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fandomhigh_ooc2007-07-01 10:11 pm
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Spotlight on Fandoms: Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Hearts is a multiverse RPG video game series which is a collaboration between two giants, Square-Enix (makers of the Final Fantasy series) and Disney (yes, that Disney). The premise for the joint game was simple: what if you took a Final Fantasy game and, instead of giving it a medieval fantasy or a futuristic sci-fi setting, placed it in the middle of classic Disney movies?
If you think that sounds crazy, you're not alone. When Square and Disney first announced their plans, most of the video game industry boggled. (IGN's recap of it had the subtitle "No, we're not kidding", and Penny Arcade made a crack about other unlikely pairings here.)
And then Kingdom Hearts was released in 2002, and to everybody's surprise, it was good. It featured original characters, cameos by fan-favorite Final Fantasy characters, and settings that ranged from Alice's Wonderland to Jack Skellington's Halloweentown. It was a critical and commercial smash.
Four years later, a sequel, Kingdom Hearts II, was released. There's also an inbetween-game called Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories which only came out on the GameBoy Advance. (It's now available on the PS2, but only in Japan thus far.)
This isn't just a game, it's a way of life. Come, and be KH's bitch. Don't you want to?
KINGDOM HEARTS: THE FIRST GAME
The Beginning
Somewhere - somewhere that could have been anywhere, really - there was an island, and on this island, there were three teenagers: Sora, Kairi and Riku. They had a plan to explore other worlds, and were building a raft so they could see what was out past the water's horizon.
There were also three other kids on this island, who were friends with our three but weren't in on the off-to-see-the-world plan. Their names were Tidus, Wakka and Selphie. Tidus and Wakka are two major characters from Final Fantasy X, and Selphie is a major character from Final Fantasy VIII. (Needless to say, the KH versions are both pre-canon and very AU; Tidus and Wakka shouldn't meet until one is 17 and the other 25, and neither of them even exist in the same universe as Selphie. Multiverse games always bring the good crack.)
The night before Sora, Kairi and Riku are set to leave, their world is Connected, which means that people can travel to it freely. Sadly, that's just what happens; creatures known as the Heartless invade and destroy the world entirely.
That night, Riku chooses to accept the Darkness which the Heartless bring with them. Sora, in trying to reach Riku, is swallowed by the darkness ... and then pops back out again, holding a giant key-shaped sword known as the keyblade. With it, he is able to fight his way off the island and wakes up alive and well in Traverse Town. More on that later.
All the other residents of their world fell to the Heartless that night.
This is Sora's story: he's a fourteen-year-old boy who has been chosen by Light to wield a mystical weapon and told that only he can save the world. What he wants to do most is find his two friends, Riku and Kairi, who he can only hope are even still alive. Since this is a Final Fantasy game, the two goals are gonna end up intertwined.
The Other Beginning
One morning, Donald Duck - no, really - stay with me, I promise this is gonna be good - goes to His Majesty's throne room, and discovers that King Mickey is gone. He has left behind a note explaining that he's learned of a great evil known as the Heartless, and is doing his part to fight against it. Donald and Goofy are told to go to Traverse Town and find a man named Leon, who is looking for a Key - the Key to saving everything. Once Leon leads them to this Key, they are to stay with it and guard it and help its bearer do what he needs to do.
The Trio
Traverse Town is a sort of interdimensional crossroads. If you survive your world's destruction, you wake up here, with the rest of the refugees.
Leon turns out to be none other than Squall Leonhart, main character of Final Fantasy VIII. (He appears here in FH (in his FF8 canon-form) as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
whatever_sucks; this is why Naminé keeps accidentally referring to Squall as Leon.) Squall/Leon serves as a mentor figure to Sora during the games, teaching him the basics of fighting and serving as the person Sora goes to for advice.
Sora, Donald and Goofy form your main party during the game. You can at times swap out either Donald or Goofy for someone else, specific to the world you're in at the time, but the three are most powerful when they're together, and there are certain moves and hidden secrets that can only be performed or unlocked by the three of them.
