So sad story. I'm broke. I actually spent time today scouring my apartment for loose change so I could buy a soda. Yea it's that bad. What that means is that I won't be able to buy any new games for a while. That doesn't bum me out too much as there aren't really any games coming out soon that I am all that interested in. So what to play? Well I have quite the backlog and now seems like the perfect time to start working through it. So I dusted off the old PS2 and took a look through my collection. I had played the original Kingdom Hearts maybe 5 years ago or so. I had RE: Chain of Memories and 2 sitting on my shelf untouched. So I decided that now was as good a time as any to continue playing this interesting series. So I popped in Kingdom Hearts 2 and my God the intro was one of the weirdest I have ever seen. 2 and a half hours of playing as a character never mentioned in the first game. Talk about late title screens. Anyways after the weird intro where you play as a Nobody named Roxas, you return to playing Sora and exploring Disney worlds. I'm 8 hours in right now and I still have no idea what that intro was about. So being confused I consulted a friend who is a huge Kingdom Hearts fan. Seems I need to play Chain of Memories to understand what is going on in 2. So after writing this I am going to pop in Chain of Memories and see if it is good enough to warrant a playthrough.

Other than the nonsensical story I like the improvements they made to Kingdom Hearts 2. Putting the camera controls on the right thumb stick freed up the L1 button to be used as a modifier so you can use abilities and spells without going through a menu. It makes the game about 10x better. I still don't use magic very much and the gumni ship levels are still pretty pointless and out of place, but overall I think this game holds up decently well and I'm enjoying it more than anything Square Enix has done this generation. One day when I'm not broke I may buy the DS and PSP games in the series. Until then I'll enjoy these old PS2 games during our latest summer gaming drought.

So sad story. I'm broke. I actually spent time today scouring my apartment for loose change so I could buy a soda. Yea it's that bad. What that means is that I won't be able to buy any new games for a while. That doesn't bum me out too much as there aren't really any games coming out soon that I am all that interested in. So what to play? Well I have quite the backlog and now seems like the perfect time to start working through it. So I dusted off the old PS2 and took a look through my collection. I had played the original Kingdom Hearts maybe 5 years ago or so. I had RE: Chain of Memories and 2 sitting on my shelf untouched. So I decided that now was as good a time as any to continue playing this interesting series. So I popped in Kingdom Hearts 2 and my God the intro was one of the weirdest I have ever seen. 2 and a half hours of playing as a character never mentioned in the first game. Talk about late title screens. Anyways after the weird intro where you play as a Nobody named Roxas, you return to playing Sora and exploring Disney worlds. I'm 8 hours in right now and I still have no idea what that intro was about. So being confused I consulted a friend who is a huge Kingdom Hearts fan. Seems I need to play Chain of Memories to understand what is going on in 2. So after writing this I am going to pop in Chain of Memories and see if it is good enough to warrant a playthrough.

Other than the nonsensical story I like the improvements they made to Kingdom Hearts 2. Putting the camera controls on the right thumb stick freed up the L1 button to be used as a modifier so you can use abilities and spells without going through a menu. It makes the game about 10x better. I still don't use magic very much and the gumni ship levels are still pretty pointless and out of place, but overall I think this game holds up decently well and I'm enjoying it more than anything Square Enix has done this generation. One day when I'm not broke I may buy the DS and PSP games in the series. Until then I'll enjoy these old PS2 games during our latest summer gaming drought.

Kingdom Hearts is old school now? What the hell.

@Phatmac said:

Kingdom Hearts is old school now? What the hell.

This is exactly what I came here to say.

Never been a fan of kingdom hearts, I tried to get into it but I can't think of the series without thinking "this is a marketing venture".

@adam1808: Thats really to bad. Awesome game, at least the first 2 are. Course helps i am Disney fanboy. But still. :D

2000 was 40 years ago.
 
:(

@Raven10 said:

Putting the camera controls on the right thumb stick freed up the L1 button to be used as a modifier so you can use abilities and spells without going through a menu.

But you could do that in the original.

