Learn any new tricks?

[Blackdrazon]

Between all the re-releases, new content, and Trophies, and KH2's new difficulty mode, I'm sure I'm not the only one finding new ways to play these games. I'm wondering: have any of you discovered any new things in your most recent playthroughs that you never noticed before? Any new strategies that never occurred to you before?

For me, I had never noticed that in KH1, if you know where Eeyore's tail is hidden, you can actually go and see it in first person view.

I also never knew that if you got too far away from Sark (guess who went AntiForm in the middle of the battle!), he'd summon walls to cut you off. And he's really bad at it. At one point he summoned a wall between him and me! I definitely can't run away now, Sark, you sure showed me.

This is the first time I've ever played through KH2 knowing that magic can defeat bosses. No, really, I never knew. I thought only combo finishers could do it for years and multiple playthroughs. I'm humiliated.

Of course, learning this taught me a handy Cerberus Cup strategy. Back in the day when I thought I had to finish Cerberus with a combo finisher, he'd keep turning away from me at the last second. I'd lose to the timer twice for every time I won, I hated the whole cup for doing it. But now that I know Thunder could finish him off at any time, something clicked, and I came up with this plan to beat The Dog that Won't Stay Still from start to finish:

Final Form -> Spam thunder. Run out of magic -> Revert. Quickly regain Drive Gauge -> transform to Wisdom or Final Form -> MP Gauge restores. Spam thunder...

Magic is way more powerful in KH2 than I remember, I guess the easy difficulty of Vanilla KH2 made it so I never noticed?

 

[Reckard]

Oh man, using Reflect was a big one when I started my first critical run. Such a good way to block and deal loads of damage. Lexeaus, Marluxia and Saix's HP melt like butter when you use it. It wasn't always reliable, though, since you could finish a Reflect and the enemy could still be doing his attack, or far off heartless/nobody that weren't part of the pack you were Protecting against had a huge opening to get you as you finished the animation. This lead to me using more long distance magic like the Thunder and occasionally blizzard. Taking advantage of the i-frames in Flash Step/Dodge Roll was also vital and became intuitive by the end.

I died way too much overall my last playthrough though, so for my next run on the HD collection I want to try and utilize normal guard some more, practice dodging and using the spells I ignored last time (Fire, Blizzard) and beat bosses/extra challenges with skill instead of grinding for a buffer.

Also, I totally didn't notice Oathkeeper and Oblivion complimented one another in elongating Drive Forms until recently.

 

[Divine Past]

Magnet is pretty strong in KH2 something I didn't realized.

 

[darkness_boy6]

Magnet is pretty strong in KH2 something I didn't realized.

This. I never knew how great the combination of ethers, magnega, and thundaga were when powerleveling to 99 in TWTNW.

I also learned on my KH2FM playthrough how beneficial it is to level up Wisdom form in the first area on your first visit to TWTNW. Tons of shadows spawn, and you can just run back to the very first area in TWTNW to instantly get your full drive back.

 

[Hakan Xatos]

Reflect was the biggest surprise. In every play through on the PS2 I always thought it was useless, but in the ReMix I learned to use it against the Absent Silhouettes then I used it in the story and ended up liking it.

 

[hemmoheikkinen]

Well, I was pretty young when I played the KH games, so with the HD-ReMixes and being older, I finally understand how the battle system-works. I know now that abilities like Once More and Second Change exist, also not to just mash X and try to win etc.. Evading, blocking attacking, only now I realize the beauty of KH`s battle mechanics. Everything is so fluid and fun, and I never really understood it, until now.
Also I noticed how they tried to make some bosses more humane. Like in KH2FM in the Roxas fight, he sometimes just walks. He isn`t only doing an attack after attack. It makes him more of an human, than simple video-game boss. I really thought that was something interesting, when I first noticed it.