The Keyblade
The keyblade is an interesting weapon; you can swing it like a sword, but it also lets Sora cast basic magic spells, which can be upgraded as his magic abilities improve. The keyblade also lets you lock the heart of a world to keep the Heartless out, or open any lock just by pointing at it. Most importantly, for fighting purposes, is that you can't ever be disarmed; if you're the keyblade's chosen wielder, and someone takes the keyblade from you, it will rematerialize in your hand.
Weapons and armor for all playable characters are available in stores - except for the keyblade. You can't ever buy new ones. When you save someone's world, he or she will give you a memento; when you attach it to the keyblade as a keychain, the keyblade will change its shape and size and gain different attributes.
The Journey
Sora, Donald and Goofy travel to different worlds and attempt to stop the Heartless, as well as find the keyhole for that world's heart so that they can close out each world from the Heartless. Meanwhile, a cadre of Disney villains, headed up by Maleficent, are kidnapping the seven Princesses of Heart: girls with pure hearts that have no darkness in them. And Riku is helping Maleficent because she has promised him that she can help save Kairi.
Just as Sora and Company reach Hollow Bastion - which isn't a Disney-based world, but is very freaking cool and serves as home base for both Maleficent and many of the Final Fantasy characters - the villains have found the last princess, who is, of course, Kairi herself. Since she didn't have any darkness in her heart, she couldn't become a Heartless when her world was destroyed; instead, her heart went somewhere else, and her body is lifeless.
By this time, Riku has fallen entirely under Darkness's spell. He and Sora throw down. Your gang must take on Maleficent, twice. And then there's the small matter of waking up Kairi, which turns into one of the biggest suckerpunches of the whole game.
Waking up Kairi means that the power of the seven hearts opens up the Door to Darkness. Guess whose job it is to close that up? Fun!
Kingdom Hearts
The Door to Darkness leads to the heart of all worlds: Kingdom Hearts. This is where you show down against the game's ultimate villain, the man who was possessing Riku and manipulating Maleficent all along. Victory! Finally! And there's the door to Kingdom Hearts, which you can seal shut before the insane hoards of dark creatures and monsters spill through.
As the Trio pushes the doors closed, so that Sora can do his magic locking, one of them happens to peer inside. There's Mickey, holding another keyblade aloft ... and there's Riku, grabbing onto the doors and helping you shut them.
Don't worry, Mickey says. There will always be a door to the light.
Take care of her, Riku says.
And so you seal the Door to Kingdom Hearts, with King Mickey and Riku trapped on the other side.
Sealing it restores all of the worlds which were lost, which means Kairi finds herself back on their island again ... with Riku trapped behind the door, and Sora, Donald and Goofy stuck in a no-man's-land outside of all of the worlds.
I'm always with you, Sora says, as he's pulled away from her.
And that's the end of the first game.
KINGDOM HEARTS: CHAIN OF MEMORIES
Sora awakens one night at a crossroads, and before him stands a man in a black cloak. Ahead of you is something you seek, but to find it, you must lose something dear to you. With that mysterious message, he disappears.
The next image is of a young blonde girl sitting in a white room, sketching to herself. She lays her sketchpad down and the image is of an all-white castle ... and the picture fades out into a real castle, which Sora, Donald and Goofy are walking up to with some trepidation.
Thus begins Chain of Memories, the intermission game between KH1 and KH2. Inside the castle, more figures in black robes taunt Sora with cryptic threats and produce worlds from his memory, one per floor. Sora must fight his way to the top, but in Castle Oblivion, the longer you stay, the more you forget.
As Sora's memory begins to fall apart, he begins remembering other things long forgotten, namely a young blonde girl who always played with them on Destiny Islands, who would sit and sketch them while he and Riku fought. He can't remember her name, but he knows that he made her a promise ...
In Castle Oblivion, nothing is really what it seems. And the blonde artist (Naminé) has to restore Sora's memory when he reaches the thirteenth floor, beats the last bad guy, and has forgotten nearly everything and everyone he ever knew. Naminé can fix that, but he'll forget everything that happened in Castle Oblivion as a result. So when KH2 begins, Sora won't remember Naminé at all.
