RTTP: Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5

[The Bear]

(Note: All of the pictures are from the internet, none are from me)

Firstly

I have been a big fan of the Kingdom Hearts series since 2008, when I first discovered these games on the PS2. I hadn't really played any JRPG's outside Pokémon before them, so I got really into them. However, outside quickly trying the PS3 remaster collections, I hadn't touched most of the series much sine 2012 when Dream Drop Distance came out. That changed when I grabbed the 1.5 + 2.5 HD collection for the PS4. That gave me an ample excuse to play most of these games again. 60FPS really made these games (and DDD on the 2.8 collection) a blast to play again, framerate made them feel lot more fluid than before. It also inspired me to write up this RTTP thread.

This thread will be RTTP on the four games on the 1.5 + 2.5 collection, so Kingdom Hearts 1, 2, Chain of Memories and Birth By Sleep. I decided to not add the games on the 2.8 Collection, since honestly the scope of this thread is big enough as it is. I'm also not including the two movies on the collection (358/2 Days and Re:Coded) since they don't have any gameplay, and honestly the stories are not worth it to go thoroughly into. With each game, I'll discuss the gameplay and the story/writing somewhat separately. With this series in particular, I think those two aspects are quite disconnected, so that one game can have good gameplay and bad story, or vice versa. I expect the people reading this to have at least slight knowledge about these games, so I'm not looking at the bare basics.

In this thread you can discuss just one of these games, or all at once, or how you feel about the collection in general.

Kingdom Hearts 1

It is the first game in the series, released in 2002. The 60FPS upgrade on PS4 made it feel lot more fresh, but it still doesn't hide the fact that a lot of tha game has not aged very well, especially on the gameplay department.

The most obviously aged aspect of the game is the Camera for me. It felt already clunky and unintuivitive when I first played the game, and it's not much better here. The developers tried to update it by moving the camera control from L2 and R2 to the right analogue stick, but it still feels very awkward to use. The camera keeps getting stuck, and is way too close to Sora, so that you don't really see the battlefield as well as you should.

The other big thing that feels very aged are the movement options. For a big chunk of the game you are tied to a very clumsy jumping option, while you are expected to do some fairly strict precision platforming. This turns especially Wonderland and Deep Jungle into something of a slog, when you keep missing those critical jumps, and need to re-try again. The platforming and movement becomes lot more tolerable after you obtain High Jump and Glide later, but this just makes me wonder why they decided to deliberately gimp the movement controls for first 1/3 of the game. It just doesn't feel fun for that time.

The clunky movements translate a bit to the feel of the combat itself as well. It's fairly serviceable, but it feels pretty stiff and never as responsive as it should be. It never becomes outright bad though outside the underwater combat in Atlantica, which feels honestly really badly if you don't just spam magic to deal with the enemies there. It's pretty alright, especially considering it's the first game in the series from 2002, when Square hadn't done lot of ARPGs yet.

Even though the combat doesn't feel as fleshed out as some of the later titles do, there's some great ideas in there I wish were explored in other games do. I feel that the Tech system in particular was quite inspired idea. In that system, you could gain extra experience points from deflecting and guarding enemy attacks at the right moment. This incentivized players from simply spamming attack combos to look at enemy and boss behavior with more nuance, and try to approach them with more tactics in mind. I wish the later games would have this system in place too, even if it could be used to grind easy exp with maybe bit too ease.

One of the most interesting things about this game compared to the rest of the series is the world design. I think KH1 feels the closest of letting you feel like you ever inside a Disney Movie. The levels were pretty open ended, and let you mostly explore at your leisure, without holding your hand too much. This came with its own share of problems though. Most notable one is that you can get lost really easily. In some levels the game expects you to do lot of backtracking, and it's not always very clear what triggers the next story event. The first visit to Traverse Town and to Deep Jungle are guilty of this in particular. You end up wandering around pretty aimlessly in these two examples, which combined with clumsy platforming makes Deep Jungle in particular pretty annoying. The later games fix this, but not always in satisfactory way, as we will later see.