Also I don`t understand people who say that in KH2FM magic is useless. Have these people ever tried to use spells with Drive Forms? Magic comes really deadly if you while in Drive forms.
The LV1 runs have thought me an all new style and way to think and play the KH games. It is something I am really proud of.

 

[Blackdrazon]

Also I don`t understand people who say that in KH2FM magic is useless. Have these people ever tried to use spells with Drive Forms? Magic comes really deadly if you while in Drive forms.

Eh, I've found magic more useful than before, but saying "Magic is useful 5% of the time, if you're even using a special transformation in the first place," does not really make magic useful all on its own.


Oh, I just remembered this: this was my first time playing KH2 with an item equipped to quick-fire at all times. Not as useful as Cure, and obnoxious for blocking a spell slot, but it kept me alive.

 

[kuraudoVII]

For me, Reflect was the most obvious one. It was a live saver during my battle against Marluxia's Absent Silhouette and beyond.

As for other things, one thing that I noticed on one last playthrough of the vanilla game before playing Final Mix was that during Day 4, you can fight Seifer inbetween matches for free experience.

I also found out how incredibly useful Wisdom Form is in regards to magic. Data Demyx was downright trivialized thanks to spamming Firaga in Wisdom form.

 

[Hakan Xatos]

Also I don`t understand people who say that in KH2FM magic is useless. Have these people ever tried to use spells with Drive Forms? Magic comes really deadly if you while in Drive forms.
The LV1 runs have thought me an all new style and way to think and play the KH games. It is something I am really proud of.

Can't help but feel like this is directed at me since I actually said "useless". However I did use magic just not reflect because you don't need reflect to beat anyone in plain KH2 and I also used block a lot. The rest of the magic was great and I loved to use Wisdom and Final forms frequently to spam lightning.

 

[catcake]

Well I noticed that you can actually grind in Destiny Island only on my 1.5 run. I've replayed the game like 10 or so times in these years and I never realized you actually get exp from fighting there. I only ever tried fighting Tidus on my first playthrough when I was like 8 and lost hard and never tried again. I remember the scene before the Darkside fight better than anything because I sucked and had to fight it countless times on every playthrough until more recent years when I got "good" enough to kick his ass no problem on lvl 1. This time around I got to lvl 10 before leaving the island.

I've also learned not to over level. I've always been kind of paranoid about my levels and since I hate losing I'd always over level waaay too much to a point where it's not even fun anymore. I've always been more interested in the story in any game and just wanted to make it as easy as possible to win, but recently I've realized it's no fun. I tried to balance it out by doing a proud run in KH I and BBS but I still ended up over leveling and just steamrolled through them. I mean, I was at lvl 83 for Kurt Zisa & Phantom and both fights were over in like 5 minutes. That's.. really not fun. I'm starting a BBS critical run now and this time try not to grind too much.

 

[Elysium]

I also found out how incredibly useful Wisdom Form is in regards to magic. Data Demyx was downright trivialized thanks to spamming Firaga in Wisdom form.

This is the only new thing I learned, re-playing KH2. I didn't really enjoy Drives, so I would use them until they were leveled and ignore them after (except for Final Form thunder) except when in battle and I wanted an instant re-fill of HP/MP. So I never really used the top-tier spells in Wisdom Form before the Data Battles to know that they worked so much better.

 

[drumstickwielder]

I learned a lot of things about KHII in my 2.5 run. For one thing, the pirates and the heartless boss that turn into skeletons are all extremely susceptible to magic, for example you can freeze these enemies with blizzard and they cant move. I never noticed this before. Additionally, I never thought use magic in Master form, and then I noticed on the description it said something like "a form that excels at both combat and magic". Holy moly magic is powerful in master form, on enemies that don't flinch with big health bars you just spam thundaga and it kills them in three hits. I never knew that the Stitch summon would parry most attacks if you just leave him on the screen, I used this for some of the coliseum stuff and for the first room in the cavern of remembrance. I appreciate the combat in this game so much more now.

