Anyone else irked a bit at 0.2?

[Sephiroth0812]

Again, don't need everything to be "officially answered", but to speculate a Darkside (somehow commanded by Xehanort?) picked up Aqua and tangible Not!Ven(?) and then (I can only assume) casually dropped them off / Mickey rescued her / she spent her remaining energy to free herself, did I get that right?

Might be able to help with that one.
That wasn't a Darkside but Xehanort's Guardian and it was really a projection of Ventus (he subconsciously reached out to Aqua), but due to this being during KH 1 his heart is still injured and thus he can't react much less speak.
It wasn't until DDD that Ventus' heart showed signs of being sufficiently healed and stirring.

As for the Guardian "dropping" Aqua and Ven, I'd wager this has to do with Terra going all batshit "This is enough!" and constricting Xehanort with the chains of light as seen before Aqua loses consciousness.
Like Audo and others pointed out already though, it is as if there is a scene missing between this one and the next where Mickey finds her.
It's like watching part 1 and 3 of an episode but missing part 2.

 

[kirabook]

I pick at Kingdom Hearts, but generally with each new installment I love it more and more. I mean, I can and sometimes I do criticize it for various things, but that's just me playing devil's advocate. Even though Aqua's cats and dogs commentary stuck out to me, I still loved the dialogue.

In fact, I love the whole game and I was surprised when I found out people didn't like the final boss. Ha. 0.2 is very much an improvement where past dialogue wasn't exactly gold star. KH1 had stellar localization in its time, but they've gotten lazier and lazier with the voice work and who they bring back. Mickey wasn't all that great in 0.2, but I really didn't have a problem with anyone else and that's an improvement for me.

You see, I'm stuck in a place where I see the flaws or their sketchy business practices and acknowledge I shouldn't by KH things all the time to show my power as a consumer... but at the same time I love it so much that I do the bad thing anyway and glaze over the flaws cause the good stuff outweighs it.

That's how I feel... most of the time anyway. I'm not buying 1.5+2.5 till closer to the release date of KH3. I've come to not expect any freakin' bundles cause who knows why but whatever.

 

[DarkosOverlord]

I pick at Kingdom Hearts, but generally with each new installment I love it more and more. I mean, I can and sometimes I do criticize it for various things, but that's just me playing devil's advocate. Even though Aqua's cats and dogs commentary stuck out to me, I still loved the dialogue.

In fact, I love the whole game and I was surprised when I found out people didn't like the final boss. Ha. 0.2 is very much an improvement where past dialogue wasn't exactly gold star. KH1 had stellar localization in its time, but they've gotten lazier and lazier with the voice work and who they bring back. Mickey wasn't all that great in 0.2, but I really didn't have a problem with anyone else and that's an improvement for me.

You see, I'm stuck in a place where I see the flaws or their sketchy business practices and acknowledge I shouldn't by KH things all the time to show my power as a consumer... but at the same time I love it so much that I do the bad thing anyway and glaze over the flaws cause the good stuff outweighs it.

That's how I feel... most of the time anyway. I'm not buying 1.5+2.5 till closer to the release date of KH3. I've come to not expect any freakin' bundles cause who knows why but whatever.

That's exactly how I feel. I am capable of going an entire day just recognizing all the flaws the saga has, and I do know most of them are recent, meaning there was turning point during circa BbS that led here.
But it's still my favourite saga. BbS and DDD have many flaws and are essentially bad games? I like bad games.

 

[Antifa Lockhart]

I do know most of them are recent, meaning there was turning point during circa BbS that led here.

This recent criticism is what I have the most problems with when it comes to the KH fandom's critiques of the series.

Don't misunderstand me: The KH series is flawed, in many ways deeply, but this didn't start with BBS - that was not where the series diverted from the standard that KH1 set (which was also not a perfect game), as someone who didn't play the games for staggering animations and combo modifiers, my main reasons for playing games - Kingdom Hearts in general, are level design and story and in these areas, Kingdom Hearts II marks the biggest departure from KH, and sets the precedent for the same mistakes in many incarnations of the series.

 

[kirabook]

All of this started during KH2. KH2 spawned all of the subgames because KH2 was a mess in itself plotwise. Following that, the subgames weren't handled the best. Partially because of their platforms, partially Nomura wanting to stir up the KH formula like he did for Chain of Memories.

Kingdom Hearts 2 made things infinitely more 'deep' (aka complicated) to keep the series going and I completely acknowledge that and have no problem with it. I just wish Nomura had... held back. KH2 was so chocked full of loose ends, when I look back at the KH2 ending, I wondered how I ever felt like it was an 'ending' at all with so much stuff left unsaid and undone.