That more or less caps out my thoughts on the gameplay, but there is still the story aspect to discuss. I think the story and writing here are pretty strong. None of it is masterful, and the premise is inherently very silly, but it is quite cohesive, stand-alone story that holds your interest well until the end. The dialogue writing here is surprisingly natural, especially compared to what would be coming later. I in particular want to point out how well the game establishes the friendship between Sora, Riku and Kairi in the beginning. They all feel like real kids with personalities, character faults and pretty fun character dynamics between them. This early establishment is very important, so that once Sora sets out to find his friends, you feel at least a bit invested in his plight, and feel sorry for the kid. The writing also remembers to keep most of the main cast at least two-dimensional, since they all feel like actual kids. I need to put emphasis on this, since the later games on the series really seem to forget this aspect.

Last thing I want to point out is that the music in this game is really good. Yoko Shimomura does a really good job here, and her quality keeps being consistently high for rest of the series, so I won't mention it again.

All in all, the first Kingdom Hearts game is really solid game, even though its age shows, especially with lot of the quality of life elements the later entries bring to the game. It might be bit of a slog to get to if you are only starting the series now, but I'd say it's worth it.

Chain of Memories

I'm basing this RTTP on the remake version of the game, not the GBA original. I played some of that one, but never to completion, unlike with this remake, which I have finished twice. First and foremost, I want to commend the remake for being quite impressive on it's own. If I didn't know that this game was originally on a 6th generation handheld, I would have never guessed. Sure, the game recycles heavily assets from KH1, but it still feels like a pretty big game. Oddly enough though, it seems that the PS4 remaster wasn't given as much love as the other games were. Most of the cut-scenes look very fuzzy and unfocused, almost as if they were just given weren't even given a resolution bump at some parts. It's really odd, when rest of the games look very sharp even during cut-scenes. Still, the gameplay isn't affected by this.

For this game, I want to talk about the story and the writing first, because honestly, I think this game has the best writing out of all of the games in the series. The writing in Disney worlds is 100% filler, but the stuff that happens between the main floors is shockingly good. Again, it's not Shakespeare, but everything just feels very good. Sora is really relatable as a protagonist in this one, for example. The writing doesn't shy away from giving him some well needed character flaws and character traits. He doesn't always do the right thing, he is sometimes even outright mean to his friends. This makes him feel quite real. The villains are very good as well. They have nice banter with each other, have interesting dynamics and feel menacing. The story isn't very grand, but what's there is done really well. It's pretty interesting especially compared to Kingdom Hearts 2, but we'll get to that later. Sora's side is also again pretty self-contained and understandable story. Riku's side is bit less so, but I always felt like his side was more of a side attraction for the people who were invested in the series as a whole.

From gameplay side, this game is really combat heavy. There isn't really anything else to do in Sora's side but to fight, maybe open few treasure chests and tweak the card decks. With Riku's side there is even less. Luckily the card system is quite a novel idea. At first I thought it would just be a boring gimmick, but it actually adds a lot of moving parts you have to consider before and during combat situations. Sleights, when to use 0 cards, how to make sure your action is not broken while using an item… it's pretty fun, really.

However, even the combat system cannot save the game from just how repetitive it is. Like mentioned, combat is what you will be doing almost all the time. It doesn't help that the rooms are quite literally just copied and pasted over and over, just with a slightly fresh coat of paint depending on what world you are visiting at the time. This is tied to the synthesis mechanic where you can decide what the next room will look like, but it gets really boring really fast. I do appreciate the power to create save points wherever you want to, though.

So even if there's some enjoyable writing in here, the repetitive nature of the game makes it one of the weaker ones of the series. There was potential for more, but for a game that was originally on the GBA, I'm most likely expecting bit too much.

 

[The Bear]

Kingdom Hearts 2

Full disclosure here: I think this one has the best gameplay in the series, and the replay on PS4 did not change my opinion at all. However, I also think this game has the biggest gap between the gameplay and story, so I'll want to discuss the gameplay first as a whole.

I think that the combat in this game is the best the series has had to offer so far. There's lot of fun boss and enemy encounters that really put you on your toes, and force you to fight well and tactfully. One thing I really enjoy about the combat is that how you are offered lot of variety in a good way. The game gives you lot of different tools to work with: Basic Melee, Magic, Drive Forms, Limits and Summons, to name few. The game allows you to combine and mix all of these different tools with your basic melee combos, so you are effortlessly moving from combo to magic, to back to combo, to a limit. What's important here is that none of the options you are given are overpowered or more effective to others, so you feel free to mix and match, see what works for you the best. You also can't just spam one type of magic or just button mash melee combos either, or you will get killed very fast. Different bosses ask you to consider different tactics and different types of equipment, especially in the post-game. What helps to keep especially the bosses interesting is the Revenge Value system, where you can only do a certain amount of attack to a boss until you reach their revenge value, and the boss then counter-attacks. This keeps the fights fair, since you can't just cheese the bosses to death, but you are still allowed to fairly stun the bosses, and then punish them accordingly.

