Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days Retrospective

[palizinhas]

I always saw the 'one of the members has been terminated' as being a bit of a mistake by the information they're getting - it seems they don't have a good idea on what happened, so I just headcanon that they receive a message that Axel faked his death to throw Sora off, but it somehow got corrupted into someone actually dying.

It just seems hard to believe CoM would be as short as three days for me.

 

[GrovyleTheThief]

"Pete soon finds his way to one side of the city walls, where he uncovers a secret passage! A secret passage, might I add, which would be several feet in the air if it weren’t for these piles of sand, but I guess that’s as good a way to hide it as anything."

...I didn't notice that. Guess that would make it more secret.

And does anybody get bothered by how you enter the Sandswept Ruins later on?
Really, not only do you enter there from the dead end with the sandy pit and tower, but Roxas seems to get there by walking.
...although it's not like the entrance from Kh2 would've worked either, since there's the huge cliffside.

-----

 

[Blackdrazon]

And does anybody get bothered by how you enter the Sandswept Ruins later on?
Really, not only do you enter there from the dead end with the sandy pit and tower, but Roxas seems to get there by walking.
...although it's not like the entrance from Kh2 would've worked either, since there's the huge cliffside.

-----

It's perfect, magical continuity art, is what it is.

 

[sephydark]

Ugh, that part where you have to tail Pete. I don't actually mind the sight cones (I mean, it's better than the stealth system they went with in Re:Coded) but having to keep Pete in Roxas's sight at all times... It's not like the game is designed for you to make Roxas face a certain direction. In games like the Assassin's Creed series which actually utilize this kind of mission you always just have to keep the camera pointed at the target or stay close to them or something like that.

That said, I do like how long and varied this mission is; it's just that a lot of the different parts are not well implemented.

 

[Hirokey123]

Reading the retrospective I feel like you are missing a critical part about Roxas and that is he is only a teenager physically. In KH2 were introduced to a Roxas who has has an entirely new personality and that includes believing he had lived a full life. That isn't Roxas and we only got fleeting glimpses into the actual Roxas. And what we got us looking back lines up well with the reality that Roxas was about 1 year old. When he gets mad instead of process or handle it in a rational mature manner he flips his lid and beats something into submission. Much like a toddler throwing a tantrum except this toddler has the strength of 15 year old and a super weapon. Be it the computer, DiZ, or Sora. His entire attack on Sora was childish even because what happened with Axel wasn't Sora's fault at all. Unfortunately all we saw of the real Roxas in KH2 was anger or sadness. What Days does is show who Roxas really was, and that is a kid who is mentally 1 year old with a body and brain far more developed than his mental age causing clashes, and being raised in an abusive home latching onto the only things that are kind in the form of Axel and Xion. That is why everything with Roxas's dialogue and thought processes is written through the perspective of a younger child.

Which is also why the organization treats him like they do. They know Roxas's mind is young and malleable, he can only think based on what he is taught. So by avoiding answering his questions the idea is they will basically keep Roxas from learning to form thoughts and opinions for himself. Unfortunately for them Roxas is still able to learn from people in the worlds and a few mentors like Luxord and Axel. Which was enough for Roxas to eventually develope enough of a "self" that he realized the organization is a bunch of bs and no one he knows cares if he lives or dies because of him, only because of what he can do.

As for the Xion line about Roxas not waking up I actually like the game version better. The implication in the game is Xion bugged Saix so much about this that eventually to shut her up he basically told her to lose hope of Roxas waking. Which is perfectly in line with Saix being Xion's Axel. That is Axel was abusive to Roxas in deceptive deceitful ways behind the scenes because he wanted Roxas to be happy. While Saix is openly abusive through deceptive deceitful means because he cares nothing for Xion's happiness. The movie just makes it sound like Saix made PSA to the other members about Roxas even though Xion is the only one that care.

 

[Audo]

the infantilization of Roxas is one of the worst things about Days imo.

 

[GrovyleTheThief]

Y'know, I realized that they missed an opportunity for a KH1 reference at the end of the mission when you're investigating the town with Vexen.
"You know there are many other worlds out there besides your castle and this town, right?"