KINGDOM HEARTS: CHAIN OF MEMORIES: REVERSE/REBIRTH
There's a flipside tale to CoM which overlaps it, timewise, and ends up being slightly more serious in its effects on canon characters. Once you finish CoM, you unlock the other side, which is Reverse/Rebirth.
R/R is Riku's story: he wakes in a sub-basement of Castle Oblivion, and told by a mysterious voice that he needs to choose which path he'll serve: Light or Dark. He needs to battle his way up to the main floor and escape, confronting the darkness in his own heart on the way.
Riku is alone for his journey, except that King Mickey teleports in at crucial points to lend his support. (Which is seriously badass, because Mickey is supposed to be off saving the world, but he keeps blowing things off to protect Riku, explaining that Light will never give up on him.) And just when Riku nearly loses all faith, Kairi comes to him in a vision to tell him that maybe there's another way, one that involves using Light and Dark without losing his heart to either.
It's only when he reaches the eleventh floor that he realizes it was Naminé and not Kairi who came to him; she just used Kairi's form since Kairi was the one who was already in his heart. This is where we first learn that there are some odd echoes going on between Kairi and Naminé, and they aren't the only two ...
More importantly, Riku leaves Castle Oblivion determined to walk the Twilight Path, with King Mickey by his side.
KINGDOM HEARTS 2
The Beginning, Again
Kingdom Hearts 2 picks up one year after the end of Chain of Memories. The game starts from the point of view of a new character; a Sora look-alike with blond hair and access to the Keyblade. The boy is Roxas, and his connection to Sora is left slightly unclear. But DiZ - the mysterious man who was guiding Riku in Castle Oblivion - is trying to use him and Naminé in order to make Sora whole again. Sora has been in stasis during this year, while having his memories rearranged back to the way they were before. So. DiZ forces Roxas to meet with Sora and reintegrate with him, and the game officially begins.
The Journey, Again
Again, Sora must travel from world to world, wielding the keyblade, in order to stop the bad guys from winning. But this time, they aren’t necessarily after the hearts of the worlds.
The Nobodies
A Nobody is the body and soul left behind when a Heartless is formed; only people who are strong-willed leave behind a unique Nobody. Smaller Nobodies are known as dusks, and they're the equivalent to KH1's shadow Heartless.
Organization XIII, the cloaked guys from Castle Oblivion, are a group of powerful Nobodies. They're trying to collect hearts in general, as well as transforming powerful people and creatures into Heartless in order to gain their Heartless as well as
their Nobody. Their ultimate goal: to take Kingdom Hearts for their own, in the hopes that they will finally be complete.
The Catch
Only Sora's keyblade can fill Kingdom Hearts, with the hearts reclaimed from the Heartless he’s destroyed. This, of course, causes problems for Sora; he wants to take on the bad guys and save the day, but every time he does so, he’s also helping them. Sora has to come to grips with this new revelation and track the Organization to their own world.
The Happy Ending
With some unexpected help from Axel, DiZ, Kairi, and Riku, Sora makes his way through to take on their leader, and fight him. Riku and Sora are trapped in darkness for a short amount of time, but with the usual ‘where there is hope, there is light’ philosophy, they are able to return to the Destiny Islands and reunite with the rest of their friends.
FUN WITH CHARACTERS
Characters In Fandom High Who Are From Kingdom Hearts
Characters in Fandom High Who Have AU-Selves in Kingdom Hearts, But Are Not the Kingdom Hearts Versions
IN CASE YOU WANT MORE (AND YOU KNOW YOU DO)
Plus there’s the old standby of actually going out and buying the PS2 game. Copies of KH and KH2 aren’t hard to find, and KH is even a Greatest Hits title (and thus, available for $20) but CoM can be a pain depending on where you live. That and, it uses a completely different battle engine than 1 and 2, so if you aren’t very good at card games, it can make you scream with frustration.
That said! There are some really great KH related sites out there, for info, movies, and basically almost everything you get from the game, but without the gameplay.
http://www.kh-vids.net/ - One of the best sites there is. It has cutscenes in Japanese and English, as well as tons of information.
http://kh2.co.uk/ - Ultimania has up-to-date news as well as lots of info on all aspects of the game.
http://www.khinsider.com/ - Info, oddities, lots of fanmade goodies as well.