However, most of what I just said only really fits the highest difficulty, Critical Mode. On lower difficulties, you really can just spam melee combos, and still win easily without much thought. This is why I really recommend playing KH2 on critical, and why the original PS2 game didn't impress as much as this Final Mix version does.

What also helps to elevate the combat to me combat is that the camera feels lot more fluid this time around. It is not so close to Sora now, so you get a lot better view of the action. The traversal options feel lot better too, especially once you level up your drive forms accordingly to obtain high level jump and the like. Unlike in KH1 though, this time the movement options you get from the start feel lot better too, so you don't feel like the game is artificially holding you back.

One thing to mention is that the post-game of this game is great. There's lot of optional bosses that really push you to the limit of understanding the battle system. The secret dungeon 'Cavern of Remembrance' is really nice as well.

The better combat comes with some cost to some other aspects of the game though. The level design is lot more bland than it was in kh1, and the game keeps making very sure that you are never lost. The additional help is appreciated after getting lost in KH1 was a real problem, but I feel like they went too hard on the opposite direction here – there is just no room to exploring, and none of the worlds have any sort of hidden secrets to them. it's just constantly running to one combat scenario to another. Only exceptions to this is the added secret dungeon, which forces you to use your drive forms. I wish the rest of the game had more stuff like that, since now most of the worlds just feel like window-dressing.

The writing is the other part of the game I wanted to talk about. I'm not sure why, but the quality of the writing seems to go down from the previous games to this one. Firstly, this is the first game in the series where the main story is nothing but cohesive and stand-alone. Game fully expects you to have played KH1 and COM to make almost any sense of this one. The game also puts in lot of plot twists that feel like they are there to make the game feel more complicated that it actually needs to be. This is also the first game in the series that truly has issues with pacing. All of the Disney content has been regulated to be just filler, while the main plot is delivered in chunky exposition montages that only happen in few sections between the large portions of the game that are the actual Disney worlds. Chain of memories has this problem too, but at least there the plot was somewhat evenly divided to the hallway scenes between the main floors. Here the structure is more close to "3 hours plot, 10 hours of filler, 3 hours of plot, 10 hours of filler, 2 hours of plot, and the game ends". The later games in the series have this problem as well.

Other major issue with the writing is how the characters are written. I'll just take Sora as an example, since I already talked about him Chain of Memories. In the previous games Sora is very cheerful and likable, but he also has lot of character flaws. He makes mistakes and is not always nice, and sometimes he is even out-right mean. In short, he feels more relatable and humanlike. In KH2, most of his character flaws or even any character attributes have been removed. What remains is very shallow, human version of modern Mickey Mouse. Always happy and cheerful, and with no other character attributes at all. There are few scenes where he shows more emotion that just happy, but it's not enough to make him convincing. He feels like a completely another character compared to the previous games. Lot of other characters suffer from being very shallow too, but Sora is a prime example here.

Still, even though the writing of this game is very disappointing, the gameplay more than makes up for it. KH2 on critical is still one of the most enjoyable ARPG games I have played.

Birth By Sleep

I played BBS originally on the PSP, and then later again on PS3 and now on PS4. While my thoughts on the other games of the series have changed over the years, my feelings on this one have stayed pretty consistent.

The game does lot of experimenting, which I always appreciate. The gameplay uses the Command Deck system, where you get to choose what special attack commands and spells you want to use. There are very limited number of slots for these commands, and once you use them once, there is a cooldown period before you can use them. This was a fun idea, and the command melding system where you could meld lower level commands into higher level ones was nice as well. It gave you lot of options for how you wanted to customize your command deck, which almost reminds me of the fun deck-tweaking in Chain of Memories.

However, the Command Deck ends up poisoning the rest of the combat in various different ways. My biggest problem is that it un-incentivises you from using your basic melee combos entirely, as the commands just do lot more damage, and you can't combine your combos with the commands and magic with same fluidity as you could in KH2. The melee combos also feel very clunky to use, even more so than in KH1.

