Kingdom Hearts 2 Retrospective

[Divine Past]

Arc V is an awesome show.

 

[Xickin]

Who did you guys prefer for the voice Ansem SoD? Billy Zane (KH, COM) or Richard Epcar (Re:COM, KH2, 3D)? I personally preferred Billy Zane in retrospect.

 

[Rolands]

Arc V is an awesome show.

Seconded.

And no one can top Billy Zane.

 

[FFxStrife]

Not really related only to KH2 but this video is amazing.

[video=youtube;99hSFcl5LK4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99hSFcl5LK4[/video]

 

[dlppictures]

^
I've watched that a couple of times, and I would definately show it to anyone even mildly interested in the series. But there is one thing about that is a pet peeve of mine. How Jacob calls the χ-blade the "eks-blade". I know he did it not to confuse newcomers, but he made a point to tell why he calls Ansem SoD "Billy Zane", I think he could have spent a sentence to tell the χ-blade is pronounced like "Keyblade" but to differentiate the two entities he calls it the "eks-blade". Just a little nitpicking, is all.


On Pride Lands, one of the reasons why I don't care much for the world is because, what, 8½ out of 11 areas have a brownish grey colour scheme, with very little variation. It's just too boring to look at.


On Pete's role, I've never been too good at argumenting for opinions, but a few years back I made a video as to why I want Agrabah in KHIII, starting by telling my experience of 'Aladdin' and visiting Agrabah in the games. Midway through talking about KHII's Agrabah, I go on a tangent where, when I tried to analyse the Agrabah section of the game, I started to feel like the different worlds were split up halfway, or two-thirds of the way through the story, just to artificially prolong the game with second visits.
And in coming to that realisation, I also started to believe that maybe the Disney Castle/Timeless River section was supposed to be one of the very last worlds you would visit, before it was moved to early second quarter. Timeless River even had a big "Final" showdown with Pete. So I came to the believe I still have to some degree, that Timeless River was Maleficent's and Pete's last stand in KHII.
Imagine if Disney Castle/Timeless River was the last Disney World to visit before the Nobody fight in the Sandlot. After Timeless River, we see neither Pete nor Maleficent again until TWTNW. Why? Because they are recuperating after their big defeat.

The way it is in the game, it has always felt weird to me that Pete would show up in worlds post-Disney Castle, yet we never get to fight him again. Hades Paradox not-withstanding. Pete just felt out of place to me.

 

[Blackdrazon]

On Pete's role, I've never been too good at argumenting for opinions, but a few years back I made a video as to why I want Agrabah in KHIII, starting by telling my experience of 'Aladdin' and visiting Agrabah in the games. Midway through talking about KHII's Agrabah, I go on a tangent where, when I tried to analyse the Agrabah section of the game, I started to feel like the different worlds were split up halfway, or two-thirds of the way through the story, just to artificially prolong the game with second visits.
And in coming to that realisation, I also started to believe that maybe the Disney Castle/Timeless River section was supposed to be one of the very last worlds you would visit, before it was moved to early second quarter. Timeless River even had a big "Final" showdown with Pete. So I came to the believe I still have to some degree, that Timeless River was Maleficent's and Pete's last stand in KHII.
Imagine if Disney Castle/Timeless River was the last Disney World to visit before the Nobody fight in the Sandlot. After Timeless River, we see neither Pete nor Maleficent again until TWTNW. Why? Because they are recuperating after their big defeat.

The way it is in the game, it has always felt weird to me that Pete would show up in worlds post-Disney Castle, yet we never get to fight him again. Hades Paradox not-withstanding. Pete just felt out of place to me.

That would make a lot of sense! Great insight!

 

[FudgemintGuardian]

Waaagh, I've fallen behind!
But...daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn, you're words on KHII's story. While I've always considered II's story to be disjointed and filler-y, it wasn't until this I fully realized why I have such issue with its story:
they just didn't care.

Who did you guys prefer for the voice Ansem SoD? Billy Zane (KH, COM) or Richard Epcar (Re:COM, KH2, 3D)? I personally preferred Billy Zane in retrospect.

Richard Epcar all the way.

On Pride Lands, one of the reasons why I don't care much for the world is because, what, 8½ out of 11 areas have a brownish grey colour scheme, with very little variation. It's just too boring to look at.

