I think the "Sora deserving the rank of master" take really gets to the heart of the problem: The rank of master is meaningless. Its an arbitrary label applied to character in order to given them a false sense of grandeur. I love Aqua and Riku, but I respect their abilities as characters because of what I've seen them do in gameplay and story, not because they are "Keyblade masters". What makes a keyblade master is so inconsistent that I don't think its worth serious discussion. The take in the video was well written and thought out, more thought was put into the take than the actual implementation in the game. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
Honestly, I'd say that's why Sora doesn't really care about the title. It's essentially meaningless. Maybe Sora didn't get the title officially, but he's still saved the people he cares about and the universe on three occasions. I mean, Aqua got her title from smacking Eraqus' balls and doing some mild sparring with Terra, while Riku had to beat up three different Xehanorts. The inconsistency of the test renders the title without proper weight.
Yeah it'd be cool if the mark of mastery actually meant anything beyond it being the result of some test. I agree with Pat here that the test is not the same between characters and that Terra and Aqua had been getting training from childhood and so their "mark of mastery exam" was more of an end to a years long process, hence why Ventus wasn't getting the test since he wasn't there as long, while Sora and Riku were given this brutal test because of how little time they had to complete it. To me, the bigger thing with the hot take is that, what the fuck does "deserve" even mean in this case? Yen Sid said he didn't deserve it, so to say that Sora does would be to say that either Yen Sid was wrong or that Nomura wasn't writing his story fairly, which are both huge cans of worms. It's also important to note that being a master doesn't give you power, being a master describes that you do, so we'd have to talk more about why Sora doesn't have the power to be a master while Riku does moreso than whether or not he deserves it.
Actually it DOES matter in some cases. Example: Aqua is basically in charge of the Land of Departure and is the current owner of Master Defender, the keyblade passed down from Ephemer, down the line to Eraqus and now her.
@@neronecrosade but is it being a keyblade master or is it just the eraqus keyblade that changes the land of departure to castle oblivion. Sora is not a 'master' but he can use that keyblade to open the door to go into the dark world. Who's to say Sora can't do what Aqua did maybe all u need is the right keyblade. Plus don't the keyblades have a bit of sentience that's why aqua got eraqus keyblade in the first place
My hot take is that the "Nami is manipulative" take is giving "I think kids crying is manipulative". Namine is a lonely little girl trapped in a white void with people who could easily kill her if she stops being useful, who uses her powers to insert herself into sora's memories in part as a desperate attempt at making a connection with someone who has the capacity to care about her.
@@gulfcoastgaming6034 not just her entire life, but i think it makes sense that when Namine was born, she had the same suffering as Roxas, having no memories to build on. So a whole life of gaslit, is LITERALLY a whole life with gaslit without anything to contradict it.
The idea that Sora not moving past "my friends are my power" is a bad thing is kinda silly when you consider every antagonist in the series, as well as all the falls to darkness from protag, it based on a drive for more personal strength and freedom. Even in 3D the organization couldn't tempt our boy with darkness and power, only weigh him down with crushing despair over what happend to people close to him. Meanwhile Yen Sid, Michael, Eraqus, and even Riku and Axel view mastery of the keyblade and a vaguely defined strength of heart as the means to combat darkness. But at the end of the day it wasn't personal strength or any keyblade nonsense that took out Xehanort, it was a boy and his dog and duck friend just holding out to the very end. "My friends are my power and I'm nothing without them" isn't a sign of Sora's immaturity or weakness but rather an affirmation of the idea that you combat selfish egoism with selfless comraderie.
I think that Sora still being youthful and not aged artificially by the harshness of the world is why I think that Sora really doesn’t need to be tied down by the responsibility of being a Master. Riku always seemed to be in a hurry to grow up, while Sora just enjoyed his time as a kid, and continues to, while Riku, Aqua, and Mickey have been stained permanently by their experiences in the world as adults.
I dunno, I do think that Sora feels a dependency on it, especially after DDD. He seems very confident in kh2 in his abilities and doesn't even think he needs the test, but DDD was a reality check. He spends all of kh3 feeling weaker in general, and also to his peers, culminating on the mental breakdown at the keyblade graveyard. I feel like saying Sora should be stronger alone is missing the point, what kh3 does is much better. Sora gets his shit together after the final world because he truly believes that Riku believes in him, if his friend thinks he's capable, it would be better to trust his judgement no? I think Sora's development is never really focused on, giving him the appearance of being flat but I think the kids got some stuff going on and he doesn't need to grow like other characters for him to flourish.
Sora literally gives up in every single game because he thinks his friends aren't supporting him enough. It isn't silly in the slightest. It's his single biggest character flaw that almost ends the world multiple times.
Man so nice to see somebody type out a good explanation for why Terra isn’t dumb. It’s so exhausting hearing it from people but I just don’t have to energy to explain it to people lol.
You could also argue, by the logic of that comment, that the camera slowly expanding in all the games means that Sora is gaining more experience in combat, better able to get a sort of sixth sense of dangers around and behind him. Also let’s just be honest, with the much more frantic pace of 2 and 3, if you limited the camera again, you would absolutely despise it purely from a gameplay point
@@Flexpdx in theory, yeah. But most fights would be absolute hell. (You’re gonna have to stick with me for a bit, because I’m terrible at remembering the names of the Heartless) Like, think about trying to fight Sköll, that Heartless Mother Gothel gets turned into, the Master of Toys (?) with all the buildings flying everywhere, the dinosaur heartless in Sanfransokyo, Dark Baymax, the Cubes, any humanoid boss, any gank fights or any late-/end-/post-game fight with that kinda camera. Imagine trying to fight Organization 13 (the Data fights, the ones in the Keyblade Graveyard and the Replicas), Ansem, Xemnas, the Xehanorts, Vanitas, Repliku, Dark Aqua, the Demon Tide/Wave, Yozora and so many more while Sora‘s spiky hair fills up 1/3 of the screen. That honestly sounds like hell. But on the flip-side, the sequence where Mickey basically recreates the MGS4 Microwave Hallway scene would look real sick
The only real defense for the Drop Gauge is it's context within the story of the game. When we learn that Riku has been acting as a Dream Eater protecting Sora's dreams, that tells us that Sora drops when he falls asleep, and Riku drops when Sora is waking up and the dream is ending. It's also clear from how the story is written that the devs needed us to play as Sora and Riku at roughly the same time. The story wouldn't work from being split up like in CoM, and the DG was probably the best thing they came up with for that.
I also never found the drop gauge to be a difficulty. I would always manually drop at the end of a world and play through as the opposite character right after I finished, and I don't think I had a forced drop even a single time throughout the game.
KH2 was my first KH game, and Roxas is my favorite character because of that opening. I was wrapped up in the mystery of how Roxas could still be alive, could come back, etc as a teen.
Exactly. The only reason the Terra take kinda makes sense is because the rest of the characters in the series set a really low bar for intelligence, be it actual logical intelligence or emotional intelligence
@@kitkat7074 in this context, the definitions of losing and failing are different. Losing and failing the master are not mutually exclusive. You can only lose a competition, but you can fail to meet someone's expectations even if you don't lose
Terra really is the exact example of the classic archetype of the tragic hero. A hero who despite doing almost everything that makes sense given his circumstances, possesses a fatal flaw or makes an error in judgment that means he is ultimately doomed to a specific tragedy, that only we the viewer know is going to occur.
😮 I had my "it's an honor just to be nominated" comment all typed but now I get to replace it with "I'd like to thank the Academy" 😭 I thought it would lose because my camera take is so abstract and unglamorous. I'm currently struggling/imposter syndrome-ing my way through my last few months of writing my Masters thesis (in English & Film Studies), so the fact that anyone finds my writing remotely compelling or persuasive is a huge confidence boost for me. Thanks Pat and Kiwi.
No wonder it was written so beautifully and so effectively got to the heart of an issue that I didn't even realize existed. English and Film & Media Studies is literally the perfect combination for a such a precise assassination of the series' ineffective cinematography after KH1 due to camera changes.
Good luck on your education! I agree with Pat and his pal, it articulated something about the intimacy of kh1 that I hadn’t been able to put my finger on for… well nearly a decade or two…
It was an honor to have my take (KH2 Atlantica) share the battlegrounds with hamburgersplash's (KH1 Camera). When I heard that camera take I immediately knew it was going to be a finalist, it's just very good. Well done hamburgersplash.
Another benefit of the KH1 camera being zoomed is it makes the player notice the surroundings much more and be appreciative of them, especially in the case of KH1 where every room is so packed and compact. It just feels "intimate".
2:09:30 What's funny is that Nomura had revealed in an interview that he didn't wanted to bring Back Roxas and Xion to KH3, but he decided to eventually bring them back knowing that was something that Fans wanted.
It's amazing how Nomura can just so casually lie about things like that... He was putting in scenes and ideas of all the lost characters coming back for *three* games prior to KH3, but he somehow wants us to believe that he actually didn't want to do that for KH3? Uh huh...
Here’s my take: “The Lock-On feature is the best part of the KH series. I’ve been playing many RPGs over the years as my sight gradually declines. But the main reason I’ve managed to keep playing KH, even to a lesser degree compared to 15 years ago, is because the Lock-On lets me know just where the closest enemy is regardless if the game automatically moves the character in that general direction when attacking. I just find Locking-On very useful for visually impaired players and hope to feature stays when KHIV comes out.”
