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KHII Sora



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Veritas7340

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All right, I haven't played KHII in a fairly long time.

Around this forum, I've seen some remarks like "KHII Sora didn't happen"

Is he really that bad/underdeveloped of a character?

I will agree that CoM Sora is better. I would probably also agree regarding KHI Sora, maybe.

But KHII Sora did have his moments, from confronting Roxas to being overjoyed when he finally found Riku to humbly begging Saix to release Kairi.
 

Gram

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Many dislike him because it took the Sora we met in KH1 and the potential we seen in CoM and dumbed him down. They more or less shounen-ized Sora making him appear a dumber than he actually is.

He's no genius of course but between all the games in the serious featuring him kh2 portrays him the "simplest".

Another bit is Nomura's constant use of KH1 Sora for everything outside KH2 leading to the joke that even he regrets making him.
 

Some guy

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Personally, I like KH II Sora better. He portrays more what he is supposed to be: a "happy go lucky", compassionate guy that would do anything for his friends. True, KH I Sora was built on that as well, but there are some moments where he is more mature than he should be (as much as I love it, his speech about the connections of the heart upon entering hollow bastion was just ... out of place? "My friends are my power, and I'm theirs" would have sufficed. And then, he outsmarted someone who devoted his "second half" life to the study of the hearts).

My favorite is still CoM Sora though, I love how pissed he can get when you mess with him. We also get a glimpse of this in KH II, after the Demyx fight.
 

Sign

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Another bit is Nomura's constant use of KH1 Sora for everything outside KH2 leading to the joke that even he regrets making him.

That joke applied only to KH2 Sora's outfit design, not his actual character. No one has ever used it to say that Nomura regrets aging him up.
 

dysLexicon

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That joke applied only to KH2 Sora's outfit design, not his actual character. No one has ever used it to say that Nomura regrets aging him up.

I doubt Nomura would regret it anyway, considering that he said somewhere in an interview that Sora is one of his favorite original characters.
 
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Oracle Spockanort

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When we finished Kingdom Hearts, we were left with a Sora who had grown to see the importance of friendship, gained a deeper understanding of the way of the world, and was neither too hasty or too slow to take action. He had plenty of failings like not being the most trusting person, and little forethought about the future which gave him a lack of ambition beyond short-term goals.

In KH2, we see a de-evolution of Sora...or rather like the layers surrounding his already simplistic character become thinner and extremely simplistic. He was too happy, too quick to take action, too cocky, too extreme in general. He rarely questions the how and why surrounding the mystery of being asleep for an entire year. Sora was really quick to jump on the hate bandwagon towards the Organization despite not knowing more than what Yen Sid had told him. He didn't ask questions first, and it took him falling into a few messes before he finally decided to seek out answers (which was quite literally near end of the game).

If we want to try and explain it with the canon we have, this could all be due to the fact Sora's heart was a mess for the whole year while Roxas, Xion, and Namine were doing their thing, so obviously he would not be 100% the way he was before.

I doubt Nomura would regret it anyway, considering that he said sonewhere in an interview that Sora is one of his favorite original characters.

He is not just a favorite but rather Sora is like a child to Nomura, which is understandable since he been developing his story for over 12 years.
 

Gram

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That joke applied only to KH2 Sora's outfit design, not his actual character. No one has ever used it to say that Nomura regrets aging him up.

That's what I was referring to. =P
(also I've seen such jokes on the latter in other places so that's not true either)
 
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Launchpad

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He's pretty annoying, if you ask me. He never shuts up, and that sucks, because he never has anything interesting or important to say. Just a lot of shounen garbage. "I'm here to help!" "Because we're friends!"
He's pretty much the same in DDD, but has a few good moments there, mostly in the Musketeer World. Otherwise, pretty lame stuff too.

KH was about experiencing these two companies, the radical Final Fantasy characters, and timeless Disney franchises.. It worked really well when Sora acted as a straight-man to these Disney characters, because the player already knows who these characters are. It's easier for us to enjoy them when Sora isn't giving them a speech about what's right.
Not to say that I'd mind BETTER interaction between Sora and the Disney characters, but only if it's playing into the STRENGTHS of them, as opposed to showcasing how good of a guy Sora is. There was a great moment in DDD where Frollo insulted Sora's clothes. More stuff like that.
 