There are also tons of LJ communities dedicated to all aspects of KH, from the game itself to news about KH3 (still very much n the planning stages) to any and all characters or ships.
And of course no Spotlight is complete without Wiki links. Right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_hearts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_Hearts:_Chain_of_Memories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_Hearts_II
Questions? Comments? Keyblades?
(Co-written by myself andelectric_sitar. No Heartless were harmed in the making of this spotlight. Void where prohibited. Use only as directed.)
If you think that sounds crazy, you're not alone. When Square and Disney first announced their plans, most of the video game industry boggled. (IGN's recap of it had the subtitle "No, we're not kidding", and Penny Arcade made a crack about other unlikely pairings here.)
And then Kingdom Hearts was released in 2002, and to everybody's surprise, it was good. It featured original characters, cameos by fan-favorite Final Fantasy characters, and settings that ranged from Alice's Wonderland to Jack Skellington's Halloweentown. It was a critical and commercial smash.
Four years later, a sequel, Kingdom Hearts II, was released. There's also an inbetween-game called Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories which only came out on the GameBoy Advance. (It's now available on the PS2, but only in Japan thus far.)
This isn't just a game, it's a way of life. Come, and be KH's bitch. Don't you want to?
KINGDOM HEARTS: THE FIRST GAME
The Beginning
Somewhere - somewhere that could have been anywhere, really - there was an island, and on this island, there were three teenagers: Sora, Kairi and Riku. They had a plan to explore other worlds, and were building a raft so they could see what was out past the water's horizon.
There were also three other kids on this island, who were friends with our three but weren't in on the off-to-see-the-world plan. Their names were Tidus, Wakka and Selphie. Tidus and Wakka are two major characters from Final Fantasy X, and Selphie is a major character from Final Fantasy VIII. (Needless to say, the KH versions are both pre-canon and very AU; Tidus and Wakka shouldn't meet until one is 17 and the other 25, and neither of them even exist in the same universe as Selphie. Multiverse games always bring the good crack.)
The night before Sora, Kairi and Riku are set to leave, their world is Connected, which means that people can travel to it freely. Sadly, that's just what happens; creatures known as the Heartless invade and destroy the world entirely.
That night, Riku chooses to accept the Darkness which the Heartless bring with them. Sora, in trying to reach Riku, is swallowed by the darkness ... and then pops back out again, holding a giant key-shaped sword known as the keyblade. With it, he is able to fight his way off the island and wakes up alive and well in Traverse Town. More on that later.
All the other residents of their world fell to the Heartless that night.
This is Sora's story: he's a fourteen-year-old boy who has been chosen by Light to wield a mystical weapon and told that only he can save the world. What he wants to do most is find his two friends, Riku and Kairi, who he can only hope are even still alive. Since this is a Final Fantasy game, the two goals are gonna end up intertwined.
The Other Beginning
One morning, Donald Duck - no, really - stay with me, I promise this is gonna be good - goes to His Majesty's throne room, and discovers that King Mickey is gone. He has left behind a note explaining that he's learned of a great evil known as the Heartless, and is doing his part to fight against it. Donald and Goofy are told to go to Traverse Town and find a man named Leon, who is looking for a Key - the Key to saving everything. Once Leon leads them to this Key, they are to stay with it and guard it and help its bearer do what he needs to do.
The Trio
Traverse Town is a sort of interdimensional crossroads. If you survive your world's destruction, you wake up here, with the rest of the refugees.
Leon turns out to be none other than Squall Leonhart, main character of Final Fantasy VIII. (He appears here in FH (in his FF8 canon-form) as
whatever_sucks; this is why Naminé keeps accidentally referring to Squall as Leon.) Squall/Leon serves as a mentor figure to Sora during the games, teaching him the basics of fighting and serving as the person Sora goes to for advice.Sora, Donald and Goofy form your main party during the game. You can at times swap out either Donald or Goofy for someone else, specific to the world you're in at the time, but the three are most powerful when they're together, and there are certain moves and hidden secrets that can only be performed or unlocked by the three of them.