Good take, only problem with your take, it's not really a hot take. Anytime I see an action game with no lock on, the biggest complaint brought up is "wheres the lock-on"
About the Saïx thing, I feel like people wouldn’t care about the kh2 aspect if the Days movie kept his boss fight in. He got to be the main antagonist in 358 and has a similar role to Marluxia.
Personally disagree. When I first played KH2, while Saix wasn't amazing to me, all my interest in what Sora was fighting for left after Saix was finally beaten. And this was before Days ever came out.
As far as the Larxene take, if we're going to go off the fact she's the best character because the other female characters live to assist their male counter part ( which i'd says she's the most entertaining villian because she's the "bad, for the fun of it" archetype) you'd have to then admit the reality that Elrena's dynamic with Lauriam exists, the same dynamic is seen in CoM as they were working as a duo to betray the organization, and even by her own admission in kh3 she's only along for the ride and when sora asks with who. She says "My secret".
also the the orginal critism that females need their man comes from romantic movies where woman lives are often depicted as being incomplete without a man (to be fair, both genders are often time depicted like this, it just the nature of entertainment as a whole that there needs to be a problem to overcome and in romance movies, the problem needs to tie to the end goal). kh has never been like that, because romance has never been the main theme. a lot of the females characters are written fine enough. Most of their motives are known, and we can understand why they do what they do. the female character who is poorly written, would be Ollet, and only because her role isn't meant to be all that large.
@@harishramachandra1746 I think that's exactly what Zero means. She's the least well written by default because she's the one we know the least about. She's not bad, she's just there.
She's the best by default because she has an actual personality other than "nice girl." Kairi in KH1 had a similar personality to Larxene, and that's the best game Kairi's been in. Namine's story is tragic but it's fundamentally just "She's nice but is forced to be mean to Sora and Riku, how sad." And then she just gets unceremoniously schlorped into the Kairi stew to keep existing as a nothing character. Hell, KH3 basically forgets Namine exists until ReMind. I can't make a judgement on Xion because I haven't played Days, but from what I've seen she just feels like "Kairi but emo" and her friendship with Roxas is nice and, like with Namine, tragic, but everyone literally forgets she exists and it has no impact on the plot, which kind of just goes to show how pointless she was.
i also don't get the "female character revolves around a male in their life". almost every character in kingdom heart's motivations and actions revolve around their friends. sora's main motivation in both kh1 and 2 is to find his friends. so i don't see this as something that onlyh happens to female characters
I suppose it's a hot take in comparison to where the opinions of the hosts ended up, but I think the setting of KH as a whole is at its best when the balance of OC, FF, and Disney is fairly evened out. The best KH experiences for me were always Traverse Town, the many sequences in Hollow Bastion in KH1 and 2, and Twilight Town. There's a lot of examples: talking to Cloud and immediately after having a conversation with Scrooge McDuck; shops that are manned by moogles and Donald's three nephews; the fact that the FF7/8 crew hangs out with old-Disney Merlin and respect him as the best wizard in HB; having practice sword fights with multiple FF characters like Seifer and Vivi only to dive head-first into Roxas' unique and mysterious story purpose-built for KH; defending Hollow Bastion from an army of demons alongside Cloud, Squall, Tifa, Donald, Goofy, and Mickey. There's a lot of unique appeal to when KH is truly firing on all cylinders in a way that only it truly can. I mostly think it's a damn shame that that feeling is intensely condensed to the first two numbered titles. I wish it were more present in other stuff like BBS. Zack Fair was a lovely little hint of it. You even pointed out that the Auron-in-Hades segment was pretty peak, and I'm inclined to agree. It wasn't an OC world meant to let characters blend together, but it gave Auron a big spotlight in a Disney setting and that kicked a lot of ass.
In regards to the Roxas, Namine, and Xion point: even if they don't grow or develop any further, there IS something they can do in the narrative: in KH4 we have "mission: find Sora," which, if EVERYONE is prioritizing, would leave worlds unguarded. Giving the former nobodies a place as a team of heartless exterminators. This also extends to the Wayfinders
My issue with Terra is less that he's dumb and more that his story is annoyingly static. He does literally nothing wrong, has everyone yell at him that he's doing wrong, refuses to partake when tempted with the wrong thing, but then suddenly he's Darkness, Destroyer of Worlds out of nowhere at the end of the game when the only thing he'd done up to that point was shoot Braig and fight Eraqus, both in self-defense and defense of others. So the story is less that Terra is dumb or Terra falls because of bad choices, but more than Terra becomes evil because KH1 is a foregone conclusion and this guy looks suspiciously like KH2 Xehanort. Meanwhile, other characters arguably make bigger mistakes. Just look at Eraqus going "Oh no, I can't believe Xehanort is still evil after he shot me in the face with the power of darkness and said he intended to start the apocalypse. Maybe I shouldn't have sent the student of mine struggling the most with darkness to see where he is." Or even Aqua and Ven, for that matter. Why doesn't anyone ever get on Ven for never telling anyone about Vanitas being on the Land of Departure or the things he said would happen to Terra? Why doesn't anyone ever put Aqua to task for accusing Terra about how she's seen all of the things he's done in other worlds when she left Castle of Dreams with a good opinion of him, never saw any indication he did anything bad in Dwarf Woodlands, and only heard hearsay from the evil witch trying to manipulate her in Enchanted Dominion?
I like how you just reminded me of a hot take I had about Eraqus and how he didn't even bother to console Terra. HIS LITERAL BLOOD CHILD. struggling with the darkness and didn't think to address more concern with that. The worst problem is, Xehanort, for how evil he is, was technically right,too. You can't just force down darkness once you have it. You have to weild it properly like you have to weild light. Also aqua should have been put to task for the fact that Fairy god mother said that darkness can only really defeat darkness yet shoves the idea of light and Terra being in the wrong for something he literally cannot control. Not trying to help him resolve issues or ask. Just blaming and gaslighting him like Eraqus.
@@xenrusxenomorph2268 At the end of the day, Eraqus is a terrible teacher. You can see how Aqua perfectly inherits his bloodthirsty mentality and only gradually gets over it with time. But Kingdom Hearts III kinda glosses over Eraqus' mistakes and instead is just like "No, man, he was totally this wise chessmaster that puppeteered everything that counterbalanced Xehanort".
@@TheAzulmagia which is funny because of how it implies that his ghost dust was there the whole time in Terra.. like stayed silent while he was going through mental anguish. Kinda ruins everything that BBS set up though him.
the idea that it's "less mature" for the Nobodies to become independent people, when in fact the whole arc set up with Nobodies throughout COM, KH2, Days, DDD and KH3 examines a theme of personhood, is absurd to me. there are plenty of real people who are dehumanized in the exact same way Nobodies are in the series, and if the series came down to say "actually yes, you *are* less than other people, and your only true happiness is sacrifice in the service of another even though you clearly have an individual personality, thoughts, dreams and emotions" would actually be the immature take (not to mention it has kind of garbage politics attached to that conclusion). Sometimes death isn't more mature lmao. Even in KH2 it's clear that ATW is wrong about the Nobodies
To be honest though, out of the Nobodies we've seen, most of them pretty much retained their original personality, only Roxas really showed that he deviated from Sora, and I mostly assume that's just because Sora "died" in an unconventional way. I still do feel like the game is a bit weird with the needing to die to regain a heart, especially since it pretty clearly showed that Nobodies developed their own hearts. But on that, I don't think that before, during and after Nobody the person would be three different people, instead I feel that they're all the same person just at different points.
"Sometimes death isn't more mature" is a good way of summing it up. Darker elements don't automatically elevate a children's story, especially when it would completely undermine part of the point of that story, and i dont know why people always try to make children's media darker than they already are. Kids' stuff doesn't always have to be sunshine and rainbows but it doesn't have to be needlessly dark if it doesn't fit the world, themes or storyline, either.
@@bigboi8028 I think there's another example of a nobody being significantly different enough from their somebody to be considered a new person, that being, oddly enough, Vexen vs. Even. Not just with how he is in CoM vs. BBS, you can even see it within the same game, kh3, where he completely changes his personality depending on who he's talking to (i.e when he has to act like Vexen talking to people like Luxord vs. When he doesn't have to act, like when talking to Demyx). Vexen acts notably more 'deranged' (for lack of a better term) with his strange facial expressions, his perpetually annoyed/passive-aggressive tone of voice, erratic body language, and short temper. As Even, he's notably more soft-spoken, his body language is more reserved, his facial expressions are softer, and he's relatively kinder (as far as we've seen). It's nothing super dramatic but it's pretty clear there's a difference between the two. I think the issue is most of the other nobodies either don't have enough screentime to demonstrate the differences between their versions, or don't have enough personality to know if there is a difference. The outlier here is Axel and Lea, who get plenty of separate screentime, but I don't think they behave all that differently (besides, like, not being evil. Imo Lea is basically just Axel but nicer), which I'll attribute to a) the writers not wanting to change Lea's personality too much as to not diminish his appeal and b) his change being more gradual due to character development making the difference less stark. Vexen is just a unique case where he has a lot of personality to where it's noticeable when he's behaving differently, a decent amount of screentime as both a nobody and somebody, and his story in kh3 requires him to switch between those personas from scene to scene. It's not exactly game-changing but I think it serves as decent evidence that Roxas isn't the only nobody who's not exactly the same person as their somebody, which I choose to believe has been the implication from the beginning. I just wish it was demonstrated with more than two characters.
