I still can’t get over how the general opinion on BBS has shift. Or at least, it appears to have, due to a vocal minority. Here, have a much more positive video on it instead:
My KingK guy failed me. After listening to his gushing review of KHII where he ignores a lot of what I feel is wrong with it, he didn't even bother finishing his retrospective as I was looking forward to see him talk about Birth by Sleep which seems to be the entry that gets nailed the hardest for "ruining the gameplay of the series". I'm a little miffed right now.
That video was quite amusing and fairly accurate surprising enough. I started CoM on Proud mode and sadly, a lot of my concerns about shifting the game into 3D have sort of been verified. I'm only on the third floor, but I can already see how the new dimension sort of hurts the flow of combat by weakening magic since the devs couldn't be bothered to give Sora a new animation to attack from angles. Makes using Blizzard practically pointless unless you're on top of the enemy, and some of the Summons got nerfed thanks to this as well. So one of my biggest praises about the original is pretty much gone now in this addition. I know a few cards have been nerfed as well, so we'll see how that affects things as well. It's also kind of lame that only the Castle Oblivion sequences are actually fully voiced. I'm still having fun, but I definitely fall into the camp of players who regard the GBA version as the "definitive version". Also, if Riku's Dark Aura ability works the same way it did in the KH1 version, then Riku Replica is going to be a smurfing joke in this game.
I really doubt you’ll be missing out on a lot in terms of story with coded, though, trust me. Though honestly, in that regard I heard the HD movie version is actually better since there are a couple more scenes tying everything together. This entry really is skippable in terms of story, as its gameplay was its only saving grace really. I’ve pretty much accepted at this point that CoM is the most hated entry in the series. That’s okay. It’s really fine. Rolled have their tastes and busses and I just happen to be in the minority this time. Speaking of youtubers, I’ve actually watched all of Caddicarus’s retrospective and it was really cool to see because before he was firmly one of those people who only played I and II and thought the story was just too bad to get invested, but then played them all and genuinely loved each one and had become a huge fan at this point. Of course, there is only one retrospective that truly matters:
I opted to watch 358/2 first. Largely because I've been ill for the past few days and I doubt my brain was ready to tackle something more challenging than watching a movie. I will agree with the general consensus that the movie doesn't do the game justice and I'm even more annoyed now that SE ran out of time to just remake the game for the collection. While the overall quality of the video is strong and the VA work is top notch, the story just feels incredibly choppy, especially since they cut out the story scenes from most of the missions which you never realize how much they feed into the overall narrative until they are missing. There were a few sequences that also got cut that made me sad such as Roxas leaving the castle. The video wasn't bad, but I do feel like it didn't do this particular entry any favors. I can only imagine my feelings for coded will be like since I never played the original to even compare. I'll probably start CoM tonight, though I did find out a Youtuber that I keep an eye on did a retrospective of the series. I found him thanks to Dark Souls and while I don't always agree with his opinion, he tends to make good points. Sadly for me, he absolutely hates my favorite entry, but I do feel his complaints against it are legitimate issues, though for me, I feel his issues stem from liking the series as an action/skill based game series and being less interested in the RPG/character building aspect. I just reached his retrospective of KH2 and while I think he's firmly in the "KH2FM is god" group, they videos have been interesting to say the least. He at least had a more favorable response to 358/2 than most people I've seen on the web, and it will be interesting to see how Birth by Sleep fares for him since he seems to have a more fair judgement of the franchise.
Yeah, Deep Dive is pretty cool. I remember the days when people would just speculate about this - it was a similar deal later with Birth By Sleep. Both of those times it just seemed we were seeing something that’s completely unlike anything that’s happened in the series so far. If there’s one thing I really Love about KH as a whole is how surprising it is and how much theory fuel there is. It really never gets old. Eh, idk I feel you should just do what feels good. From what I’ve seen, there aren’t a lot of new cards and they’re not really anything to write home about, so I’d youre itching to play CoM and want to play Days instead of watching it, I’d just go straight for CoM.
Yeah, it's kind of sad how much the speed running scene can sometimes wreck a good franchise. Granted, it's just a few bad apples but the amount of elitism that gets thrown around by the bad ones is annoying. Dark Souls has a similar problem as does Zelda. Finished KH1 on Proud Mode this evening. Since I was so close to maxing out levels, I did so to get a trophy because I'm a tool. Obviously Ansem was a pushover but he feels like a pushover after more legitimately tough fights like Phantom, who I still contend is the toughest fight in the game thanks to the gimmick aspect of the fight. Still love this ending. It may still be one of my favorites in the series just because I like how well the scenes fit the music and the fact we get a "where are they now?" element with the supporting cast. Since I hit all the requirements and then some, I saw the Deep Dive trailer. Completely forgot how battrout insane that trailer was and overly cryptic as all hell. It's funny how this trailer launched a huge change in the visual style of both KH as well as being the basis for what they wanted to do in Advent Children and Dissidia. Hell, looking back now, I feel like Nomura was channeling this trailer hardcore when he had the devs make the original Versus XIII trailer. It's funny to think this might be the third most important thing Nomura made after FFVII and Kingdom Hearts. Now I'm conflicted, because I read somewhere that if I watch the 358/2 movie and unlock everything, it will unlock some special cards added into CoM:Re. Yet, I'm kind of back to playing the game proper. Not sure what to do at the moment on that. Maybe watch the video tomorrow night and then start CoM the following day. Might be interesting to see how the movie measures up while I'm playing the game proper.
I’ll take a look at it later, thanks! And yeah, I think the worst part about this whole attitude is how many people just mindlessly regurgitate it. It’s one thing when you maje a well-substantiated video that I may not agree with but it’s still a valid opinion, but it’s another thing altogether when people go “well, soeedrunners say this, so it must be objective fact” - and this is really common, sadly
Yeah, reading the TV Trope page shows you're right and it's the HD release that finally brought this game back into good graces. Course, even back in the day, it felt obvious that Final Mix fixed a lot of problems with the game which made it more annoying that it was Japanese only. It's probably why I'm a little bit more ecited to play it despite my usual mixed feelings for it. I think my confusion comes from the fact that I forgot that this collection has been available for years now, so it just felt to me like it popped out of nowhere, but considering I checked out of the series around 3D, it's not surprising that I missed this weird bandwagon. I skipped the video I told you about, just a quick look at the comment section told me everything I needed to know about the video and considering some of the other videos the guy did, it's pretty obvious he's one of the "KHII:FM is end all be all of the series" types, so I don't really need to watch another video of him beating a dead horse. I did find this cool video though.
It’s really the Final Mix version that changed this. KHII now has an insane amount of extra content to seek your teeth into, so people now spend way more time with its mechanics, so the appreciation came. And it’s not that this is our forum’s deal - this literally happened after the West got FM. It’s gotten to the point that people don’t remember what it was like before FM - KHIII is lagrgely criticized for having just one optional boss, but people have completely forgotten that II used to have Sephiroth in the post game and that was it.
