Random thoughts about Kingdom Hearts and Birth by Sleep...

I didn't like Kingdom Hearts 1, loved Chain of Memories (the real, original release)...which is the only Kingdom Hearts game whose gameplay I actually liked. Liked 2 quite a lot, but much more for the story than the gamplay. Now I'm starting Birth by Sleep, and...

Maybe I'm missing something that makes the combat in this way easier, but I've gotten stuck on the 'normal' difficulty with the first boss of the first world! Even aside from the IMO extreme difficulty, the basic gameplay just does nothing for me. It's all just spastic wacking at enemies, and the camera's not great here either. Not a fan of the upgrade system at all so far, nor the way special moves work...just basically nothing at all about the gameplay. 2 wasn't great in that regard, but it wasn't crazy hard, and somehow...I don't know, just felt/worked better than this, even while not being that great either.

Like the earlier games, I like the story so far a lot. The whole thing is insane, and I kind of can't believe they make something based on this concept so complicated, but hey, it's pretty compelling to me.

But the gameplay.... I guess tomorrow I'm restarting it on the easy difficulty, which unfortunately locks out the true ending.

Why are there 2 threads with pretty much the exact same title and text ?

I deleted the other thread, since it seemed to be basically the same, and moved this one to the appropriate forum.

Please don't double post things in the future, and try to post them to the correct forums.

@mooseymcman: I'm guessing he got an error posting his first thread and tried posting a new one, even though the first one posted anyway.

I've had it happen to me plenty of times in the past. These forums aren't always the most stable.

@mooseymcman: This isn't the correct forum, the general one is, and I didn't double post, the site screwed up and claimed the first post wasn't posted.

@wolf3: If you want I can move it to the Kingdom Hearts franchise page, but I don't think general discussion is the right one for a Kingdom Hearts related topic.

It has been a very long time but I remember the latter half of Birth By Sleep being really hard.

I almost got stuck at the first boss too. But that's because you don't attain Cure magic until a little bit later. The same is true of all three protagonists. Because of this, the very beginning of the each character's campaign is harder than the 2nd act. (but maybe not as hard as the final segments, when the difficulty finally catches up with the fact that you have Cure/Cura/Curaga equipped to multiple slots)

But having said that, there actually is a way to heal yourself before you attain Cure, by using D-Links. (left/right on the dpad during battle) Using one automatically replenishes your HP. (I didn't really pay attention to D-Links until later and they still seem rather pointless. Personally if I had it my way, a D-Link would automatically activate if you are near death, or the very instant you would die. There are several things I think should have been different about the game, and this is one of them.)

Also, if you play as Ventus he probably seems a little spastic since he's the quickest of the three characters. This is especially true if you play as him first (like I did) since you're even less familiar with the game by that point. I enjoyed Terra a lot more, since he's more slowed down and playing as him feels a lot more "deliberate" and less like a button masher. Also, later in the game there are QTE finishing moves, which force you to pay attention. If you just mash X all the time, you fail the QTE and leave yourself vulnerable.

Story wise I think you're meant to go in the order of Tera-->Ventus-->Aqua. Not sure about the first two but I know Aqua is the last one. My advice would be to play defensively, and don't be afraid to use your spells and abilities. Their nature as cooldowns rather than being mana dependent mean you should use them as often as possible, especially to trigger those special command forms, you're much more powerful in those states.

I'd stick with it, the true ending is worth getting I think, there's a nice chunk of story and gameplay behind it. I found the gameplay kind of refreshing actually, not having to worry about mana. Felt like I could experiment more.