@Gonmog:When they do a pixar version then count me in. Although I think it's the connection to FF that put me off more so than the disney fan service

@Phatmac: @Taku128: As I wrote the title I thought that exact thought. It's been nearly a decade since the first one came out though. We're about to hit a new generation so I guess I would consider it somewhat old school. I debated with myself over the title actually. I had a feeling I'd get a bunch of comments saying that, but in the end I guess it just felt old enough to deserve that title. Obviously not as old school as something from the 70's or 80's but time is always marching forward and I think a decade is long enough to consider something old school. At least I think.

@adam1808: I love how they take Disney stories and modify them to fit their own game. It's actually pretty cool. As I'm discovering the more I play there is a pretty deep story behind the Disney fan service. Knowledge of Final Fantasy isn't really required. There are certain characters you recognize if you are a fan of the series but it's not like you explore a Final Fantasy world ever. It's a lot more Disney than Final Fantasy and I'm very pleased about that.

@Rakitox: Could you? I thought that was new in the second one. I haven't played the first in years. I could be wrong about that definitely.

I really feel like it's a shame that Kingdom Hearts 2 continued so much out of Chain of Memories. Chain of memories was alright, but that whole Organization 13 thing ended up taking way too much of a spotlight in that series and I think Roxas is just a terrible character. He is literally exactly like Sora but with less personality. Why would anybody like him?

@Raven10: I get your point, but then the Nomura connection has put me off a lot of Square stuff. I just don't appreciate that style of character, both in terms of characterisation and design. Which meant when I first played Kingdom Hearts 1 I only liked half of the characters, because I liked them in movies I saw years ago

I think the KH series peaked at 2. It was already flirting with typical JRPG story convolution in the first game, and it just barely manages to hang on in the second. It's got some neat reveals and a fun second half though. After that, good luck following the series. I tried both DS games and they are so mind numbingly boring and nonsensical that I couldn't bring myself to continue. As for Chain of Memories, you don't need to play it. There's some story stuff that fills in the bits between KH and KH2, but nothing you can't YouTube. Most of the game is spent scurrying around randomly generated levels fighting monsters with a love it or hate it card battling system (I didn't think it was too bad). It does have some gorgeous sprite work and pixel art though. Sorry you're broke dude, I know the feeling. Right now I'm trying to clear out my backlog. Juggling Rage and Asura's Wrath, plus Max Payne 1 and 2 (I actually only played about an hour of both back when they were new, so this is kind of fun), and of course still working on Witcher 2. Gaming with a baby is tough.

Enjoy Kingdom Hearts. Good to see you round these parts. Isn't blogging here so easy?

@Taku128 said:

@Phatmac said:

Kingdom Hearts is old school now? What the hell.

This is exactly what I came here to say.

Well, the series is decade old now. I don't know if I would call it old school but it's far from new.

Fuck yeah, Kingdom Hearts!

I played through Kingdom Hearts earlier last month and it is definitely a lot stranger than how I remember it when it first came out. Still a great game though!

@Taku128 said:

@Phatmac said:

Kingdom Hearts is old school now? What the hell.

This is exactly what I came here to say.

ditto.

@RazielCuts said:

@Taku128 said:

@Phatmac said:

Kingdom Hearts is old school now? What the hell.

This is exactly what I came here to say.

ditto.

That and

@Rakitox said:

@Raven10 said:

Putting the camera controls on the right thumb stick freed up the L1 button to be used as a modifier so you can use abilities and spells without going through a menu.

But you could do that in the original.

You could use the right analog stick to go through a menu in the original, which is something that I quite enjoyed and used the hell out of. Having to hold down a button to do the same thing in the second one was not something I wanted to do, but it wasn't a big issue for me.

@Hunter5024: After playing some of Chain of Memories I feel like the Organization just starts turning this into a standard JRPG story. There was something really engrossing about playing through Disney worlds as a Nomura designed character, but as soon as they go the Final Fantasy route I get bored of the story. While I haven't played a huge amount of Final Fantasy I really don't get the people who say that those games are well written. I have yet to play one that has a good story. I wish they had kept it focused on Disney and not on random anime style characters.

@adam1808: Yea Nomura's character designs are a love it or hate it thing. I think as far as anime character art goes he is one of the better artists out there. But he's nowhere near the quality of Disney or even Studio Ghibli. As far as the writing goes, he doesn't write the dialogue in Square's games. He works on the stories of a lot of them but they have full time writers who do the actual in game dialogue. I think the stories he comes up with are fine but their writing staff could really use some work. And as far as the Final Fantasy 13 world goes, I think there were too many hands in the pot so to speak. It could have done with a singular voice instead of having Nomura, Kitase, the writers, and the game directors all involved.