It doesn't help that the boss design of this game has taken a step back from KH2. Most of the bosses don't act consistently. You cannot stun some of the bosses at all, and some of them break from stun randomly, which punishes you from trying to learn the fights. This feels particularly annoying after KH2, where the Revenge Value system made stunning bosses feel fair, as all of them reacted fairly consistently to it. It becomes clear after a while that the only way to fight the bosses in higher difficulties without dying is to run at them, do one command, and then run away. doing any physical combos on them is more or less impossible, especially on Critical Mode.

These problems aren't the only issues with the game balance sadly. Although melding new and more powerful commands is fun, the game balance becomes even more broken once you realize that only very few commands are actually any good to use, especially in the end-game and post game. In this game it's the different types of surges and the mine commands that you will most likely end up using by the end. Both of them have a short cooldown time, and the surges have invincibility frames that make attacking bosses safe. Most of the high level end-game commands are powerful, but they also way too dangerous to actually use since you will most likely end up getting killed instead unless you are playing on Beginner or Standard. So you end up just spamming the few commands that are obtained fairly early to the game instead. It's not healthy for the game's balance when a only very few commands are actually viable on the highest difficulties.

Last thing to mention about the game balance are the movement options. The game gives a single evasion move for the playable characters. with Aqua and Ven, they have full invincibility frames, which means you can just spam the evasion moves and become completely invincible until you decide to do something else. Lot of the post-game bosses are designed with this in mind, so the bosses turn into quite mindless battles where you just spam your evasion button, then do a one single command to do little bit of damage, and then return into spamming evasion. It also makes these bosses almost impossible to beat with Terra, who doesn't have an evasion move like, so he is killed easily.

So with all those issues combined, the game is somewhat annoying to play especially on higher difficulties. The command deck gives you lot of options in theory, but with useless melee combos due to bosses punishing you from using them, only few commands being viable options and the dodge rolls giving you infinite invincibility frames, the game turns from fun experimentation into pretty repetitive and boring slog. It is a shame, since there was potential for more. Like in KH2, the game does offer variety and options with shotlocks, D-link and command styles. But due to the way the game is balanced, you are pushed away from actually using any of those. Instead you are better off to play in a very boring way, because any actual experimentation will most likely just kill you in Critical Mode.

So with gameplay out of the way, how is the story for this one? Well, honestly it's somewhat worse than before. The main plot is even more convoluted now than ever before, although it is more self-contained this time around. My main issues with lie within the writing though. It's honestly really bad, not going to lie. The writing is relying quite heavily on telling, and not showing. For example, the game tells throughout the story that Terra, Ven and Aqua are best friends, yet it never shows them interacting like real friends would. This is one thing KH1 did very well – it established the dynamics between Sora, Riku and Kairi, and did so quite convincingly even if it was sometimes pretty cheesy. Here the characters keep making proclamations about how they are best friends, and how they fight for friendship, yet all of it feels so hollow due to the game never showing them actually be friends. There are some flashback scenes, but they also ring very hollow to me. The Disney worlds are mostly here as filler again, although there is a little bit effort to tie them more to the main story. It's not enough though, and the game falls again into the same routine of "1 hour of plot – 5 hours of filler" etc. routine that happened in Kingdom Hearts 2.

Even though I've been quite critical of the game in this writeup, I do think Birth By Sleep is a fun game. It just could have been lot more than what it ended up as, and that is a big shame for me. It's better than Dream Drop Distance, and Chain of Memories though from gameplay perspective. I still really like to meld commands and attach abilities into them.


Wrap-up

I know I've been pretty critical of the games in this RTTP, but I do want to emphasise that I still like all of them quite a lot. It's just my style of want to point out the things I'd like to be improved on. I'm quite excited to see what Kingdom Hearts 3 will bring forth, and I do hope it will take the best parts of each of these games.

 

[PurgeVIII]

Blank Points is the best cutscene in the series, don't @ me

 

[Napalm_Frank]

Blank Points is the best cutscene in the series, don't @ me

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Dreadful.

 

[Napalm_Frank]

I'll promise to read and nag about your post Grizzly after I get some sleep.

 

[MrTired]

Re:Chain of Memories had the best battle system of the Series. Come @ me bro (Pause).

 

[The Bear]

Re:Chain of Memories had the best battle system of the Series. Come @ me bro (Pause).

Click to shrink...

