The US cover art of KH1 makes a return in the final area of KH2….
@“Funbil”#p94294 yeah the original is about as important to me as games can get to a 90’s baby and I crushed the remake and 100%’d it in four days. Is the 60fps mod on emulator?
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@“treefroggy”#p94348 Is the 60fps mod on emulator?
It is! I haven't messed with any Switch homebrewing stuff, but I have to assume there isn't much performance left in that machine for a mod to try and squeeze out.
I‘m only at castle oblivion, so still a ways to go but I know it will be fine. Here’s my pre-final impressions of KH2:
first, I was humbled, being wrong on a couple things. the opening hit very differently than when I was a kid and the non-disney plot was emotional and I liked it. the secret trailer at the end of kh1 did foreshadow the plans for the future of the series.
I‘m not surprised at this one, but basically no one plays these games in their original forms anymore, they always play the updated remasters. I read the list of differences and honestly there’s nothing I feel like I‘m missing and there’s a lot of things changed that I prefer in the original version. Chain of memes is a lot more remarkable as a GBA game.
I was quickly bogged down by disney filler content and reused assets. some of the new stuff was great like mulan, tron, and cornerstone hill.
In this sequel, the map design and pacing is less like an old school rpg like KH1 was, with large areas to explore at your own pace. It plays more like an on rails movie, and that‘s totally fine, but it does make it annoying to find places to fight for fun and to level the drive forms, which seem like the crux of the enjoyment of the battle system. If you don’t know what you‘re doing, you could go through this whole game without leveling drive forms. The more advanced features of the first games’ battle system were much more apparent to me. Once I figured it out on my own, I liked the back & forth of using a limit/summon, then filling up the drive meter.
The progression of new keyblades is far worse than KH1. In the first game, you typically will use each keyblade as you get it. In KH2, I‘ve been getting more keyblades more quickly, but, even with dual wielding drives, I’ve used the same 4-5 keyblades the entire game, passing over 3/4ths of teh keyblades I get. Makes sense for some that are for very specific uses, but there's some I found myself nerfing myself just to use them aesthetically for a while.
On normal mode, the game is just barely too easy for me. The first game was much more challenging. I haven't died a single time in KH2. I wish I just played on hard mode, a very frustrating mistake.
in closing
I play these games for the evolution of Squaresoft action JRPGs that began with Seiken Densetsu (or King's Knight) and has continued into Dissidia, FFVIIR and FFXVI. In that sense, they are a major fulcrum in the evolution and severely influenced the Final Fantasy series. I will probably dip into the DS, PSP, 3DS games at some point, because I like those consoles and would enjoy a good-in-the-hands action RPG for it. Though more and more I'm finding this series to be tedious. Eventually I'll play KH3 and 4. I still think the original stands on its own and is much more charming in a vacuum. By playing KH2, though, I understand better where these fellas are coming from with stuff like FFVIIR. I still can't say I find it preferable, but the mechanics are so solid, and in the case of FFVIIR it delivers those beats I'm looking for and expands which make sense to me for the most part.
I am mainly posting this now so I can switch back to my old icon instead of KH goofy vaping.
Oh and the biggest mechanical oversight of both KH games for ps2 is that they both will not run at all unless you have a DualShock 2 plugged in, even though no DualShock 2 specific features like analog buttons and triggers are used at all. This sucks because the ps2 controllers buttons hurt to mash for so long because they are fricking mushy and uncomfortable compared to a psone or dualshock1 controller. KH is one of the only games that does this. Even games utilizing ds2 features often allow you to play with the prior controller. It’s such a problem that someone made a YouTube tutorial on how to edit the ISO of the games to replace the ds2 pointer with ps1 controller pointer, allowing you to use a better controller.
After KH2 I think, since I finally beated a wesident evil game this year, I will play devil may cry 1
But other prospects:
Resident Evil 2 (dweamcast)
FF8
FFX-2
Tomb Raider
Jack and/or Daxter
Oof, yeah, finished KH2. I don’t see the need to go on with a sequel after this one unless I really crave the gameplay. Because this one wrapped up the story from the first game and had a satisfying enough end. I think I’ll sooner play FF Type 0 before picking up a KH on PSP. And I need to play the world ends with you before touching KH on DS.
