Kingdom Hearts Primer – Birth by Sleep – Episode 8 – The Worst JRPG Protagonist

Welcome to Greek Mythology… where everything is made up and the points don’t matter.

To give the game some credit, I didn’t notice just how badly the timeline for this world got bungled until after I had beaten the game twice and then did this project with Sam. When I had 8 hours between visits to a given world, it was easy to forget some of the particulars. Having AtRiley cut this in chronological order just puts in into perspective.

It’s also hard to unsee just how different Aqua is treated in this world compared to other worlds. In all the other worlds, being a woman informs her character, but it never becomes a defining trait of who she is and what she’s involved in. Here, Sam’s right in that she just gets treated like the token chick. Even if it’s only for this part of the game, I’m left quite uncomfortable about that. Not only does it perpetrate harmful stereotypes, but the character deserves better than that.

Kingdom Hearts Primer – Birth By Sleep – Episode 1 – The Chosen One

And so the Primer begins anew….

I have a deep seated problem with this game, and Sam hit the nail on the head very early on. This game answers questions that did not need to be answered, and raises new, even more confusing questions as a result.

As we progress through the game, Nomura insists on explaining details that aren’t important, rather than elaborating on the ones that are. This initial reveal of Sora saving Roxas before he was even born is just one of those details. Not only does this ruin Sora’s appeal as The Unchosen Hero, but it comes out of left field. There’s nothing in previous games to even suggest the possibility, and doesn’t really add to the story.

I’ll point out other such details as we go along. This is only the beginning.