It's very enjoyable for sure. Just wish the game wasn't so combat heavy as it is.

 

[Cruxist]

Great write up. I still think BBS is one of the better games because of all the experimentation.

I feel bad for Chain of Memories. Once it got ported to the PS2, the game suffered a lot. It really wasn't meant to be played on a tv. The GBA game is such a fun experience, works really well as a portable game, and I don't remember getting too frustrated with it. Granted, the 3D effects are great in the Organization Boss Battles and you don't get that on the GBA, but the card battle system feels much better for a handheld.

 

[L4DANathan]

I agree with most of your points, especially about the Tech system in KH1. Once you start dealing with the higher level xp requirements, I don't think grinding for xp with it is a very efficient method and wouldn't be a problem. You failed to mention the insane completion grind for BBS by the way, an insane number of mini-games that have to be played an insane number of times for each character, of which there are 3 (Seriously, fuck that board game).

 

[Psxphile]

Fuzzy cinema scenes in Re:CoM is due to the fact that they were originally FMV of PS2 assets, and not rendered in real-time back when it was first released. There's only so much you can do with that, and seems the porting team wasn't about to go back and re-render every scene... which is a shame.

 

[The Bear]

I agree with most of your points, especially about the Tech system in KH1. Once you start dealing with the higher level xp requirements, I don't think grinding for xp with it is a very efficient method and wouldn't be a problem. You failed to mention the insane completion grind for BBS by the way, an insane number of mini-games that have to be played an insane number of times for each character, of which there are 3 (Seriously, fuck that board game).

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Oh yeah. I never bothered to 100% BBS due to how much the game expects you to love those minigames, haha.

 

[Syril]

Other major issue with the writing is how the characters are written. I'll just take Sora as an example, since I already talked about him Chain of Memories. In the previous games Sora is very cheerful and likable, but he also has lot of character flaws. He makes mistakes and is not always nice, and sometimes he is even out-right mean. In short, he feels more relatable and humanlike. In KH2, most of his character flaws or even any character attributes have been removed. What remains is very shallow, human version of modern Mickey Mouse. Always happy and cheerful, and with no other character attributes at all. There are few scenes where he shows more emotion that just happy, but it's not enough to make him convincing. He feels like a completely another character compared to the previous games. Lot of other characters suffer from being very shallow too, but Sora is a prime example here.

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So pretty much old Mickey Mouse to moden Mickey Mouse.

 

[Inuhanyou]

I'm also not including the two movies on the collection (358/2 Days and Re:Coded) since they don't have any gameplay, and honestly the stories are not worth it to go thoroughly into.

Click to shrink...

You got no soul OP

Also, how can you say Sora has no emotions in KH2 when that's the only game he actually cries

 

[Hecht]

I've been watching my nephew plow through the series in the past months. Seem mostly fine, though Terra's voice actor is so, so bad.

 

[Macca]

Played through 1, Chain of Memories and 2 again recently. Still very good games and 2 improved the fun gameplay and has probably the best combat in an action RPG to me, but I've said it before the charm of KH1 went to lost somewhere between 1 and 2. You just have to look at the level design especially, KH1 had a lot of stuff to do in the different worlds that fitted to that Disney property. KH2 just feels flat and empty without anything to do.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

KH2 is a fantastic action game and kind of a cruddy RPG. KH1 is an okay RPG and a pretty bad action game. I love the combat mechanics in KH2, but I would definitely appreciate the world complexity of KH1 if it were there. The Cavern of Remembrance shows that Square's teams could still do complex level design, so it's not like it's impossible.

 

[aesync]

Great write up! I'm playing through the series for the first time, to the chagrin of all my friends who grew up on this series, and I'm halfway through KH1 and feel VERY frustrated with many parts of that game. I do like the cheesy story, but the level design and platforming is abysmal. Wonderland and Deep Jungle seem impossible to finish without a guide, OR by wasting hours and hours backtracking to every room to find a trigger for the next event that you missed.

Combat feels like it has some promise, but so far, spamming X seems like the most effective strategy. Looking forward to getting to KH2!

 

[ryseing]

and honestly the stories are not worth it to go thoroughly into.

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As a Roxas defender, I disagree with this.

 

[kennyamr]

358/2's story is one of the best though :v

 

[Benzychenz]

Heh, I'm actually planning on making a thread exactly like this soon enough, doing a full series replay and platinuming every game right now. KH1 is done and just need to max out Riku to finish CoM.

