also found that Gepetto and Pinocchio have been given a home by Squall, further proving that he is the best part of this game. As thanks, they give me a new gummi ship model. Yay. And also a new keyblade! Oh wow, that's actually pretty cool! Unfortunately it's not quite as powerful as my current one and also doesn't provide the MP bonus.

I do get to the church and after some fumbling I reach the chest, which contains... a megapotion. NOT WORTH IT. I got to Merlin's house as there are some crates I can jump on to reach a chest and my GOD that's annoying to do. First, getting atop the crates is difficult enough because Sora doesn't grab onto the ledge like with any other platform so you can easily over or undershoot it, but then you have to do the same with a tiny little platform that barely has enough room for the chest and Sora. At least it was worth it because it gives me an attack bonus.

Inside, Merlin gives me another key. This one has even worse attack but it does give me an extra MP and strengthens my magic so I'll give it a try. Can't think of anything else to check so that's it for Traverse Town and let's go participate in the latest tournament since it is now available, the Philoctète tournament. Aaaand it's another series of generic enemies without even a boss at the end and not any reward for winning. Urgh. Fine, let's go check one of the new worlds. Right, so as usual, let's start with the easier one, which is...




OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD YESSSSSS!! Halloweentown!! I love me some Nightmare Before Christmas!! (even though I only saw it once and it was as a child) AND I'm playing this in the period between Halloween and Christmas. It's like I planned it except I didn't. Alright, right off the bat it has a super awesome look and for some reason, the characters have different models again. Not sure why themed costumes now needs to be a thing when it wasn't at the beginning of the game but you know what? I'm not gonna complain because they. Look. Awesome! Even Dingo and Donald have pretty cool variations, especially Donald who is now a mummy but he even has parts of his body that are invisible. Now THAT is clever character design.




Oh man oh man oh man this is awesome! What a step up from that Antartica bullshit! the background music is an instrumental version of "This is Halloween" and they even changed the colour of the text boxes to match the spooky look. Now if they'd done stuff like that to really make each world feel unique, that alone would have already made this game so much better. Anyway, as we visit, more of the puppet Heartlesses appear (I did think they had a Jack Skellington thing going on, moreso than a Pinocchio thing, really) and while the characters prepare for a fight... they don't attack. And I can't attack them either. They just kind of stand there. Hm. The mayor appears and soon after, Jack makes his entrance. They talk about how these ghosts are going to be a huge success for Halloween, so I'm guessing these puppets aren't really Heartlesses? Or the heartless versions are made from them?

After that, I look around and find a small isolated mausoleum. There is a bell I can ring... and nothing happens. But you can't fool me! I know how these horror stories work so I try ringing it three times and then the door opens and I get an elixir. We find Jack and Dr. Finkelstein in a lab, where they try to improve the puppets so they can dance, with Jack coming to the conclusion that the Heartless need a heart and Finkelstein says it's easy but they need the keyblade to get it going. Sora wants to help as he figures that if it works, they won't need to fight the Heartless any more.

Bizarrely, the scene cuts from Sora raising the key towards the makeshift heart to the procedure being finished, without showing it happening. Not sure why they didn't at least show some sort of special effect going on but whatever. They then gather the ingredients (you know, stuff you have lying around the fridge like "fear" and "despair"), start the experiment and... it fails. Fink figures that there must be a missing ingredient and wants to try by adding memory to the mix. He calls Sally, but she doesn't seem to be around and so we go with jack to find her.

Inside the laboratory, we find a torn page of Marlin's book. Back outside, the mayor tells us the Heartlesses have gone out of control. Oh boy, looks like we blew it big time. We hunt down the Heartless then head for the cemetery. Here, we find a new type of Heartless designed after the one-eyed mummy character whose name I can't remember. We also find Sally, we gives us a myosotis which I guess contains her memory? She also says she's got a bad feeling about this but Jack is all like "nah, is cool".




Well, we've got what we need so let's go back to the lab but before we do, there is the reveal that Lock, Shock and Barrel (known as Am, Stram and Gram in French) have been listening in on us the whole time and are going to tell Oogie-Boogie. Why you little shitstains. Back at the lab, Fink says we also need surprise to complete the heart (man, couldn't you guys have just made sure you read the full list to begin with?) and says the mayor must know where to find some. Meanwhile, Oogie-Boogie wants to steal the makeshift heart to gain control of the Heartless.

To find the mayor, I go back to the cemetery and I can enter the largest grave. This takes us to another area where the mayor is. For some reason, rather than just giving it to us, he makes us play a memory mini-game for a box of surprise. I win it and we go back to the lab (Oh classic Kingdom heart making us go back-and-forth between the same locations), where the heart is promptly stolen by Am, Stram and Gram.

Unsurprisingly, we have to go back to the cemetery and continue down the previous path. We reach the twirly hill thing and after activating some kind of switch, we access a bridged area which leads to Oogie-Boogie's lair:




The climb is perilous and pretty fun. There's a little bit of platforming but it's well done and doesn't get annoying and again, I really, really like the look of the level and it's nice to see a world that isn't just a series of rooms for once. We reach the top and get inside the attic, where we fight Am, Stram and Gram. Evidently Sora is following in Squall's footsteps and decided to beat up even smaller children. Heh, they've had it coming. They're fairly easy although they can cause a surprising amount of damage. After the fight, Gram tells us that oogi-Boogie told him not to talk about the switch that opens the way to his hideout. Well, good thing you didn't and I'm not flipping this switch right now, then. Going down, I find something new: a green door.



Guys, I think there may be a subtle hint that Oogie-Boogie is in there.


We get inside and find... Captain Hook?! Okay no, Oogie-Boogie. Who eats the heart and gains control of... a whole two Heartlesses. it's not me being a smartass, by the way, Oogie-Boogie himself is annoyed by this. The boss battle begins and the arena is a gigantic Russian roulette that also has slot machine reels and OB himself throws dice at us. Like I said, it's been since my childhood that I've seen the film... did Oogie-Boogie have a casino theme there? It seems a bit random. But it does look really cool and make for an interesting boss fight. The roulette is inside a pit so in order to reach him, you have to press a button on the roulette corresponding to the area he is in, which will raise you there. You can also cast magic on him but it does minimal damage, and that's with my magic-boosting keyblade.

So once again, pretty cool boss battle with a novel and well executed concept. I eventually beat him and gain a talisman and another Ansem report, while Jack decides that the heart was a bad idea after all. We take our leave but of course, as we are used to by now, there is still more after defeating the bad guy.