 

[Blackdrazon]

Ah, that would have been nice!

 

[ShardofTruth]

the infantilization of Roxas is one of the worst things about Days imo.

That's also my opinion and why I'm also sharing Blackdrazon's point of view on the game so far.

I also get your perspective Hirokey, how you see Roxas' character, but I don't think these justifications make any sense in explaining Roxas's actions. Roxas doesn't behave like a toddler, he never does, so that he's only one year old doesn't make any sense in this regard.
He lacks perspective, enormously so, because he doesn't have memories and therefore no experience and is manipulated on top. He's more like a robot that gets self-conscious but he is able to think and act more complex, something a toddler simply can't, and we see that in the games too. He can be rational, he can even read, and write and probably calculate, but he doesn't seem to use these skills in some cases.

This incongruity between the actions of Roxas, his perceived learning and what the story tries to hammer in, is where the game truly fails for me. It fails even double because it's the same for Xion too and it fails even more because this very same story worked so much better in Naminé's case.

I totally get when the story of for example BBS is criticized for being a rush-job when the friendship of the three main characters is never really explained or shown for example, but at least in this case you can fill in the gaps very easily. In Days' case the whole premise is borked from the start, and never worked for me and what's even worse it made some of the good scenes in KHII questionable or downright strange (like the meeting with Xemnas on the Dark Margin).

 

[Hirokey123]

Here is the thing again he isn't just a toddler. He is a toddler who was born with an almost fully developed brain and body, he skipped the early stages of development brain wise that's why he can read and write but he had no concept of anything. If he is asked to write the word love he could do it because his brain already past that stage. But understanding the actual concept of what love is, is beyond him. Likewise his body already starts out with fully developed motor skills so he doesn't need to learn them. He acts like a todler at all times just one who already knows how to read, write, and walk. He is also part Sora so he instinctively responds like Sora until he forms his own fully developed sense of self, at that point you start to see clashes between his instinctive "Sora" side and the "Roxas" side which even he starts to notice but it's not until he is called Sora to his face that the subtle clash inside him, hinted about since almost the beginning of the game, becomes obvious to even him. The earliest sign of it is Roxas subconsciously remembering the taste of salt which his body knows because when it was Sora's he lived on an island chain and played in the ocean which also is salty in taste.

On the subject of that beach scene I don't see what is strange about it. Roxas was already capable of forming complete sentences and thoughts on his first mission. I think there is some confusion in that some people don't realize we are already at the tail end of the zombie phase. Day 6, the beach, is when he starts forming complete thoughts and had gained a decent cognitive function that Xemnas felt it was time for him to do missions. It's just much like many young children they are shy/quiet with people they don't know which is why it's not until Axel goads him enough and they spend some time together that Roxas is more willing to speak to Axel. Back to the beach scene notice the only thing they talk about is the only concept that Roxas was taught as far as we know. They talk about names something Roxas was taught in the first day. "Who are you" "I meant your name" "my true name is...." nothing being said here is beyond what Roxas was taught at this point.

I am also going to need you to elaborate a bit on several things. How on earth do Xion and Namine have anything in common story wise beyond the being forgotten by Sora and looking like Kairi thing? Their stories are night and day so I fail to see how Xion's story worked so much better for Namine when they had basically nothing in common. Namine isn't even blank she was born with immediate access to the memories of Sora and those connected to him, she basically had condensed education over any topic she wanted at the drop of a hat. Which is why she never had anything like a zombie phase shown and never acts like a robot or even a young child. She acts more mature than most people her age because she has a full picture that others don't. But then is forced to do wrong things by her abusive caretakers.

Likewise how is RAX's friendship borked from the get go?

 

[BlackOsprey]

Just wanted to throw in a couple cents about Aubade. Its name, by definition, is "a song or poem about lovers separating at dawn." The design itself resembles a katana (possibly in reference to the Samurai Nobodies), decorated with motifs of the sun and light.

