Welcome back to Port Royal. We’re barely hanging on.

This is roughly the point where Sam and I start to lose our minds and slowly slip into madness. It’s not quite so visible at this point, and we’re still able to mostly hold a coherent conversation. But we start making a ton of diversions and side conversations, which will become a more common occurrence later on.

In the meantime, enjoy the sanity while it’s still there.

While Kingdom Hearts rolls in the background, Sam and I talk about the JRPGs we have (and haven’t) played.

I want to point out that while Sam seems to have a chronic inability to finish the JRPGs he starts, as of the time of writing, he has completed a single JRPG: Final Fantasy XV, otherwise known as the Beautiful Boy Band Adventure.

Given how long this series has gone on, and Kingdom Hearts status as one of the biggest JRPG franchises out there, it was only a matter of time before an episode like this came out. Sam and I spent a while just talking about the various games we’ve played in the genre, lightly comparing them both to each other and to Kingdom Hearts.

Also, props to Belle for not being another captured princess. Even when held hostage, she still manages to be the only sane person in the room.

And now that we’ve finished with some of the important stuff, we can do nonsense for the next 5-10 episodes.

A recurring problem we’re running into with this series has more to do with the nature of these long RPGs than any inherent flaw with Kingdom Heart’s actual story. Our objective here is to help explain the lore and story behind this franchise. That said, so much of the content, even when focusing purely on the cutscenes, has little, if anything to do with the story.

Most of this “filler” story comes from the Disney worlds. This is an interesting problem, because those Disney worlds are a major draw for many, if not most, of the people who play this franchise. A lot of the reason people come to Kingdom Hearts is to fight alongside characters from classic Disney films.

But for us, who are only interested in the overall plot, most of this is just a waste of our time. It’s almost shocking that, if you remove most of the Disney-related worlds from any given Kingdom Hearts game, and focus on the original story, without losing much. Some details are lost, but the series as a whole will still make sense.

If anything, I would want to have the main story thread woven into the Disney world storylines with much more grace than this. Considering worlds like Beast’s Castle can do that, it doesn’t seem like too much of an ask.

Then again, I wasn’t on the team for this project, so what would I know.

It’s so refreshing to have cool, interesting conversations about the story.

The scenes in the first seven minutes of this episode are all Final Mix exclusive, and that’s honestly a large problem. In those seven minutes, so many of the reveals from future games are foreshadowed that the people who only played the original release don’t have the foundation that they should. Unless you’re like me, and read the wiki, the only way you’d have this content is to:

  • Look it up in the wiki
  • Import the Final Mix version from Japan
  • Wait several years for the ReMix to be releases, that you’d have no way of knowing about at the time Kingdom Hearts 2 came out
And up until recently, this was one of the biggest problems with the Kingdom Hearts series. In order to have the complete story, it was required to have the following systems so that you could play every game in the Kingdom Hearts series:
  • PlayStation 2
  • Game Boy Advance (any variant)
  • Nintendo DS (and later 3DS)
  • PlayStation Portable (PSP Go and Vita wouldn’t work due to copyright protection)
  • Mobile Phone
This all changed recently with the ReMixes. While this was a problem for a long time (and part of why Kingdom Hearts was so hard to get into), now all one needs is a PS3 and a PS4 to have access to every game. Soon, with 1.5 + 2.5, the PS3 won’t even be necessary, and the PS4 will be the one-stop shop for Kingdom Hearts.
Square Enix has had this problem for a long time, and finally they’ve solved it. Still, disregarding the financial commitment of getting all the systems and games, there is still the issue of having to play all of the games. As you can see, even with a ton of the gameplay edited out, going through all of these stories is still quite time-consuming.
It’s a messy complicated problem Square Enix dug themselves into. While I appreciate the attempt to solve it, it’s still a problem.

It’s story time, ladies and gentlemen.

It’s weird to think of how Kingdom Hearts 2 is a product of it’s time. I’m not talking about mechanics or how dark its story is (although that’s certainly true). I’m talking about how it references other media that, in hindsight, are clearly only to drum up or capitalize on hype for other projects.

We touched on that topic earlier in Port Royal. In hindsight, it’s obvious that the only reason Port Royal is even in Kingdom Hearts 2 is that Pirates of the Caribbean was taking off in a big way at the time it was being developed. This is silly, but something that one can easily look past, and is no more offensive than any other Disney-world story.

On the other hand, the references to Advent Children are some of the worst offenders in the game. It’s not just that the game is detouring to make a thinly-veiled hype piece for the movie. That could be hilarious, but otherwise inoffensive in its own way. The real problem is that the way the jury-rig the pieces together makes almost no sense. It comes off as awkward, especially when those extremely edgy looking outfits are juxtaposed to “Happy Disney Funtimes”.

Sam and I stop playing games to talk about not playing games.

I appreciate Sam’s help in reminding all of us who Christopher Lee is and why you should be worshiping him.

Aside from that, it’s nice to have a Disney movie tie into the main thread in a way that makes sense without feeling too much like filler.

Today, we start to get into some of the more confusing aspects of Kingdom Hearts.

I love the way they leverage the fact that Tron exists in a computer system in order to write the scenario. The way they smartly link it back into the main scenario through the protagonist’s quest for answers was a nice way to keep the plot moving forward.

I was also very impressed at Sam’s ability work through his confusion and figure out the Ansem/Xehanort connection without my help. It shows that he’s been paying attention as we prime.

Finally, we’re back to talking about story content.

It’s actually pretty amazing that, after the original Kingdom Hearts, Kairi has a huge problem with almost completely ceasing to be relevant to the plot. Even though she spent most of the first game in a state of limbo, she still does contribute to the story in some ways.

In Kingdom Hearts 2, her only real contribution is being kidnapped, and then not being kidnapped anymore while Sora goes off and actually deals with the real plot. It gets worse from here on. At some point, you’d be hard-pressed to remember who Kairi is. I wish that they’d make more use of her. As it stands, she only serves as motivation for the real heroes, without taking any actions of her own.

Also, points to Sam for correctly figuring out the Xehanort/Ansem family tree on his first try.
Page 91 of 134...88899091929394...