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/6DlAlP9.jpeg]
OTP
Glad to have this one behind me. Didn’t deliver as much emotionally as the first one did for me. Didn’t capitalize the accomplishments enough by the end. Like where’s wakka, Selphie, tidus? Sora’s moms dinner
This tripped me out because it uses the exact same image that I use for my OPL background every time I select this game
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/xYVB8NU.jpeg]
I think I might have to give up on Tactics Ogre: Reborn. I can‘t get past the Boed Fortress Oz fight, and looking at guides, it only gets more difficult from here. I enjoy a challenge, but the progression and level caps just aren’t generous enough. I‘m also barely squeaking by on cash in this game, and I hate having to sell items during a first time playthrough. It’s too bad because I am enjoying the story and the presentation a ton. If I do return to this game, I think I will play the PSP Let Us Cling Together, because it sounds like it is more forgiving.
Strategy RPGs have to straddle the line between strategy and role playing, and this version drifts harder toward strategy. It feels like many maps only have some viable party compositions, and it's a little tedious to trial-and-error your way through it. I would have instead loved to have more of an emphasis on character customization, recruitment, and the loyalty system instead of just chasing the 'meta'. I think Matsuno got the balance right with Final Fantasy Tactics, but I'm still happy this franchise exists as a cousin to FFT.
@“Tradegood”#p94522 I agree and experienced similar difficulty/learning wall when picking up this game multiple times. I found the more simplistic workings of the snes version to make more sense for myself.
@“treefroggy”#p94525 Totally, and I enjoy the game enough that when we get a Knights of Lodis remake in the coming years, I‘ll make a point to revisit it and check out some guides and FAQs before just jumping in without a long-term strategy. Turns out it probably wasn’t smart to kill a bunch of the recruitable named characters lol.
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@“Tradegood”#p94522 it only gets more difficult from here.
Uh oh. I'm currently in the middle of:
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@“Tradegood”#p94530 just jumping in without a long-term strategy
And as of now, it's not been to crazy tough. I'm pretty deep into chapter 2, but I haven't done any long term planning, really, which had me really enjoying the game so far. Honestly, I've found the first 10ish hours considerably easier than _FF:T_'s early game. But, on the flipside, I thought _Tactics_' late game was pretty dang easy once I had all the jobs unlocked and upgraded that I wanted. Keeping my fingers crossed that this doesn't get to tedious.
Unrelated, I'm playing _Katana Zero_ at a friend's recommendation and it is a video game. It has mechanics and graphics and a story. Honestly, the narrative stuff and talky bits have been the most interesting things so far, which is not what I expected at all.
Spent this weekend playing Gundam Evolution, not because I enjoy 6v6 comp shooters, but because my brain wouldnt let me do anything else. I‘ve been on a Gundam hyperfixation month.
Overall had an okay time, got slightly better at it, only had one instance of a Dude requiring a Mute.
Will I play more? I can’t say. I wish that Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme VS Maxi Boost On was A: Free to play online with friends but its PS4 locked and I don't have $10 for psn, and B: a little less wordsoupy, but MBON suffices.
after KH2 I've kind of lost all motivation to commit to any game.
Currently steeling myself to use my shiny used Playstation Composite cable (courtesy of @"milo"#451) to play some PS1 games with composite blending.
The top priority would be _Klonoa_ probably. I tried looking at Akumajou Dracula X68000 and Dracula X Symphony of the Night again with composite blending this time and dang, I know playing over RGB is a huge privilege but I think these games would have looked way cooler if I had composite blending at the time. I'll have to replay them again someday....
Also the Kindom Hearts disease persists: I'm taking a look at the next two games, the ones for DS, and they look pretty cool 😩😩😩 will probably play them when I get around to softmodding DSi's and/or composite modding DS Lites. BUT I will 100% have to play The World Ends with You first.
One plus side of having no motivation to game is that I am more motivated to get those mods done, along with other IRL stuff.