That's right! He absorbed his own hideout and is using the power of darkness to grow stronger and so we have to destroy those bubbles of darkness. And you know what? Usually I find those post-boss sequences to be pointless and annoying but here I actually liked it, if only because it was a bit different and a better challenge than usual. Still, I destroy them all, Oogie-Boogie collapses for good and Sora can finally lock th-GOOD GOD LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT THING!




And so ends the Halloweentown portion of the game, so next time, in part 11, unless some kind of unexpected event occurs, we shall take a look at the final world we can explore.

Wow, that was the best part yet! Well, aside from Squall beating a child into a coma. But seriously, THAT was genuinely fun. Maybe it's just because I like horror even when it's the kid-friendly kind (in fact, kid-friendly horror can be surprisingly fun as it tends to give it an unusual layer by having to tap into a different kind of fear) It looked great, it played great, there was atmosphere, it even sounded good and the level design was fantastic! Still a bit too light on story for my taste but at least it didn't drag unlike other parts and I think it's the first non-Traverse part I have genuinely liked, and I don't mean like the Jungle or Agrabah which were just kind of neat, this was really good. It almost makes up for Antartica. Almost. I haven't forgotten about Abomination Dingo. But yeah, that was nice. It really feels like they put more effort into this part than any other and I really wish more of the game was like that.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Part 11: We're off to Never Never Land

Welcome back, everyone! Last time, something amazing happened and for the first time, there was a part I genuinely liked from beginning to end and had no complaints about. Can Kingdom Hearts repeat the miracle? Probably not, but let's see anyway! Only one world we haven't visited yet so let's get to it. However, on our way there, we are attacked by...




A pirate ship?! In space?! Oh my God, are we going to meet Captain Harlock?! Wait no, thinking about it, it's probably Captain Hook's ship. And indeed the title card confirms that this is Neverland (Neverland being reduced to Captain Hook's ship, apparently). And so the first character we meet is of course Riku. And I bet you'll never guess what he does! That's right, he moans and whines about Sora having the audacity to make friends with new people. Hey Riku, do you think maybe you'd have more friends if you didn't throw a bitch fit when the ones you do have hang out with other people?

Riku shows that he's found Kairi, who is catatonic. Captain Hook finally shows up with Smee by his side but he appears to only be a lackey for Riku, who also reveals that he can now make a dark clone of Riku. He has Sora and his friends surrounded so of course, being a badly written character, instead of killing them right away, he opens a trap door to send them to a cell.

The group wakes up and meets Peter Pan, who is looking for Wendy. Tinkerbell arrives and gives Peter some info, but after Donald Dick gives him some lip, she bails on us without even picking the lock for us because she ain't got time for this bullshit. At least I thought that was what happened but then we open the door just fine. Maybe it was unlocked the whole time and Peter is just an idiot.

After making our way through the ship for a while, a cutscene starts where Donald asks Peter how come he can fly because apparently, with all the magic shit we've seen, THAT is the thing to question. But yeah, he has everyone covered in fairy dust which may or may not be relevant later. We get another scene where Riku informs Hook that Wendy isn't one of the seven chosen ones. Back to Sora's group, they find Wendy's cell and she is with Riku but the girls are taken away before we can do anything about it.

The issue doesn't last long however as I soon find a ladder which allows me to find Riku again, who is teleporting away with Kairi and leaves us with this lovely fellow:




He's a really tough opponent too but unfortunately, it's not as clever a boss fight as usual. It's basically just bash him until he dies. It only gets a bit more original towards the end when he creates doubles of himself and only one takes damage. After that,we find a trapdoor and rescue Wendy. Peter Pan then leaves with her. Gee, glad we could help you, man, thanks for helping us rescue our friend, ass. Oh well, I'm sure he won't come back near the end to help us fight Hook.

We go back up, cross the door that was behind Riku when he teleported and find ourselves on the bridge. Hook and Smee are there as well as some Heartlesses. Hook tells us Riku took Kairi to "the Forgotten Fortress" (I'm translating literally but I think he may actually be referring to the Hollow Bastion) and it turns out he captured Tinkerbell somehow and is threatening to kill her (and us as well) unless we give up the keyblade. Fortunately for us, the crocodile who ate his hand shows up and Hook flees, leaving Tinkerbell with Smee.

The Heartlesses have Sora cornered on the plank because Sora obviously cannot take a handful of Heartlesses. Peter Pan uses telepathy (was... was that a thing in the movie? I honestly don't remember but I'm pretty sure that wasn't a thing) to tell Sora to fly. Oh good, that fairy dust thing did have a little bit of a point and oh surprise, Peter Pan came back. What a twist. Anyway, there is a big battle and I'd like to show you the one new Heartless I find noteworthy in this part:




It's not easy to make out due to the special effects going on but that is indeed a tiny pirate captain piloting a flying mini-ship. That is amazing and adorable. I want one. After that, Peter uses his impeccable impersonation skills to lure Hook out of his hideout and another battle starts. Hook is a lot easier to fight than Shadow Sora although he does have some very strong attacks, so it's a case of glass canon. We beat him without much difficulty and get another Ansem report.

Dingo laments how Kairi still hasn't woken up. However, Sora doesn't let that bring him down and he just thinks of all the things he'll had to tell her once they wake her up. Tinkerbell returns and tells Peter that there is something at the clock tower, which is where we are headed next in a surprisingly scenic view for this game, which usually keeps things closed in. Seriously look at this, it's simple but it looks really nice:




We find Wendy there, dangerously sitting on the edge. Talking tower makes her tell us about trying to set it to the correct time by hitting it, so we know what we have to do. Using our flying ability, we can not only find some hidden stuff, but most importantly see that three of the four faces of the clock show midnight whereas one shows quarter to midnight, so we have bash that one into place, for all problems can be solved by hitting them repeatedly. Doing this reveals this world's keyhole and amusingly, whereas the previous one was gigantic, this one is all itty bitty teeny:




We get another instance of the flashback we saw early in the game of Sora and Riku as younger children talking about going on an adventure when they grow up, followed by a scene of Riku panting while kneeling before Maleficent, who admonishes him for taking Kairi there without using a ship and warns him that overusing the power of darkness might cost him his heart. Afterwards, she makes like a Super Kami Guru and unleashes his true potential. Back at the clock tower, Tinkerbell decides to join us as a new summon and... that's it!