 

[Xblade13]

I learned a lot of things about KHII in my 2.5 run. For one thing, the pirates and the heartless boss that turn into skeletons are all extremely susceptible to magic, for example you can freeze these enemies with blizzard and they cant move. I never noticed this before. Additionally, I never thought use magic in Master form, and then I noticed on the description it said something like "a form that excels at both combat and magic". Holy moly magic is powerful in master form, on enemies that don't flinch with big health bars you just spam thundaga and it kills them in three hits. I never knew that the Stitch summon would parry most attacks if you just leave him on the screen, I used this for some of the coliseum stuff and for the first room in the cavern of remembrance. I appreciate the combat in this game so much more now.

Well, it did hint at that in an early cutscene there, where Pete says that Sora and Co. have a kind of "magic" that could actually hurt the cursed pirates.

 

[drumstickwielder]

Well, it did hint at that in an early cutscene there, where Pete says that Sora and Co. have a kind of "magic" that could actually hurt the cursed pirates.

When I heard that line I thought it just meant that Sora could fight the pirates since they were from another world. Like Pete just called it magic instead of having to explain that there's other worlds.

 

[SephirothZ]

The first time I played KH2, I was pretty young. Probably the easiest trick in the game that I learned on the 2.5 Remix was Magnet + Thundaga. It got to the point where the basic enemies were not a challenge, so I decided to not use it unless I was in trouble.

 

[DoctahFaz]

Some things I learned:

-How easy it is to level Master Form after the Land of Dragons revisit in the Antechamber and at the Palace Gates.
-Definitely how amazing Thunder is in Final Form
-I agree with you on the finishing move point, I learned that magic can do the trick as well
-Running away from Sark then using his wall and the Needle Drive reaction command to defeat him in one shot
-The value of leveling up drive forms next to a room where the characters are walking around/can be spoken to, since you can enter the room as your drive form is running out and you'll appear in the room back to normal with the drive gauge maxed out again.
-How amazing of a summon Stitch is
-That the drive gauge restores exponentially faster when your MP is recharging; I NEVER noticed this in vanilla KH2 on PS2

 

[Blackdrazon]

Well, it did hint at that in an early cutscene there, where Pete says that Sora and Co. have a kind of "magic" that could actually hurt the cursed pirates.

Actually, I was in the same boat! I just assumed the "magic" was the magic of the Keyblade being able to kill them in the first place, and a few playthroughs later, I thought it was a hint to use spells to manipulate the pirates (Blizzard freezes them - hopefully in the moonlight, Fire forces them to move, Thunder stuns them which is like Blizzard but easier to work with if you screw up). I didn't realize they were actually weak to magic until this playthrough. Funny someone else had the same oversight.

-That the drive gauge restores exponentially faster when your MP is recharging; I NEVER noticed this in vanilla KH2 on PS2

That's Drive Boost! It's attached to the Oblivion and Sword and Shield players will get it around mid-game, definitely worth having. It even makes the Drive Gauge glow while it's in play, which is a nice touch.

 

[Anagram]

What I learned. Reflect is OP as hell. Besides that the only new thing I started doing was messing with Donald and Goofys settings. I found Donald is marginally more useful by turning off his cure and only letting him have the thunder spell.

I also never knew that if you got too far away from Sark (guess who went AntiForm in the middle of the battle!), he'd summon walls to cut you off. And he's really bad at it. At one point he summoned a wall between him and me! I definitely can't run away now, Sark, you sure showed me.

If I remember right that wall is a reaction command too.

 

[hemmoheikkinen]

an't help but feel like this is directed at me since I actually said "useless". However I did use magic just not reflect because you don't need reflect to beat anyone in plain KH2 and I also used block a lot. The rest of the magic was great and I loved to use Wisdom and Final forms frequently to spam lightning.

Wait, you did? No no, I was just rambling by myself. It was not my attention to direct that comment to you or to anybody else.