If it wasn't for the fact that 3D stuff from generations five and six look much better over RGB and Component, I think I'd be okay with just a composite CRT for the rest of my days. But that yummy 480i signal is just so good and crispy coming from gamecube and PS2 over component, and Ps1 & Saturn polygonal 3D games look amazing over RGB and s-video. N64 is more nostalgic over composite, I've found, depending on the game. Like if I'm playing one of the amazing new Zelda 64 hacks/fangames, the composite filter makes it feel more "real".
Jumping around again, another weird choice in KH2 was changing the Twilight Town music after Sora awakens. It is way less amazing than the original Twilight Town theme. I get why they did this, but it's what you will hear over the next 80% of the game... Sora even heard the original Twilight theme in the GBA game, which, of course he lost the memory of those events, but, IDK. I'm glad to see the theme return in 358/2 days.
Also a note on the corny "giant battle" sequence in KH2. This is **the most** mid 2000's stuff, totally reminds me of what was going on during my childhood, with things like _300_, Lord of the Rings trilogy, and smaller stuff like the Bionicle Movie being obsessed with delivering "giant battles" with armies clashing in barren wastelands... In my 5th grade class, this is the type of thing that all the boys were obsessed with. Technology at the time was pushing to render that type of scale. Games like Pikmin were accomplishing it in their own way. Films like A Bug's Life set the stage for it. Come to think of it, huge missed opportunity never having A Bug's Life in Kingdom Hearts.
Probably going to take the Elevator Action Returns S-Tribute plunge today since it‘s finally out, as a palate cleanser for my endless P5R playthrough (which I’m still enjoying, it‘s just a really really long game). I always wanted it on Saturn, but by the time I started looking for a copy, the price had spiralled out of control (and it’s still pretty expensive these days).
I also grabbed Eschatos while it was on sale, so I'll give it some time too!
@“Syzygy”#p95124 yeah, I‘m pretty sure everything that could be said about KH2 already has, so I’m not that interested in compiling my thoughts about it, but I do have a lot of thoughts, and I really went back & forth a few times in this thread, you'd get the idea that I either totally hate it or totally love it. At the end of the day, flipping through the air in drive form, but still being grounded with kh1 mechanics is fricking awesome. Also, one of the few IRL friends I talk to often is a KH-only-gamer-forver, so I have a good outlet for discussing this stuff already.
edit btw: put very simply, my take on KH2 now is that I love the beginning, the middle parts of travelling to disney worlds 2x apiece and paced more linearly was a slog for me personally, and the end didn't capitalize enough for me, but the mechanics were cool, just, again really annoying trying to use the mechanics in the disney worlds.
I'm looking forward to forming my own opinions on the next games in the series.
Already, just briefly testing Re:Coded on my DSi, the proglogue for that game capitalizes on Chain of Memes and KH2's story in ways I wanted KH2 to do, haha.
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@“treefroggy”#p94923 BUT I will 100% have to play The World Ends with You first.
Just gonna chime in with support for this sentiment. I loved TWEWY.
||I wanted to love Neo TWEWY but there was _something_ about it that for whatever reason I didn't latch on to. I probably did it to myself; I'd cranked the difficulty all the way up in order to maximise my dang rewards from combat, and I ended up stuck at a checkpoint where I was repeatedly getting straight up _owned_||
Picked up Elevator Action Returns S-Tribute today on Steam and… pleasantly surprised! No major gripes here. The controls are defaulted to WASD/mouse and you must change them externally in Steam first to controller. Otherwise, it plays pretty solid, has some additional fun time options, and does everything it says it does on the box.
On a whim I bought and started the Blizzard Arcade Collection, which should more accurately be called the “Blizzard SNES Collection”.
Turns out Blizzard is (rather, was) a pretty good developer! I had low expectations of _Rock N’ Roll Racing_ but unlike every other isometric racer I’ve ever played it actually controls quite well and the aesthetic (including a licensed soundtrack seemingly selected by Beavis and Butthead - in a good way!) is very endearing. I played a bit of _Lost Vikings_, which I’ve always been curious about ever since the [still-excellent Action Button Manifesto review](http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=393) - the movement feels a little chunky, the aesthetics are ugly and the two-player mode is a little less intuitive than I would’ve hoped, BUT I can see the makings of a substantive game underneath. (Also, fooling around in the jukebox menu informed me that the Genesis version’s soundtrack is vastly superior to the SNES - huh.)