Wow, that was a short part. It was okay, not great but nothing really wrong with it either. Not much to comment on, really. Riku is a twat. See y'all later for part 12!

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Part 12: Faffing With Hercules

Well, we're on a pretty good run. Two parts in a row that weren't too bad, with one being genuinely good and the other not bad. Can the streak continue? I 'unno, we'll have to see. So, I'm wondering if we're already nearing the end of the game. I mean, we have visited every world, closed almost every keyhole, I have activated most of the coloured marks, rescued more than half of the Dalmatians and last time, I gained the flying ability which really feels like an endgame thing to allow the player to wrap up the side quests before moving on to the final part. But at the same time, Maleficent mentioned being after 7 princesses and so far she's only got two: Alice and Jasmine. So either we're not nearly as far as I thought or this is the first game I've seen where it feels like the good guys are way ahead of the villains at all times.

But anyway, let's go back to the game. Now, since unless some twist occurs, we have visited every world and locked 7 out of 8, I assume something is going to get unlocked at Olympus so we can finally close that keyhole as well. I would also like to go back to the various world and use my flying ability to grab what I've been missing out on. So let us leave Neverland and see what's what.

In the ship, Donald suggests going back to Traverse to upgrade it and Chip and Dales confirm that indeed, there is a new tournament we can participate in. But first, since I know for a fact that there is something there, let us once again return to Wonderland and finally grab the chests in the garden with the tea party.




I find two blocks for the ship (oh good), some mithril and more Dalmatians. Next, the Jungle, where I find another block (yaaaaay) and more mithril. In Agrabah, I find more mithril, no less than three more blocks (toooot), more Dalmatians and a "Carapace X" necklace, which would actually be a very good item as it raises defence by a lot except all my characters already have better stuff and finally, in Halloweentown, I get a whole piece of mithril! Wooooo!

Alright, enough of that, time to do that new tournament and see if there's anything of interest going on there. The new tournament is called "Cup Hercules" so with any luck, maybe we actually get to face him. For the most part it's the same concept as before but once we reached 4th place, we did get to see a familiar face:




Yep! Cloud is back and this time he's actually a lot stronger than before but with some strategy and liberal use of healing spells and items, I still beat him. Cloud: 0, Small child: 2. In all honesty though, he WAS a much bigger challenge than the monsters that came after him. Oh and I got a new keyblade for beating him. Once we make it to first place, we are indeed challenged by Hercules himself:




For some reason, Sora wants this to be a duel, meaning Dingo and Donald won't be helping. Hercules is invincible while glowing but barrels appear, subtly hinting that we have to toss them at his face to temporarily dispel his invincibility because if a large rod of iron won't hurt him, obviously a pile of frail dry wood will. I nearly defeat him but ultimately he wins because he is a cheap motherf***er with his stupid invincibility and his stupid unblockable attacks that always have priority. It has nothing to do with me sucking. On my second attempt, I beat him, because I rule and not because I got lucky. For real.

We win a cup for our efforts and Hercules says Phil has found a great future hero. However, Phil still refuses to recognize our skills but we do get a new buckler for Dingo. Dude... come on. How many worlds have I saved now? Don't be a dick. Oh well, at least I can activate the yellow marks now. And hey, there just so happens to be one nearby. So using it allows the characters to push a heavy block, revealing...




Oh.

Wasn't expecting that. Kind of thought we were gonna have to fight Hades before we could find the keyhole but hey, I ain't complainin'. So that's that, right? We have locked every world, so what now? Well, we were told to go back to Traverse and since that was so short, let's check it out right away! As usual, I take the opportunity to buy more stuff although I don't really need much, then I got to see Cid since that's what Donald and Sora wanted to do as we recently found another navi-gummi.

Cid goes to install it and Dingo, Donald and Sora have a generic pep talk about how Sora having to believe in himself (by the way, can we just agree that "you just gotta believe in yourself" is a really stupid lesson? If someone doesn't believe in themselves, ti's not gonna change just because you tell them to. It'd be a lot more constructive to help them find a reason to believe in themselves), followed by a weird sequence.

I'm not sure if it's a dream or a flashback or what, but it shows Kairi as a little girl talking to her grandma, who tells her a story about the Door of Darkness and how opening it will bring back the True Light. Cid returns, having completed the upgrade and even gives us another block as a bonus. Before I go, I'm of course going to check if there's anything else I can find and indeed, there was a chest I couldn't access near Merlin's house that I can now get to thanks to the flying ability, containing more Dalmatians.

Also, remember that chest on the edge of the roof I mentioned the last time we went to Traverse Town? Yeah, turns out what I actually had to do was activate the nearby yellow mark so the characters would have made stairs out of the column of boxes, granting me easy access to it. Hurray for accidental sequence breaking! Well, I've seen everything I wanted to and thanks to the latest upgrade, we can access one new area let's go to a whole new wooooooorrrrll- wait, I already made that joke.

So it looks like we're headed for the final area of the game and even I know what it is, it is indeed...




The Hollow Bastion (or "Forgotten Fortress" as the French name translates to)! Oh damn, am I giving you final dungeon blue balls?! Yeah, this is another short one and it was mostly faffing but honestly, I assume even if it turns out it's not actually the final part, it's probably going to be a very tough and time-consuming one so I really want to give it its own part so I'll see you next time for part 13 and maybe, -who knows?- The end of the game! Don't miss it! Tell your friends! Tell your family! Tell your enemies! Tell your doctor! Tell your cat!

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Part 13: Hollow Bastion

Last time, we reached the Hollow Bastion, signalling the final part of the game and thus the Let's Play. As I mentioned, I wanted to be able to take as much time as I needed to explore it so let's get to it. We open with some platforming. Oh goody. Well, actually, it's not too bad as the platforms are pretty wide and the flying (or rather, gliding outside of Neverland) ability makes it a lot easier. Soon, we find Riku and talking with Beast. Huh, surprised they're still introducing characters this close to the end of the game.




When Riku asks Beast how he got there without a ship or magic, Beast answers that he simply believed in it, which has got to be one of the most infuriatingly asinine lines of dialogue I have ever heard. This is probably supposed to be emulating the style of emotional Disney moments but really, it sounds less like Disney dialogue and more like a bad parody of Disney dialogue by someone who has never actually watched a Disney movie.

