Fool Reviews Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
"Three Hundred and Fifty-Eight Days Experienced In Just One":

So, for context on this one, this review isn't going to contain anything on the gameplay. Having seen various reviews on this game's original release and having just played Re:Chain of Memories, I had no interest to play the DS Original as that would just take up more time and I want to get to KH2 already. So this review will be strictly about my enjoyment of the story and how it is presented in the Final Mix collection.

You may be asking why I decided to watch 358/2 before playing KH2, since the former released after the latter. The reasons are kind of simple: The first being that I already know the general plot of these games, and so the twist of Roxas being Sora's Nobody doesn't have an impact on me at this point. The second being that in the collection, this is actually ordered before KH2, making me believe that the developers wanted me to experience this game first. And the third being that this game might give additional context for KH2's story.

So, as for the overall enjoyment of this... It was alright. The cutscenes are really nice, and the plot basically just being "Friends: Anime Edition" was a nice change of pace from the last game. I really like the dynamic between Roxas, Axel, and Xion. They feel like actual coworkers, which I find rather endearing at the end of the day. A realistic feeling relationship between characters that develops into an actual friendship, I'm all down for that.

As for the rest of Organization XIII... well, Xemnas has a cool voice but I don't really know much else about him. Xigbar was actually relatively fun to watch whenever he would show up, which wasn't often but it was enough to be entertaining. He gives me Larxene vibes to be honest. Saix... I didn't really care for him. I like that he and Axel were friends in the past, and that creates conflict between them when Axel gets more and more attached to Roxas and Xion, but outside of that he's got the personality of a wet piece of cardboard. The rest of the Organization barely gets any spotlight at all besides our main trio and these three, and because of that they don't come off as very interesting.

As for the plot, I will say one of the things that genuinely surprised me was the fact that Xion is introduced basically at the beginning of the story. I was not expecting that at all. From what I had heard, I was thinking she wouldn't be joining the plot at all until like a quarter of the way through the story. It felt a little weird given she only arrives within a week of Roxas' induction. The beginning of the story mostly focuses on building up Roxas' and Axel's relationship, and it's very entertaining. Quinton Flynn does a great job making Axel, who's normally a very active personality, feel down to earth and chill. The way he repeats "Got it memorized" in a calm, almost sibling like tone makes he have to give praise for the performance. Through Axel, Roxas begins to learn about life and his own feelings and goes from a barely talking zombie to a person with emotions and goals.

Good things aren't meant to last for Roxas though, and eventually Axel has to go to Castle Oblivion so that Chain of Memories can happen. During this time Roxas does missions... I do not like how these are presented. Occasionally when there isn't a cutscene for a particular part of the story, they just show images with text. It feels very stilted in comparison and kind of feels a little lazy. I know they're not as important as the main plot, but I would've liked to genuinely see Roxas interacting with the other members of the Organization.

Anyways eventually Roxas befriends Xion, and they eat ice cream together. It turns out Xion, like Roxas, can also use the keyblade, which is a neat turn of events. Then Roxas goes into the first coma of the game. This game has multiple moments where characters go into comas... it does feel a little repetitive after the first one and I don't think it serves much of a purpose other than making that character unavailable in the original DS release. Xion takes on the missions in Roxas' stead, until he wakes up.

Eventually Axel returns after being M.I.A. after Chain of Memories and starts to hang out with Roxas and now Xion. Xion eventually forgets how to use the keyblade, resulting in Roxas pulling double duty until he teaches her to remember. The Three Musketeers enjoy ice cream and sunsets, hoping it will last forever.

Then Xion starts having memories of Sora's past, and eventually goes into a coma. From there a bunch of things wind up revealed. One, Saix and Axel are working together on something. Two, Xion is actually a Replica meant to copy Roxas' powers in case he ever went AWOL. Three, because Xion is siphoning Sora's memories from Roxas, the memories being trapped within her are delaying Sora's awakening, something Namine cannot fix on her own, and something DiZ won't tolerate. So DiZ has Riku go out to kill both Xion and Roxas. Riku actually fights Xion earlier in the game, giving her the hints that she isn't who she believes herself to be... but also says like the weirdest line "I must be the biggest nobody of them all." It's very weird.

Eventually Riku convinces Xion more or less to return to Sora's memories so he can recover, and after a bunch of chasing, capturing, running away, and recapturing, Xion finally faces off with Roxas, while looking exactly like Sora. Roxas, despite having been weakened by Xion's presence for the entirety of the game, manages to land the killing blow. As she dies, Xion asks Roxas to release Kingdom Hearts. Unfortunately for her, because her existence was built upon false memories or whatever, she becomes completely forgotten.

Roxas then promptly quits the Organization, but not before chastising Axel for keeping information about Xion a secret from him. Then he encounters Riku, and the two fight it out. It looks like Roxas may get the upper hand but then Riku turns into Ansem and bodies the man, which leads us into the beginning of Kingdom Hearts 2.