Sad considering how great the locations look in the movie

On Pete's role, I've never been too good at argumenting for opinions, but a few years back I made a video as to why I want Agrabah in KHIII, starting by telling my experience of 'Aladdin' and visiting Agrabah in the games. Midway through talking about KHII's Agrabah, I go on a tangent where, when I tried to analyse the Agrabah section of the game, I started to feel like the different worlds were split up halfway, or two-thirds of the way through the story, just to artificially prolong the game with second visits.
And in coming to that realisation, I also started to believe that maybe the Disney Castle/Timeless River section was supposed to be one of the very last worlds you would visit, before it was moved to early second quarter. Timeless River even had a big "Final" showdown with Pete. So I came to the believe I still have to some degree, that Timeless River was Maleficent's and Pete's last stand in KHII.
Imagine if Disney Castle/Timeless River was the last Disney World to visit before the Nobody fight in the Sandlot. After Timeless River, we see neither Pete nor Maleficent again until TWTNW. Why? Because they are recuperating after their big defeat.

The way it is in the game, it has always felt weird to me that Pete would show up in worlds post-Disney Castle, yet we never get to fight him again. Hades Paradox not-withstanding. Pete just felt out of place to me.

This would make a heck of a lot of sense

 

[Divine Past]

A lot of KH2 seems like it was switch at the last time. Like to me it seemed they wanted to have Kairi be in your party like Riku but then they scratch it at the last minute. For one the scene where Sora finally hugs Kairi the cut from the game to that cut scene was very awkward. Kairi was in fighting position and looked like she was still waiting for more heartless to spawn. So it seemed like Sora was suppose to help Kairi fight off those bad guys and then the scene happens.

Not to mention the awkward way Saix clears out Kairi/Riku from his fight which didn't make too much sense to me. Finally the ship thing that Sora and Riku used during their fight with Xemnas' machine seemed awfully unbalanced. Why will that bike thing only have a platform on one side?

 

[Blackdrazon]

Yeah, those are two of my leading three theories: they just didn't care, they changed things at the last possible second... or a third thing I'll be getting into on Saturday.

I think it's probably a mash of all three.

 

[ShardofTruth]

I can't wait for Space Paranoids since it's my favorite Disney world in the series.

As for the additional FF characters: I don't understand their inclusion one bit. Cloud's whole story was kinda strange in KH1 too but repeating it in KH2 with Sephiroth as his darkness and Tifa as his light is not making things better.
You should really check out Goldpanner's translations of the character trivia Nomura wrote for the two Character Reports (Vol.1, Vol.2) if you haven't yet, the one for Tifa is just gold:

Tifa
As a symbol of light, like Sephiroth, it's possible that she too was incorporeal. That last scene where she goes off to search for Cloud, you could say, is a metaphor for how Cloud's light still hasn't lost him, even though he's disappeared off with his darkness, and it is trying to shine on him again… I'm pretty sure I didn't manage to get all that across very well.
--Nomura

You sure didn't Nomura, you sure didn't. Sephiroth is a nice super boss and fighting almost the whole FF cast in the coliseum is neat but that's about it.

Bringing the Gullwings back as fairies was a nice change, although as with Maleficent herself, this got us nowhere in the end. I like how they tease Sora, not enough characters are doing that.

I'm really looking forward on how you will tackle the things that follow the short trip to Space Paranoids, because it is and always was "the gathering" of all strange plotlines in KH2. I'm always surprised how little sense these scenes make and how fast I (and the game) can forget about them after.

 

[FudgemintGuardian]

A lot of KH2 seems like it was switch at the last time. Like to me it seemed they wanted to have Kairi be in your party like Riku but then they scratch it at the last minute. For one the scene where Sora finally hugs Kairi the cut from the game to that cut scene was very awkward. Kairi was in fighting position and looked like she was still waiting for more heartless to spawn. So it seemed like Sora was suppose to help Kairi fight off those bad guys and then the scene happens.

Not to mention the awkward way Saix clears out Kairi/Riku from his fight which didn't make too much sense to me. Finally the ship thing that Sora and Riku used during their fight with Xemnas' machine seemed awfully unbalanced. Why will that bike thing only have a platform on one side?

I forgot those parts. See! The writing is so bad I subconsciously block things from my memory!