Beast explains that he is looking for Belle, who was kidnapped after their world was destroyed. *raises hand* Hey! Hey, Kingdom Hearts! I have a question: if the Beast is already in love with Belle, how come he's still in his beast form and not back as the prince? Oh well, he and Riku fights and Beast is defeated embarrassingly easily. Riku then turns his attention to Sora and cries some more. He eventually announces that he and Sora have always been rivals and kept challenging one another, something we were never shown because why get us invested in the story by actually showing character development when you can just state it?

Riku tells the keyblade to choose its true master and it decides to switch to Riku. Wow, could've just done that the entire time, huh? He then taunts Sora by tossing him a wooden sword, which is totally not an awkward and shoehorned in way to give the player some sort of weapon until we get the keyblade back. Dingo and Donald keep going, leaving Sora behind. Beast then gets back up, limping but still determined to save Belle and Sora tells Beast that he doesn't intend to give up either.

Okay, I've got to drop my cynicism here and admit that this is a very good character moment, the two of them deciding to go on against all odds, one handicapped physically, the other metaphorically, but unable to just give up when there is so much at stake. Good stuff. Also, just kind of a random observation, while I've said that Squall is the best thing about this game and I still think that's true, I find that Beasts' behaviour here is more Squall-like than anything Squall has done in this game, continuing to protect the woman he promised to always be there for no matter what. I actually really wish they had this part be with him and have Linoa in Belle's place, plus I think it would also have been nice to have some of the Princesses of Heart be Final Fantasy characters to give more weight to the crossover aspect of the game.

We enter the bastion itself and it is easily the most labyrinthine part of the game yet. There are a lot of forks, some puzzles involving platforms or switches, hidden areas (which are awesomely open by Beast blasting the shit out of some walls), all that good stuff. Naturally, there are also enemies but of course, since I am now using a freaking wooden sword, I do almost no damage and while magically is slightly more efficient, it's not by much, so Beast has to do most of the work and thankfully he's very good at it. We eventually open the door to Maleficent's lair and it turns out she actually had many more princesses than I thought:




Yup, on top of Jasmine, Alice and Belle, she also has Snow-White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, with Kairi being the 7th, I guess. Again, good thing we didn't actually see any of that and instead went to a bunch of worlds whose subplots were completely irrelevant. She performs a ritual so the princesses' power shows her the way to the Secret Door. We cut back to Sora and Beast, who ends up trapped after raging because a Heartless taunts him by taking the appearance of Belle. Riku appears again, with Donald and Dingo at his sides. After changing to an armour that at least makes him look cool, he attacks but Dingo of all people saves the day and shields Sora. Donald's cold, cold heart grows three sizes and he joins them as well.

Sora gives another whimsical yet utterly superficial speech about how his heart is stronger than any weapon and the power of friendship and stuff while I reach for a bucket in which to throw up. The keyblade is impressed though and goes back in Sora's hands. Wow, what a fickle, two-timing bitch. Seriously though, what was even the point of including this "problem" if it's going to be resolved so quickly and easily?

Anyway, now that Sora has an actual weapon and no longer has to rely on the power of love, it's time to kick Riku's ass. He actually is pretty tough, owing mostly to his speed and he does come close to beating me a few times but the power of my contempt for this character gave me the strength to beat him in one try.

Afterwards, Riku runs away like the wuss he is and Beast comes back. Considering he just casually opens the door he was behind, it seems it wasn't even locked and he just didn't want to help. He then says that it's Sora's heart that triumphed because we haven't quite bashed this shallow "moral" in people's heads enough yet. No Beast, beating the tar out of some brat with an iron club triumphed. Also, you weren't even there so don't give me that shit.

We enter a library and there is a simple puzzle where we have to find books and put them in their correct place and ooooh! This library is where Kairi's grandma told her the story. No idea if that's important or not. There is also something where you spin pillars to reveal chests that I hesitate to call puzzles because they are entirely luck-based and Sora is apparently to dumb to think of the crazy idea of just slowly spinning them until he can get to the chests.

We gain access to the upper part of the hall where more puzzles await and all of them are fairly simple. Use fire to light up candles, push a statue, break pots and use a Trio mark. Basically, every one requires to use an ability gained through the game. Each puzzle grants us a piece of en emblem which we can in turn use to open a door:




We get a cutscene were Riku is now whining about they keyblade leaving him but then, that hooded being with the cool voice we saw waaaaaay back at the beginning of the game finally returns and tells him to give in to darkness to make his heart stronger than Sora's. Back to our team, the door we open gives us access to a room with various elevators. We can decide whether to make go up or down and obviously we're going to have to find a way to go from elevator to elevator to explore everything.

This part is actually pretty cool as we get to explore the fortress and go back and forth between the interior and the exterior. It really makes it feel like a massive, sprawling building and even though the puzzles are very simple, it really does feel like climbing it is an epic undertaking. It's hard to really describe in text form but it feels suitably big for a final dungeon. We reach the summit and a cutscene shows Maleficent and Riku chatting, with Riku now having a "voice of the legion" thing going on which I'm sure is supposed to be intimidating but just sounds silly with him.

They talk about how Maleficent has made "the Keyhole of Darkness" appear and that if she opens it, the Heartless will invade this world. Maleficent says she will use them to rule the worlds, which is when Riku reveals that he has this:




A dark keyblade! And what follows really confuses me. At first she looks impressed and excited about that, but then she looks angry, saying that it's impossible and that Kairi made it happen. So... Riku isn't with Maleficent after all? Does he want to lock that keyholeto prevent the Heartles from coming? Why did he help her and therefore the spread of the Heartless until now then? And why did he let the keyhole appear? Well, before we can get any answer, Maleficient notices that Sora's team has made it to the summit and goes to take care of that, leaving Riku to guard the princesses. Looks like she still trusts him so I guess he isn't turning on her? I just... hmmm...

As you may expect, Maleficent is a pretty tough boss battle but she's actually not as difficult as you might think. I did need two tries to get her but that's only because I acted like an idiot, didn't pay attention to my health bar and jumped right into her most powerful attack. Honestly, if you're good at dodging and maybe have a few ethers to cast spells at a distance, you should be alright. For beating her, we get a new Ansem report and she escapes through a portal.

We follow her and Riku also appears. She is panting, obviously badly wounded from our fight. Sora's group arrives and they realize Riku has a keyblade. He explains this one opens people's hearts and demonstrates it:




Holy shit he just stabbed Maleficent! Does that mean he did betray her? Well, no. It actually makes her more powerful by giving her the power of true darkness and she then turns into a dragon! Man, platforming, puzzles, backtracking and now the villain being stabbed in the heart in order to turn into a dragon... this whole level is a remake of Tomb Raider 2!