And I think the fucked up thing is that Roxas and Naminé aren’t “dead” in 2, they’re still alive and conscious so having them be in Sora and Kairi might put a bad taste in people’s mouths if they interpreted as “dehumanization is ok because it’s a lesser being”
I think as far as Larxene being quite one-note, there is that weird part of CoM, where she feels VERY attached to Axel. Like Marluxia and Axel are the only people she is never hostile to, but she actively acts like she and Axel are closer than they are. Like idk if she had feelings for him or something but that is a very interesting dynamic that never gets brought up again.
Now that I am actually seeing my takes on there, I am suddenly feeling self-conscious over my writing, and my unpopular opinions 😆Perhaps this is a tiny window into what youtubers feel like starting out
about the "Sora does not deserve 2.B.A Master" take: I think the end of KH3 signified that growth in him. After Kairi gives him another fighting change, instead of relying on his friends to be his power, he is the one who single-handedly saves each and every one of them. He realizes his mistake of breaking down at the sight of losing his friends and becomes determined to save them no matter what. I think this is the moment he begins to deserve it. The moment in which he stops taking things for granted.
12:29 Oh, my take made it! 8th seed, out in the first round, but I'll just happy to be included. You were totally right to have Terra's not stupid as the hotter take. I usually get lost in the symbolism in the series before I even consider the characters.
I thought your take was very interesting! It was unfortunately doomed from the start going against such a goliath like Terra not being dumb, but I think it definitely could have gone farther if it had some better luck in its match ups!
Twas an excellent take. Personally, I've always believed it, and it's the only reason KH3 Xehanort's plan makes sense. The dude wanted to bring balance to the force. I can respect it.
In regards to "Saix is the Main Villain of KH2," The structure of Xemnas and Saix fall into a specific trope of villain structures. I forget the actual name, but the way I heard it is something along the lines of "The Emperor and the General." Basically, the General is meant to be the foil-villain for the hero to have that emotional, personal struggle and beef with, and the Emperor is the larger shadow looming behind them, whose mere presence above the General helps to elevate their threat level, and make it so that just beating/killing/whatever the General isn't all that needs to be done. GotVodka mentioned Ozai and Azula from AtLA, but there are other examples, like Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine from OT Star Wars, or in a different direction, the Black Knight and King Ashnard from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. In Star Wars, the big threat to the galaxy is Palpatine, but Luke has the more personal motivation coming from Vader, who killed his mentor Obi-Wan right in front of him, and Ike has a similar case of being far more focused on revenge on the Black Knight that made sure Ike was a true FE protagonist by killing his dad, than he does to King Ashnard, someone he's really only heard of in vague terms at best, but knows that the Black Knight serves Ashnard out of respect for his strength. What I'm saying is that the Saix is the main villain take isn't a hot or cold take, because it's not even a take. It's an observation of a normal story trope that's been used plenty of times. The "lesser" villain has the connection to the protagonist, and acts as a bridge to connect their personal quest into stopping the main villain, because the big evil emperor has better things to focus on than crushing/psychologically mess with every bit of resistance personally. It's normal story structure, and good writing.
Regarding the FF character take, my opinion is that we don't need the Radiant Garden crew **specifically** in KH3, but I feel that a small part of KH's identity is lost without that small bit of Final Fantasy involvement. What I hope happens in the future is we start getting a wider variety of FF characters, maybe even in Disney worlds that **aren't** Olympus. Pull characters from the older and newer games, like Lightning or Luneth, and blend them into their Disney worlds like they did with Zack Fair in BBS. Or let them exist as groups in original worlds that are independent of the Radian Garden and Twilight Town FF characters that still affect the plot and characters. The point is, while they aren't a necessity or as major a component as the Dusney stuff, Final Fantasy elements in general are still an important aspect of the franchise that I'd hate to see put on the wayside.
I'm an outside KH fan, in that I've never actually gotten around to playing the games, but I love watching/listening to videos about them. I'm also not a FF fan, I've watched a friend play a few ages ago but nothing else otherwise. So from my perspective, yeah, I fully agree. Nomura's new take that there can't be ANY FF because he'd rather focus on the KH original stuff makes sense for the main plot stuff sure, but falls flat when factoring in possible minor cameos. For example one simple and easy case I can think of is that Quina and Freya from FF9 should have been featured in the Ratatouille mini game cutscenes in KH3. Quina is food themed and Freya is a humanoid rat, both would be perfect FF characters to give a cameo to in that situation. It simply feels like they are going out of their way to not even try to come up with creative uses of FF characters.
It's very simple to describe what KH loses without FF cameos, to me at least. I watch a lot of playthroughs for reactions to the game, and nothing beats the reactions to reveals like Cloud or Sephiroth or Auron or Tifa or Neku. It's that extra burst of hype that people get meeting and doing things with characters you know. And lets face it....while a lot of us have nostalgic Disney memories, if you know FF games then it's still way more hype to team up with Auron than it is teaming up with Hercules. Games are about these memorable fun moments. And even better when you can turn these one-off moments into a more significant investment, which is what you get when you make these cameos play a longer part in the story. No, the FF characters aren't "needed". But hell, a lot of Disney or even original characters aren't even "needed". One potential Disney world is always replaceable with another, it's a grab bag of what we get, and what worlds they choose is often based on hype level and the capabilities of the devs. Captain Jack Sparrow isn't "needed" over Jack Skellington. Hayner isn't really "needed" over Neku or vice versa. The story at most needs the main original characters that appear at the very end in the main conflict. That doesn't mean the unnecessary characters don't have significance to the games as a whole.
16:12 - To some degree, yes it is indeed possible they were tracking mickey. They were tracking Riku in days for taking Xion, literally sending Roxas out to kill him, I believe it is possible they were also tracking Mickey for the same reason. This is in-addition to the fact that he just sent Sora to someone who told him to kill the rest of the organization. Also that month time period between kh2 and DDD was filled with Re:Coded.
okay but is that really an excuse? mickey could have just not bothered with some dumb shit in jiminy's dumb book, and none of the events in re:coded would have happened nor would it have mattered since it wouldn't have opened up the backdoor entrance or whatever. it literally would have made more sense for mickey to have just been dead asleep relaxing the whole time having totally forgotten about Aqua than being on a fucking computer god i hate re:coded
I think on the writing of the franchise, KH2 had great writing for dialog post-prologue, particularly in Sora's sassiness and interactions with Donald, Goofy, and Riku. The writing of Saïx in those "main villain" scenes you focused on for that take was great and sinister. DiZ and Mickey's dialog was also really good if you can look past Mickey's surrealistic presence.
There were good moments of writing scattered throughout the series, and now that you bring it up, I think Saix passes that villain description test where others would fail.
Wow, BOTH my takes made it in, I'm surprised! Still, thanks for including them dude! I finished DDD RIGHT before making these takes so I can see where I was coming from with them. While I still think the drop gauge is really good (I personally never had a problem with it) I absolutely see your point about me being able to work AROUND the game mechanic instead of it being actually well-designed. I'm glad I was able to convince you on the dives, though.
The thing about the drop meter is that it’s so pointless. There’s zero reason to not delay dropping as long as possible since you’ll accumulate the most droplets for the next guy. So all it ends up amounting to is putting a drop-me-not in your deck for second then taking it out. It’s litterally just a medication you have to take every 20 minutes in game
I agree that the Drop gauge is a good idea in principle. Especially when there's a way to work around it if you don't like it. It's just that 99% of the fan base don't like it. Just as well, a lot of folks love to overblow and rant about what they don't like in video games. 😆 My only gripe with the Drop gauge is the restting bosses thing. However, programming it in a way that would be able to perfectly recreate your state in the battle would be a bit much. Plus, it'd be kinda silly for you and the boss to be fighting, but then the boss stops mid attack to wait for you to finish your beauty nap. 🤣
I think the drop meter is a neat concept. I think that the intention there is for you to proceed through both stories at roughly the same pace to give the feeling that Sora and Riku are running two parallel journeys and so that you reach the conclusion at the end at pretty much the same time, and turning that into a gameplay mechanic instead of just forcing a perspective change at set points in the story is a legitimately interesting idea. I can't even say I remember personally ever having a problem with that mechanic but I do understand other people's problems with it, and I think it would have been a simple fix to make it not trigger until after a boss fight if you ran out of time during it. It's definitely not high on my list of things that are wrong with DDD though.
Been binging your entire channel and I love it. Kingdom Hearts 2 is my favorite game so it's so good that I can watch you come up with so many problems with the game that I completely agree with, but don't change my opinion on the game at all. But your videos encouraged a replay of kh1 for the first time in 15 years and made me appreciate it so much more. Appreciate you man!
The KH 2 magic bar is one of smartest decision made for kh 2. It makes you consider whether healing is worth giving up your magic options and cure gives you an out for one mistake but forces you to learn why you got hit and adept to since if you make the same mistake again without having mp you didn't learn from your mistake the first time.
Alternatively, with the robust dodging mechanics. If you are struggling, it now means that you are now spending 30 seconds to a minute of just dodging waiting for your MP bar to recharge. Your only consequence is a timer within the attempt, that often just makes the fights last longer, and not dying and having to start over. Maybe that's better, to have like a soft checkpoint within an attempt that just requires some time to maintain, rather than having to restart? I don't know. To me it just seems to artificially lengthen hectic battles. While KH1's magic, would basically give you x mistakes forgiven, and then you have to actually fight to earn more forgiven mistakes. It also wasn't a party heal, so you had to choose if you wanted some more support from an ally that was downed, or if you wanted to give yourself full health. In both cases both systems have their ups and down. But in the end it boils down to , how do you want your mistakes forgiven? By forcing the player to go into the danger zone and continue the fight, or by stepping back from the situation and dodging and observing until the bar comes back? It sounds like you prefer the latter. It is all down the preference I guess.
