How's everyone enjoying it?

[kuraudoVII]

I remember reading that the Mickey symbol doesn't appear in character files until after you've beaten all the superbosses with each character, but I could be wrong about that. But that may perhaps be why. I kind of stopped my 100% run for the game a few months ago.

Ah, that might be it.

Welp, at least it gives me more incentive for finishing Ven and Aqua's Super Bosses faster.

Anyone have any advice for taking Xemnas' ship thing down in critical mode?

For some reason, that's always the final boss moment that I always have the most trouble with somehow... and it's actually the only time I've died during this run.

Maybe I'm just underleveled, but yeah: Any advice (about dodging attacks especially)?

If only you could heal during that portion of the game.

I guess I should also point out that I never absorb the enemies' attacks--and then use the mega laser--during this fight for some reason, but rather just rely on the standard laser, as the other one never seems to work for me, oddly enough....

You really need to absorb the enemy attacks. What I do is I will usually try to alternate between hitting the X button and whichever button it is that absorbs the enemy's attacks. It always helped me in my Critical run fights against Gundam Dragoon ship Xemnas.

 

[Chuman]

Just hit level 50 as terra, got all of his treasure (that hidden one in neverland, smh), and I'm tearing through the mirage arena. Keepers of the arena with iron imprisoned 3 & 4 are throwing so much shade, keep dying in the final round.

also, if I complete the first 6 command boards and first two races in MA, do I unlock the final two to complete for arena levels or do I have to win them during the main game?

 

[Nazo]

Finished the Re:coded movie a few hours ago. They handled it so much better than they did with the Days movie. Actually felt like watching a Kingdom Hearts film and not just a massive bundle of cutscenes. I also feel like the work they did on it with all the scenes they created helped make Coded a hell of a lot more relevant to the entire series. I already knew everything about Coded prior to watching, but watching the movie, all of it was explained so much better than how it was in the actual game. I had to read a bunch of wiki articles to fully understand Coded after beating the game. It all flowed smoothly while watching the movie though.

That was a satisfying end to my 2.5 experience. Had a blast platinuming all of 1.5 and 2.5. And after watching the credits of 2.5 for myself, it's quite obvious that there's going to be some sort of remastering done with Dream Drop Distance. Hyped for the idea of that.

 

[Blackdrazon]

Congrats, Nazo, glad you enjoyed! And nice to see you enjoyed coded last, too, I didn't see many people doing that and I'm glad it held up as an ending for you.

 

[Chuman]

Escaped the final round of KoTA, and took home ultima shotlock. Then I completed the neverland board in the MA, which unlocked the secret board. I barely beat that one, actually sort of surprised I did. For some reason, the last two rumble races aren't showing up even though I cleared the first two. Do I need to beat them under certain requirements? I'm MA level 24 which means I'm 1 shy of unlocking villain's vendetta and the ultima weapon, and my only other option is getting the 7,777 medals (which I'll need to finish the races after regardless to get to the final arena missions with eraqus' and xehanort's armor).

any help would be much appreciated.

 

[Divine Past]

Escaped the final round of KoTA, and took home ultima shotlock. Then I completed the neverland board in the MA, which unlocked the secret board. I barely beat that one, actually sort of surprised I did. For some reason, the last two rumble races aren't showing up even though I cleared the first two. Do I need to beat them under certain requirements? I'm MA level 24 which means I'm 1 shy of unlocking villain's vendetta and the ultima weapon, and my only other option is getting the 7,777 medals (which I'll need to finish the races after regardless to get to the final arena missions with eraqus' and xehanort's armor).

any help would be much appreciated.

You need to beat or do all the races in disney town for them to be unlocked at Mirage Arena.

 

[LightUpTheSky452]

Thank you very much for the help, kuraudo! I'll just have to try that!

Hopefully it'll go better for me than it did in the vanilla, PS2 version of KHII...