Ooooooh boy, this one is a doozy! Up until now, the bosses ranged from easy to manageable. Even the tougher ones, as long you knew what you were doing, you could deal with them fairly easily but this one... deary me! You take heavy damage from everywhere! There are near constant shockwave that force you to roll or jump to avoid damage, Maleficent hits you with her head or her tail, she can slash, bite, breathe fire and blast energy and there is no such thing as a weak attack with her. Oh and did I mention she has the most HP of any boss yet?

By far the most difficult boss yet and I suddenly feel massively underlevelled. I find that the most efficient technique is to jump at her head and glide away after a few strikes as that allows you to avoid most of her attacks. Also, use healing spells and items. A lot of them, and have a lot of ethers saved up as well.

After about seven thousand tries, I finally beat her!



YEEEAAAAH! Who's your dragonborn, BITCH?!


Riku mocks her, revealing that the Heartless were the one using her the whole time! And then he disappears through another portal. We can't follow this time but going back the way we came, a new path opens. We get to the room where the princesses are kept. Sora finds Kairi and tries to wake her up but Riku explains that she can't wake up because her heart is gone, which admittedly is something you rarely wake up from, although somehow I don't think they mean that literally.

He then immediately says that the keyhole won't open unless Kairi awakens. Well, guess that means we win, then, since you just said that's impossible. But apparently it IS still possible because her heart was within Sora all along! Symbolism! Sora also figures out that Riku is being possessed and the person possessing him is revealed to be none other than... Ansem! Dun dun dun! Ansem tries to take Kairi's heart from Sora but he resists and another battle begins. Note that during the cutscene, Dingo and Donald have been knocked away so I have to do this on my own.

Needless to say, it's another tough battle. The trick this time is to bait him into attacking and then counterattack. I can't summon anyone during this fight so I'm going all out with Cure. I also glide when he uses his special attack as it is on ground level (I cannot stress enough how useful gliding is during boss battles). As tough as he is, I take him out in one try (which goes to show how absurdly hard the dragon battle was if I can take this guy out in one try).

Riku fades away and Sora wants to lock the keyhole but is reminded by Dingo that it is not complete and therefore cannot be locked. They want to try waking Kairi up, but how? Well, Sora remembers what Riku said about the dark keyblade: it opens people's hearts, and so he grabs it and stabs himself with it! And os he turns into a dragon and kills everyone.

No, of course or not. What actually happens is that it liberates the hearts of the princesses, including Kairi, who awakens, only for her to witness Sora disappearing. The scene fades out, showing Sora falling down a black void. Back with the rest of the cast, Kairi swears to find a way to bring Sora back, but they are stopped by Ansem, who has finally recovered his physical appearance:




Daaaaamn, son! Evil has never looked so sexy! Well, except Harley Quinn. But then, Riku as a spirit or a ghost or an aura or whatever appears and holds Ansem back, not wanting to let him harm Kairi and buys the group time so they can escape. Oh good, that's gonna be our one good deed that's supposed to make up for attempted multiple planeticide, then. I can't be the only one who hates these slapped-on cheap attempts at "redeeming" a villain or making them seem complex at the very end by where we're supposed to forget about the many atrocities they committed because they did one noble thing in their entire life. Also for some reason the scene then focuses on a lone Heartless dropping by. I mean, why should we ca...




Oh. Oooooooooh. It's Sora! How you doin' buddy, did you change something? Got a new haircut? I climb back down (you can just drop off ledges to make it quicker) until I get back to the entrance hall, where Donald and Dingo seem to be under the impression that I'm chasing them. Well, I guess I am but not for the reason they think. Donald is ready to open a can of whoop-ass but Kairi recognizes Sora. More Heartless appear and Kairi brings Sora back to normal through the power of love and deus ex machina that didn't need to exist because this part was kind of pointless, all things considered. Beast comes back and tells the group to leave while he takes care of the Heartless. Sora wants him to join them but he refuses to leave without Belle.

The group escapes and we are back in Traverse Town, where Sora explains what happened to Squall and the FF7 characters. They agree that the only way to stop the Heartless from rushing in is to lock the keyhole in Hollow Bastion but Squall wonders what will happen once that happens. Sora doesn't care because considering the consequences of your actions is for games that make sense.

And so ends part 13, which turned out to not be the final part, but it was still a big one. I think it's pretty obvious that I didn't care much for the story developments but then again, I gave up on that a long time ago. However, I have to say, the gameplay aspect WAS a lot of fun. Like I mentioned, climbing the bastion really felt like a huge undertaking, the puzzles, while simplistic, where pretty creative for the most part and the boss battles were pretty cool as well, even the dragon one.

So next time, in part 14, we will revisit the various worlds for presumably the last time now that I can activate white marks (Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that was a thing? Because that's a thing) and we will take on the Hollow Bastion! Again!

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

Part 14: Don't they know it's the end of the World? (And the game)

Last time, we went through Hollow Bastion, beat up Maleficent and Riku, brought back Ansem and now, we're... going back to the Hollow Bastion. Does anyone else really dislike when video games do that, taking you to the final dungeon, make you go through most of it and then force you to leave to collect some MacGuffin before you can get to the final battle? I remember the obscure German RPG Gothic doing this as well and despite that being a great game, I wasn't impressed with this gimmick either.

Anyway, before we do that, since we're back to Traverse Town anyway, let's take the opportunity to use our recently acquired skills to check if we missed anything and hopefully the enemies we meet on the way will also allow to grind a bit 'cause I'll tell you what, some of the fights in good ol' HB did get a little bit hairy so I feel like I should level up a little. And for once, I won't skip any because I don't think I'll really get another opportunity to do this (well, not unless I leave HB of my own accord).

So, not much new in Traverse Town, just some orichalcum. Wonderland is a lot better though. We get some more orichalcum but more importantly, a white mark gets us a new keyblade! And it's a really good one too as not only is it as powerful as the one I currently have but it also gives Sora an extra MP AND increases the power of his magical attacks and summons. Amazing!

Olympus has a new weapon for Donald but it's a bit disappointing. Not very powerful and decreases his MP by one point. In the jungle, in a shocking twist of fate, we get more orichalcum. And in Agrabah is a block for the ship... deary me, it just gets better and better. And it's gonna keep getting better because next is Atlantica (I actually will be skipping Monstro because it wasn't there and checking a walkthrough, it turns out that it only has a gummi block so f*** that) and it's yet another orichalcum. In Halloween Town, another gummi block and the goes same in Neverland. Right, so only the Wonderland one was really worth it. On to Hollow Bastion!