The meaning of the word sorta-kinda alludes to some spoileriffic future events, though the parting was at sunset​ and I wouldn't exactly describe the two as lovers...

 

[Blackdrazon]

Just a heads up: I've been having trouble accessing the client side of Wordpress all day now, and not just on my blog but others too. Curiously, I can still access my blog's behind-the-scenes controls, so I was able to update today's hardlinks, but it's certainly an awkward way to get around!

It may just be me and my computer in the end, but long story short, if you have trouble accessing the blog today, the problem may be on Wordpress' side. Best of luck, and sorry!

 

[Muke]

Well, it perfectly works for me

 

[Blackdrazon]

Thanks Muke, that's good to hear. Hopefully it is just me!

 

[Hirokey123]

Hey I was reading your retrospective and I think you underestimate the power of the stick. Roxas's stick gains the combo of the starting blade and the stats of one BUT it retains the ability of whatever blade you bring in. So Roxas can almost effectively melee as well with the stick as he ever has via things like thunder finish because the air combo is only two hits, with the second one being the finisher. So you can rapidly spam thunder finish on enemies which rips their HP a new one since thunder finish damage is percentage based on their hp not your stats. This is also the ONLY time I'd suggest using the melee setting of the AI partner because with the short stick combo letting you get rapid finishers (even without the ability trigger finishers cause a short hit stun) teaming with Xion's just slightly longer ground combo the two are able to keep enemies stunned for most of their life so long as they are attacking the same one.

Furthermore I don't see you mentioning anywhere that if you just wait and block the the dog heartlesses jump attack they get stunned for an absurd amount of time (until hit with magic or a finisher usually) and take a TON more damage during this phase. If you want to bait them into pouncing then just whack them precisely one time as they are generally programmed to get ready to pounce on you after the whack, it's not perfect as they can just roll around instead of pouncing so but generally that's how I always made quick work of the missions. Granted the A.I. is actually kind of dumb so Xion for example is more than likely to trigger the retaliating pounce and take a ton of damage to the face.

Oh and Xion CAN finish the mission for you pretty easy if she gets to low health, instead of die, she can use her limit break and that pretty much destroys the thing.

-----

You keep talking about thundaga as the spell of choice for Antlion but that is a HUGE mistake, the spell of choice is Thunder. Thunder is one of the hardest hitting spells in the game in fact it IS the hardest hitting spell in the game which is normally masked by the fact that it travels in a straight line hitting each spot. But two things make up for this...

1. Thunder is stopped by anything coded as a solid object, used against enemies near anything the game says is "solid" will cause all the thunders to stack in one place which is enough to kill most individual enemies in the game. Extremely good in Wonderland because that place is walls galore and the mage heartless all just love to crowd into them so it trashes their giant HP bars like its nothing.

2. Since each thunderbolt is its own hit than means anything with a large hit box will get ripped a new one. Antlion is pretty much the prime example of this, come back in the mid game one thunder spell will shave off several bars on it in the challenge missions. However don't be fooled by large enemies that have a small hit box, like infernal engine its hitbox is just the small head of the battering ram AND that pixel thick wooden mouth. So thunder will rip antlion a new one that makes doing the challenge mission almost possible when you first get it, but you can't get the 3rd sigil because at this point in the game Roxas is factually to slow movement wise to make it back to the portal in time.

In fact in general most cases Thunder > Thundaga for a single enemy unless it's really small. Thundaga's main advantage is that upon leveled up it begins to deal a splash damage shockwave where it lands allowing it to take out bunched together enemies. Thundara is pretty much useless in comparison however and only existed for multiplayer pretty much, in single player all it can do is MAYBE take off some of the pressure from enemies flying all over the place but in general it would have just been better to use Thunder or thundaga because the thundara bolts are spaced too far apart and it ties up your magic extensively.

I also don't know if you're aware of this but you don't need leaf bracer equipped if you level up cure. Leveling up Cure's level bestows it an innate leaf bracer ability. I think it's either lv3 or 4 it acquires the innate leaf bracer.