The Keyblade
The keyblade is an interesting weapon; you can swing it like a sword, but it also lets Sora cast basic magic spells, which can be upgraded as his magic abilities improve. The keyblade also lets you lock the heart of a world to keep the Heartless out, or open any lock just by pointing at it. Most importantly, for fighting purposes, is that you can't ever be disarmed; if you're the keyblade's chosen wielder, and someone takes the keyblade from you, it will rematerialize in your hand.
Weapons and armor for all playable characters are available in stores - except for the keyblade. You can't ever buy new ones. When you save someone's world, he or she will give you a memento; when you attach it to the keyblade as a keychain, the keyblade will change its shape and size and gain different attributes.
The Journey
Sora, Donald and Goofy travel to different worlds and attempt to stop the Heartless, as well as find the keyhole for that world's heart so that they can close out each world from the Heartless. Meanwhile, a cadre of Disney villains, headed up by Maleficent, are kidnapping the seven Princesses of Heart: girls with pure hearts that have no darkness in them. And Riku is helping Maleficent because she has promised him that she can help save Kairi.
Just as Sora and Company reach Hollow Bastion - which isn't a Disney-based world, but is very freaking cool and serves as home base for both Maleficent and many of the Final Fantasy characters - the villains have found the last princess, who is, of course, Kairi herself. Since she didn't have any darkness in her heart, she couldn't become a Heartless when her world was destroyed; instead, her heart went somewhere else, and her body is lifeless.
By this time, Riku has fallen entirely under Darkness's spell. He and Sora throw down. Your gang must take on Maleficent, twice. And then there's the small matter of waking up Kairi, which turns into one of the biggest suckerpunches of the whole game.
Waking up Kairi means that the power of the seven hearts opens up the Door to Darkness. Guess whose job it is to close that up? Fun!
Kingdom Hearts
The Door to Darkness leads to the heart of all worlds: Kingdom Hearts. This is where you show down against the game's ultimate villain, the man who was possessing Riku and manipulating Maleficent all along. Victory! Finally! And there's the door to Kingdom Hearts, which you can seal shut before the insane hoards of dark creatures and monsters spill through.
As the Trio pushes the doors closed, so that Sora can do his magic locking, one of them happens to peer inside. There's Mickey, holding another keyblade aloft ... and there's Riku, grabbing onto the doors and helping you shut them.
Don't worry, Mickey says. There will always be a door to the light.
Take care of her, Riku says.
And so you seal the Door to Kingdom Hearts, with King Mickey and Riku trapped on the other side.
Sealing it restores all of the worlds which were lost, which means Kairi finds herself back on their island again ... with Riku trapped behind the door, and Sora, Donald and Goofy stuck in a no-man's-land outside of all of the worlds.
I'm always with you, Sora says, as he's pulled away from her.
And that's the end of the first game.
KINGDOM HEARTS: CHAIN OF MEMORIES
Sora awakens one night at a crossroads, and before him stands a man in a black cloak. Ahead of you is something you seek, but to find it, you must lose something dear to you. With that mysterious message, he disappears.
The next image is of a young blonde girl sitting in a white room, sketching to herself. She lays her sketchpad down and the image is of an all-white castle ... and the picture fades out into a real castle, which Sora, Donald and Goofy are walking up to with some trepidation.
Thus begins Chain of Memories, the intermission game between KH1 and KH2. Inside the castle, more figures in black robes taunt Sora with cryptic threats and produce worlds from his memory, one per floor. Sora must fight his way to the top, but in Castle Oblivion, the longer you stay, the more you forget.
As Sora's memory begins to fall apart, he begins remembering other things long forgotten, namely a young blonde girl who always played with them on Destiny Islands, who would sit and sketch them while he and Riku fought. He can't remember her name, but he knows that he made her a promise ...
In Castle Oblivion, nothing is really what it seems. And the blonde artist (Naminé) has to restore Sora's memory when he reaches the thirteenth floor, beats the last bad guy, and has forgotten nearly everything and everyone he ever knew. Naminé can fix that, but he'll forget everything that happened in Castle Oblivion as a result. So when KH2 begins, Sora won't remember Naminé at all.