@yeah_write: I love blogging here. And notice how this is my first blog here in years and I have a good 20 comments on it already compared to the grand total of 3 comments I got when I said I was leaving GS. I don't think all JRPG stories are convoluted, but the ones created by Nomura, Kitase and team over at Square certainly are. There are still good writers in Japan, they just seem to have really fallen behind in general compared to the west. It's a shame. Akira Kurowsawa all but defined screen stories so to see Japan fall so far behind in storytelling is really sad. They have the occasional good live action movie, and Studio Ghibli still tells some of the best stories in the world, but so much of the screen narrative output of Japan is based around terrible anime conventions. Such a long way to fall from one of the greatest directors to ever live.

@NoobSauceG7: Yup I think it is worthwhile still. It is definitely weird. But what Square Enix stories aren't weird?

@believer258: I'm pretty sure you can use the d-pad in the second one the same way you could use the right thumbstick in the first. I just always found that navigating menus was tough in a real time combat system so I prefer where you can just hit a single button to perform attacks. It is similar to how any number of action games work. God of War has a shoulder button modifier and I know Prototype does too. It is a common thing so it made the game feel more at home to me. I honestly am not sure if any games did it before Kingdom Hearts 2. Maybe it was the first?

@Raven10 said:

@believer258: I'm pretty sure you can use the d-pad in the second one the same way you could use the right thumbstick in the first. I just always found that navigating menus was tough in a real time combat system so I prefer where you can just hit a single button to perform attacks. It is similar to how any number of action games work. God of War has a shoulder button modifier and I know Prototype does too. It is a common thing so it made the game feel more at home to me. I honestly am not sure if any games did it before Kingdom Hearts 2. Maybe it was the first?

Yeah, but it's a lot easier to circle around some of the harder enemies while using the right analog stick to pick whatever magic I'm going to use or to search through the menus for a health potion. You could use the d-pad in a tight spot like that but you'd either have to stop moving (not good!) or move your right hand over to the other side of the controller (unwieldy). Using the right stick to move up and down a menu while in real-time combat was a lot easier to me, especially since I didn't shortcut healing spells.

I know what you're talking about but I liked Kingdom Hearts 1's camera controls just fine.

@believer258: I just put a healing spell and a potion on the quick select and I don't worry about the menus. I never use more than one or two magic spells at a time. I'm also playing the second game on the easy difficulty to mitigate some of the frustration I had with the first one, but I'm finding it maybe a bit too easy. I may try putting it up to normal and see how hard that makes it. Chain of Memories is perfect for me on the easy difficulty. It's challenging especially on the boss battles but not so tough that I have to replay every room multiple times.

@Raven10 said:

@believer258: I just put a healing spell and a potion on the quick select and I don't worry about the menus. I never use more than one or two magic spells at a time. I'm also playing the second game on the easy difficulty to mitigate some of the frustration I had with the first one, but I'm finding it maybe a bit too easy. I may try putting it up to normal and see how hard that makes it. Chain of Memories is perfect for me on the easy difficulty. It's challenging especially on the boss battles but not so tough that I have to replay every room multiple times.

When Chain of Memories first came out on the GBA, I tried playing through it on the Normal difficulty. I've beaten some tough games, but after bashing and battering my way through most of that I just hit one boss (Spoiler! Riku) where I said "Fuck it!" and haven't hardly touched the game since.

@Raven10: You know, the Final Fantasy character's didn't really bug me so much. They were all pretty different from how they were portrayed in their own games, and I feel that was because they changed their styles and personalities in just enough subtle ways to make them belong. They did a worse job of this in KH2. I sort of agree about it becoming too anime inspired, but the first one was kind of like that too, I think it just became too much like a Bad Anime. Organization 13 was just a convenient excuse to create boss after boss after boss. They had style but absolutely no substance. If you feel like they're trivializing the Disney Locations now wait until you get to 385/2 days. They literally might as well have just not paid for the license. Also I genuinely believe that the writers over at square are not bad at what they do, but they've just been lazy, uninspired, and maybe a tad arrogant.