IDK why, but whenever I tried to absorb enemy attacks back then, the gauge really didn't seem to fill up, and I seemed to take on more damage that way, so now I'm kind of afraid to try that tactic on the II.5 version. But maybe my PS2 copy was just glitchy there, and now I'm just being silly?

But, yeah: thanks again, kuraudoVII. Very much appreciated! ^_^

Also, Nazo, I completely agree about everything you said with Re:Coded. I'll admit that I now have a soft spot for that game--and was very exciting going into it, and even had high expectations for it--but it was absolutely fantastic, and just done so well.

It DID feel like a KH movie, and it just flowed together so nicely.

I feel like the shot angles for the new scenes were also really done expertly, and that the acting and everything else was superb.

They were even able to fit most of Coded into cutscenes, unlike what they were able to do with Days.

But my favorite bit about it all were the new little tidbits they added, which made everything SO much better: like Jiminy guessing early on that Naminé might have been involved in it all, Goofy voicing that he hoped the Traverse Town--err... Radiant Garden--gang were doing okay, etc.

Heck, it even seemed to me like they reworded some lines in this version of Coded to me, so that it had some nice parallels to earlier games in the franchise, and stuff like that.

Very well done, imo, and a definite joy to watch=)

Almost makes me wish that we WOULD get a real KH movie now:)

 

[Chuman]

You need to beat or do all the races in disney town for them to be unlocked at Mirage Arena.

Wow. I don't know how I did it in the original, hope I only have to beat the final two and not the first two again. Thanks for the help, I'll (begrudgingly) do the races some time later.

 

[Divine Past]

Wow. I don't know how I did it in the original, hope I only have to beat the final two and not the first two again. Thanks for the help, I'll (begrudgingly) do the races some time later.

Hey it's much quicker than having to catch up with the command boards!

 

[Chuman]

Hey it's much quicker than having to catch up with the command boards!

Thank kingdom hearts I didn't have to do those twice. Barely finished certain ones by the skin of my teeth.

 

[Blackdrazon]

Wow. I don't know how I did it in the original, hope I only have to beat the final two and not the first two again. Thanks for the help, I'll (begrudgingly) do the races some time later.

This is a change from the original, that's why it's all screwy. It makes a... certain amount of sense, considering the only reason you'd race in Disney Town in the original was to get the Victory Line, and the Victory Line is a hunk of junk. But I wish they hadn't added additional redundancy - couldn't have racing in Disney Town counted for the Arena?

 

[Chuman]

This is a change from the original, that's why it's all screwy. It makes a... certain amount of sense, considering the only reason you'd race in Disney Town in the original was to get the Victory Line, and the Victory Line is a hunk of junk. But I wish they hadn't added additional redundancy - couldn't have racing in Disney Town counted for the Arena?

That would be like beating terra's first boss and having weaver feaver show as cleared. I wish they showed like the command board instead in that if you beat it in the MA, you were met the requirements to unlock what was next.

 

[Blackdrazon]

That would be like beating terra's first boss and having weaver feaver show as cleared.

...No? No it wouldn't be? Weaver Fever is a series of new battles tied to a rebalanced boss. The races in Disney Castle are 100% identical in every way. They're just forcing you to do something over again to encourage a multiplayer feature that no longer exists.

 

[kuraudoVII]

...No? No it wouldn't be? Weaver Fever is a series of new battles tied to a rebalanced boss. The races in Disney Castle are 100% identical in every way. They're just forcing you to do something over again to encourage a multiplayer feature that no longer exists.

Agree with this. The races save the very last one were very redundant because of that.

 

[Chuman]

They're just forcing you to do something over again to encourage a multiplayer feature that no longer exists.

And this pissed me off immensely. It's one thing to remove the multiplayer and its another to lazily edit a game. The sections where you can enter text are still using the psp's inferior typing system, they give you command boards, badly designed races and long battles designed for multiplayer (which are a drag with only one player), and the camera angle designed for a portable console.

it was a bad port to say the least, kh2 was a much better port, although it was designed as a console game so there wasn't much to fuck up there. I hope for DDD's sake they show it more TLC and aren't rushed.

