Current Events > ITT: I rate the KH games after playing the entire series this year. *spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

If anyone cares at all lol.

Kingdom Hearts 1
Story: 4 Gameplay: 3

KH1 does two things that no other game in the series really does. One, it incorporates the Disney shit directly into the main storyline. Two, the worlds have actual puzzles and platforming in them. Story-wise, there's a clear goal in visiting each world: locking that world's keyhole. All of that together means the "filler" portions of the story are a lot more meaningful than they are in any other game. With no parasitic anime bullshit that infects the later titles, the story is close to the best.

The gameplay is serviceable but obviously dated and clunky. Strike Raid all day erry day and you'll be fine.

Chain of Memories
Story: 2 Gameplay: 0
I'll give the story credit for having potential. A sequel where the protagonist remembers memories that the player knows is false is a great idea in theory. The problem is that it's just such a who cares plot. The game is essentially just setup for KH2. The only meaningful plotline it has is Namine - who is useless - and the inner coup of the Organization which never goes anywhere because you kill all of the rebels.

The gameplay is garbage. Even if you like the card battle system - and I don't see why you would - it's just a snoozefest.

Kingdom Hearts 2
Story: 4 Gameplay: 5
This is where the anime bullshit really comes in, but it's not really a problem yet. Aside from introducing the Ansem/Xehanort name theft, it's pretty straightforward. It's not going to be winning any awards, but it's enough to hold your interest.

The combat in this one is the best in the series. The Data Organization and Lingering Will were genuinely difficult bosses, but they never felt unfair. Saix, for instance, whooped me about ten times. When I beat him once, I was able to farm him without issue. The only exception is Xaldin who is a giant crock of shit. Combat's very reactionary compared to the later games. Every fight is about watching the boss, countering his moves, and hitting an opening. The reaction commands help by adding a little variety. I never really wanted to try a Dark Souls game, but I get the idea that KH2 is like a really easy version of it and now I kinda want to try a Dark Souls game.

KH: Coded
Story: ?
I watched the video, but I have no memory of what happened in this game. Other than Mickey casually creating a data replica of Sora which seems like some dystopian philosophical nightmare which Sora's too dumb to really take offense to. I think this is where Malificent learns about the black box too? I don't fucking know.

KH: 358/2 Days
Story: 0
Xion is the epitome of what's wrong with Kingdom Hearts' storyline. She has no reason to exist other than to provide a plotline for this game. KH3 compounds the issue by bringing her back even though that makes no fucking sense. Fuck Xion.
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KH: Birth By Sleep
Story: 4 Gameplay: 1
The story is interesting enough, propped up a bit by the game's three character gimmick. I like that you're playing through different points in the same timeline and you see how things link up only when you play through all three. I almost gave it a five, but this is where the anime silliness really starts to come in. Special mention to the creation of Castle Oblivion in this game. It was a neat moment I didn't see coming.

The gameplay, on the other hand, is fundamentally flawed. The removal of revenge values on the bosses basically means that you can't attack them because there's no warning of when they're going to counter you. The command deck is really the only way forward and it's terribly, terribly balanced. More advanced commands are typically worse than the basic ones. The "___ Rush" variations are really the only attacks you have time for. Tying abilities and RNG into this system was also a terrible idea. I had to abandon the final boss as Terra and go farm because I never unlocked the Once More/Second Chance abilities. Given the series' propensity for stunlocking you if you get hit, you either need those abilities or you just never get hit at all. Combat becomes a series of dodge roll spam until an ability comes off cooldown and that's boring as hell.

Special mention made to the final bosses of the Aqua and Ventus storyline. They are some of the worst bosses I've ever seen in a game. Braig is a snoozefest. He teleports and attacks too frequently for you to attack him yourself, it's an entire bossfight of reflecting his attacks back at him. It's not difficult, it's just tedious. Vanitas is a piss easy boss if you do the dodge roll spam, but his final phase is an atrocious mess. It involves you building up your combo meter. The best way to do that is to repeatedly trigger a QTE. Because he constantly teleports, you can miss this QTE. If you miss, typically enough time passes that your combo meter starts to deplete. There's no healing. And if you do manage to fill the combo meter, the big showy anime finisher can miss. And it usually will because he constantly teleports. I had to do the final phase about six times before it finally worked right.

Additional special mention to the minigames in Disney Town. They are awful and singlehandedly made the decision on whether I'd be 100%ing that game.

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance
Story: 0 Gameplay: 2
This is the game that turns the KH plotline into a convoluted mess. Worlds that lost their heart are restored, but they didn't realize it and are still "sleeping." Apparently one of these worlds is Destiny Islands even though the cast has been living on that world for months without seeing anything wrong with it. Time travel exists now. Thirteen Xehanorts exist now. Sora and Riku travel to the same worlds but they have entirely different storylines. Wait, Riku wasn't actually traveling to those worlds, he was traveling in Sora's dreams of those worlds. I'm sure there's more but it's just a giant fucking trash pile.

