Fynn
is an EoFF Hero and/or Heroine
Radical Dreamer

Ugh, I completely forgot that Vexen can be a serious pain. He whooped me pretty bad. I swear his health doubled since the first fight and he now has a damn Megalixir card that makes trying to wear down his deck nearly impossible. I'm also feeling the "taking more damage" aspect of Proud mode in this fight.So I'm kind of grinding now. By which I mean I'm farming Room of Rewards card in Twilight Town along with XP and then backtracking to those worlds to pick up my loot. I now have the Xemnas and Xaldin cards. Xemnas may come in handy when I have to fight Repliku and Larxene since he's kind of like Second Chance except he negates combo damage instead of keeping you alive. Xaldin is the freaking Aeroga spell from KH1, but it sounds like it's been nerfed a bit for balancing reasons obviously. I'm like level 51ish and I'll probably work my way to Lv. 55 before tackling him again. I honestly feel I could take him now, but I want to get this backtracking done now and I'd rather get the Levels now before Destiny Islands.

In writing news, all this KH excitement has brought me back to my story The Other Side which I told you about, which is sort of me taking all the ideas I liked from Nomura's works but actually doing something cool with them instead of wasting their potential. It's the one where the main protagonist becomes aware of his counterpart from another world and he's a member of an organization where everyone has unique powers. Well I've been brainstorming some new ideas for it if you want to listen.

In CoM news, I finished 100 Acre Woods, which has been the largest change up from the original in the game so far. Following tradition with the 3D entries. There is always one mini-game, usually associated with Rabbit, that is difficult to do, luck based and usually the game asks you to get a ridiculous high score for it. Thankfully for me, the "high score" element of this game is mostly for the trophy and I'm not as concerned with that one. Overall, I actually enjoyed all of the minigames for a change.

After that was my first battle with Vexen, or as I like to think of him, the moment the game decides to take off the kiddy gloves and goes to town on you. Thankfully, his Shield doesn't screw you as badly like it does in the GBA version, but he's still an ass with his high level cards, good mix of close and long range abilities, and his frequent use of 0 cards to screw you out of your sleights. With him down, it was time to go to the main reason why some people bothered to play this game, the sneak peak at Kingdom Hearts II's new world: Twilight Town.

It's still pretty surreal going here, but probably more so this playthrough because I'm aware of what goes down here as opposed to the first time when I was just as clueless as Sora is. I called it a night there and will look forward to my rematch with Vexen and then prepare for Destiny Islands and Repliku rematch fights.

Yeah, I feel that's why I enjoy the spin-offs more, because they were more experimental. I find it amusing people whine that KH keeps changing their battle mechanics a little with each installment, but forget that this series is made by Squenix and several members of the FF team which does that with all of their games.

Speaking of, I guess we've witnessed that as well with FF since VII was the sacred cow and then had it's years of backlash against it. I feel the only way to stay a sacred cow sometimes is to just be too obscure to be popular. I'm waiting for the Persona series to get hit with this as well.

I get more annoyed by the increasing misconception that Chain of Memories's plot is pointless because it somehow doesn't tie into later games? I had one guy trying to convince people that CoM was created for marketing and was never meant to be made, and yet time and time again, the later installments feature heavy callbacks to it.

Now that I'm delving more into the fanbase, it's so weird seeing how eschewed it is about the series. I'm used to this nonsense in FF, but that franchise is designed to work like that when you think about it, but KH is a giant narrative mess, so it's weird seeing fans say certain entries don't matter when they kind of do. Granted I think this vocal minority is the "play the game, skip the story" group who would argue the very premise of the story was stupid to begin with and thus the plot never mattered, but damn. Fanbases can be so fascinating from a sociological level.

Ah that's nice.

I'm actually delving into the part of the story I really love, which was watching Sora slowly lose his memories and be unaware of it. I think he's just reached the point where Namine has almost completely usurped Kairi in his memory. It's so subtle how they did it and it's why I love the plot of this game.

Glad you're back to reading and it's inspiring you to write again. I'm a bit annoyed because I caught the tale end of a documentary on Hayao Miyazaki working on Ponyo, and I wish I caught the whole thing. I simply adore the fact he's this crotchety old man who seems like he hates everything and yet he makes these beloved children classics.

I have heard of the group, but I haven't listened to too much of their work.

In CoM news, I have played this game a few times and I never tried using the slight that stops time and has Sora just murder his target. I also forget how broken Sonic Blade is in this title. Anyway, I busted through both Atlantica and Neverland. Forgot how easy Ursala was in this game compared to the first one. She was one of the Disney bosses who seriously gave me trouble, but here she's manageable since you can actually stop her from attacking you. Captain Hook feels like the first real casualty of the move to 3D. I remember this guy being a bit of a nightmare in the GBA version for Sora, but since we now get to play on his new spacious and huge deck. Avoiding most of his attacks are easy. The move to 3D has largely made card breaking less necessary unless it's a room hitting attack or you know the attack is lethal. Even the Riku fights are a little easier in terms of avoiding his flashy attacks, though his regular attacks and relentless combos are still an issue. I always forget how often you fight the Replica Riku. I just did my second battle with him, and while he whooped my ass the first two times, I took him down on the third and even in the prior fights he was down to little health as well and was simply faster with his card break than I was.

