@NekuSakuraba:
Who's trolling? Want me to give quantitative reasoning of what makes that game bad?
Let's start off with the flaws of the first game as the game with the most merit because it aped Secret of Mana so doggedly.
The combat controls for this game wasn't the most mindless ever, but still pretty shallow for where video games have progressed to that point. One might argue that a two button attack scheme is all that children can really utilize (yes, this game was made for children) but it's as responsive as one could ask for. This doesn't really matter when the real epic boss challenge is the one you have with the camera. When panning around fights the camera can often get stuck at looking to a wall and then suddenly zoom back to Sora's crotch, none of which happen to be the boss you're facing(Jaffar was the worst offender IMO.)
Then we can talk about the Gummi Ship. What a fucking afterthought to pad game play time. The controls and enemy patterns were so trash you ended up making your ship as tough as it could be merely so you could bludgeon your way through a level.
Or how about the side quests? The most egregious one that comes to mind is the 101 Dalmatians quest. You go through the game, finding these puppies and when you turn them in, there's no animations(which is really the point of a Disney game), no silly little cut-scene, just some text. Fucking brilliant!
The character designs were by Tetsuya Nomura, who, from this point will be called Belt-san Zippers... Before I go into the criticism of the art direction, I first want to tell you that Disney employs some of the best artists in the world. The characters they've made are some of the most iconic designs ever created. That being said, Belt-san Zippers felt they all needed a trip through a Hot Topic(which I guess makes sense for the time). What's left is a bunch of original characters that seem soulless and amateur(seriously, if you make a silhouette of Sora and take away the key blade, you've essentially took away the one design element that defined him) and a bunch of gothed-up Final Fantasy and Disney characters.
The story in this first game is... palatable. The plot doesn't get driven off a cliff in terms of ideas(that doesn't start until the second one Roxas? Jesus Christ!) and I guess there are few points to really get confused about. There's two real aguments I'm going to make about the story. The first point is the weird sexual tension and relationship stuff between the original characters. I want you to realize, this game is still geared to the kids would would have been watching the Cheetah Girls circa 2002, so that means those relationships will not have any real meaningful progression simply due to demographic they were aiming for. IE, games for little fangirls to speculate over for years(and a fanfiction/art explosion!). The second argument I'd like to levy is this is when Tetsuya Nomura, Mr. Belt-san Zippers himself, started his domination of the company.
This is where square left the tracks, this is where they started to not be able to make fun games. This rather average character designer took the reigns of a good amount of Square's development and then proceeded to drive it into the ground with reckless abandon.
I'd continue to write about the second game if I wasn't afraid I've already TL:DR'd so, to be hyperbolic, I'll say take the first game and cram it full of the fanfiction and fanart that the first game generated, simplify the combat, and crank the story to "crazy cat lady" levels of over dramatic nonsense and you've gotten Kingdom Hearts 2. I'll leave you with the wikipedia entry on the story for the second game, go ahead, tell me this is good writing, and fuck you Tetsuya Nomura, you fucking hack.
"Plot
Kingdom Hearts II begins one year after the events of Kingdom Hearts. Sora, Donald, and Goofy have been asleep in suspended animation for the past year to regain their lost memories. Meanwhile, Roxas, the Nobody of Sora, is trapped in a virtual simulation of Twilight Town created by DiZ so that he may merge with his original self to restore Sora's power, done as part of DiZ's revenge on Organization XIII. DiZ's plans are threatened when Organization XIII's Nobodies, led by Axel, Roxas' former friend in the Organization, infiltrate the virtual town, but Roxas finally merges with Sora. Sora, Donald, and Goofy wake up in the real Twilight Town and meet King Mickey and Yen Sid, who send them on another journey. Their goal is to find Riku and stop the plans of Organization XIII, who control the Nobodies—the body left over when a person with a strong heart is turned into a Heartless. Afterward, Maleficent is resurrected and joins with Pete to continue her quest for power.
Sora travels to many Disney-themed worlds, old and new, and resolves the troubles caused by Organization XIII, the Heartless, Maleficent, Pete and local villains. During a visit to Hollow Bastion, they again meet King Mickey, who reveals the true nature of Ansem, the antagonist of Kingdom Hearts. The Ansem whom Sora defeated was actually the Heartless of Xehanort, a student of Ansem the Wise, and that the leader of the Organization is Xehanort's Nobody, Xemnas. Organization XIII's plan is revealed: they seek the power of "Kingdom Hearts", the sum of all the hearts that Sora released by destroying the Heartless with his Keyblade. Sora then revisits the worlds to solve lingering problems and new complications, while seeking a path to Organization XIII's base of operations. Throughout his endeavors, Sora is secretly aided by a mysterious hooded figure whom Sora believes to be Riku.
Following a lead, Sora, Donald, and Goofy enter a passageway through Twilight Town and encounter Axel, who sacrifices himself to create a passageway to "The World That Never Was", the headquarters of Organization XIII, with Kingdom Hearts looming overhead as a heart-shaped moon. Sora finds Kairi and Riku, whose appearance has been changed by the darkness to that of Xehanort's Heartless; he also reveals to Sora the nature of his connection to Roxas. King Mickey meets DiZ, who reveals himself to be Ansem the Wise. Ansem uses a device that dissipates some of Kingdom Hearts' power, but a system overload causes the device to self-destruct, both engulfing Ansem and miraculously returning Riku to his original form. At the top of the Castle that Never Was, Sora and his friends battle Xemnas, who uses the remaining power of Kingdom Hearts to power his multiple forms. After Sora and Riku destroy Xemnas, the two are reunited with their friends at their home, Destiny Islands. The game concludes as Sora, Kairi, and Riku read a letter from Mickey, its contents hidden from the player."
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