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puck
Joined: 15 Sep 2006
Posts: 875
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 Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 11:37 pm Post subject: |
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| Bijomaru wrote: | | Ah, thanks for reminding me why KH2 was so utter shit. |
having slept on it i now disagree to an extent.
the heart of the story is okay for the sort of thing that it is, nothing to write home about but i don't expect that sort of thing. what's more important than that is quite a few instances of some high sentiment, e.g. roxas' suicide, demyx's rage at being snubbed for being non-human and therefore invalid, the transformation of axel's hatred of sora due to perceived culpability in roxas' death into love for their essential sameness, the reunions, sora's gradual realization of the existence of roxas and his coming to terms with that, riku's acting in the shadows so as not to let his friends see what he is and then his being forced to reveal just that, riku and sora on the beach. a great story is impossible without these certain cares, and a middling story can be redeemed by them. for me at least, KH2 is of that latter category--i haven't played it in years and all those things mentioned surface easily.
other random points of criticism w/r/t KH2
the cloning/merging thing for KH2 was actually anticipated in the extra ansem reports (indeed, in the AR-that-was before any of the sequels came out there was plenty of speculation about which of the unknowns would prove to be sora's nobody and while i don't specifically recall i have a feeling someone might've thrown out the idea of kairi's nobody). the others, not so much: xion is a person made out of spare memories, vanitas is a person made out of darkness, sora and ventus combine hearts all voltronlike. all of those are ad hoc nonsense. the examples in KH2 only seem to me excessive looking backwards from 358/2 and BBS, on their own they were okay.
the serious flaws i think are the ansem/xehanort trainwreck, riku turning into ansem, and the computer hallucination.
of them xehanort is the only inexcusable one. he could've been torn out and DiZ could have instead been a mentor and minister to ansem, who would've had the same motives of betray and a sense of failure.
i can see the function of the riku thing as a physical manifestation of his shame and guilt, but it's still pretty wonky. the reveal was funny, not enough redeem the weirdness though. could've been replaced easily enough with the various go-to signs fantasy characterization has for pointing out someone is evil. also riku turning back into riku by virtue of being in the general vicinity of an exploding kingdom hearts laser absorption contraption is simply bizarre. replace with character development.
i'm kinda torn about roxas' twilight town. otoh i like the parallelism with KH and the moment of truth was nicely done, but oto the conceit was played a bit clunkily and punting roxas' service in the organization partially further in the game and partially into another sequel annoys me a bit, even though not much can be revealed about them in the beginning. it would require some tricky writing but i think absorbing 358/2 without xion and with roxas going willingly into KH2 as the intro would be more satisfying. it might be tough to keep the original twilight town cast, who weren't really all that bad, in with that, though. i dunno.
| Chibi_Person wrote: | | For every new character Nomura makes, he also decides to make a variation on an old one. Xehanort has a cloning fetish. Maybe if he's really dead this time we won't have that problem any more. Because aside from the identity issues, Birth By Sleep really does try to go for the old KH1 charm and gameplay. Nomura listened to fan's complaints over KH2, it's just clones seem to have replaced his belts and zippers fetish. |
honestly i'd be down with this if it seemed like he was trying to do something with it. as a stylistic element though it's just frustrating.
but having said that your approval of bss loosens my biases. not enough to get a psp and the game, but if i happen onto a psp at some point maybe.
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Zinddel
Joined: 16 Sep 2006
Posts: 622
Location: Indiana
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| Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 12:23 am Post subject: |
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Ha great synopsis puck... nice yet, vaguely confusing as this all seems to be.
And I have to agree with the cloning fetish. WTF Nomura? I understand the 3 components of beings (heart, body, and soul) and how they could spawn different beings, but then you have to bring in emotion and crap. Stick with the main components and avoid the overwriting. It's slightly reminiscent of Boba Fett in the Star Wars series... Except Nomura is trying it with just about every character he can and it's not executed as seamlessly as it is in Star Wars.
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Chibi_Person
Joined: 12 Mar 2006
Posts: 4294
Location: the keyblade graveyard
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| Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 1:14 pm Post subject: |
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I think the final point BBS tried to make is a reaffirmation that everything is connected, and specifically that Sora is what ties everything together. There were times this was done well, like in the secret ending where all the different characters look into the sky and mutter his name, and times where it wasn't as good, like with the clones.
But like you said, it's mostly a problem out of excess. The idea of a Sora made entirely out of light and a Sora made entirely out of darkness by itself doesn't seem all that bad, I even think Vanitas is pretty cool, especially with how his name foils with Ventus, but when you consider two other games had Sora splitting into two people and then being cloned already, it gets redundant. You could think of Ven and Van as precursors to Roxas and Xion, but only the former really holds up, as the only relation Xion has with Vanitas is her hair color, and the story itself does very little to put them in such a position.
It should be kept in mind I also have a positive bias for the series, I'm very much a fanboy, although I won't deny it has flaws, I'm just able to overlook them.
I imported 358/2 Days when the Japanese copy came out, but I never finished it or purchased the English copy. The gameplay became frustrating and the story didn't prove worth getting through it.
PS, in BBS, the chi-blade should have been left a macguffin; it's ugly as hell and doesn't end up being used for anything. |
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