KINGDOM HEARTS: CHAIN OF MEMORIES: REVERSE/REBIRTH
There's a flipside tale to CoM which overlaps it, timewise, and ends up being slightly more serious in its effects on canon characters. Once you finish CoM, you unlock the other side, which is Reverse/Rebirth.
R/R is Riku's story: he wakes in a sub-basement of Castle Oblivion, and told by a mysterious voice that he needs to choose which path he'll serve: Light or Dark. He needs to battle his way up to the main floor and escape, confronting the darkness in his own heart on the way.
Riku is alone for his journey, except that King Mickey teleports in at crucial points to lend his support. (Which is seriously badass, because Mickey is supposed to be off saving the world, but he keeps blowing things off to protect Riku, explaining that Light will never give up on him.) And just when Riku nearly loses all faith, Kairi comes to him in a vision to tell him that maybe there's another way, one that involves using Light and Dark without losing his heart to either.
It's only when he reaches the eleventh floor that he realizes it was Naminé and not Kairi who came to him; she just used Kairi's form since Kairi was the one who was already in his heart. This is where we first learn that there are some odd echoes going on between Kairi and Naminé, and they aren't the only two ...
More importantly, Riku leaves Castle Oblivion determined to walk the Twilight Path, with King Mickey by his side.
KINGDOM HEARTS 2
The Beginning, Again
Kingdom Hearts 2 picks up one year after the end of Chain of Memories. The game starts from the point of view of a new character; a Sora look-alike with blond hair and access to the Keyblade. The boy is Roxas, and his connection to Sora is left slightly unclear. But DiZ - the mysterious man who was guiding Riku in Castle Oblivion - is trying to use him and Naminé in order to make Sora whole again. Sora has been in stasis during this year, while having his memories rearranged back to the way they were before. So. DiZ forces Roxas to meet with Sora and reintegrate with him, and the game officially begins.
The Journey, Again
Again, Sora must travel from world to world, wielding the keyblade, in order to stop the bad guys from winning. But this time, they aren’t necessarily after the hearts of the worlds.
The Nobodies
A Nobody is the body and soul left behind when a Heartless is formed; only people who are strong-willed leave behind a unique Nobody. Smaller Nobodies are known as dusks, and they're the equivalent to KH1's shadow Heartless.
Organization XIII, the cloaked guys from Castle Oblivion, are a group of powerful Nobodies. They're trying to collect hearts in general, as well as transforming powerful people and creatures into Heartless in order to gain their Heartless as well as
their Nobody. Their ultimate goal: to take Kingdom Hearts for their own, in the hopes that they will finally be complete.
The Catch
Only Sora's keyblade can fill Kingdom Hearts, with the hearts reclaimed from the Heartless he’s destroyed. This, of course, causes problems for Sora; he wants to take on the bad guys and save the day, but every time he does so, he’s also helping them. Sora has to come to grips with this new revelation and track the Organization to their own world.
The Happy Ending
With some unexpected help from Axel, DiZ, Kairi, and Riku, Sora makes his way through to take on their leader, and fight him. Riku and Sora are trapped in darkness for a short amount of time, but with the usual ‘where there is hope, there is light’ philosophy, they are able to return to the Destiny Islands and reunite with the rest of their friends.
FUN WITH CHARACTERS
Characters In Fandom High Who Are From Kingdom Hearts
- Demyx [electric_sitar]
- Naminé [palestshadow]
- Roxas [orewahikari]
Characters in Fandom High Who Have AU-Selves in Kingdom Hearts, But Are Not the Kingdom Hearts Versions
- Hades [ismyhairout] (appears in all three as himself)
- Lumiere [sexycandlepants] (appears in KH2 in Beast's Castle as himself)
- Rikku [the_merriest] (appears in KH2 as a treasure-hunting fairy)
- Squall [whatever_sucks] (appears in all three as Leon, a mentor figure to Sora)
IN CASE YOU WANT MORE (AND YOU KNOW YOU DO)
Plus there’s the old standby of actually going out and buying the PS2 game. Copies of KH and KH2 aren’t hard to find, and KH is even a Greatest Hits title (and thus, available for $20) but CoM can be a pain depending on where you live. That and, it uses a completely different battle engine than 1 and 2, so if you aren’t very good at card games, it can make you scream with frustration.