Awhile 2 has a much more punishing system when it comes to magic, it also has different ways to be able to manage like using drive forms or using different summons that can restore some of your MP.
i think overrall kh1's system works pretty well for hte most part, but it starts to fall apart once you start getting other abilities. mp haste is fine, but mp rage will pretty much always let you do a cure if you get hit, so as long as you won't get oneshot you can always heal after getting hit with this ability. combine this with second chance and leaf bracer and you're pretty much unkillable. i think kh1fm would've been a bit better leaving leaf bracer out because it is way to op with kh1's magic system, and makes a lot more sense with kh2/3's system@@tiggy4591
@@tiggy4591something I like about 2's MP recharge is that dodging isn't always the safest option. I tend to keep being aggressive while the bar is recharging because me attacking means the enemy isn't attacking me.
Oh wow, my take is in there! Yeah, I was definitely looking at KH1 Maleficent exclusively. Looking at everything else she has done (or didn't do I should say) would knock her way below Xehanort overall. But I still stand by the fact that she would have won easily if Ansem hadn't gotten in her way in KH1. Loved participating in this! Not sure how you'd do something like this again (tournament with viewers submitting entries) but I'd do it again in a second.
It definitely makes sense. I think I remember hearing somewhere that Maleficent was originally the main villain and that Ansem Seeker of Darkness was added as an afterthought.
"FF not needed in KH3" only really deals with Leon's gang and not the other FF characters. Despite being childhood friends of SRK, Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie have just been completely forgotten. Seifer and his gang are also randomly absent in Twilight Town. The inclusion of Leon and the gang may not have been needed for KH3 due to their story being done, but that same argument goes for Roxas and Xion as well as most of the Organization XIII characters that have been randomly pulled back for this game despite having more satisfying endings in previous games.
Id say my main take is that the ones we've had arent needed. If they wanted to bring back Tidus and Wakka thats cool. The Seifer gang would've been cool to see but theyre not exactly plot relevant. Whereas characters like Xion and Roxas are plot relevant and their story wasn't done. As apparent in needing more keyblade wielders, they were only after roxas, and Sora vehemently telling Roxas that he's his own person in DDD
Outside of arguably Roxas and Xion, there were no "Organization XIII characters that had more satisfying endings in previous games". Every character who was an Org member between the old and new one, got an infinitely more satisfying end in KH3 than they did in whatever game they first 'died' in. Also, I guess this depends on how you define "need", but there were good reasons to have them to be there. We have scenes in BBS, Coded, and DDD that all hint towards the idea of bringing the characters who are lost back, which includes Roxas and Xion. Building up three games worth of set-up and not paying it off would be... pretty terrible, honestly. And from a meta-perspective, the point of the "Real" Organization XIII was basically to have them be a giant tribute to the entire series up to now. A collection of iconic characters (and also Luxord) from across the series. It's why there's at least one boss from every past game in there. It's a celebration of the Dark Seekers Saga, having all these characters who meant so much to it (and also Luxord) be there for the end of it.
"FF not needed " well that depends what final fantasy aspect we are talking about. Like most spells are directly from FF as well as gumi ship parts. Not to mention the whole vibe of the story.
This was a really fun and entertaining video; I especially appreciated the way Pat snuck that "He did it. He opened Kingdom Hearts." reference in at 2:34:22. For some reason that's become one of my favorite running jokes from this channel, ngl.
1:07:32 That's only true of BBS. You absolutely can walk into any battle with 2 Formchanges loaded and ready to go in 3 and then switch between them whenever you want to. Formchanges are so much easier to access than Drive Forms.
I think there may be something to Namine being manipulative in kh2. If only because manipulating others is basically all she's done since she first started existing. So purposely or not thats what she defaults to when presented with needing Sora back while Roxas is around.
That take was weird cause I couldn't tell if the person was trying to say she was malicious with her manipulating or not. If the argument is just "she manipulates" then yes you are correct, but it partly sounded like they were trying to say "manipulative and evil" which I don't believe is.
I feel like her manipulation is due to her being manipulated by the Organization and then working with Ansem the Wise. Both parties used her for her power over Memories. I believe she didn’t have a chance to develop to be her own person until she met Sora and Riku in CoM and then Kairi in KH2.
Pleasantly surprised my Terra is not dumb take was a number one seed (I forgot to put my username on it before I submitted it). It's something that I'm oddly very passionate about to the point that I can feel my blood pressure rise whenever people try to dunk on him but they can't because he's just too tall. ( okay, okay that was a bad joke. I'll see myself out LOL)
If it helps. Me as someone who never delved super far into the kh community much prior to recently. As a younger human playing through bbs on my psp 1000 or whatever. Liked Terra quite a bit. Albeit aqua is my favorite of the 3, only bcuz of the fact I'm gay. And she's hot. Lmao. So until recently I wouldn't have even seen how it was a hot take. In short. I Def agree with your take pretty fully
Your take shouldn't even be a hot take man, it should be a fact. Terra was arguably the smartest from the bunch of the main cast excluding Xehanort himself ofc. It's more of that the fanbase believes it because of the characters constantly bashing and shaming Terra for learning to manipulate and control darkness and believing everything any villain says about him without any consideration, but then Terras actions and decisions completely contradict and debunk the belief that he's dumb
A very based take. Not only was all of what you said true, but people berate him for believing Xehanort even tho *everyone* trusted Xehanort. Ven, Aqua, Eraqus, all of them fell for it. Not only that, but while it is obvious that he is manipulating Terra to us, people need to pay attention to what the old man was saying. He never told Terra anything that was a lie. The Unversed and Vanitas had to be stopped, Ven had to be saved, Darkness can only be channeled not destroyed so he should embrace it and use it just as he uses light, Eraqus was blinded by light, there needs to be a balance, yadda yadda. Yeah, we know he's just trying to manipulate him but people wipe all of what he said under the rug because "he's just so evil, look at him!" (which, should we judge people on appearences?) while failing to realize he's just speaking facts and that Terra had zero reason to be suspicious of him.
The only thing I have to say about that "Larxene is the Best Written Female" was when gotvodka said "Larxene does this because she's just an evil bitch" which is really not true due to what we now know from Union X where Larxene's Somebody was in the Dandelion group alongside Marluxia's Somebody. So technically, Larxene also does things because of Marluxia and her connection to him before they were Nobodies.
RE: Drop Gauge. One thing I really REALLY like is how it mechanically is making these two campaigns feel like they're happening at the same time. I kinda think the team wanted to accomplish that after BBS because BBS is always touted as having an "order" (the game even recommends an order" so you re-tread events. And by the time you're at Aqua you're still consciously aware these are all at the same time narratively but Aqua is just something you do after the other two. Idk, I see that take and respect it.
2:02:00 as a kid i didnt read the reports and how i always interpreted the sacrifice was kairi sealed a piece of herself in sora in the beginning when she flew through him. Then the "Dark Keyblade" which can unlock the darkness in ones heart unlocked soras darkness and freed Kairis heart at same time which made his sacrifice more meaningful to me as a 10 year old, not only are you sacrificing yourself but relegating yourself to lose yourself and become evil to save someone
Got another hot take related to but distinct from "Terra isn't dumb": namely, "Terra doesn't care about power". I say this mostly as a response to Eraqus's remark after the Mastery exam where he claims that Terra is too power-hungry and that's why he failed, except nowhere in the rest of the game does Terra show interest in or behave in a way that suggests getting stronger is even a secondary motivation for him. It isn't the promise of power that suckers Terra into Xehanort's clutches, it's *recognition* as a Master; in other words it's *approval*. And even with "cool uncle Xehanort" saying that darkness needs to be controlled rather than eliminated -- which really might have made Terra's life easier if he'd learned to control his darkness instead of suppressing it until it became overwhelming -- he still tries to get rid of his darkness instead (as shown in Olympus) because he wants ERAQUS to approve and be proud of him. The fact that Aqua, his only real perceived "peer" as a student is something of a Teacher's Pet who, despite their friendship, still calls Terra a "boy" and treats him like more of a delinquent than he really is (including admitting that she was more or less trying to spy on him in the first half of the game) almost certainly plays into and reinforces this insecurity, this *lack of approval/respect* that drives Terra further and further down the path destiny set out for him.
The Gummi ship vs Dive arguement is good, but unesessary when you realize we can just merge them together. Pretty sure during he KH3 hype season, The Gamers Joint suggested the idea of Sora diving FROM ORBIT out of the Gummi ship. We could get both aspects and I personally would want that so much.
For the bit about how Axel should have been the one to drop the Organization’s plan on Sora…didn’t he? Like, he explains to Sora how the Organization set him up, and then Saix shows up and elaborates…why, I’m not sure, but maybe he figures the cat’s out of the bag. …One thing that did occur to me would be that they should have better taken advantage of the fact that Kairi’s their hostage by saying “Hey, if you don’t keeping collecting hearts, who knows what’ll happen…” A bit more a personal reason for Sora to go along with their plan. That would actually probably give the Organization some villain cred - if Sora finds out they’re using him, they’ll have a backup plan.