Overall, I much enjoyed the story. It's definitely not perfect, there are some lines that are... questionable. "Who else will I have ice cream with?" in particular. The stilted presentation at a few points though can be a bit distracting. I would definitely say I enjoyed it more than the last story or KH1's story. It's surprisingly not as loaded with the pseudo-Shakespearean writing like those two, which I find kind of refreshing.

Either way, it's time for Kingdom Hearts 2, so I'll see you all when that's over with.

Fool Reviews Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep Final Mix
"Awake the Entire Time":

Hmm.

This is one of those weird situations where I, the non-Kingdom Hearts fan sits in confusion at the thoughts of my friend who is one.

A forward if you will, prior to my marathoning of the series I had always heard good things about this game. Only shortly before I started did I hear from my friend, Luke, that he thought this game was one of the worst in the franchise. This was eventually followed up by my other friend, who at the time of this review has yet to play this game, showing me a video by a man named Civit (I believe that was his name), that covered a bunch of the mans negative opinions about the game. From Keyblade Design to the way the camera works, to the floatiness. So I went into the game prepared for a not-so-great time... and came out rating it the same as KH2.

Firstly, I want to get out of the way what I think the biggest strike against this game is, that being that it released after KH2. Now, while I will whole-heartedly agree that KH2 is a better experience overall and that the flow of combat is incredibly smooth and near flawless, I also want to state that I don't really think it's a fair judgement of this game. This game is very much not KH2, and what it does differently from that game, it does relatively well.

Now, I'll cover the story real quick just for the purpose of getting it out of the way.

Terra's story is just the Star Wars Prequels mixed with some Bodysnatcher stuff. A lot of focus on his fall into darkness, being tricked by XehaSpock, killing Master Eraquskywalker, and ultimately becoming the Lingering Will.

Ventus loses his friends, then makes some new friends, then goes into a coma for trying to save his friends.

Aqua winds up with all of the dirty work as the two other protagonists basically fuck her life up thanks to shenanigans.

The story is definitely the weakest aspect of this game, but at this point that's just the gamut for Kingdom Hearts. I don't think, outside of 358/2 Days, that there has been a single decent plot in this franchise. There's a lot of retcons and shit that this game does that are rather upsetting to longtime fans, and I can understand that... but in all honesty I stopped giving a shit about the story by 2.

The acting is also hit or miss for Terra, and just plain bad for Aqua, but at least it's funny to watch. Idk, compared to the first game I at least manage to stomach a chuckle for this shit. Maybe I just hate kid voices.

Gameplay Wise, this is definitely the second best Kingdom Hearts game I've played so far. Levels are short and concise, resulting in a fast paced game that doesn't overstay its welcome. Combat has degraded a little bit from 2, but thanks to the Command Deck a whole ton of variety has been provided.

You have the ability to create tons of abilities, allowing for an amazing amount of customization. Now, while there are broken as hell commands like the infamous Thunder Surge, they are not immediately available. However, if you go out of your way to get them, you will be rewarded with the ability to purchase them at the Moogle Shop. This is such an amazing feature in my honest opinion, as it actively rewards those who want to get great commands early on while not punishing those who don't. If there is one thing I absolutely love about this game, it is the ability to get Tier 3 magic as early as the first world if you're willing to put in the effort. For someone like me who thoroughly enjoys grinding and getting broken as hell moves, I appreciate the ability to do this.

Another cool thing about the commands involves abilities. Unlike KH1 or KH2, abilities are not learned from regular level ups but rather through leveling up your moves. It is a relatively fast process, and can net you abilities like Second Chance and Once More extremely early in the adventure, which you'll need if you plan to play this game on Critical Mode, which is what I did.

The game isn't incredibly hard, but boss fights are definitely a toughie, at least towards the end. I will say that they can be rather BS, especially Terra-Xehanort at the end of Terra's Story, with them never stopping with the attack as well as lacking stagger, but for the most part bosses are fine. There's no Super Giant bosses, thank god, so that's not an issue in this game.

Luckily the difficulty with bosses can be mitigated with Shotlocks. These are basically quick time events that you can initiate by locking on the opponent, giving you invincibility frames for the entire attack. They're usually a visual spectacle to behold, and rack up a lot of damage especially in the case of shotlocks like Ragnarok.

There's also D-Links, which I love way more than Summons. Instead of wasting a ton of MP, you instead use your D-Link Meter and have your moveset and finisher changed to reflect the character you link with. It could mean doing some jumpy jump fuckshit by linking with Mickey Mouse, or chilling with a Ukulele by linking with Stitch.