----

As for chain max power as you've noticed during a chain enemies have a ring around them, the ring gets smaller as the chain starts to wind down. What that ability Dual Gear does is so when your striking an enemy when the ring is at basically lets call it its biggest you'll do more damage. It's not a huge damage boost though and so it's not a terribly useful ability. But it's good in missions where it's easy to keep a chain at max. Or to put it another way...chains have both an "active" and "max" state.

Ring of any size= active
Ring at its largest size=max

Note that the initial strikes that put it max doesn't get the boost only the subsequent hits that come after it during the boost.

 

[Blackdrazon]

Thanks hirokey, I'll try to fix as much of that as possible!

 

[Hirokey123]

No problem! And keep it up I love your retrospectives!

Oh I also dunno if you know this or is worth mentioning but a cool little detail is there are variable cutscenes based on how well Roxas does on each of the training. If you do below what Phil says he hopes you have a steep learning curve and Roxas acts downtrodden. If you reach the suggested score by him he gives you positive reinforcement for reaching the minimum but then will give an even higher goal to reach while Roxas will be neutral. If you reach or surpass the higher goal he will be boggled/very impressed with Roxas and Roxas acts a bit bashful. I mean due to the nature of the game's visual you can't really get a whole lot of emotion out of this but I thought it was a cute little detail and I appreciated they went the extra mile because it really helps sell the idea that Phil is training Roxas by adjusting his praise and goals. It be cool if we got something substantial for it like another magic panel or something but still I'm glad this detail is here regardless. Days also does this with the much much much easier struggle mini-game later on.

As for why you can check your score this has to do with later on in the barrel missions. Eventually heartless decide to just invade your training...or maybe Phil just put them there the game wasn't really clear on that...and they basically have to be killed with barrels to get your heart points. This creates a conflict because you still have the three separate cutscenes based on which benchmark you hit BUT they didn't want you to be able to easily and infinitely farm heart points this way. So what do they do when you collect enough heart points that the mission gauge turns that completed orange color? They have Phil decide he suddenly has better places to be and leave forcibly preventing you from continuing anymore training unless you replay the mission. This means if you fail to hit the top benchmark before then that now you'll need to replay the mission all over again. So it's nice to have a reminder as to where you were so if you decide to come back for the higher benchmark later you can see where you were last time.

I also took it to basically be Roxas's psuedo trophies since Roxas doesn't get any trophies added into vestibule for his hard work he just gets his current training score written down instead. It does also just feel nice to be able to click that sheet and just see all those high score numbers on there if you're someone likes me who likes to compete for a higher score just cause I like seeing how much I can improve.

 

[Blackdrazon]

No problem! And keep it up I love your retrospectives!

Oh I also dunno if you know this or is worth mentioning but a cool little detail is there are variable cutscenes based on how well Roxas does on each of the training. If you do below what Phil says he hopes you have a steep learning curve and Roxas acts downtrodden. If you reach the suggested score by him he gives you positive reinforcement for reaching the minimum but then will give an even higher goal to reach while Roxas will be neutral. If you reach or surpass the higher goal he will be boggled/very impressed with Roxas and Roxas acts a bit bashful. I mean due to the nature of the game's visual you can't really get a whole lot of emotion out of this but I thought it was a cute little detail and I appreciated they went the extra mile because it really helps sell the idea that Phil is training Roxas by adjusting his praise and goals. It be cool if we got something substantial for it like another magic panel or something but still I'm glad this detail is here regardless. Days also does this with the much much much easier struggle mini-game later on.

I suppose there are no direct prizes because each of Phil's minigames relates to a sidequest (usually from Xigbar) later in the game? But even Xigbar doesn't ask you to get the max score...

As for why you can check your score this has to do with later on in the barrel missions. Eventually heartless decide to just invade your training...or maybe Phil just put them there the game wasn't really clear on that...and they basically have to be killed with barrels to get your heart points. This creates a conflict because you still have the three separate cutscenes based on which benchmark you hit BUT they didn't want you to be able to easily and infinitely farm heart points this way. So what do they do when you collect enough heart points that the mission gauge turns that completed orange color? They have Phil decide he suddenly has better places to be and leave forcibly preventing you from continuing anymore training unless you replay the mission. This means if you fail to hit the top benchmark before then that now you'll need to replay the mission all over again. So it's nice to have a reminder as to where you were so if you decide to come back for the higher benchmark later you can see where you were last time.