@Hunter5024: I'm going to have to disagree with you on that last point. As a game designer myself I can safely say that I've never met someone working on a game who was lazy. It just isn't possible. If you think of all the writing that those writers have to do I don't see how you could possibly think that they are lazy. I think part of the problem is that FF13 was mostly written by a single dude. Compare that to say Mass Effect that was written by a half dozen people. On one hand it gives it a more singular voice. On the other hand, that is a ton of writing this guy has to do. When you are writing hundreds of pages worth of text you can't expect every line of it to be a gem. The guy isn't lazy he is just one of the only writers Nomura works with so he does most of the writing for Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy. That's just a lot of writing for one man. Lazy is probably the opposite of what he is. He is also a different writer than the guys who wrote Final Fantasy previous to 10. He worked on 10, 12, and 13 as well as all the Kingdom Hearts games. So maybe he is uninspired. I might even go as far as to say that. Arrogant I don't think so. And lazy I would say there is 0% chance of that.

All I want is Kingdom Hearts 3. These bullshit handheld games are bullshit. Only one I ever played was chain of memories.

The KH games are fun but their pacing sucks. Front-loading 4 hours worth of friendship-bracelet plot is a pain since I want to get to the RPG elements asap, but then once you get to the battle worlds it's just one after the other for a loooong time.

The devs could easily have had Sora return home after every few worlds or such to spread out the home-world story stuff...

@Raven10: Yes you're actually completely right about that rather than lazy I should have used the word "Careless". It's impossible to be lazy and produce as much content as game writers must. Maybe this is just because he doesn't have much time to devote to details, but I feel like the stories that have come out of them recently rely quite a bit on deus ex machina, macguffins, and just nonsense. In reviews and stuff this is typically referred to as lazy writing, but for all of the reasons you just pointed out I've just decided that's a bad term. Also while I think you are right about the same writer being involved with 10 and 13, I am fairly certain 12 was a completely different team. What's the name of the writer you're referring to?

Okay so, Studio Ghibli does the art, story and character animations for a Team Ico game. Possibly the best thing that Japan could ever produce. Am I right?

If I remember correct Roxas don't appear in CoM, only Namine. Roxas gets explained later in the game, I think. I could be completely wrong however, as it's been forever since I played.

Loved the series, I've been wanting to dive back in before Dream Drop Distance, but I'm holding out to see if any of these HD collection rumors are true.

@HellBound: I never played any of them. Nomura said that they were going to work on Kingdom Hearts 3 after FF13 Versus was released, but who knows when that will happen. At this point they might as well make Kingdom Hearts 3 on PS4 and skip PS3 altogether.

@Levio: Yea the one thing I've liked about Chain of Memories is that it just starts into the game right away. You've got about 5 minutes of introduction and then you are in Disney worlds. In the first game there was a good hour worth of stuff beforehand and I spent a ridiculous 2.5 hours to get out of the Roxas part of Kingdom Hearts 2. I agree with you entirely. They really need to work on the pacing.

@Hunter5024: Originally 12 was written by the masterful Matsuno (don't remember his first name) who also directed the game. But partway through he fell ill and this writer whose name I also can't remember was brought in to write the script. Matsuno still wrote the story but the actual lines were written by the same guy that wrote 10 and 13. Generally in games the director of a game will create a story or setting and then hand it to a writer who actually writes the scenes. There are only rare cases of designers who actually write their own games. Matsuno is one of them. Ken Levine of Bioshock fame is another. Amy Henning of Naughty Dog is a third. But these people aren't common. Designers are designers not writers. They can come up with a good premise for a game but actually making characters sound like people, well that is the job of a professional author.

@adam1808: I think the Team Ico games have a very distinct art style that really helps define their look. I wouldn't say that look meshes well with Studio Ghibli. Team Ico's work is very ethereal. Ghibli's work is very detailed. I would say the tones of the two companies wouldn't mix together very well. But I would be interested to see what came out of it if they did ever do that.

@ckeats: I would love it if they took the two DS games and the PSP game and made an HD Collection for PS3. That would make my day. Save me a lot of money as well. We'll see.

I guess I was in the minority but I hated Kingdom Hearts 2 and enjoyed the hell out of the first. With 2 I felt that they basically turned it into a bunch of quick time events and a lot of button mashing.