On the note of MP, I'm actually glad it's gone in this game. Instead of MP, all commands have a set cool down period which can be hastened by getting haste abilities. This honestly makes magic so much more useful by default compared to the numbered titles, since I don't have to worry about managing heals and attack spells, and can just press a single button and be on my merry way. For the record, I never liked the shortcut menu in the numbered games, it always felt really awkward for me to use personally, and I just see the command deck as an overall improvement. Call me lazy I guess.

On the camera, this is just here because of the nitpick in that video I mentioned, it never once made me feel sick or dizzy, and the issue of it bugging out in narrow corridors is honestly rather rare. There aren't a lot of situations where you're going to be up against a wall, and in the three stories I played I don't remember any time where the camera bugging lasted more than like 2 seconds.

At the end of the day, as I'm writing this at 1:51 in the morning at Eastern Standard Time, all I wind up leaving this experience with is confusion. I have zero idea why my friends dislike this game, because I can't see half the problems they mentioned and I'm not even a fan of this series. Never once did I feel like wanting the game to end, which KH1 and CoM managed to make me feel. This game never genuinely upset me (outside of the final bosses), or made me exhausted, That's including the multiple times I played the Command Board game.

I just don't understand the dislike of this one. Though given the rating on here overall, it seems like this game isn't overly hated outside of my friend circle.

I recommend trying this one, hell, I'd say play it as your first Kingdom Hearts if you don't give a single shit about the story. It's got visually entertaining gameplay, it doesn't drag on, and it's an overall good time.

I'm nearly done with the 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX collection now, all that's left is Re:Coded which is just a movie for all intents and purposes, followed by my dive into the 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue with... Dream Drop Distance, the one game after CoM that I have absolutely been dreading to play. I'll see you all then.

I'm not going to make a big production of this review because this is a 2 hour demo.

I will however start with a little side note. Something I forgot to mention in my Birth By Sleep review is how the secret episode winds up being an advertisement for this demo. At the moment when I realized that I both chuckled and groaned at the fact that the secret ending of that game advertised a literal 2 hour demo for Kingdom Hearts 3.

This demo is perfectly fine though, early on there was some roughness, some noticeable frame dropping and textures not exactly looking pristine, but after a little bit everything started to work out.

I liked how the areas shown were twists on the first three areas of Birth By Sleep, I thought that was just a neat little detail, allowed for some interesting visuals. Gameplay was overall solid, actually got mileage out of Magic this time, which was pretty fun, and the fact that you can cast Level 4 Magic as finishers was something I really enjoyed. I loved how Command Styles (or rather the two available) were handled, with a visible arrow symbol showing how many points you've racked up to start the Style and how many you've racked to get the Finisher. I will knock how Shotlocks are done, I don't like the change in reticles, it makes me feel less precise than before. In BBS there was a cross effect that would appear right as the circles would intersect and it was a very good way of timing the button presses. It doesn't exist here and the larger size of the inner circle fucks up my sense of timing.

The story was ok for what it was, which was just Aqua losing her mind and then somehow being involved in the ending of KH1. Aqua and Terra have definitely improved acting wise, and I'm glad they did. I firmly believe that BBS was probably their first VA gig, so to see them improve is great.

A few complaints. The Phantom Aqua boss fights and the second Darkside Boss Fight with the giant orb were exhausting. I don't like fights where you are basically prevented from attacking and are forced to just block and counter. It gets very repetitive very quickly and this demo is loaded with that, and I hope it isn't something that leaks into KH3. Secondly, Critical Mode shouldn't be hidden behind New Game Plus, I'm sorry but I do not like that. KH2 and BBS have Critical Mode from the start, so I do not understand the need to keep that difficulty unavailable from the player until they've finished a playthrough.

Anyways, overall this was a good time. It's time for me to watch Back Cover now, and then start KH3. It's time for this marathon to come to an end.

The main campaign of this is a joke even in Critical if you have a Level 80 Sora with Ultima Weapon and the best defensive equipment... however when you're not playing as Sora, holy shit.

The story was standard, not gonna go into it.

Bottom line is that the DLC is alright. I wouldn't say it's worth 30 bucks personally as (outside of the Data Fights) it's mostly just retreads of the ending of KH3.

Still pretty kino tho, now can someone for the love of god make a straight Kingdom Hearts Doujin about Aqua.

Honestly, I don’t know what it is about this specific MMO that has me spending entire days off just grinding through the main story as a Ninja, but it just feels right. Combat is just so fun, and the hunting guide mitigates grinding while giving me more time to experience the great combat. I love the Dungeon Crawling and the Boss Fights (even if the rest of my party kills the boss while I’m uh, watching the cutscene). The only thing I’d say isn’t entirely up to snuff is the plot, it took a very long time for me to get really interested in the main story, and by a very long time I mean it took me until like Level 42 to get invested. This game has a lot of callbacks to older Final Fantasy’s and I can’t wait to get to Heavensward and the rest of the DLCs. Also if you wanna hang out my character is Bunnygirl Hottie on the Zalera server, let’s crawl some dungeons sometime.