_Blackthorne_ is probably the most interesting game to me, being a breakthrough in the “cinematic action game” inspired by the dark fantasy boom or the 80s/90s and very visibly iterating on _Another World_. It’s less aesthetically appealing and daringly minimalist than _AW_, but by making the level design and mechanical structure a little “video-gamier” it holds up a lot better as an actual game experience imo. I’m fascinated by the attention to the physicality of player’s avatar and real-world logic present in the game design: stray bullets will kill NPCs! Long falls will hurt you! You can either sling your big bad shotgun around or you can run and jump, but you can’t do both simultaneously! This makes for some compelling second-to-second tactical decisions, and a decent amount of amusement you can get just messing around on a neutral screen. (Love the action-roll maneuver you can do from crouching.) And is this the first-ever action game with a cover shooting mechanic? Because once I figured out that every enemy encounter turns the game into a 2D _Gears of War_, I was hooked. Sad that Blizzard didn’t make more traditional action games!
I also finished Live A Live last week and, as I’d threatened, wrote up a bunch of notes that I could maybe turn into the skeleton of an essay. I found myself writing passage in vintage Action Button style, which doesn’t really happen when I review movies, which is interesting. Unlike Tim(?), my knowledge of early-90s JRPG history is not quite comprehensive enough that I feel totally confident in some of the proclamations about LAL’s groundbreaking qualities I’m inclined to make - that’d probably require some research, if I wanted to do anything with this junk heap of thoughts. (I’d probably also want to, y’know, actually play the original 16-bit game for comparison.)
Here’s the rough notes, if anyone’s interested.
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Positing a witty twist on Joseph Campbell, LAL imagines not the hero but the villain with a thousand faces: across every time period, culture and genre, “wherever there is hate,” the all-consuming Odio resurfaces with dreams of species oblivion. Its antithesis is not any one world-saving hero, but a unity between many and a willingness to break the cycle of violence. Maybe that’s still kiddie moralizing, and maybe it’s kind of deep; the important thing is that structurally, thematically, it exhibits a willingness to challenge the baked-in ideology of the genre in ways that had barely been seen before Tokita & co. attempted them.
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Each chapter is, on one level, a straightforward pastiche of some genre of 20th century popular media in JRPG clothing: Hollywood movies, manga and anime, even a turn-based Street Fighter II. Each of those pastiches is also an optimistic prediction of places the Japanese roleplaying game could go, mechanically and thematically, beyond the traditional Dragon Quest-alike high fantasy monomyth.
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Significantly, when the game does get around to rewarding the player with a traditional DQ-alike in the game’s penultimate chapter (disguised as its finale), it proceeds to turn the narrative and ideological trappings of the genre on their heads, subverting triumphalist wish fulfillment with a tragic twist. Initially casting the player as another chosen hero tasked with saving another medieval kingdom from another faceless Dark Lord, the game eventually yanks back the curtain as misfortune, betrayal and human frailty drive the ostensibly noble hero, renouncing the player’s control and the passivity of his silent protagonist role, to trade places with the very embodiment of evil he was expected to kill. LAL then proceeds to question the foundation of the heroic fantasy itself: every person has the capacity for both heroism and villainy, we’re told in dramatic endgame soliloquies, and the day is saved not when one man kills all the bad guys but when many different people come together to break the cycle of hatred. Philosophically it ain’t quite Dostoevsky, but it’s hard to overstate how thematically ambitious and structurally inventive this was for a console game from 1994, and a whole host of subsequent RPGs to toy with the genre’s underlying philosophies and assumptions, from Xenogears to Undertale, owe Tokita and his colleagues a debt.
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Touch on the integration of gameplay and narrative in a way that was and still is unusual for the genre
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Even the standard visual language of the genre is toyed with, as in the final boss’s grotesque uncanny valley design (another ingredient directly recycled by Undertale)
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The Bakumatsu chapter - the game’s most mechanically ambitious - undermines violence as a weightless, reflexive game verb by creating a proto-stealth level where enemy NPCs are unique and finite, and every choice to remove them with violence is avoidable and internally remembered - four years before Metal Gear Solid and two decades before, you know, that Toby Fox game.