The gameplay is an improvement over BBS but only barely. The drop meter is a terrible idea. I'm sure everyone who's played this game forgot about it and lost progress in a boss fight at least once. They took the RNG out of the command deck, but replaced it with the Dream Eater system which massively ups the crafting requirements. You also don't unlock abilities, you rent them by equipping Dream Eaters which provide those abilities. I fucking hated that. Flowmotion is a fun idea, but I don't think I ever used it on purpose in combat. It was super useful for platforming though since you can just jump forever.

Kingdom Hearts Back Cover
Story: 5
I'm a sucker for the kinda shit this story had. The Master manipulating all of his students so he could set up the timeline he'd seen in the prophecy was great. Nice and short and coherent and not stupid at all.
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Kingdom Hearts 3
Story: 2 Gameplay: 3
The story, as I should have expected, was the culmination of garbage. The pacing is sooooo fucking bad, I was halfway through the last world before realizing, "Oh, I think this is actually the end of the game." How do you have 13+ main antagonists and have us fight them all at once at the end of the game? How do you interrupt those combo-boss fights with lengthy cutscenes whenever you take one of them down? How do you introduce brand new convoluted shit in the middle of a game with no introduction? How do you have your main bad guy literally ascend to heaven? How do you bring Xion back when she should not exist? How do you bring Namine back before Kairi is rescued? Why, after all the hype, did Kairi do literally nothing except get kidnapped again? Why did you end a fifteen-year-long story on two different cliffhangers? Why were the Tangled, Frozen, and PotC worlds just the exact plot of the movie except we had diarrhea and missed 90% of the film because we had to go to the pot? How do you not address the obvious brain damage Sora has suffered between this game and the last few? How do you think that obnoxious half-pint joke is so funny that you repeat it thirteen dozen times? I'm sure there's more but holy shit.

The gameplay was a massive stepdown from two, but a massive step up from the (formerly) mobile titles. The biggest problem is that it's just too fucking easy. The only times I really remember dying are on rail gauntlets which either have atrocious aiming sensitivity or I have a bugged game. Even when actively avoiding things like attractions which are completely broken, bosses just melt. The fighting is quite fun though. Three equippable keyblades and formchanges were great ideas.
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pegusus123456 posted...

I watched the video, but I have no memory of what happened in this game

same. i even fell asleep during it. its so bad
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That 358/2 game is terrible as a game too fwiw

If we're ranking the games...

KH1
Story: 4 / Gameplay: 4
I agree with TC on pretty much all fronts. The Disney was done well, the worlds were creatively designed with more incentive placed on return visits and interacting with the environments. The story was charming. And the gameplay aged pretty well, all things considered.

CoM:
Story: 2 / Gameplay: 2
The story was good and had a bunch of fun new characters. The gameplay is very divisive, but I enjoyed it. Especially by the end when you get enough sleights to wreck anything.

KH2
Story: 3 / Gameplay: 5
This is where the story starts to suffer with needless retcons and making everything more anime than Disney. And the worlds became very linear with not much to do in them besides progress the story. The gameplay is the best in the series, though, especially with the Final Mix additions.

Days
Story: 4 / Gameplay: 1
Probably the best writing we've got out of the series, with good development for its main cast. But it has very annoying DS controls that end up hurting your fingers by the end of a session. If anything, though, I think a Switch remake would benefit it a lot.

BbS
Story: 3 / Gameplay: 3
The game I've played the most, but it definitely has its flaws. Mainly due to the command deck being unbalanced and making melee pointless. But the story is fun enough, even if it isn't the most well-written thing in the world. Probably the only game past the first that attempted to get the charm from visiting Disney worlds back -- it's up to you to say if it succeeded or not, but they at least tried to make the Disney worlds feel relevant. So that's something.

Re:coded
Story: 1 / Gameplay: 2
Pointless story, but surprisingly solid gameplay considering how wonky the previous DS game was. Having the world gimmicks that switch up the gameply style made me take away a point from it, though.

DDD
Story: 3 / Gameplay: 3
Definitely where the story lost some people, but I enjoyed the adventure and I loved the character development it gave to Riku. The gameplay is also pretty hit-and-miss, and I hate how they implemented Dream Eater abilities and such, but overall, I had a fun time playing it.

0.2 Birth by Sleep
Story: 2 / Gameplay: 2
It's basically a tech demo with an "in-development" build of KH3's gameplay and graphics, so it's not the best thing in the world. And because of it gets a point lower than KH3 in "Gameplay" just off principle. But the story was interesting enough when it was dealing with Aqua's personal demons, and then kinda got dumb when the main KH shenanigans came into play. It's only like 2 hours long though, so giving it more than a 2 would be stupid.