I think they just rolled the dice on the whole “yeah, Xehanort sounds and looks super evil, but this is a Disney universe, maybe he’s actually a good guy like the Beast” but they came up snake-eyes.
this but also not judging someone based on their surface appearances is also just like. common sense and basic human decency in the real world as well lmao
1:22:03 my take made it in! Ik it's labeled under anonymous, but I didn't attach my G-Mail or anything because I didn't think it'd make it! That's awesome man
On an alternate note to the Drop Gauge is Great take, particularly with the bosses, I think it could have been interesting if they played into the "split apart in layers of the world but still helping each other" aspect of Sora and Riku's test if, during a boss fight, you still could drop, *but* the other member would be able to sub in to help in a similar way to how Mickey can defend you in certain KH2 fights. I don't know how it'd be best implemented and is obviously not a real feature that'd ever exist, but it would have added a neat layer to the feature both for gameplay and narratively. Even if they're separated, they're still able to defend and help each other when the need arises. Alas this is all meaningless wishing for mechanics that will never be
i have never played a single kingdom hearts game and i watched this entire video and idk what or who or where is going on but i felt the passion of the takes and the responses
Re: Saïx as the primary antagonist of KH2, I feel the conflict of Xemnas as a person (heh) is better felt against Roxas. Xemnas has met him multiple times, and may've been the first person (heh!) Roxas even saw. Roxas deliberates about Xemnas, about their roles toward each other and the Organization (I just...really like the throughlines of Beast's Castle in Days?), and when actions are meted out against Roxas or Xion, it's either to their faces or understood in the chain of command. Roxas knows Xemnas more, and Xemnas has direct history with his errant Keyblade wielder. Saïx certainly was no slouch either, being Axel's foil and a constant grindstone and *we were robbed by the HD Cinematics skipping Roxas's escape* , but Xemnas had both a dynamic and a distinct dynamic compared to Saïx, an abuse of power compared to a dismissal of personhood. Maybe if there was a segment of KH2 where Sora subjected himself to Xemnas's command, perhaps leading out from his groveling before Saïx, then we could've had some time to build up the clashes of perspectives and methods as happened for Roxas, and have some conflict borne from direct engagement rather than reputations (and leave that *just* for MX). At least Young Xehanort got his gloves dirty by proactively antagonizing Sora, as theirs may be the most founded beef among the 'norts.
Seriously though i will forever be salty that the HD collection of 358/2 days robbed us of the final confrontation with saix. He has been the ONE thing constantly standing in the way of ALL the protagonists of days, moreso then xemnas. Xemnas might be the one calling the shots but saix is the one acting on them. And his battle in days in so damn satisifing. Taking away his confrontation in days also takes away so much of all the seasalt trio's characters, including saix's. It makes his actions in 3 so much more impactful and for people who never played days and only have acess to the cutscene won't have this other level of depth to all the seasalt fam. We were robbed i tell you. ROBBED.
Definitely. Xemnas is the counterpart to Roxas like Ansem is to Riku. That's why the 3v3 at the end of KH3 should have replaced Mickey with Roxas. That leaves Sora v Young Xehanort, which kinda ties with DDD, having Sora want revenge for almost getting norted even though it was Riku who beat YX.
To add to this (a year later, sorry), Roxas's entire character journey is self identity. Every other organization member sees him as Roxas while Xemnas always sees Roxas (and Xion) as Sora or a method to obtain his power as his plans endgoal for CoM, 358, and for the majority of 2 was to have Sora under his thumb. It's to the point where each of his few conversations with Roxas being about entirely focused on Sora and he never bother calling Sora 'Roxas' in their one on one unlike every other organization member excluding Axel who does because he sees them differently.
Oh wow my take’s in! I’ll admit my take was a bit on the semantic side, but it’s something that’s been on my mind for a while and it was nice to get it off my chest.
Most content creators release a 2 and a half hour video Me: Nah, I'll pass Regular Pat releases 2 and a half hour video Me: Oh hell yeah, can't wait to watch this after work
9:50 : But it actually happen. Three of the 13 darknesses are not defeated and dissolve, but changed side (Xion, Terra and technically, Xigbar). There was an lack of balance, which is why the darkness became a danger to the realm of Light, that was corrected by the 3rd Keyblade War 48:00 : I actually prefer KH2 and 3 magic system because it's a good balance to force the player to use items. It's always a problem in RPG to force a player to use his stach of items he accumulate but never use unless they really needs it. With Bar magic, yes enemies can re-empty your life in three seconds, but you can also use potion items while the gauge is reloading or using an ether to reload it faster.
2nd take is facts, especially considering that you can use the drive forms to get your MP bar back and you have some summons that have MP restoration properties.
I know it’s a bit late (I have to find time to watch videos this long) but as someone who’s favorite game is KH3, I slightly disagree with the KH1 camera being good for the series moving forward. The minute the design team started making more enemies appear and bosses appear and move faster, you needed a pulled back camera to see it. In fact, the whole “god” like camera is used creatively sometimes like data Luxord in 2 and 3. I’m not saying the KH1 camera is bad, it fits its game beautifully, but I don’t think it’s fair to compare them when the enemy and boss designs in each game demand something different from the camera.
1:52:00 Their initial 'get Radiant Garden back' story might be done, but there's so much more potential for scenarios beyond that. The thing about the Final Fantasy characters being 'done' is that there's a whole 16 mainline games to pull characters from for the writers to *give* them something to do, more than just relegating them to bit parts in one world, maybe two. It's more of a wasted potential of a crossover to tie it in to the 'KH is not a crossover' hot take. I *want* it to be a crossover, so I want more Square characters to show up and intertwine themselves in the story.
Haven't started watching yet, but man I can already feel the heat Edit (After Watching): There was hot ones here, but overhaul, really well written and argued points. There was maybe only one I got heated by, but most of the ones I disagreed with weren't ones that keep me up at night and we're basically inconsequential.
2:05:34 - That’s my take. Sorry for forgetting to use my name. First let me say this whole project is fantastic and I enjoyed every minute. Then, I’d like to say I am so happy that my take was able to get you guys thinking, which is all I really want. I want people to think critically about narrative choices that may feel good emotionally in the moment, but may be a detriment to the series’ potential down the road. I don’t think Roxas, Namine, and Xion coming back ruins KH per se, but I’m not sure about the significance they’ll play in the future, or if bringing them back is a narratively superior choice than the ways their arcs ended in previous games, albeit with some changes. I wish people would stop equating Roxas’s return to Sora as a death. It’s not. Roxas and Sora are literally the same person. Different in many ways, but sharing uncannily similar traits. Let’s not forget that had it not been for Ventus’s heart being in Sora at the time, Roxas would have looked just like Sora, which only strengthens their duality. Sora in KH2 is a lot more of a smartass and has a bit of an edge to him. He calls out people a lot even if it may hurt their feelings and he has almost no mercy for his enemies. Just like Roxas. This should feel out of character, but it isn’t, these aspects have always been a part of him and manifested mostly as Roxas. They are one and the same. And Xion death is certainly tragic, but having an ending where people remember her is so much more significant than one may think at first. CoM’s theme was all about memories, the importance of them, the feelings they give you, and how you live on in people’s hearts through them. Sora never remembers who Namine is, I don’t think, and that’s kinda sad, but also good because it was a sacrifice to be made that felt right and earned. What matters is that Sora still helped Namine through all of that even if he doesn’t remember, and that’s the very core of the theme. Similarly, Xion is a being that shouldn’t exist, yet she made her mark on the world and the friends she made in it. All she wanted was to not be forgotten, for her friends to know that she existed and to keep her story in their hearts. What could be more fitting then, for her friends in a future game to remember her and keep her story and existence alive in their memories? I see this as a win. An act of defiance against a world that tries to say she is a nobody. I find that beautiful and more emotionally compelling. And I don’t think any of it runs counter to KHs optimistic themes. These characters are punished by the KH universe, and yet despite this, they find ways to defy its supposedly undeniable laws. Roxas and Namine become whole again, and if Xion is remembered, then it proves her heart was real all along and that her existence has permanence in the world, despite what the universe may say. Is that not a miracle? Is this not the exact kind of Hope and inspirational power that KH is meant to have? These characters found their light in the darkness. It is the series’ most prominent theme. It’s not as if KH is unfounded in it’s bittersweet endings, either. Pretty much every primary arc of the series has a bittersweet ending, quite literally a light and dark ending combination, and so it fits that some character’s stories are tragic, but ultimately end with something good. I feel Kingdom Hearts series will suffer if it doesn’t mature in some aspects. I’m not saying death needs to happen all the time, heck I’m a believer that death should never happen unless it’s necessary. But I fell in love with how the series could make such sad stories, balance them out with goodness, while also being pretty grounded and taking its themes and concepts seriously both with optimistic outlook that doesn’t shy away from tragedy, and instead teaching people that though bad things may happen, there is still light in the darkness, there is still hope and goodness. Sure, the return of these characters embodies this theme too to an extent. But does it embody the themes better than their original endings? I personally don’t think so. Anyway, this was a long response but again I’m glad I got ya’ll thinking!
@@justjames2555 Exactly, by the time Saix arrives the bulk of the damage has already been done. Whatever it is the Org are gathering hearts for, it surely is something bad. If anything, Saix humanizes the Org's pursuits by revealing that they're just trying to be whole again.
@@Kalernor That's a really interesting realization here. The reason why Saix shared their plan at all was basically damage control, to maybe help convince Sora to keep going. The only reason Xaldin fought Sora is pretty much just that he's fucking pissed that Sora ruined this year long thing of turning Beast into a nobody, at least that's how I think of it. Demyx? Why did Demyx fight and die to Sora? Actually a great question. Not much justification for it other than Demyx is a dumbass, but even then we wouldn't expect him to fight either way.