That said! There are some really great KH related sites out there, for info, movies, and basically almost everything you get from the game, but without the gameplay.
http://www.kh-vids.net/ - One of the best sites there is. It has cutscenes in Japanese and English, as well as tons of information.
http://kh2.co.uk/ - Ultimania has up-to-date news as well as lots of info on all aspects of the game.
http://www.khinsider.com/ - Info, oddities, lots of fanmade goodies as well.
There are also tons of LJ communities dedicated to all aspects of KH, from the game itself to news about KH3 (still very much n the planning stages) to any and all characters or ships.
And of course no Spotlight is complete without Wiki links. Right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_hearts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_Hearts:_Chain_of_Memories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_Hearts_II
Questions? Comments? Keyblades?
(Co-written by myself and
electric_sitar. No Heartless were harmed in the making of this spotlight. Void where prohibited. Use only as directed.)
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So when I lost to the second boss, I keysmashed so hard that I nearly busted my laptop, and I screwed up the ROM and lost my save state, and had to go back a couple hours and start over.
There's a vid on GoogleVids somewhere that has just the cutscenes from CoM, btw.
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Worst battle system since Chrono Cross, FOR SERIOUS.
CoM aside, the PS2 games devoured my soul and did not allow me to sleep :[
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I loved Chrono Cross!
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If it did not drive you insane you are not human. Or have the most amazing tolerance known to mankind. Take your pick.
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Now I wanna replay it. *clings to Glenn and Nikki*
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*hides*
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...I haven't actually tried CoM, actually, so I might even like it. I liked the card battle system in NeoGeo Card Fighters' Clash...
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The Sphere Grid was AWESOME. I loved it.
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So.
That made that one battle in Mt. Gagazet fun! :|
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All the characters emo'd at getting out of Gagazet and reaching Zanarkand, and I was going "Wooo! No more Gagazet!"
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Mt. Gagazet is like the ULTAMITE TEST for RPG gamers, omg.
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The caves were pretty sweet. But just hearing the violin sad music of Gagazet cues up my "must ... choke ... a bitch" internal reaction.
I did the sacrifice-an-Aeon-to-his-move-you-can't-survive thing to beat him and felt like I cheated. :(
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Augh why Squeenix why. D:
... Wait, what, you can do that? I never bothered using Aeons ever unless I had do because they... just blow so much :|
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Oh. Heh. It's a cheeseball move but I finally caved and did it because I suck. Here's the thing: if there's an attack coming that's gonna KO your whole party, and you know it, and the enemy telegraphs it?
- Switch Yuna in
- Have Yuna summon an Aeon
- Have the Aeon do a little bit of damage
- When it's the enemy's turn, they'll blast the _Aeon_ with the instakill
- Aeon dies, Yuna's turn over, the rest of your party runs back in.
Some people spam this to get through some bosses, like, Bahamut! *dead* Valefor! *dead* and so on. I didn't, except I pulled out Bahamut once in the Seymour fight and nailed him with an Overdrive and then Bahamut took the uglynasty hit next and that was the time I won.
I didn't use the Aeons either. Just ... didn't like to. I managed to beat all of the Monster Arena creatures without them just to see if it was doable. And it was sweet.
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I had the anti-zombie armor, but even that didn't always work. Le sigh.
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Reverse/Rebirth is so much harder than CoM, though, because in Riku's side of things, you don't get Donald, Goofy and Random Person This Level helping out, you don't get potions and ethers, and you DON'T get to pick your own deck. They set one up for you, and on some floors they give you an absolute shit deck, and the trick is learning how to play that deck and win anyway.
I loved getting to decide how to level up my people on the Sphere Grid. At first I thought it was a pain, and then I realized I AM IN CONTROL and, well, see above in re: OCD.
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Cookies? Ilu still ):
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...And me from the wrong account, even! :D
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Which means I'm going to read this tomorrow and make sure I'm correct on the above statement ;) All looks gooooooooooood.
(come and join the KH-side. We don't cookies! In light and dark!)