Unchained x / Union x
Story: 1 / Gameplay: 1
Don't even really need to say anything. It's a gacha game with a story that updates like twice a year.

KH3
Story: 1 / Gameplay: 3
Definitely sets the bar low for video game stories. Giving it a 1 and lumping it with Re:coded and Union x might not sound fair, but it's definitely the worst-told and worst-paced story in the franchise thus far. The gameplay is alright -- the best the Osaka Team's given us, but still not as good as the previous main entries.
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pegusus123456 posted...

Kingdom Hearts 3
Story: 2 Gameplay: 3
The story, as I should have expected, was the culmination of garbage. The pacing is sooooo fucking bad, I was halfway through the last world before realizing, "Oh, I think this is actually the end of the game." How do you have 13+ main antagonists and have us fight them all at once at the end of the game? How do you interrupt those combo-boss fights with lengthy cutscenes whenever you take one of them down? How do you introduce brand new convoluted shit in the middle of a game with no introduction? How do you have your main bad guy literally ascend to heaven? How do you bring Xion back when she should not exist? How do you bring Namine back before Kairi is rescued? Why, after all the hype, did Kairi do literally nothing except get kidnapped again? Why did you end a fifteen-year-long story on two different cliffhangers? Why were the Tangled, Frozen, and PotC worlds just the exact plot of the movie except we had diarrhea and missed 90% of the film because we had to go to the pot? How do you not address the obvious brain damage Sora has suffered between this game and the last few? How do you think that obnoxious half-pint joke is so funny that you repeat it thirteen dozen times? I'm sure there's more but holy shit.

The gameplay was a massive stepdown from two, but a massive step up from the (formerly) mobile titles. The biggest problem is that it's just too fucking easy. The only times I really remember dying are on rail gauntlets which either have atrocious aiming sensitivity or I have a bugged game. Even when actively avoiding things like attractions which are completely broken, bosses just melt. The fighting is quite fun though. Three equippable keyblades and formchanges were great ideas.

100%

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Which version of Chain of Memories
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SmidgeIsntBack posted...

Which version of Chain of Memories

Oh, these were all from The Story So Far.
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I thought so; as much of an acquired taste as the card system is, it's so much worse in a 3D environment where you can't see everything at once. I also didn't think the added voice acting is particularly stellar, especially when you've got KH2 Sora voice coming out of KH1 Sora's body.
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One thing I forgot to mention about KH3 that I absolutely fucking hated. You almost never win a boss fight. Oh, you'll deplete the health bar, but the cutscene after will have the boss pull the old Enough I'm Tired Of These Games and do whatever the hell he wanted to do anyway.
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I hate the old "enemy teleports in, speaks cryptic bullshit, teleports out as sora/riku exerts the bare minimim effort required to seem like hes attempting to stop them"
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I liked the scene in Toy Story where Sora actually tries to do something but Young Xehanort just effortlessly teleports away. Every other scene just has the heroes making anime reaction noises whenever the villains do something.

And seriously, they're always super fucking surprised when a bad guy teleports even though every single fuckin' boss in the series can do that.
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For gameplay, I'd probably rank:

KH2 > KH1 > Re:coded (combat wise, unironically think this is the best implementation of the command system by a significant margin) > CoM/Re:CoM > KH3 > 3D > BBS > Days > Mobile game.

I really dislike the way triangle commands work in KH3.
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I also think KH1 would be significantly improved with just a camera zoom out and dodge roll from the beginning of the game. I would also say it has my favorite MP system in the series, but KH2 probably did magic/MP balance better.
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I may be remembering wrong, but don't you get Dodge Roll real early in KH1? Like in Traverse Town or smthng?

I know you don't get it until a good ways through KH2, but that's because it was a FM addition.
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You get Dodge Roll from the Guard Armor which is really the first boss.

Guard, on the other hand, can take a while to get because it's dependent on your build.
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pegusus123456 posted...

KH: Coded
Story: ?

lol
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Oh, one more moment akin to Land of Departure being Castle Oblivion.

Ansem's Guardian being Terra's Heartless was fucking great. It made consistent sense, even down to the design, and the moment where he rips off the bandage gag was genuinely cool.
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slmcknett posted...

I may be remembering wrong, but don't you get Dodge Roll real early in KH1? Like in Traverse Town or smthng?

I know you don't get it until a good ways through KH2, but that's because it was a FM addition.

Yes, but not having Dodge Roll for Guard Armor makes it way harder than it should be. Whenever I play the game on Proud, it's one of the hardest bosses to fight since he usually two shots you.

Most of the "significant improvement" would be from the camera though, imo. It would make the Cave of Wonders way less annoying.
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