And Coded and Chi should have stayed offshoots and not relevant to the plot. If it were just BbS and Days before 3, it'd be tight

 

[Grono]

All of this started during KH2. KH2 spawned all of the subgames because KH2 was a mess in itself plotwise. Following that, the subgames weren't handled the best. Partially because of their platforms, partially Nomura wanting to stir up the KH formula like he did for Chain of Memories.

Kingdom Hearts 2 made things infinitely more 'deep' (aka complicated) to keep the series going and I completely acknowledge that and have no problem with it. I just wish Nomura had... held back. KH2 was so chocked full of loose ends, when I look back at the KH2 ending, I wondered how I ever felt like it was an 'ending' at all with so much stuff left unsaid and undone.

And Coded and Chi should have stayed offshoots and not relevant to the plot. If it were just BbS and Days before 3, it'd be tight

Weirdly enough, Kingdom Hearts II still seems... final to me. Like, if you told me the series ended at Kingdom Hearts II I would buy it somehow. I have no idea how this is possible, but it has a sort of finality to it.

True that about Coded and X, why are you trying to make them important? Why not just have them be fun extra canon side games instead of "crucial plot developments"? Nomura, I get it: you wrote coded when you were drunk, according to interviews. However, please just drop the datascape already? No one gives a single fuck what happens to the datascape after coded, you can just leave it in the background as a cameo appearance or something. STOP TRYING TO MAKE IT IMPORTANT AGAIN, NO ONE ASKED FOR YOU TO DO THAT!!!

I love coded, but come on, Nomura. You can come up with a better excuse to bring Maleficent back than that, right?

 

[Audo]

you wrote coded when you were drunk, according to interviews.

groan. no he didn't. this was a complete mistranslation.


honestly, i dont get you guys. coded and chi are both leaps and bounds better than days, which, shockingly, no one seems to have a problem with in this thread even though it's practically a raging trash fire both story wise and gameplay wise. y'all love kh2 so much but apparently have no problem with kh2 being diluted down to absolutely nothing and then being repeated ad nauseam in banal missions and ridiculously forced and fan-ficcy plot and story developments, seeped in the most melodramatic and emotionally manipulative narrative the series has ever seen.

 

[Grono]

groan. no he didn't. this was a complete mistranslation.


honestly, i dont get you guys. coded and chi are both leaps and bounds better than days, which, shockingly, no one seems to have a problem with in this thread even though it's practically a raging trash fire both story wise and gameplay wise. y'all love kh2 so much but apparently have no problem with kh2 being diluted down to absolutely nothing and then being repeated ad nauseam in banal missions and ridiculously forced and fan-ficcy plot and story developments, seeped in the most melodramatic and emotionally manipulative narrative the series has ever seen.

If it helps, I think those games are WAY better than Days.

The worst part of my days playthrough so far was when Riku said "I guess you could say... I'm the biggest nobody of them all." It was the most fanfic-y, cringy line in the series in my opinion, and it's only went up from there since.

Sorry for the mistake Audo, what was the correct translation if you don't mind me asking?

Coded is awesome, X can be boring, but has its fun parts. The battle system is fun, but it took me some time to warm up to it, and the story can be a slog sometimes in the beginning. Still stuck in the 150-200's at the moment, like nothing has happened at all!

 

[Audo]

Sorry for the mistake Audo, what was the correct translation if you don't mind me asking?

There like, isn't even a "correct" translation. Like the people who translated the interviews back then were like so bad at translating they practically invented that drunk thing whole cloth. Like the actual translation makes no mention of alcohol or drinks or anything. It was basically just "Nomura was discussing his ideas with us".

 

[Grono]

There like, isn't even a "correct" translation. Like the people who translated the interviews back then were like so bad at translating they practically invented that drunk thing whole cloth. Like the actual translation makes no mention of alcohol or drinks or anything. It was basically just "Nomura was discussing his ideas with us".

Hmm, so pretty much whoever translated that either had an ulterior motive or was just really terrible at translating? Sorry for the mistake, that was my bad (although it would have explained some things).

 

[Rydgea]

honestly, i dont get you guys. coded and chi are both leaps and bounds better than days

Because no one's opinion is word of god? If we're really fair, all of the bottom tier games could incorporate elements of eachother to elevate them to better standing. Personally, I think everyone who complains about Days's melodrama forgets how particularly thick it's present in the other games (CoM, KHII, BBS) - not that I perticularly have a problem with it it the first place, because the derivatives, Disney & FF, are generally overflowing it to begin with, and in terms of repetitiveness and level design, the gameplay can also be as much of a slog as CoM and coded.

It all just depends on what you gravitate to, but you really don't have to wrap your mind around someone else's opinion in order to understand that it's subjective.