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Battle system tries to de-abstract turn-based combat from a series of menu selections in a void by creating a setup where both space and time exist as in-game variables to inform your tactics. The game rarely takes full advantage of its own system’s depth - and the initially exciting lack of MP or non-temporal action costs eventually just flattens battles into a process of spamming your objectively best DPS moves over and over with only the occasional consideration for positioning, debuffs and charge time - but this was and is hot game-mechanical territory, broached a year before Chrono Trigger and Tactics Ogre would revisit the same concepts in taking the genre by storm.
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Where the battle system delves into digital abstractions of time, the Wild West and Bakumatsu chapters ask how the passage of analog (you know, irl) time could interact with an RPGesque map setup and narrative - see also Moon, Majora’s Mask.
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The Prehistory chapter challenges the expressive potential of sprites to tell a complete story through pure visuals and game mechanics when the crutch of text windows is verboten.
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Behind its flashy proto-Xenogearsian mecha conceit (and oddly specific plot elements foreshadowing Evangelion), the Near Future chapter imagines the possibilities of an RPG with a telepathic protagonist. NPCs in roleplaying games are typically info dispensiaries with a single (malleable, perhaps) set of data; what unique narrative and mechanical possibilities open up when each NPC possesses TWO datasets, potentially contradictory, both regular dialogue and internal monologue? A few other games have toyed with this premise in passing - Golden Sun and The World Ends With You have reminiscent mechanics - but to this day no one has dared to build an entire game around it.
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The distant future chapter turns out to be the least compelling: basically an RPG without choices (battles are sets of choices!) and an adventure game without items and puzzles, it boils down to simply walking back and forth within a large empty level, triggering a linear series of event flags by talking to the NPC or examining the object that will progress the story - and only in the prescribed order. I’ll give it this, though: SquEnix’s dubious “HD-2D” style of sprites walking through lighting, particle and “lens” effects out the wazoo looks better on a spaceship than anywhere else, and seeing it in action convinced me that the mythical Xenogears remake should be done with exactly these visuals or not at all.
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The fighting game chapter is cute for imagining turn-based RPG battles as a game’s worth of attraction all to themselves (hello, Pokemon Stadium) where non-standard incentives WITHIN those battles could give them the spice of variety, and every “attack” and “spell” corresponds to a fighting-game-ready martial arts technique. Because it’s so standardized, though, this chapter ends up being pretty dull as you simply figure out the correct order to fight each opponent and generally wipe the floor with them. Thankfully it’s short, and Yoko Shimomura whipping up a lawyer-friendly cover of her own SF2 music is nothing if not amusing.
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The China chapter has a bit more fun with the “martial arts RPG” concept, and the twist in which the game sets you up to choose your “successor” only for the story to end up choosing it for you based on actions you didn’t realize would dictate that choice is a clever bit of narrative construction. Still butts heads with the limitations of the game’s battle system in a format where you only control one or two characters per battle and the game is afraid (and/or unable) to make them hard.
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The localization is a mixed bag - in an effort at racially authentic voice casting(??) we end up with a bunch of characters in the same Asian settings sporting various combinations of about half a dozen different accents: Chinese, Japanese, Australian, American, Filipino, the list goes on. This fits well enough in the globetrotting modern-day chapter, but is downright bizarre and incredibly distracting when all the characters are in historical China or Japan. The localization team also has some funny ideas about how much presentational gravitas to give what’s essentially a YA fantasy game populated by cute little cartoon sprites: the sprawling mock-Victorian purple prose of its medieval chapter, most notably, overshoots on self-seriousness by a mile and turns into a headache fast as every relatively simple line is delivered in archaic soliloquy. This game’s translator is ready to thrill his local renaissance faire, but might be trying a little too hard for a Super Nintendo RPG where a few Ted Woolseyish hastily-applied “thou”s and “thine”s would’ve worked just as well and been vastly more endearing.