I think I mostly agree with your points. KH1 remains my favourite, the story and worlds are just so much better than the following games, and while the gameplay is a bit more dated I think it still mostly holds up (clunky camera is the biggest issue).

Re:CoM is just... not a good game imo. The combat is boring and repetitive, and you have to do a whole lot of grinding throughout to keep your level where it should be. At least once you get overpowered sleights you can cheese the rest of the game. What's there of the story is great but it's really not enough to slog through the rest.
I do think the game overall worked better on GBA.

I only played a couple hours of 2.5 on PS3 so I'm excited to dive into critical mode properly (in 60fps no less!), hoping it lives up to the praise and makes me like the game more than I did on PS2.

BBS I've only played once on PSP but I loved it then. I'm a little scared the higher difficulties will bring out the flaws and lower my opinion of it.

 

[MrTired]

It's very enjoyable for sure. Just wish the game wasn't so combat heavy as it is.

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That's fair criticism, I'm biased cause Chain of Memories on GBA was my first interaction with series (didn't have PS2 at that time). Agree with your assessment of Birth by Sleep. I heard that they rectified your complaint about combat in the 2.8 collection. I'm currently in the middle of playthrough of birth by sleep and finding it a bit of a slog. I don't know if its more to do we the writing or due to playing the collection of games one after the other.

 

[L4DANathan]

Also, how can you say Sora has no emotions in KH2 when that's the only game he actually cries

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David Cage, is that you?

 

[Inuhanyou]

David Cage, is that you?

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i'm not french ;)

No but seriously, i never really thought sora in KH1 was...particularly filled with characterization, just a generic kid character. In COM i found him much more humanlike because he was basically having his mind stretched into 10 different places at once

 

[Winston1]

Honestly, I'm a bit more forgiving to Birth by Sleep's story just because of Kingdom Hearts 2 being one of the worst written games I've ever played. That's not to say that Birth by Sleep doesn't have tons of egregious stupidity. It does, most notably everything involving Terra. But it also has a few redeeming elements, notably Ventus's very strong campaign. Kingdom Hearts 2, meanwhile, is a parade of aggressive stupidity from beginning to end.

 

[WrenchNinja]

Kingdom Hearts II has become my favourite game in the series with the collection. I wish Final MIX had come to the West earlier.

 

[Footos22]

Heh, I'm actually planning on making a thread exactly like this soon enough, doing a full series replay and platinuming every game right now. KH1 is done and just need to max out Riku to finish CoM.

I think I mostly agree with your points. KH1 remains my favourite, the story and worlds are just so much better than the following games, and while the gameplay is a bit more dated I think it still mostly holds up (clunky camera is the biggest issue).

Re:CoM is just... not a good game imo. The combat is boring and repetitive, and you have to do a whole lot of grinding throughout to keep your level where it should be. At least once you get overpowered sleights you can cheese the rest of the game. What's there of the story is great but it's really not enough to slog through the rest.
I do think the game overall worked better on GBA.

I only played a couple hours of 2.5 on PS3 so I'm excited to dive into critical mode properly (in 60fps no less!), hoping it lives up to the praise and makes me like the game more than I did on PS2.

BBS I've only played once on PSP but I loved it then. I'm a little scared the higher difficulties will bring out the flaws and lower my opinion of it.

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Birth by sleep is an absolute bitch to platinum. I was all in for platinuming it. Did 1 and 2 easily.

100% Ventus including all secret bosses, almost 100% Terra but honestly fuck Terra. he hasn't got the evasion techniques to be able to beat a certain
secret boss without having pure luck as the defining factor. That's even with using thunder surge spam. It's taken me so many tries I cant even be bothered to go through all the rigmarole of doing it all again with Aqua even though she will be way easier. I honestly think the only way id be able to do it is starting the whole game again on easy and that's a huge time sink. I can honestly say its the hardest thing I've ever tried to get through in a game straight out BS

 

[Culgan]

If you thought the plot for BBS was convoluted just wait until you play DDD.

I've played the entire series and I...I know what's happening generally but I really struggle to follow some of the the shit that's going on and have to re-read wikis regularly to wrap my head around everything.

I'm replaying the PS4 collection now before KH3 drops but i still know that no matter what i'm gonna have to read tons of recaps/summaries right before KH3 comes out to get a refresher on all the crazy.