I also took it to basically be Roxas's psuedo trophies since Roxas doesn't get any trophies added into vestibule for his hard work he just gets his current training score written down instead. It does also just feel nice to be able to click that sheet and just see all those high score numbers on there if you're someone likes me who likes to compete for a higher score just cause I like seeing how much I can improve.

That's a good thought! It's still disappointed they didn't have you checking the trophies for your score or something, though, and instead have you checking an empty, table-sized blank pillar. :/ But yeah!

I'm glad you're enjoying the retrospective!

 

[FudgemintGuardian]

I've completely forgotten about the retrospective. :'(
Welp, better get to reading!

 

[Hirokey123]

So a couple things...

I actually liked the ice cream bit because it just fits Roxas well. He's never once at this point done anything beyond work, sleep, or ice cream and so when Axel asks him what he likes it makes it was a very cute if predictable response. It's not that he doesn't like his friends but Axel is going to sleep and it's not like Roxas can sleep with Axel...most he could do is sit in Axel's room and stare at him while he sleeps...you know I kinda wish they had made that an option for the hilarious creepy factor. Likewise it's not that he doesn't want to hang out with Xion but working/training isn't something he likes so even if it be with someone he likes to be with it wouldn't be something he actually wants to spend the one day he has free to do it. Like if your best friend asks you to help them move I don't know a lot of people who jump at the chance of "MOVING OH MAN I AM ALL ON THAT!" even if it does mean you get to see your best friend.

It also shows a subtle difference in personality, in fact the first time I felt this is the moment the story starts to foreshadow it's about to move into how Roxas and Xion are different because so far all it focused on is how they were alike. This is just that first step, Roxas doesn't like to fight/train/care about getting better with the keyblade. He does it because that's all he knows life is and if he didn't do it he wouldn't know what to do with himself (Until DiZ sticks an entire regular life into his head that is). Xion on the other hand does care about her strength, does want to get stronger, and to her the thing she wants to do most is improve and become awesome at the keyblade. I do wish we could of joined her though it sounds like it could of made a fun mini-game....

As for the art thing with Xaldin that makes sense you just have to sort of mull it over for a second. When Xaldin calls the ballroom lovely it's not because he's appreciating it but rather because he's cultured enough to know that from an architectural standpoint it is in fact objectively a lovely room. But when they find that abstract art that has no objectivity to it, art designed to be interpreted through emotion, that is where being a Nobody meant they could never understand or truly appreciate it.

More magic stuff Aerora is basically Xigbar's best friend and the only way you're going to make mission mode with him bearable as a soloplayer. Aeroga is one of the best spells in the game drawing in enemies, keeping them stunned while hitting them rapidly for a lot of damage especially if they are wind weak, oh and it has an invisible hitbox. A second after the spell ends the damaging hitbox is still on Roxas causing anything that attacks him to get hit in the face by nothing while you can still do things. It's a lot like how when fire spells explode or those stupid plants that slam their faces into the ground do their final slam the hitbox lingers even though the visuals are gone. I can't imagine this split second was intentional but as a bonus it makes you able to basically chain Aerogas together without a weak point between them almost like a pseudo reflect.

It's a really great for things like the deserter missions which is also where you are most likely to notice the lingering hitbox as in the second when the spell ends is the second when they generally try to attack you and you'll see them kick but instead of hit roxas they just explode. Those missions you can just walk in, kill a deserter with aeroga and then continue to just spam it as they all rush to you to die. It's also the most effective at taking out the aero weak enemies or any enemies that like to move past/circle you.

Oh and Limit attacks don't count as part of the "hits" counted for no-miss so long as ONE hit manages to connect so I just come in and spam limits to take care of the no-miss mission against this guy and several other "no-miss" missions. The only thing that makes this guy's no miss mission hard is those stupid canons...