I see my take in there. I'm satisfied it made it this far. Thanks for the work, Pat and Kiwi. I've been looking forward to this. EDIT: Thank you for the compliments on my "bad writing" submission. Win or lose, this was a fun ride. I feel like I should have emphasized more that I think the insistence on maintaining a plot that always builds on itself is bad for the series. That's better than the blanket statement I made. As the comments have reminded me, good lines come and go. Between the translated aspect of the series and the crossover format it must adhere to, it's difficult to give a thorough and accurate analysis of the dialogue, world-building, and general story writing. Can we all just agree on one thing, though? KH3 should have done so much more with its extended cast once they were all on screen. I wanted to see everybody interacting with everybody else, and what we got was a super limp scene of everyone generically hanging out on the beach. None of the characters individual personality shone through. I didn't just want Roxas and Ventus to look at each other, I wanted them to talk. Kingdom Hearts has so much personality lying just under the surface, and a lot of my take stems from frustration that it doesn't use this more. That's why people like the manga! Hopefully there'll be a spinoff set in the normal KH reality at some point that lets everyone interact in a satisfying way.
1:26:24 Im upset because I agree that Left or right on the Dpad could cancel it. I think he would have been better by mentioning that the Shortcut Menu *itself* invalidates the sifting around Command Menu. In KH3, you can map Magic, Items, and summons to Shortcuts, and you have 3 Shortcut Menus to swap between, only thing you can’t map is activating Situation Commands. As for a substitute, Zelda BOTW’s Rune/weapon swapping comes to mind. I do like the Command Menu, though, it adds a lot to the game and it wouldn’t be a KH game without it.
Although; in regards to the crossover take. Isn't the actual Crossover Square Enix and Disney and not just FF and Disney? The merge isn't just characters, it's mechanics, directors/producers and concepts. Edit: In particular, I'm thinking about the Shin Megami TenseiXFire Emblem crossover where if you based it on the characters it'd be a Fire Emblem game, but the combat and story is far more of a SMT game with FE elements.
Great video! I can listen to you and guest star Regular Pat talk for hours! Your videos are always so creative! Months of hard work really paid off! Even tho I didn’t win the bracket I still won a nearly three hour video to fall asleep to! Thank you!!
I really like the drop system from DDD. Never understood why people complain so much when you have total control of the gauge, using Drop-me-nots or just dropping when the bar is too low, so it won't happen on boss fights. It's more interesting for me playing the same worlds at the same time than having to play all the game three times to see everything like in BBS, this can be very tiring.
Given that in the modern day all the cameras function without issues, yes that is a huge feel difference from the player playing any current copy of KH1 (being the final mix)
@@themuffinprincesa21 I don't disagree that the feel is different. I'd just argue different doesn't always equal better. More immersive for sure, and if that is your measure I can understand that, but can't say it is not frustrating being hit by something clipping out of the bounds of the tight camera POV.
@@zacharyowenmartin8247 definitely isn't perfect & I prefer the farther camera as I used to play a lot of MMo games. The camera immersion is nothing that ever made a difference to me, but I know it has for many others.
2:13:54 I think there could be a case for Organization Bad in terms of how they effected Kingdom Hearts. The first story was a pretty straightforward one, a classic tale of the hero searching for the damsel in distress against the Big Evil, with the Lancer rival being the wildcard in the mix. But once the Organization came onto the scene, they've DOMINATED the series with their presence. Pretty much any of the "KH is confusing" memes comes from shit that involves them, having to explain so much about where they came from and what they're trying to achieve. And the prequel games of BBS and Days made things even more complicated. You'd almost forget that this is a Disney hack-and-slash, in fact that's sort of why it's so hard to integrate the original story points with the Disney since you have to spend SO much time explaining the KH part. So my version of this argument clashes with another one of the hot takes; the simplicity of KH1's story is what makes it one of the best in the series, because the Organization caused Nomura to let his ambitions get away from him.
I would love to see a theory tournament where people share either their own personal theories or a theory they saw on the internet somewhere. Think it would be a neat way to see the thought process and ideas that people have regarding where the story has gone and is going
I think another reason why people give terra so much shit is his gameplay being slow and then tacked on is his story rather than terra being actually bad If anyone was dumb it's erauqs
Terra actually has my favorite gameplay in Birth by Sleep because every button press is a commitment. You really have to think about what you're doing and not just go in all willy-nilly.
Here's the thing about Ansem in my experience: a lot of the core around the discussion is whether or not you see him dying in and of itself as making up for his past actions. I personally don't; to me, death isn't an atonement, it's a cop-out. There is no work being done in death to rectify the mistakes done in the past, there's no healing of those he hurt, and him dying didn't really help the situation all that much. Making a big exit via explosion with what is admittedly *the* best death speech is easy. Turning to face the remnants of what he put Roxas and Namine through, of addressing the things he had Riku do, and apologizing to *them* while living with the knowledge that he may not be forgiven is _hard._ Whether or not what he does after makes up for it leaves more room for debate to me. I think it's a step in the right direction -- not a full atonement, but a progress which I think makes for a much better character arc -- but the mad rush to forgive him and slot him in the _noble hero_ position personally put a bad taste in my mouth about how he was handled, but it's a similar complaint I had with how easily Isa was accepted by Roxas and Xion. He has his good points and I appreciate him putting in effort to rectify his past mistakes, but having him be immediately accepted warmly is an annoyance to me.
I'm not the biggest fan of Ansem the Wise myself, but in the interest of fairness to him there are couple of things to bring up. He does acknowledge his past mistakes pretty often. When he's talking to Mickey at the end of Kingdom Hearts 2 he does admit that everything that has happened to Riku is his fault and right before he blows up he apologizes to Roxas. He must have not cared as much about Namine since he doesn't really bring her up until Kingdom Hearts 3 after he's been nabbed by Ansem SOD, but he is one of the people that helped bring her back. His explosion in Kingdom Hearts 2 did actually have a pretty big impact, since it is what changed Riku back to normal. How intentional that was is debatable but he did say that anything could happen and something did happen. There's also the fact that if his device hadn't released so many hearts from Kingdom Hearts then Xemnas would have been much more powerful in the final battle and it probably would have been the end for everybody.
Absolutely. Ansem's consistently a bastard up until 3, only ever going "Maybe I shouldn't have been so racist to Roxas" at the end of 2. However, because he helped make amends for his mistakes in 3, being a potentially key player in giving Roxas his body back, I'm inclined to say he's redeemed.
@@gusgarrison9211 "Racist towards roxas" Lmfao is this a fucking joke? Yes Rucksack got the short end of the stick but at the end of the day, Roxas was not the man of the job and Sora was. It became apparent to Ansem the wise what Sora had accomplished had accomplished at the end of KH1. Ansem knows that Sora is likely to take some indirect path to taking out Xemnas just like he did to Ansem SoD. Roxas was about to take a DIRECT path to KH through the entire remaining organization and that was not a smart idea (at Riku said so). Plus you conveniently forget that the realm of darkness had twisted Ansems mind somewhat, so of course he wasnt going to have the demeanor of the forner sage king of radiant garden
"Him dying didn't help the situation much" Holy shit that is CAP if ive ever seen it. By holding that machine up prior to its explosion, Ansem basically ensured that Xemnas obtaining KH would be delayed. Xemnas had to bargain with KH and he was far less less powerful than what he would have been because there were A LOT less hearts in the KH, THANKS to what Ansem did. If the KH that powered Xemnas had even a few more hearts powering it up, Sora and Riku may very well have lost
@@AuroraExhale Hey 🤡 "this person" said that ansems death was a copout even though the guy took the steps necessary to save the world. You say ansem simps this and that but all roxas simps have been doing for the past 16 years is bitching 🤡
I actually totally agree with the command menu thing. To answer the question pat had regarding how you’d possibly map it, you could map the D-pad’s first set (one-click on the d-pad) with items or magic, and then have the shortcuts menu to have basically an overlapping set of mapped other items or magic spells.
Press D-pad direction ones activating mapped item or ability. Hold the shortcuts menu then use the D-pad again to use another set of items or abilities.
My counterpoint hottake to hating on Fairy Godmother, it’s the same logic as with Mickey, she probably wouldn’t have known what happened to Aqua post-BBS (I mean she only met her for like an hour, I don’t think Aqua is in her thoughts at all tbh)
I just wanna heavily disagree with the roxas xion namine take in another series I may have agreed but in kh the story book ending just feels right and honestly I can see heaps of potential plot lines for both roxas and xion (not so much namine but I’m not a big fan of her in general) because roxas whole arc is about wanting to be his own person and having a reason to exist, now having him deal with all the implications that come with that and the responsibility he has towards everyone around him could be quite compelling, roxas and xion have fought so hard for the right to exist now to see what they do with there existence, well I’m excited, I won’t be surprised if we don’t hear from them soon but I think they have tons of future potential Also great video
1:15:51 Literally the biggest issue with the Drop Guage isn’t even having to restart a fight or just force switch to a character you didn’t want. It’s that the developers weren’t committed to the idea. Not only do Drop-Me-Nots exist, but you can force a drop from the World Map, a Save Point, and *THE PAUSE MENU* . I’m replaying DDD as Sora first. Everytime I drop and go to Riku, I just pause, triangle to drop, and resume what I was doing as Sora. If there wasn’t anything to refill the Guage, and no way to force a drop yourself, I’d actually think it would be *less* infuriating.