I will say, I'm not sure if the game just changed a few things, or if the RNG loves me, but I am finding a ton of 0 cards in this playthrough. I think I have live five Kingdom Keys, one Olympia, and at least two Hi-Potion 0 cards. I'm also getting better drops with enemy cards than I'm used to. Usually I see maybe three or four in a playthrough, but I've got like nine or ten right now. I am taking advantage of finding the Room of Rewards cards and backtracking to older zones to pick up the loot.

With the 358/2 complete, I've gained a few interesting items. Traverse Town gets a unique bounty award finally and now gives a keyblade from 358/2. The Organization Cards on the other hand are a little over the top. I've only obtained two so far, but my goodness they feel a bit unbalanced. To start off, they all give a passive resistance to all three element types and special attacks when used, at least the two I have so far. Saix special effect makes your combo attacks stronger with each passing hit until you get card break. Luxard's card allows all of your card to card break an opponent for a set amount of card, making him a more broken and useful version of the Pirate Heartless Card. I can only imagine what Xaldin, Xemnas, and Roxas cards are going to be like.

I'm on the ninth floor. Will likely do Hollow Bastion and save the 100 Acre Woods for just before I have to deal with Destiny Islands and Twilight Town. I'm around level 40 right now. Though I feel like I should be maybe five levels higher than where I'm at. Still, I'm holding my own pretty well, started finally using Moogle points to buy more cards, though I often get better cards from the free pack they give me than what I buy. I make sure to use a Unrelenting Darkness card in each world and clear the room just to keep my levels from dipping too far below. I usually raise my CP by 100 points for every level I give in HP, but I may change that before I have to deal with the BS boss bonanza at the end with Larxene, R. Riku IV, Axel, and finally Marluxia.

Well your retrospective as well as everyone around me fangasming over KHIII got me to replay the franchise.

One thing I will say that re:CoM got right, even over the original KH1 is that Sora is now able to cast magic while jumping, which has upped the usability of magic in better light than the first game. Irritated the hell I couldn't do it in the first title when I believe it was possible in every other game.

I don't think I've ever acquired the NG+ cards because every time I decide to play CoM, I always start a fresh file. I'm honestly really bad about starting NG+ files anymore. Even CT, I often start a fresh file instead because I love watching my characters really progress and I don't usually care for starting the game with some kind of advantage.

I can't help but always feel like Kingdom Hearts is like this, just imagine this being Nomura.



In CoM news, I finished Halloween Town, which turned out to be a great leveling spot, though I've learned to really hate the flower heartless cause the little bastards love to throw out high numbered cards to break me out of combos since my deck still has a few low level cards. Oddly enough, the story of this world really segues nicely into the events of the sixth floor and the first fight with Larxene. I always remember her being a handful, and then I get to the fight and it's much worse than I remember. Took a few tries but finally bested her. I think they gave her a new attack as well, but it's been ages since I last played so I probably just forgot. I kind of forgot she's a pain because she's a long range fighter. Doesn't help that trying to break her cards sometimes involves waiting for her attack animation to start which is a pain when she's summoning lightning which comes out fast and can stun lock you.

With her down, I can tackle the next set of worlds. Will probably go Atlantica, Neverland, 100 Acre Woods, and finally Hollow Bastion. I should also start being able to find Room of Rewards cards, so I'll need to backtrack to the lower worlds to grab those prizes as well. With that said, I don't want to linger too long, and hope to start Riku's part in a few days.

Well you're welcome? The PuPu one only bothers me because I'm pretty sure he was just trolling me the whole time. It did broaden my horizon on the fact that the nature of KH has never really been made clear at all.

Yeah, I don't really remember too many people dissing BbS outside of it being for the PSP and not KHIII. I still feel like part of this change up really has to do with the change in gamer culture, and the fact that KHII's stronger action game elements caught onto the speedrunner/skill challenge run community that Twitch has made popular. It's interesting how shifts in gaming trends can change the opinion of a title. Wonder if that community might bring up FFXII's standing with the fanbase.

Yeah, just watch this exchange between Data Roxas and Data Sora. You can tell Jesse loves playing Roxas and he gives it his all when he gets to play him.



As for the old discussions on KH2, all I ever remember is that long ass thread between PuPu and myself debating the nature of Kingdom Hearts and how he was wrong about there being two of them in KH2. Ugh... so many wasted evenings on that discussion.