Yeah, those are two of my leading three theories: they just didn't care, they changed things at the last possible second... or a third thing I'll be getting into on Saturday.

I think it's probably a mash of all three.

Probably is, whatever the third thing will be.

I have two guesses on what your third thing is: Either executive meddling, which would make sense as its the omnipresent problem of practically everything. Whether it be movies, television, video games or what have you, whenever something crap happens, it's usually the result of a higher-up walking in and effing it up.

My second guess is....Chain of Memories. We know that there originally wasn't any plans for this title and that the year between the KKI and KHII wasn't going to be touched upon.
...or was it?
The first few hours of II does touch on the "forgetting Sora" thing briefly. Selphie completely forgetting about Sora, and Kairi I'll say was barely holding on to her memory of him, DiZ briefly telling Riku that memory of Sora is starting to be clear in everyone connected to him, and Leon and company saying that they all suddenly remembered Sora at once. After which the topic is completely dropped.
What if the "missing year" was originally part of II's plot early on in development, but the making CoM resulted them into removing material from II's story?

You should really check out Goldpanner's translations of the character trivia Nomura wrote for the two Character Reports (Vol.1, Vol.2) if you haven't yet, the one for Tifa is just gold:

I'm pretty sure I didn't manage to get all that across very well.
That's for sure.

Bringing the Gullwings back as fairies was a nice change, although as with Maleficent herself, this got us nowhere in the end. I like how they tease Sora, not enough characters are doing that.

I'm with you on that! I really liked that they went a different route with the Gullwings by making them fairies.

 

[Blackdrazon]

I can't comment on future posts but I will say "please be excited," and also a thank you to Shard for those links to the character profile translations!

 

[BlackOsprey]

I find it hilarious that KHII tried to go out of its way (mostly) to avoid CoM's existence, while every single game after that had a plot that hinged on what happened in or the existence of Castle Oblivion.

 

[Divine Past]

I find it hilarious that KHII tried to go out of its way (mostly) to avoid CoM's existence, while every single game after that had a plot that hinged on what happened in or the existence of Castle Oblivion.

Hey at least they gave the same treatment to Days! Nobody even remembers the main character of it and nothing change because of the existence of the game. Why did I spend so much time in this game again....

 

[Elysium]

The computer room scenes were hard the first time, but they’re painful in re-play. The worst part is definitely all the interruptions you mentioned. Even knowing what happens, I still get impatient and annoyed while it’s happening. I didn’t even realize until I played 2.5, that if you went by the order of availability, you should actually visit Atlantica after TRON and before the beginning of the 1000 Heartless Battle, too. lol

 

[ShardofTruth]

Kingdom Hearts 2 is the game were I started to dislike Sora because of all the stupid things he says and does and that's also why I still think (despite its length) the prologue with Roxas is great, like it was written by a completely different person.

Sora's behavior might be rooted in the Shonen tropes you talked about earlier, at least there it's always the stupidest who are purest of heart.

 

[GrovyleTheThief]

Heh, the tangent about the computer scene was funny. Sora's reaction later on always amuses me. "Woah, it's doing something!"

In the TRON film, the scenes where Sark talks to the representation of the MCP take place on his carrier ship, from what I remember. I wouldn't really call a place where a hollogram/representation-thing appears the MCP's "physical location".

 

[Blackdrazon]

I wouldn't really call a place where a hollogram/representation-thing appears the MCP's "physical location".

Yeah, that's fair, I can fix that.

 

[FudgemintGuardian]

"Lack of respect for the audience."
I should'a known this was what you were leading into (looking back, it was pretty clear you were,) but my mind was so stuck on "behind-the-scenes" type problems I couldn't see that.

I don’t care how upset he’s “supposed” to be! In fact, I’d argue that if Sora doesn’t care enough about Riku and Kairi to show care around the evidence, then he doesn’t really care about them at all.

The whole tangent hits the mark but this here especially. Ignoring the implications for the sake of comedy, and it wasn't even funny.
Since II I've had a hard time caring about Sora because of this. And there are times where I wonder if he cares about anything at all.

 

[Divine Past]

COM Sora cared enough about Namine to ditch Donald and Goofy so they fend for themselves. KH2 Sora looks like a choir boy compared to the COM version.