Elysium

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I don't mind KH2 Sora, although CoM was much better which makes the shift so drastic. He basically becomes a stock anime cliche in KH2, imo. The only thing that bothers me is how outright stupid they make him. Otherwise, the silly stuff with the Disney characters doesn't really bother me too much.

And I agree, the fact that he never shuts up is very annoying. His conversation with Mickey at HB on who Ansem really is is just infuriating--the whole time, I'm just like, "STFU Sora so he can explain for godssakes!" And then the way he keeps jabbing at Mickey about Riku the whole time in Twilight Town really deserved a punch in the face.
 

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It seemed they didn't know how to write him so they went all over the place. Mostly odd how dead-set Sora was to kill off the organization without knowing much about it which is something we don't see in KH1. In the first game Sora saw the evil things Clayton did and then decided to attack him. You put KH2 Sora in that spot and if he was told by one of the gorillas that Clayton was a bad customer and Sora pre-preemptively attacking him.

I get Sora wanting to kill off Saix/Xaldin etc for what they did, but it seems the second version of Sora was much more trigger happy to fight.

I also like to point out I got the weird feeling that Sora didn't take the Disney world problem very seriously like he did in the first game but I can't pinpoint a couple of scenes rather just a feeling. He seemed much more jokey and cheerful which isn't always a bad thing but it drives home the point more that Disney worlds are not very relevant to the game for the most part.
 
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Sora341

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I must agree. Sora has always my favorite, throughout every game. No matter what anyone says, he really is a deep thinker. Especially in KH1 and Com. But in DDD, they did make him seem like an idiot. Which ticks me off. But I think in KHIII he will come right back around to the person we had first met, since it is the Xehanort finale.
 

Oracle Spockanort

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I also like to point out I got the weird feeling that Sora didn't take the Disney world problem very seriously like he did in the first game but I can't pinpoint a couple of scenes rather just a feeling. He seemed much more jokey and cheerful which isn't always a bad thing but it drives home the point more that Disney worlds are not very relevant to the game for the most part.

I don't think it is anything that can be directly shown; It's definitely his overall tone towards things, which is also due to his single-mindedness. He's there, not because his first thought is to go solve problems in these worlds, but rather he is hoping all of this world-hopping will inevitably lead him to Riku (and then Kairi after she is kidnapped).

He comes off more lax and insensitive when visiting worlds because they wrote Sora to be more jovial and humorous. It's hard to put into words how unnatural it felt, but it permeates the entire game. You are right.
 
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Launchpad

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Honestly, KH1 and COM nailed it. Sora was a bit more headstrong, a bit more reasonable, and also had a vengeful streak if he was pushed far enough. I can understand wanting to put him in more of a hero position, but that was something the player felt over the course of the first game. We didn't need Sora shouting about saving the world, because WE already knew that we were going to do it.
 

gamerobber7

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The only thing that bothers me about KH2 (and DDD) Sora is how cocky and sure of himself he tends to get. Sure he's beaten some powerful beings but there are plenty of other things to be concerned about so he shouldn't feel so confident most of the time.

Sora was really quick to jump on the hate bandwagon towards the Organization despite not knowing more than what Yen Sid had told him.

I like to think he acted that way partly because Sora was feeling Roxas' anger and hatred towards some of the Organization.
 

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To all the people complaining about how stupid Sora seemed in KH2, I honestly felt it was much worse in DDD. Compared to that, Sora in KH2 was a genius.
 

Gram

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To all the people complaining about how stupid Sora seemed in KH2, I honestly felt it was much worse in DDD. Compared to that, Sora in KH2 was a genius.

DDD Sora definitely wasn't much better but unlike KH2 Sora he actually had tolerable moments, namely most of his run through TWTNW.
 

kuraudoVII

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I think part of the problem with Sora in II and DDD was that they were essentially trying to make him way too happy and go-lucky while ironically making him more determined to beat the everloving crap out of his opponents simply because he was told that they were his opponents. In all fairness, there are reasons - both in-game and and out - as to why he acts like this. For the particularly go-lucky/foolish aspect in those games, it can be chalked up to him having much simpler goals and having less personal baggage on him. Remember that in II, he was, to his knowledge, merely asleep and was simply on a quest to find Riku and later Kairi without feeling depressed over the fact that his homeland was destroyed like in the first game. For Dream Drop Distance, he was literally de-aged to be like he was in the first game, but since there was initially no threat in the game aside from failing the Mark of Mastery exam, he was able to act like how he most likely would have acted in the first game if the darker elements were taken away.