I'd love to see a round robin on all these takes, disqualify the top two extremes and bottom two extremes and seed the rest. I like the idea of letting an idea battle every other idea, rather than by chance making it up to the top because it happened to face less popular ideas, or getting snuffed out by the more popular ideas.
As a film major and a movie lover I wholly appreciate the more intimate camera of Kingdom Hearts 1. I too have always felt those same sentiments about the KH1 camera being more significant in some way, but didn't know how to express it, and then here comes a hot take explaining so succinctly my thoughts. It was perfect, it was bliss, it divulged everything I wanted to say. I whole heartedly agree with this tournament's winner. It hits home hard and it was well deserved. Well done!!!
Having played KH2FM critical mode for the first time recently, the only segment that comes to mind that felt really sloppy with it is the Hades chase. I don't think any other segments really felt that unfair, and it feels like that take feels far more applicable to something like KH3's critical mode.
It feels more like they were talking about a lv 1 crit run but I can't really speak on that bc I've only ever done a lv 1 run randomized so it's VERY different than playing the game normally lol. I think that critique is also more applicable to kh3 as well because kh2 starts you off only facing about 3 enemies at a time while kh3 just throws so many mobs at you right off the bat. I think I dislike those flame cores way more than those horse enemies from Land of Dragons. 😆
Like krebin said, it feels like they were talking about lvl1 crit, which indeed, does not allow you much room for error, and it can be really annoying and painful at times. Even then I wouldn't call lvl1 crit poorly designed as a whole (at least the part that I got to play, which was up to the first visit of Halloween town after visiting Agrabah), far from it, I think it's mostly well done CONSIDERING WHAT THE CHALLENGE IS MEANT TO BE, the "next to no room for error" type of challenge, which is not for everyone, not even me in other games such as the souls games. And that's fine, and that also doesn't mean you can't criticize it either, but criticizing it for what it's trying to be is stupid. And I almost forgot to mention that the weakest parts of that mode usually are the weakest part in the whole game, which, as much as I fucking love this game, there are, there are quite a few.
It definitely feels like a lvl 1 crit run like others have said. Hades escape the reason it is sloppy is because you can get one shot by those lancers. Once you get movement, cure, and reflect you have a lot more options to get out of a situation so it feels a lot more fair.
I think the command menu take had valid standing but was poorly thought out. The issue I have with the command menu is that for anything outside the attack command (especially with the 4 hotkey magic L1 menu) it can easily become an annoyance. I think this is more to the design of it not really being updated with the series so it stays in a kh1 feeling and pace while the rest of the game has shifted away from it. instead of a menu being navigated by the dpad it should instead be a series of quick select options controlled by the dpad. So instead of pressing down to search the menus instead the different menus are assigned to the directions on the dpad and a neutral selection defaults to attack. Example: if I want to use an item currently i need to press down to highlight > select > search for the item > use (depending if it is single target or not) it really breaks the flow of gameplay now with so many things happening. instead it could just be I hit right to access the item menu > I select the item I placed in one of the dpad directions > then it gets used. The command menu could actually be a really cool aspect to the game series by allowing you to customize the 4 dpad options to hotkey different gameplay elements. magic menu, items, drives, summons, weapon swapping ect. it's not bad for the game it's just outdated.
I take on the command menu. I think it’s not a problem. But I think the shortcut menu should add the d-pad as options as well, quickly giving you access to 8 actions instead of just 4
@@edgeofultima7483That’s something I’ve wanted ever since they did it with Limit Form, the only drive form I use. Not a really a fan of drive forms post KH3
I think the final fantasy characters helped push the main plot forward as they were always more tied to the main story than the Disney filler worlds. I think their absence in 3 is really noticed as everyone says the pacing is god awful. I think a few visits to a world with FF characters wouldve pushed the story a bit more forward rather than having to slog through every disney world to get more story.
On the point of Larxene being the best female character. Besides Luxord, she is my favourite Organisation member, and for something a lot more simple, and less degrading to the other female characters. She's the closest thing the Organisation has to a Disney style villain. She's utterly insane, and delights in being evil because it's fun for her. Everything she does is over the top, dragged out and even flamboyant. The things she does in Chain of Memories would make her fit right into any Disney story as a prime foe. In fact my only gripe with her is in Kingdom Hearts 3, they didn't give her a proper villain to team up with and have some fun. She'd probably be best friends with many of them!
I know this video is old af, but I think alot of what you guys were saying about the Drop gauge take is pretty easily countered by just managing it better. Even if you don't abuse drop me nots and nevers, if you feel like you're about to run into a boss fight, just drop manually. That way you can buff the other characters next run, and in return, buff yourself up before the boss. I don't think it's the games issue if you have double drop speed, low drop gauge, and do a boss fight like that because you weren't paying attention. That's the while point of it. Anyway, I just found your channel and have been binge watching your old content lol great stuff
the people who only play the 3 mainline games and then talk about the series as a whole are the bane of my existence and every time I see one I just sigh in frustration. It's like the people who only saw the movies in the mcu with the word avenger in it's name and where then confused by everything going on in endgame. Also yea not sure what people where expecting from a series where donald is a fucking mage, Goofy is the leader of Mickey's royal guard and where the main master and probably the most powerful dood in the series is named Disney backwards.
Here’s a take. Captain Hook is actually the good guy in that movie. He only ever attacks Peter Pan. Peter Pan literally steals people’s children and discards them like trash when they get too old. (Suspiciously similar to a certain type of disgusting person irl who steal kids and take them to a Fantasy Island)
You should try the "KH-ReFixed" PC mod since it has a camera option for KH1 to make it more like the camera from later instalments. Wonder how you would feel about it after the KH1 camera hot take
I just really don't care for the camera take just because a huge part of it is based in the idea of immersion, which has never been something I understood or cared about.
Loved this video so much! Hopefully there could be another hot take tournament for the next year! Was super busy and haven't been keeping up with the channel. I was going to further the Terra not dumb idea, but it lead to another hot take that I'll save just in case for the future 😉 Also congrats to the winner! That camera idea really opened up my mind 10,000%
I absolutely love your discussions and you elaborate on your positions so well that I learned just as much from you guys as I did from these takes, amazing tourney!
I think the only thing about the drop gauge that I actually really like is that it makes sure you play the stories side-by-side. without it, I'd probably have to force myself to switch characters so I don't accidentally end up playing it like BBS, and that's probably not how they wanted the story to be told. but that's probably not a problem anyone who TALKS about KH (or frequently engages with the games and community) would have. it feels like some of these takes don't take the average player into account.
KHIII Only serves to completely destroy the main point of 'Larxene is the best-written female': that being that unlike the others, her every move isn't dictated by the men in her life. Her "My secret" line throws that all out. Xion is truly the best-written female, and in my opinion, the only well-written female. While it is easy to argue that same as the others, a lot of her actions are for the men in her life; it can also be argued that it was for a greater purpose. Having been born from nothing and not understanding anything, her learning what friendship is and the time that she spends with Axel and Roxas gives her all the reason to stay with them. She makes the active decision to leave them, knowing she won't be remembered because she needs Sora to stop the Organization.
The thing about the final fantasy characters is that, yeah, maybe the ones that have been established in KH so far have ended their roles but there are plenty more in the ff series that could have been incorporated into the story if they had put in the effort and tried. And in that vane, how much are the Disney worlds/characters relevant to KH anymore? Sure there were tie ins in KH 3 but most of the focus in the series now is on dumb lore shit and creating more mysteries than are actually solved or explained.
I feel like KH3 really forced the narrative that Sora can’t do anything without his friends even though there’s plenty of moments in the series where he has to confront something alone or is the person who paved the way for others to continue forward. In many ways, the characters around Sora are as, if not more reliant on him than he is with them.
I think the "Sora deserving the rank of master" take really gets to the heart of the problem: The rank of master is meaningless. Its an arbitrary label applied to character in order to given them a false sense of grandeur. I love Aqua and Riku, but I respect their abilities as characters because of what I've seen them do in gameplay and story, not because they are "Keyblade masters". What makes a keyblade master is so inconsistent that I don't think its worth serious discussion. The take in the video was well written and thought out, more thought was put into the take than the actual implementation in the game. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
Honestly, I'd say that's why Sora doesn't really care about the title. It's essentially meaningless. Maybe Sora didn't get the title officially, but he's still saved the people he cares about and the universe on three occasions. I mean, Aqua got her title from smacking Eraqus' balls and doing some mild sparring with Terra, while Riku had to beat up three different Xehanorts. The inconsistency of the test renders the title without proper weight.
Yeah it'd be cool if the mark of mastery actually meant anything beyond it being the result of some test. I agree with Pat here that the test is not the same between characters and that Terra and Aqua had been getting training from childhood and so their "mark of mastery exam" was more of an end to a years long process, hence why Ventus wasn't getting the test since he wasn't there as long, while Sora and Riku were given this brutal test because of how little time they had to complete it.
To me, the bigger thing with the hot take is that, what the fuck does "deserve" even mean in this case? Yen Sid said he didn't deserve it, so to say that Sora does would be to say that either Yen Sid was wrong or that Nomura wasn't writing his story fairly, which are both huge cans of worms.
It's also important to note that being a master doesn't give you power, being a master describes that you do, so we'd have to talk more about why Sora doesn't have the power to be a master while Riku does moreso than whether or not he deserves it.
Actually it DOES matter in some cases. Example: Aqua is basically in charge of the Land of Departure and is the current owner of Master Defender, the keyblade passed down from Ephemer, down the line to Eraqus and now her.
It's like Sora himself said: it's really just a formality.