 

[Trigonometrize]

Man, the story in Kingdom Hearts 1 is so good. I think it's the strong point of the entire series. Sora, Riku and Kairi's friendship triangle is well established in subtle and convincing ways. Like when Riku and Sora have their little race, and right before Riku puts sharing the fruit with Kairi on the line, and then when Sora wins Riku's just like "nah, just kidding. You're such a kid to think I was serious." It's a coming of age story about two kids fighting to see who can come of age first, bigger, and better. I love how Riku and Sora feeling alienated from each other feels pretty analogous to two kids growing up and growing apart, but in shedding their former views of the world are able to come back together again at the end. Riku at the beginning is challenging Sora to grow up with him, and although it was clearly Riku trying to grow up too fast, by the end you can tell they both found a good place in the world they're happy with.

And then the other games happened...

???

There are other reasons that make 1 my favorite, but the through line of the friendship in the story is excellently done. Most of the other games in the series are more concerned with masturbating to the worst aspects of Kingdom Hearts when it comes to the stories.

 

[Benzychenz]

Birth by sleep is an absolute bitch to platinum. I was all in for platinuming it. Did 1 and 2 easily.

100% Ventus including all secret bosses, almost 100% Terra but honestly fuck Terra. he hasn't got the evasion techniques to be able to beat a certain
secret boss without having pure luck as the defining factor. That's even with using thunder surge spam. It's taken me so many tries I cant even be bothered to go through all the rigmarole of doing it all again with Aqua even though she will be way easier. I honestly think the only way id be able to do it is starting the whole game again on easy and that's a huge time sink. I can honestly say its the hardest thing I've ever tried to get through in a game straight out BS

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Does difficulty level actually make much difference on the secret bosses or will they BS instakill you regardless?
Because BBS is actually the one I've been considering doing 2 full playthroughs on.
1 and CoM were fine to do in a single 100% proud mode playthrough, and I'm sure KH2 will be similar. The optional bosses will be a good challenge on critical but not impossible.

Doing the secret bosses as Terra though? That's got me considering doing my 100% run on easy then just straight story for the critical mode trophy.

 

[L4DANathan]

Does difficulty level actually make much difference on the secret bosses or will they BS instakill you regardless?
Because BBS is actually the one I've been considering doing 2 full playthroughs on.
1 and CoM were fine to do in a single 100% proud mode playthrough, and I'm sure KH2 will be similar. The optional bosses will be a good challenge on critical but not impossible.

Doing the secret bosses as Terra though? That's got me considering doing my 100% run on easy then just straight story for the critical mode trophy.

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Yeah, I would definitely recommend 100%ing it on Beginner. Critical is fucking awful. Seriously, the first thing I do every time I start is rush to Radiant Garden to get the XP Walker skill, then afk grind 50 levels before bothering to play any further or do any side content.

 

[The Bear]

If you thought the plot for BBS was convoluted just wait until you play DDD.

I've played the entire series and I...I know what's happening generally but I really struggle to follow some of the the shit that's going on and have to re-read wikis regularly to wrap my head around everything.

I'm replaying the PS4 collection now before KH3 drops but i still know that no matter what i'm gonna have to read tons of recaps/summaries right before KH3 comes out to get a refresher on all the crazy.

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Oh I know... I played DDD in 2012 on 3DS, and later again with the 2.8 Collection. It works better on PS4, but it's the weakest mainline game (KH1, 2, BBS, DDD) for sure to me, both gameplay and writing wise.

 

[Deleted member 5086]

I really need to catch up with the series before KH3 comes out. I've played through KH1, but that's about it.

 

[Blade24070]

1 and 2 are legendary games. Especially 1. 2 got better with the Final Mix version.

After that, it becomes kind of a mess, though BbS probably comes out on top (though I used to think it was overrated, still is imo).

 

[WrenchNinja]

Yeah, I would definitely recommend 100%ing it on Beginner. Critical is fucking awful. Seriously, the first thing I do every time I start is rush to Radiant Garden to get the XP Walker skill, then afk grind 50 levels before bothering to play any further or do any side content.

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Hunter in the Dark is so bad on Critical. I think half my deck were Curaga spells.