Alright, now for the more ruthless elements. The in-universe reason for as to why Sora is more bloodthirsty in II can be chalked up to all of the lingering and negative emotions that permeated throughout Roxas (and quite possibly Xion as well) as well as the threat that the Organization began to show later on in regards to Kairi's kidnapping and rather interesting insinuations in regards to Riku's then-current plight. The out-of-universe reason for this is most likely due to the fact that Sora (and, indeed, the entire Kingdom Hearts series) began to suffer from what I like to call Shonen Jump Syndrome. The character as well as the game was rewritten to have more elements that you would expect from shonen series such as Dragon Ball or Yu Yu Hakusho (or Naruto and Bleach for those of you that are a little younger). While this was present in the first game and was more prominent in Chain of Memories, it was in II where it began to go full-tilt into a game with a plot that you would see in a typical manga and anime. Later games in the series would have these elements as well, but they would try to work around this a bit better than the second game did considering that it was juggling between that and trying to follow the original movie plots to the letter.

What I am trying to get at is that these elements would lead to a disjointed Sora that would switch from being a stock anime hero while also suffering the angst that some of the more antiheroic shonen protagonists had to deal with despite being a very simple straight man. Think of Zidane Tribal from Final Fantasy IX. You have a character that is meant to be a charismatic and bright character like some of the earliest Final Fantasy protagonists, but near the end of the game, the game likes to tack on dark and troubled pasts that make him angst in an what seems like an out-of-character way because they saw how that worked with Cloud Strife and Squall Leonhart. Sora seems to have fallen into this by Kingdom Hearts II.
 

Launchpad

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I don't mind Sora becoming more heroic. But he act more mature like he was in KH1, in Hollow Bastion and EOTW scenes. It was so goddamn heartwarming to see him in that game, becoming more responsible, and willing to sacrifice himself for others. They never had to make him a goofball. He was just a likable character overall, without overrepresentation.
 

Gram

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I don't mind Sora becoming more heroic. But he act more mature like he was in KH1, in Hollow Bastion and EOTW scenes. It was so goddamn heartwarming to see him in that game, becoming more responsible, and willing to sacrifice himself for others. They never had to make him a goofball. He was just a likable character overall, without overrepresentation.

This ^

It made him identifiable or more "real". He had things to worry about but he actually matured as a person in KH1 taking on responsibilities and learning whats more important to be done.
He started out childish, fully enjoying seeing new sights and just tolerating D&G to accepting there's something only he can do as well as considering D&G true friends.

He was just more "real" in this sense. CoM built on this when it made him borderline antagonistic.

There just is no real excuse for his behaviors on KH2 or DDD. Even if he was made to be look younger in DDD he was still as of the same mind as his actual age, there's no excuses there.
In KH2, yes sure he had less to actually worry about, but he was devolved as a character from being the maturing and responsible kid he was in KH1 to becoming a copy&paste shounen hero and somehow in the transition actually got dumber.

I know Sora was never the brightest but by hell he was never actually stupid, just simple. He grew up on a, from what we can tell, mostly non-technological world so his more simplistic personality is expected. (especially in regards to computers)

If Nomura really wants to address the issues of his character he needs to take a hint from his KH1/CoM self and build on that.

he was able to act like how he most likely would have acted in the first game if the darker elements were taken away.
Except even before dark elements came into play, which was the first bit of KH1, Sora didn't act anything like KH2/DDD Sora. Hell, if anything, Data!Sora is a more faithful representation of how he'd behave in normal situations lacking threats.
 

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To all the people complaining about how stupid Sora seemed in KH2, I honestly felt it was much worse in DDD. Compared to that, Sora in KH2 was a genius.
I'd have to agree with this. KH2 Sora was bad, but DDD Sora was annoying. Hopefully Sora will reverse the trend and get smarter between DDD KH3.
 
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