By the way, I should point out that while I was grinding, I realized that there is a bit of a problem at this stage. You see, all enemies have been upgraded to tougher versions that grant you more experience when you beat them. But since you need more exp to level up, it still takes a while so rather than a new and bigger challenge that shows how serious things have become, it feels more like the gameplay regressed and we are back to the early stages of the game of tedious grinding where your attacks don't do a lot of damage, which compounded by the fact that attacks don't look any different when they get more powerful and a lot of the Heartlesses are the same as before, only stronger.

It's not like in the usual RPGs where you can see your characters have become a lot stronger because they can defeat basic enemies very easily and they just need to find bigger challenges to progress. It's not even like in FF8 where the enemies' level scales with your own (a mechanic I really like and I wish was used more often) because there, they start using different attacks and new strategies, they drop different loot and some actually become more of a threat than they were before whereas others become trivially easy and of course, your characters have learned all sorts of new skills as well and even with the enemies growing stronger, the heroes have become more powerful so it feels like there is a progress in the gameplay. Here it's like they just got nerfed and we're back to square one.

Because I haven't been paying attention, I didn't realize that I need to talk to Cid as we can't use the same route to go there. Cid tells us about a secret Navi-gummi in the canal, by which he actually means the secret cave. There, we find Kairi and do you remember how the first time we visited the case, I made a point of mentioning there was a decoration og a night sky that seemed out of place? Well, it has now changed to a sunny sky. Even Kairi finds it weird.





As we approach, the painting turns back into the night sky and we get the navi-gummi. Wow, that was hard. There's a cutscene where they mention they want to bring back Riku for some crazy reason. We also get a new keyblade which is slightly more powerful than the one I just found but I'm still goint to stick to it for the magic boost. Cid installs the new Navi-gummi and off we go!

Aaaand Chip and Dale tell us that not only did a new cosmic hole open but the worlds are having a strange magical reaction so we might want to visit them again... * siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggggggghhhhhhh* ... You know what? Sod that. I actually gave Wonderland a look, didn't notice anything new so I'm going to ignore that entirely. In fact, I'm beginning to wonder if this was a really belated prompt to go activate the white marks. Now, for the love of Hyna, let's just go to Hollow Bastion already.

So, for what is hopefully the last time, we go through the Starfox mini-game. Oh, how I won't miss that. And despite the fact that we used a different path, we still land in the same place, meaning this was just padding, because a 30+ hours game really needs it. Joy. We meet beast who explains that Belle and the other princesses decided to stay in the castle for unknown reasons so we've got to go meet them to find out what they're planning.

Once we get to the top, we find the princesses are trying to hold the Heartless and Ansem back so Sora can lock the keyhole. After we fight our way there, we enter the "Pit of Darkness" through the trippy giant keyhole and meet this guy:




Aaaawwwwww! It's the most adorable Behemoth ever! I want one as a pet! Or at least a plushie. And its adorableness is magnified by the fact that in spite of its size and large amount of HP (even more than Dragon!Maleficent) and its very strong attacks, it's a really easy boss. You have to bash its horn but he usually doesn't raise his head high enough to keep it out reach so you can go to town most of the time and the other thing is, you can just go behind him, climb on his back, get to his head and bash the horn from there.

He will eventually shake you off but you can repeat this manoeuvrer as much as necessary, even after he starts moving (oh yeah, he doesn't even walk or turn at first). Man, I kind of feel bad for the guy, it's like Shadow of the Colossus all over again. After the fight, we hear Squall's voice coming from outside and find Yuffie and Aerith with him. They explain that they came using Cid's ship (could've come earlier and help me with the monsters, guys) and explain that they grew up in Hollow Bastion but apparently it got taken over and I guess corrupted by Ansem.

They say that once Ansem is defeated, everything will go back to normal, the worlds will be restored, but they also won't be able to see one-another any more and of course they're doing the whole "even if we're separated, we'll always be in each-other's heart" spiel despite the fact that aside from Squall, none of them really had any meaningful interaction with Sora, and even Squall didn't have that much. And so, Sora locks the hole:




The princesses tell us that the forces of darkness are weakening but they are gathering in the Heart of Darkness, which is presumably where Ansem is hiding. That crafty bastard, hiding in a completely different video game! Sora wants to take the fight to them and the princesses upgrade his fire spell. Hey ladies, wanna maybe upgrade the other ones too? No? Okay. Before leaving though, Sora says he can't go back to his world before he's found Riku and the king.

In the ship, Chip and Dale say that there is a new tournament at the coliseum. The keyhole is locked, I don't care. So we have to go through the Starfox game again (dammit) and we arrive at... the End of the World. Well that's gloomy. Also, since the premise of the game is that we visit multiple worlds, shouldn't that be the end of the galaxy or the universe or something?

The place is a large void with some rocks which the characters explain are all that is left of the worlds that have been destroyed by the Heartless. They wonder what will happen to this place once the worlds will be restored and I don't really understand why they make such a big deal out of that considering it only exists because the worlds have been destroyed. It doesn't seem like anybody lives there.




Adding to the trippy feel of the area is the fact that we can just walk from rock to rock despite nothing supporting our feet. a ball of darkness drops from the sky and takes us to what I think is a pocket dimension where we have to fight four very powerful creatures. They are regular enemies but my God are they tough, more than most bosses I've faced, honestly. They pack a punch, can take a lot of punishment and the fact that there are four of them in such a small map makes it hard to dodge attacks as there is usually more than one attacking at the same time.

The place has many very good items, including stuff that raises attack and defence permanently. I originally wanted to grab the items one by one and going back to the save point each time to recover without using up items but the developers anticipated that and so an invisible wall is placed behind you the further you go. Clever girl. After that, we are sent to an even trippier area:




It's a bizarre yet beautiful scene that looks like a snowy mountain but is covered in crystals and there are some web-like formations. What worries me is that I keep finding blocks for the ship. Surely there won't be ANOTHER place to go to where I need to use the ship after that, will there? Either way, I climb down and into a vortex which takes me to a circular, spiky platform with orbs floating in mid-air, one green and one blue. The green one takes me back to the previous map, the blue one takes me to another platform, this one with a pink column of light which takes me to... Traverse Town?!