 

[Nazo]

Congrats, Nazo, glad you enjoyed! And nice to see you enjoyed coded last, too, I didn't see many people doing that and I'm glad it held up as an ending for you.

Thank you! And yeah, I did the same with Days in 1.5. I refused to watch it until I had platinumed KHFM and Re:CoM. It was like a "reward" for the tons of hours poured into platinuming two games. That, and I like to do things in order, so watching Re:coded before finishing KH2FM or BBSFM would've felt weird to me.

...No? No it wouldn't be? Weaver Fever is a series of new battles tied to a rebalanced boss. The races in Disney Castle are 100% identical in every way. They're just forcing you to do something over again to encourage a multiplayer feature that no longer exists.

Precisely. Wanting to have every keyblade for all 3 characters, I actually had to go back and get 1st place in all the Disney Town versions of the races just to get Victory Line for Aqua and Ven (I had already gotten it with Terra to get the racing trophy). It'd have been much nicer to get it after finishing first in all the arena races, instead of having to literally do every race with every character twice.

And this pissed me off immensely. It's one thing to remove the multiplayer and its another to lazily edit a game.

Not to mention, they kept in all the multiplayer-related commands at the Moogle Shop, like Group Curaga. That doesn't do anything anymore, so why keep it? It's essentially just a Curaga you buy with Medals instead of Munny.

 

[Blackdrazon]

Thank you! And yeah, I did the same with Days in 1.5. I refused to watch it until I had platinumed KHFM and Re:CoM. It was like a "reward" for the tons of hours poured into platinuming two games. That, and I like to do things in order, so watching Re:coded before finishing KH2FM or BBSFM would've felt weird to me.

I've been replaying the games along with the releases, with the two lost DS games in between. But I still had to watched coded once I got the copy because it had new content. You have better patience than me.

 

[Nazo]

I've been replaying the games along with the releases, with the two lost DS games in between. But I still had to watched coded once I got the copy because it had new content. You have better patience than me.

Well, I did watch the two brand new additional cutscenes when they got leaked on YouTube, but all those text bubble scenes that got turned into fully voiced scenes, I saw those for the first time last night and they were goddamned glorious.

Also, watching the Re:coded movie proved something else to me. Having every character speak with a fully animated face instead of a default face (save for Cloud) looks SO MUCH BETTER. For a while, I was thinking maybe I've gotten so used to switching back and forth between fully animated faces and default faces that it'd be weird to have only fully animated faces in KH3.

Nope. If I see a default face in KH3, I will be disappoint. Every character having fully animated faces all at once looks fantastic, and doesn't constantly remind me that I'm playing/watching a videogame.

 

[Chuman]

I'm a man of my word. After six tedious wins (and countless losses) of rumble race, I was at arena level 26. After that, I took on VV and came out ahead (the secret was multiple curaga spells) and now I'm fighting armor of the master. Got him two bars down before I fucked up and countered him in the middle of a combo, but I'll update after I bring him down.

 

[Blackdrazon]

Well, I did watch the two brand new additional cutscenes when they got leaked on YouTube, but all those text bubble scenes that got turned into fully voiced scenes, I saw those for the first time last night and they were goddamned glorious.

Also, watching the Re:coded movie proved something else to me. Having every character speak with a fully animated face instead of a default face (save for Cloud) looks SO MUCH BETTER. For a while, I was thinking maybe I've gotten so used to switching back and forth between fully animated faces and default faces that it'd be weird to have only fully animated faces in KH3.

Nope. If I see a default face in KH3, I will be disappoint. Every character having fully animated faces all at once looks fantastic, and doesn't constantly remind me that I'm playing/watching a videogame.

Ugh, so much. Even the Days movie, which isn't on the same level, is so much better than the fish-faced, stiff-handed puppets they have acting in the game. For the series retrospective I'm writing, I try to show restraint and address an issue only when it's started to grate on me, but with those models I just had to mention them at the very beginning of the draft because they start to become a problem right away!


EDIT: Good luck, chuman!