Kingdom Hearts 2

So I beat KH2 over the weekend. Haven't got the extra ending yet, 'cause you have to meet certain requirements on minigames and beat Sephiroth to do that. Some of the requirements on the minigames are *insane*, and I'm not entirely sure that some of them are possible. o.O

I've fought Sephiroth three times now and have been brutally murdered each time. The fight with him is at least four to five times harder than all of the end fights combined. Part of that's 'cause I don't have the final form leveled up yet, and apparently that is an absolute must, as I've fought him as a level 99 and still died in under a minute.

As for the game itself, I have to say I was disappointed at first. x.x

It's like, well... Kind of like the old 4 disc rpgs for the first playstation. The first disc kicks ass, everything's new and exciting and omgshiny. The second disc is where everything slows down a bit, 'cause you're starting to get into plotty things, and the game gets really interesting. It's more awesome than the first disc but by this time you're so sucked in you don't notice. And then there's the third disc. >.> That's the one where the plot goes all wierd and you're kinda confused and the gameplay's not so linear anymore and basically you just run around the world getting all your shit together for the endgame stuff.

KH2 felt like the third disc. Which was kinda good and kinda meh. It's cool on one hand 'cause you can really see that from the very beginning this whole thing was intended to be this huge story that just wouldn't fit in a single game, and that a sequel really was necessary. In fact, I really want to hunt down a copy of Chain of Memories now, because it really does seem like a lot happened in that game and it wasn't just filler.

But yeah. The first KH was amazing, some of the things in it were very unique, and a step up from what Square normally does, I think. KH2 was good, but even with the revamped battle system, still didn't really seem like much of a step up from that. And the first one was written and programmed and planned to be in English. And for whatever reason KH2 was really designed to be Japanese, and the English adaptation was really sucky compared to the first game. Which was just wierd, 'cause usually Square's a bit better about that.

And the opening sequence took about 2 hours to finish. I was starting to wonder if I'd picked up a Xenosaga game by accident.

The game was pretty amazing despite that. It's no match for the first game, but it was decent. Things I really liked about it:

- Roxas. Really liked playing as him, wish there had been an opportunity to play as him later on or something.
- Axel. Axel/Roxas. I liked that whole dynamic, and not just 'cause it was kind of on the slashy side lol. Axel was fun. I was really annoyed they killed him off though. >< Also, I could just be crazy, but if Riku ever did have a Nobody it would sooo be Axel.
- The minigames. They're a nice break from the main story and they were really well done. They were fun, and they were also good for helping you to develop strategies for the big fights later on.

- I loved the idea that the home base, or whatever you want to call it, was Hollow Bastion. Even though it was pretty much a heap of rubble, it was my absolute favorite dungeon from the first game. It was soooo beautiful and overwhelming and just guh. The big fight in the canyon there was probably my favorite sequence of the game.

- Stitch as a summons! I adore Stitch, he's so evil. And he's hysterical in the game. He has his little laser guns, and he also plays the ukelele and runs around the screen hanging off the menu and stuff.

- I really thought I'd hate the Tron part of the game, and was horrified when that part was first announced. It actually ended up being one of the more clever and more fun worlds to play in.

- I adore the Riku storyline. Actually Riku's probably my favorite character from the series. I'm a sucker for characters that go bad, and then don't quite go good but aren't nearly as evil as they thought they were, if that makes sense. They're so much more interesting than the heros we're supposed to like 'cause they always do the right thing.

- I almost died laughing at the ending. Not because it was funny or so bad it was funny or anything but when Riku and Sora are stuck together and all, 'I don't mind being stuck with you here forever', I just lost it. The slash writes itself.

- The Hollows. The designs for some of them were beautiful. And the way they moved was really neat, it was so different from the Heartless.

- The song that Utada wrote for the theme. It's kinda dark and really pretty. It was really unexpected. When it starts playing you're like, 'whoa, this really doesn't fit as a game theme at all'. But it does. It really really works. It's an ending theme, and the game is really just one big ending for the first.

- Auron. Auron's my favorite FF character by far so I was all melty that they put him in the game to begin with. But when they had the bits and pieces of dialogue from FFX with him trying to tell Jecht and Braska that the way summoners had been handling things was only a temporary fix and that their deaths would be pointless...gah. Made me want to play FFX all over again.

- The keyblades. I really missed some of the designs from the first game, but I really liked how instead of each one getting progressively stronger, their stats were more focused on different sets of abilities, so you tended to switch them out more.

- The Limit commands were fun, I really liked Jack's dance one. All the animations for those were neat.

- The different forms for Sora. I was kind of skeptical of them at first, but once you get used to them, they are awesome. Except the Wisdom one. That one really was annoying, although the skateboarding based motions were kinda nifty.

- The very!random skateboarding. No idea why, 'cause I avoid skateboarding games like the plague, but it was still fun. Maybe it was because random things always make me smile, I dunno.

- The very last town, I can't remember the name at the moment. It was as awe-inspiring as Hollow Bastion was at the end of the first game. There's just something so very out of place about it, with the tall buildings and neon lights, and was such a change from all the fantasy worlds.

- The reaction commands, when all is said and done, were a pain in the ass. But they were cool from the standpoint that the animations for them were nifty.


ETA: aaaaah! skip=500 and counting, and that's with comms filtered out. O.O