Yeah, it took me to the third district of Traverse Town. There's a chest and of course, some Heartlesses appear. They're basic ones so it's no big deal and the chest contains an accessory. So then, I open the door to the first district and... I'm back to the platform. Huh. So let's continue one and the blue orb takes me to a similar platform, entering the pillar of light takes me to Wonderland. Ah, I see how it's going to be and yeah, we get similar stuff with every world we've visited. Olympus, the jungle, Agrabah, Atlantica, Halloween Town, Neverland and of course... the 100 Acre Wood?!

WHAT.

Yeah, looking it up, turns out there was a secret world based on the 100 Acre Wood I could have visited the whole time. Apparently you have to do something in Traverse Town to get there? Oh well, it's too late now, I don't care. I do find it funny that it's the one zone where there is no enemy and you just have the chest in the middle of a clearing. I also appreciate that they put in the effort to give it a special style to make it look like the show/books.

Anyway, we finally arrive to the last platform and this one has a column of fire instead of the usual light. This takes us to a corridor where the path is blocked by a large heart but we can enter a room with this thing in it:




Not entirely sure what it is, there's a plate with cryptic writings on it alluding to Sora and Riku and sealing all the worlds and after reading it, two monsters appear. Back outside, the fire is gone and in its place is a hole. We drop down it and find ourselves flying in a dark, cloudy area where we find...




Holy shit it's the Devi- Chernabog!! And he's... ridiculously easy. I mean yeah, he's got some deadly attacks but there is almost no strategy to beating him. Just go straight for his mug and beat the everloving crap out of him. Watch out for his fire attack and you're golden. We enter the now empty volcano he was standing in and keep going further down by going through several empty rooms and find another behemoth. After we defeat him a piece of a Heartless symbol breaks and several waves of enemies appear, each one removing another piece until the symbol is completely gone. We walk through it, find a small room with a save point and a door. When we examine it, Sora hears a voice warning him that this room is his last refuge.

Well, it looks like this is it, folks. Beyond that door is the final boss and the end of the game. Time to finally put this thing to rest. Let us open it!

What awaits us is none other than Destiny Island, bookending the game. It looks wrong though. Nobody is there, the doors to the cabins are gone, the trees are dying. Obviously the only place to go is the cave but before we can get there, Ansem can be heard, saying that this world has been connected to darkness and will soon be gone. And indeed, we can see parts of the island disappear, the clear water turn a dark purple and cracks appear on the earth. Riku can be seen but it is an illusion created by Ansem.

Ansem reveals that what allowed this world to be invaded by the Heartless is Riku's desire to explore which made him feel in prison by being stuck on the island and so he looked for a way to visit other worlds and opened his heart to darkness. Now you see, if they'd pushed THAT aspect of him, that would have made him a much more interesting villain than the stupid "I hate that you're making friends with other people!" motive. Too bad they waited until the very end of the game to bring it up, huh?

Anyway, after his speech, Ansem attacks. Some dark being is hovering behind him like a stand out of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and Ansem occasionally uses it to protect him. They also have some pretty good attacks but overall it's not that hard a fight. Of course, it wouldn't be a Square-Enix game if the final boss had only one form so naturally, this is only the first part. Ansem escapes as the island keeps collapsing in on itself. We go after him but Donald and Dingo are stopped by a forcefield, meaning Sora is on hiw own to face...




... the shadowy monster that Sora saw in his dream. Once again, fairly easy fight, all things considered. You gotta hit its hands when he touches or punches the ground, which he does frequently. He can summon Heartlesses but it's the most basic kind so no biggie. The only real threat are large energy balls he can shoot, but even those are easy to dodge.

Immediately after, Ansem returns and this is time, he is a much more serious threat. His techniques aren't that different but he does have a couple new tricks and is a lot faster, making it harder to get close enough to him to hit. Gliding helps avoid his ground attacks and knowing when to heal is a key factor.

I beat him and a cutscene shows the group reunited and floating in a dark dimension similar to where we fought Chernabog. They see a door which Ansem says contains the heart of all kingdoms. The Kingdom Hearts if you will (and don't care about grammar) but before we can get through it, we have to fight Ansem's final form, this:



Have you been working out?


Can you see the original Ansem in the middle? Yeah, he's attached to that huge ship demon thing. He has also grown to giant size because why the f*** not at this point, you know? Sora is flying during this entire fight and you've got to get up and personal with Ansem and clobber him but it can get tough as he starts shooting lasers at you that are pretty hard to dodge and do a lot of damage. Better to try and anticipate that attack to get away and heal then come back to continue hitting him.

Using that technique, I beat him and Sora enters the central part of the ship/demon/Ansem and finds himself in a dark area surrounded by Heartlesses which seem trivially easy in comparison to what we've just been through and seem to be an excuse to recover Sora's health and MP a little because oh no, it's not over yet! Sora returns to the fight, where Ansem is now protected by a Heartless symbol and things have taken a turn for the phallic as tentacle-like protrusions have appeared on the ship (and are disappointingly poorly integrated into the model considering how well this hybrid thing is otherwise designed, with the tentacles visibly clipping).

Dodging more lasers, I destroy those things, which allows me to return to the dark area and finds Dingo! There are tougher monsters here but that also means they drop more health and MP bonuses so overall, I heal up nicely and go back to the fight with Dingo by my side. This time, the giant head of the ship opens its mouth and that's what we have to fight. Once again, the key is to anticipate its attacks to avoid getting hit or at least stay in good enough shape to heal and then go back to finish the job. This is actually easier than on Ansem himself and another portal to the dark area opens.

We rescue Donald and once again, tougher enemies appear. Back to the fight, a shield that was protecting the core of the ship is dispelled. This allows us to access a gross bulbous fleshy growth and destroy it, removing the shield protecting Ansem. We launch our final assault, dodging and healing as much as we can and eventually... we win!! YES!! YES!! YES!! And this time, it's for GOOD! Ansem explodes in a suitably over-the-top fashion for a JRPG boss.

Ansem is returned to his original form and claims that our victory was pointless because they keyblade cannot seal the Door of Darkness on its own. He commands the Kingdom hearts to open and grant him the power of supreme darkness, but Sora somehow manages to turn it into light, destroying Ansem once and for all. Still, they've got to close the Kingdom Hearts but even the combined strength of Sora, Dingo and Donald doesn't seem to be enough. To make matters worse, they look inside and see that the Heartless are coming!