 

[The Unsent]

I don't find the controls of Kingdom Hearts 'gimped', I like the metroidvania aspect of unlocking double jump and glide and I actually like to see more of it, better than the worlds just being battle arenas (with few NPCs as well)

 

[Mister X]

Kingdom hearts 2/ Birth by sleep >>>>>> rest

(and chain of memories on GBA was good imo)

 

[kayos90]

No comment on any of the music! T_T

 

[Stuart Gipp]

I'd play through the whole thing if I could get past the boss (Vexen) in Twilight Town in Re:CoM. Absolutely impossible. The annoying thing is I've beaten the GBA version three times!

 

[The Bear]

I'd play through the whole thing if I could get past the boss (Vexen) in Twilight Town in Re:CoM. Absolutely impossible. The annoying thing is I've beaten the GBA version three times!

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Make a deck with big bunch of Sonic Blades, fires for firagas, few cures for curagas and some hi-potions, and then just spam.

 

[TwilightSparkleMotion]

I just finished KH2 last night! I disagree about KH2 Sora---the theme of the back half of the game is romance, and Sora is visibly bothered about Kairi the whole time despite wanting to help these people. I thought it was a nice touch.

When I was a kid in KH1, I would rush from room to room to see the next cutscene, especially towards the end. KH2 was the opposite. There was so much filler that I actually thought the gameplay was the strong suit. KH2 is the most fun I've ever had mashing X.

Onto BBS!

 

[Chaserjoey]

I'd play through the whole thing if I could get past the boss (Vexen) in Twilight Town in Re:CoM. Absolutely impossible. The annoying thing is I've beaten the GBA version three times!

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Do you have Lethal Frame? Or you could even use Firaga.

Activate the Genie Jafar card and spam those two sleights (have various elixirs at the end of your deck to restore used sleight cards) and Vexen should go down in no time.

 

[Akabeko]

I've been playing through the whole KH series to get ready for KH3. Just made it to the last world of DDD, so pretty close to done. I think I agree for the most part on your assessment of each individual game, except I really liked the plot of BBS. Sure, the writing of the characters could have been a little better, but I thought the game did a great job of setting up an ominous atmosphere that kept me motivated to play through all three story lines. Like, I've never felt like Sora was ever in any real danger (plotwise), but in BBS even from the opening cinematic I wasn't sure what the fate of the characters would be, and that kind of hung over the entire game ramping up the tension.

 

[Woozies]

Can't say i disagree with any of your assessments.

Re:CoM battle system is the worst though.

Like it's not even a question.

 

[The Bear]

I just finished KH2 last night! I disagree about KH2 Sora---the theme of the back half of the game is romance, and Sora is visibly bothered about Kairi the whole time despite wanting to help these people. I thought it was a nice touch.

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It was hard for me to buy Sora's investment to Kairi when he had way, way stronger reaction to meeting Riku again, when meeting Kairi made him seem like he felt very indifferent, haha.

 

[Woozies]

I do think BBS has a largely fucked story(something I believe, notably in presentation. But I also feel like it makes up a lot of its problems in that long final stretch of Aqua from I would say Colosseum onwards (Assuming you did Terra and ven before)

 

[Footos22]

Hunter in the Dark is so bad on Critical. I think half my deck were Curaga spells.

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I had no problems with him, but still had to abuse thunder surge.
Vanitas lingering spirit I beat legit with Ventus with roll spam same with mysterious figure.

Cheesed vanitas lingering spirit with the rock with terra. But mysterious figure just seems flat out impossible without luck on my side. As soon as he goes invisible and then starts unleashing about 3 special moves at once it fucks me up everytime. Once I got him to like 1% and then out of nowhere I died that made me put the game down lol. I'll leave it at 95% just thinking about it is giving me nam flashbacks

 

[Woozies]

All the BBS bonus bosses are manageable except for Vanitas Remnant and Mysterious Figure

Fuck those two. Those two are legit garbage.

 

[Berordn]

It was hard for me to buy Sora's investment to Kairi when he had way, way stronger reaction to meeting Riku again, when meeting Kairi made him seem like he felt very indifferent, haha.

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Having just rewatched this scene for myself yesterday, it's actually really hilarious how it plays out. He basically shoves Kairi aside so he can cry into Riku's arms, but no it's her that he's most enamored with and concerned about.

 

[WrenchNinja]

To be fair to Sora, he thought Riku was dead

 

[Keym]

Sora shows tons of emotions, he even cried without knowing why. Twice!