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@“2501”#p95707 how to properly tuck this away behind a tab
use >! at the beginning of the line
`>! > - If Tokita's attempt at exploding the Japanese...`
`- Positing a witty twist on...`
`- etc etc`
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Got two games fresh off the grill
Bayonetta (PS4)
Played this a ton back when it came out on 360, but I hadn't sat down for a proper replay in many years. As with DMC4 a few years ago I wanted to approach Bayo with an adult perspective and a more thorough understanding of the mechanics [size=8](though I had enough of one back in the day to beat secret boss ||[Father Rodin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0mvgu2PNOs)||)[/size]. Part of my interest was to compare it to Bayonetta 2, which I had played more recently but which I didn't love for a [variety of reasons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jIQkohrSvQ).
The first seven chapters of Bayonetta are awesome, especially on replay when you have all your moves and weapons unlocked. Chapter 8, the motorcycle chapter, is ugly and a point of friction, especially frustrating in the context of a game which grades your every move. The later Space Harrier levels are frustrating for the same reason, although they at least give you a camera angle which lets you see a few more of the things you're supposed to avoid hitting (though one of these is infuriatingly placed immediately before a tough boss fight: getting all platinums will be a pain here). The Jeanne fights are OK although I think the PS4 version may actually run too smoothly some of the time(?), or that the 360 version may have depended on slowdown to work correctly, because for example I cannot mash P fast enough during [this manoeuver](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FipbC2Eztq8&t=9m22s) to successfully counter Jeanne's punches. Some of the other big bosses, namely Iusticia, Sapientia, and Jublieus, can be pretty obnoxious. Some tedious and repetitive gimmick sections in there. Which, I guess that's one thing I didn't quite remember about this game writ large: there are a lot of one-time mechanics/gimmicks that I don't think are very fun to play with. [Instant death quick-time events](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzEh9iH0AGw&t=1107s)!
That said the combat against standard enemies is very fun, and that is most of the game. I will certainly continue to revisit it and will likely never uninstall it from the PS4. It's very pretty too, and was a real breath of fresh air when I played it first. I love the cutscenes, I love the attitude. I love the game. But it's [not perfect](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/297-theme-sale/173).
Sonic Adventure 2 (GameCube) (Visions of OLD NEWS ahead)
I had never before played this whole game. It was the first Sega game in our house, although back then I wouldn't have known what that meant if you told me. All I knew/thought at the time was that San Francisco must be cool.
Over the years we (me & my sibling) put 300 hours into the game, mainly replaying the Sonic and Shadow levels and raising chao, though sometimes we would play hide and seek in the multiplayer levels. Which is all to say, I had messed around with the treasure hunt and mech levels, but never knew how annoying they were to actually finish! Not all of them are terrible, but the ones that are take up the most time, so I spent probably 75% of this recent playthrough thinking, _boy, throw this level in the toilet._ On starting this playthrough I had the silly idea that I might finally unlock the extra costumes or Green Hill Zone, but nah not gonna happen. The fun parts are fun and the parts that aren't are annoying and, with the exception of the car levels, difficult. Still, I'm compelled to look past its flaws because beneath them is what still feels like the best 3D Sonic gameplay. Jumping, the homing attack/air boost, spin dash, ball bounce, and rail grinding all feel better in this than in any other 3D game they are featured in (possible exception of Lost World, haven't played it). The Sonic and Shadow levels are fun to explore thoroughly and replay. I like that character upgrades/tools are sometimes optional and hidden—the last level with Knuckles for example plays much differently when you have the optional item that lets you swim forever, and Mysitc Melody unlocks completely new paths in certain levels. I look forward to comparing with Spark 3...
To conclude: the soap opera story is so good. If Sonic characters aren't going to act like this when they open their mouths then I don't want them to talk at all, and I'm sure many of the world's 7-year-olds would agree with me if only they knew what they were missing. Gosh the audio is badly edited and mixed but the voices themselves are OK. It's as though VO in later games was specifically directed to be more annoying/condescending to kids. The supposedly-made-for-5-year-olds-but-actually-made-for-grown-men effect. Bring back the love and tragedy
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Also I can‘t for the life of me find the earlier discussion on the matter but I saw Big in one of the cutscenes, which I think someone might have thought wasn’t in the GameCube version