They become desperate when suddenly, Riku appears from inside to help them because we need a sudden face turn to pretend his character developed and hey, his heel turn made no sense and was gratuitous so I suppose it's fitting that his face turn is equally nonsensical and gratuitous. They still struggle though, when suddenly, the Heartless start disappearing. The reason for that is shown to us when Mickey appears, wielding his own keyblade! And I really hope that the reveal that the king was Mickey wasn't supposed to be a twist because it was really damn obvious. And with Sora, they lock the Kingdom Hearts from both sides.




The door disappears and Sora turns around to see Kairi. And just as I was about to bitch about how little sense it makes that she's suddenly there, the game has the galls to provide an explanation that actually makes sense in-universe: she is on a sandy ground separated from where Sora is standing, which is snowy, so it seems to show that the worlds are being restored and this is the epicentre of this event. Sora unfortunately cannot join her but he promises her that he'll always be with her and will find a way to reunite with her. Their worlds drift apart and Kairi winds up alone as the island is restored. She is at peace with how things unveiled but obviously misses her friends, although she doesn't seem to lose hope to see them again.

Well, at least the game ends on a high note because that was a genuinely great, bittersweet scene.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was Kingdom Hearts... man, I wish this game was better. I think it's pretty obvious from what I wrote but playing through this game didn't exactly change my opinion of it. In fact, in a way, I am even more confused by its popularity because while objectively, it's not bad, well, that's all it is. This is in my opinion and incredibly mediocre game. It is literally "not bad" because it was made by competent people, but there is no substance to it. There is nothing wrong technically with it but there is no added value, no soul. Ironically, there is no heart to this game.

It can never dwell to deep into each world it showcases because we only have a very short amount of time for each one so we cannot develop any of them and so the game has to rush through the stories, stripping them of everything that made them meaningful in the process, leaving only its most superficial aspects.

And really, that is Kingdom Hearts in a nutshell to me: superficial. The story is cliché, the worlds are basic and disappointingly repetitive and formulaic for how varied the original works were, the characters are stereotypes and while Sora and Kairi are at least likeable, Riku is honestly one of the weakest villains I have ever seen in any work of fiction. I remember saying in my FF8 Let's Play that Seifer was two-dimensional and nowhere near as intimidating as he was supposed to be but man, he looks like the freaking Joker in comparison.

The crossover aspect is completely pointless. There is absolutely no reason for either the Disney or Final Fantasy characters to be there. You could have replaced all of them with original characters and lost nothing. In fact, it would have been better because then they would have had more freedom to do what they want with them.

And the fact that they come from their respective franchises has no influence on the story whatsoever. I was under the impression that the concept was that Sora would basically build a team of Disney & FF Expendables, with heroes from each world teaming up and bringing their own skills and personality to the table to fight the Heartless but no, the sub-plot of each world had f***-all to do with the main story.

Nothing that makes the story progress comes from either franchise, only the original material advances anything, which further begs the question of why they didn't just make this an entirely original work. It feels like a bad fanfic, the kind where the writer wants to name drop the characters but not actually do anything with them and instead focus on their OCs. It just seems incredible to me that in a game based around visiting and saving various worlds, the worlds are completely extraneous to the story.

The only sort of exceptions would be Maleficent and Squall who have a little bit of influence on the plot but again, you could rewrite them as entirely different character and nothing would be lost. The fact that those are these specific characters is not important, as evidenced by the fact that as much as I like Squall, like all FF characters, he is not the character we know because his backstory is completely different. And he's the one that turned out the best because they at least got his personality mostly right. So once again I must ask: why bother with existing franchises if you're not going to actually use what makes them what they are?

In general, the Final Fantasy characters other than Squall are utterly useless. Cid and Aerith did next to nothing, Cloud was barely the same character and why was Yuffie even there? And to say nothing of the ones who were on Destiny Island. Why were Selphie, Tidus and Wakka there? Why were they children? Why do they exist here when all the other FF characters are from Hollow Bastion? Who knows and who cares?

If they really wanted to focus on existing franchises, this game would have been better off being all Disney stuff, that way they could have gotten more into the themes of each world and reflect on how and why they resonate with people so much, kind of like a kid-friendly Cabin in the Woods, with maybe a few cameos from FF characters as Easter eggs.

The gameplay was just as superficial. I did praise the controls, and they are good, but it can only do so much with how repetitive everything was. The only thing breaking the monotony was the boss fights, which were almost always a lot of fun. Other than that, it was always the same thing: go somewhere, fight some mooks, fight a boss, rinse, repeat. What little changes they included was really not enough to change things up (and were occasionally quite annoying). In fact, it ended up reminding me of Final Fantasy X, which I was also disappointed with gameplay-wise for similar reasons (although I do like FFX a lot better than Kingdom Hearts).

The writing was a mess too. I've already gone one and on about what a non-character Riku is, but in general, there are constant contradictions, logical fallacies, plot holes, unclear motives, etc... I've pointed out most of them in the Let's Play but I actually skipped some of the smaller ones. The tone was all over the place, with the attempts at slapstick falling flat, feeling forced, way out of place and the goofier elements being jarring when the game attempted dark and serious moments.

And the dialogue, my god the dialogue. It was trying so hard to be whimsical and inspiring it was obnoxious. Just some of the most hackneyed platitudes you could possibly think of, anvilicious yet hollow morals and just plain cringe-worthy lines. If you could get into this universe, the writing would take you right out.

And that's not to say there aren't good things about this game. There are. Like I already said, I like the concept of the disappearing worlds and having to visit surviving ones, I love the visuals, including the redesigns of FF characters, I like Traverse Town, the boss fights were cool and heck, the entire Halloween Town part was great and there WERE a few good scenes. It all just makes it more frustrating that this game never gets better than average because it shows that the potential for it to be good was there.

And hey, if nothing else, we will always have Squall beating a small child into a coma. Pfffffft ha ha haaa!

And so ends my Let's Play of Kingdom Hearts. Thank you very much for reading all this. If you like the game, I hope you enjoyed this even though I complained about it a lot and that you can understand the criticism even if you can look past the flaws of the game. If you feel the same way I do, well, I hope you had fun reading about someone else raging at the game. And whether you agree with me or not, I'd be really interested to read what you people think of the game and what you thought of this Let's Play.

I enjoy doing those so I'll probably make another one somewhere down the line. Don't know when, don't know which game, but I hope to see you again there. See ya!