 

[VoidGear.]

groan. no he didn't. this was a complete mistranslation.


honestly, i dont get you guys. coded and chi are both leaps and bounds better than days, which, shockingly, no one seems to have a problem with in this thread even though it's practically a raging trash fire both story wise and gameplay wise. y'all love kh2 so much but apparently have no problem with kh2 being diluted down to absolutely nothing and then being repeated ad nauseam in banal missions and ridiculously forced and fan-ficcy plot and story developments, seeped in the most melodramatic and emotionally manipulative narrative the series has ever seen.

I have 99 problems and I'm sure Days makes up at least 59 of them.

Honestly though, while Coded's story wasn't thaaaaat needed to be put in a full game, I still think both Chi and Coded are way better games than Days, simply because Days was awful.

 

[DarkosOverlord]

honestly, i dont get you guys. coded and chi are both leaps and bounds better than days, which, shockingly, no one seems to have a problem with in this thread even though it's practically a raging trash fire both story wise and gameplay wise. y'all love kh2 so much but apparently have no problem with kh2 being diluted down to absolutely nothing and then being repeated ad nauseam in banal missions and ridiculously forced and fan-ficcy plot and story developments, seeped in the most melodramatic and emotionally manipulative narrative the series has ever seen.

Yes. All of this.
My interpretation (albeit I think this is rethorical)?
People love these features. And while it's fine, many of the story/gameplay aspects are objectively bad or cheap, but could anyone admit they like a bad thing? Of course not. So, Days is amazing and not a fluffy mass of crap whose only important part are the last 15 minutes and they're as good as the game itself is at retconning ("Roxas set Kingdom Hearts free oh no wait what have I done Riku go stop Roxas setting Kingdom Hearts free").

 

[Muke]

Days was completely unnecessary imo. The story was awful and the gameplay was awful, too. Don't even get me started on Xion and Roxas.
The only thing it did right, and I will forever stress that I want this in KH3, is its Mission Mode.

At least Re:Coded has decent gameplay and an okay-ish story. X… I dunno. I would've preferred it to stay a spin-off game, but it's like whatever. They should just stop trying to force us to like that stupid "May your heart be your guiding key" shit because it's overused already.

 

[Absent]

[Insert game name here] is thrash and unnecessary. Tell me one game that isn't 1 that was necessary?

 

[Audo]

kingdom hearts 1 was trash and unnecessary. no one needed kh to be a thing. it is cynical anime crossover corporate disney trash fanfic that exists entirely to prop up the ips of its respective companies. it has no soul and no merit. stagger animations.

 

[Grono]

kingdom hearts 1 was trash and unnecessary. no one needed kh to be a thing. it is cynical anime crossover corporate disney trash fanfic that exists entirely to prop up the ips of its respective companies. it has no soul and no merit. stagger animations.

It serves to prop Disney up so much that Disney hardly associate themselves with the brand at all (to be fair, kingdom hearts hardly associates itself with final fantasy nowadays)

 

[Audo]

it props them up in the videogame medium. most don't remember this, but for a long time disney's main presence in gaming was license movie tie-ins that did poorly and were critical failures. kh helped prop disney up in this market, as disney themselves continued to struggle to make a profit in the industry on their own. even now, with disney officially ending its independent game studios, kh still exists and is selling strongly, proving its purpose as something existing to prop up the ips of its respective companies.

 

[Muke]

I dunno if you guys are trying to mock me but:
Days really felt shoehorned in to me, which is why I said it's unnecessary (imo). Xion conventionally being forgotten and all. Not even having decent gameplay doesn't help either. And the whole RAX trio is just a mess.

 

[Grono]

it props them up in the videogame medium. most don't remember this, but for a long time disney's main presence in gaming was license movie tie-ins that did poorly and were critical failures. kh helped prop disney up in this market, as disney themselves continued to struggle to make a profit in the industry on their own. even now, with disney officially ending its independent game studios, kh still exists and is selling strongly, proving its purpose and merit as something existing to prop up the ips of its respective companies.

I'll agree with that, it's Disney's least respected industry and least funded department. Disney hardly puts any money towards the creation of new games, and the vast majority of the games coming out now are just movie tie-ins or obscure Disney in-universe tie-ins like Epic Mickey or Disney's magical world or whatever that one was called.

Still though, they hardly advertise Kingdom Hearts. My brother went to the pin trading company store in Downtown Disney recently, the biggest pin store Disney has to offer, and they were selling only one Kingdom Hearts pin. It might not be popular compared to everything else, but really, Disney? Only one? That's just depressing as a fan Thank god we're getting tons of new collectibles though, I'm alright with affordable Kingdom Hearts merchandise for once!