@@neronecrosade but is it being a keyblade master or is it just the eraqus keyblade that changes the land of departure to castle oblivion. Sora is not a 'master' but he can use that keyblade to open the door to go into the dark world. Who's to say Sora can't do what Aqua did maybe all u need is the right keyblade. Plus don't the keyblades have a bit of sentience that's why aqua got eraqus keyblade in the first place
My hot take is that the "Nami is manipulative" take is giving "I think kids crying is manipulative".
Namine is a lonely little girl trapped in a white void with people who could easily kill her if she stops being useful, who uses her powers to insert herself into sora's memories in part as a desperate attempt at making a connection with someone who has the capacity to care about her.
“Why can’t this small child who’s been gaslit by anime edgelords for basically her entire life understand what she’s doing is wrong instantly!?”
@@gulfcoastgaming6034 not just her entire life, but i think it makes sense that when Namine was born, she had the same suffering as Roxas, having no memories to build on. So a whole life of gaslit, is LITERALLY a whole life with gaslit without anything to contradict it.
The idea that Sora not moving past "my friends are my power" is a bad thing is kinda silly when you consider every antagonist in the series, as well as all the falls to darkness from protag, it based on a drive for more personal strength and freedom. Even in 3D the organization couldn't tempt our boy with darkness and power, only weigh him down with crushing despair over what happend to people close to him. Meanwhile Yen Sid, Michael, Eraqus, and even Riku and Axel view mastery of the keyblade and a vaguely defined strength of heart as the means to combat darkness. But at the end of the day it wasn't personal strength or any keyblade nonsense that took out Xehanort, it was a boy and his dog and duck friend just holding out to the very end. "My friends are my power and I'm nothing without them" isn't a sign of Sora's immaturity or weakness but rather an affirmation of the idea that you combat selfish egoism with selfless comraderie.
I think that Sora still being youthful and not aged artificially by the harshness of the world is why I think that Sora really doesn’t need to be tied down by the responsibility of being a Master. Riku always seemed to be in a hurry to grow up, while Sora just enjoyed his time as a kid, and continues to, while Riku, Aqua, and Mickey have been stained permanently by their experiences in the world as adults.
I dunno, I do think that Sora feels a dependency on it, especially after DDD. He seems very confident in kh2 in his abilities and doesn't even think he needs the test, but DDD was a reality check. He spends all of kh3 feeling weaker in general, and also to his peers, culminating on the mental breakdown at the keyblade graveyard. I feel like saying Sora should be stronger alone is missing the point, what kh3 does is much better. Sora gets his shit together after the final world because he truly believes that Riku believes in him, if his friend thinks he's capable, it would be better to trust his judgement no? I think Sora's development is never really focused on, giving him the appearance of being flat but I think the kids got some stuff going on and he doesn't need to grow like other characters for him to flourish.
Sora literally gives up in every single game because he thinks his friends aren't supporting him enough.
It isn't silly in the slightest. It's his single biggest character flaw that almost ends the world multiple times.
Who is Michael
@@Strange_Child Mickey is a common shortening for Michael, so some people call Mickey Mouse, Michael or Michael Mouse.
Man so nice to see somebody type out a good explanation for why Terra isn’t dumb. It’s so exhausting hearing it from people but I just don’t have to energy to explain it to people lol.
Thanks!
I accept the Terra = Anakin analogy but Terra being stupid is a nah for me.
Every character in BBS is dumb, Terra is just the dumbest.
That KH1 camera hot take was literally so good I’m still thinking about it a day later and had to leave a comment about it.
You could also argue, by the logic of that comment, that the camera slowly expanding in all the games means that Sora is gaining more experience in combat, better able to get a sort of sixth sense of dangers around and behind him.
Also let’s just be honest, with the much more frantic pace of
2 and 3, if you limited the camera again, you would absolutely despise it purely from a gameplay point
We got mods that make the old game cameras more like KH3, I'd be interested in seeing a mod that made the Kh3 camera more like KH1
@@Flexpdx hmmmmm, doesn‘t sound torturous enough. What about KH3 with an over-the-shoulder type camera, RE4 style
@@KeDe1606could actually be sick!
@@Flexpdx in theory, yeah. But most fights would be absolute hell.
(You’re gonna have to stick with me for a bit, because I’m terrible at remembering the names of the Heartless)
Like, think about trying to fight Sköll, that Heartless Mother Gothel gets turned into, the Master of Toys (?) with all the buildings flying everywhere, the dinosaur heartless in Sanfransokyo, Dark Baymax, the Cubes, any humanoid boss, any gank fights or any late-/end-/post-game fight with that kinda camera. Imagine trying to fight Organization 13 (the Data fights, the ones in the Keyblade Graveyard and the Replicas), Ansem, Xemnas, the Xehanorts, Vanitas, Repliku, Dark Aqua, the Demon Tide/Wave, Yozora and so many more while Sora‘s spiky hair fills up 1/3 of the screen. That honestly sounds like hell.
But on the flip-side, the sequence where Mickey basically recreates the MGS4 Microwave Hallway scene would look real sick
The only real defense for the Drop Gauge is it's context within the story of the game. When we learn that Riku has been acting as a Dream Eater protecting Sora's dreams, that tells us that Sora drops when he falls asleep, and Riku drops when Sora is waking up and the dream is ending. It's also clear from how the story is written that the devs needed us to play as Sora and Riku at roughly the same time. The story wouldn't work from being split up like in CoM, and the DG was probably the best thing they came up with for that.
I also never found the drop gauge to be a difficulty. I would always manually drop at the end of a world and play through as the opposite character right after I finished, and I don't think I had a forced drop even a single time throughout the game.
I think it's also a handheld design driven decision. Give a specific time to turn the console off
Someone else actually thinks Roxas's Prolouge is the best part of Kingdom Hearts??? LETS GOOOOOOO
Yessss
I was a fool as a child to not see how good it was
the story is great
the twilight town tutorial is torture
KH2 was my first KH game, and Roxas is my favorite character because of that opening. I was wrapped up in the mystery of how Roxas could still be alive, could come back, etc as a teen.
It's absolute shit, should be skipable
Right off the bat, I think Terra is not dumb for sure, I would never call him smart. No one in this series is smart.
Exactly. The only reason the Terra take kinda makes sense is because the rest of the characters in the series set a really low bar for intelligence, be it actual logical intelligence or emotional intelligence
@@scizormaster6624 except goofy
“Terra don’t be afraid of losing”
Terra: “I promise I will not fail you again!”
He’s dumb
@@kitkat7074 in this context, the definitions of losing and failing are different. Losing and failing the master are not mutually exclusive. You can only lose a competition, but you can fail to meet someone's expectations even if you don't lose
Terra really is the exact example of the classic archetype of the tragic hero. A hero who despite doing almost everything that makes sense given his circumstances, possesses a fatal flaw or makes an error in judgment that means he is ultimately doomed to a specific tragedy, that only we the viewer know is going to occur.
😮 I had my "it's an honor just to be nominated" comment all typed but now I get to replace it with "I'd like to thank the Academy" 😭 I thought it would lose because my camera take is so abstract and unglamorous. I'm currently struggling/imposter syndrome-ing my way through my last few months of writing my Masters thesis (in English & Film Studies), so the fact that anyone finds my writing remotely compelling or persuasive is a huge confidence boost for me. Thanks Pat and Kiwi.
Yo, Cartoon Baffoon here, HUGE congrats, such a well-fought battle and well-articulated take, you deserved this win fo sure!
No wonder it was written so beautifully and so effectively got to the heart of an issue that I didn't even realize existed. English and Film & Media Studies is literally the perfect combination for a such a precise assassination of the series' ineffective cinematography after KH1 due to camera changes.
Good luck on the thesis!
CONGRATS MR. SPLASH
Good luck on your education! I agree with Pat and his pal, it articulated something about the intimacy of kh1 that I hadn’t been able to put my finger on for… well nearly a decade or two…
It was an honor to have my take (KH2 Atlantica) share the battlegrounds with hamburgersplash's (KH1 Camera). When I heard that camera take I immediately knew it was going to be a finalist, it's just very good. Well done hamburgersplash.
Another benefit of the KH1 camera being zoomed is it makes the player notice the surroundings much more and be appreciative of them, especially in the case of KH1 where every room is so packed and compact. It just feels "intimate".
2:09:30 What's funny is that Nomura had revealed in an interview that he didn't wanted to bring Back Roxas and Xion to KH3, but he decided to eventually bring them back knowing that was something that Fans wanted.
It's amazing how Nomura can just so casually lie about things like that... He was putting in scenes and ideas of all the lost characters coming back for *three* games prior to KH3, but he somehow wants us to believe that he actually didn't want to do that for KH3? Uh huh...
@@Kisaru1000 Yeah I agree. im calling cap on that.
@@Kisaru1000 Yep, it was literally the entire point of Re:Coded and then there was also a couple of scenes late in DDD. Nomura is flat out lying.
Nomura interviews are very inconsistent for lore responses, he even said in an interview that Nobodies do not age, when that's clearly a lie.
@@ScoutNessThat's a thing that's being discussed even today. Apperantly some people now say, they typically do not age but they can age.
I don’t know why this exists, but it’s 2 and a half hours of Regular Pat, and I love it.
nothing irregular about that ;)
Here’s my take: “The Lock-On feature is the best part of the KH series. I’ve been playing many RPGs over the years as my sight gradually declines. But the main reason I’ve managed to keep playing KH, even to a lesser degree compared to 15 years ago, is because the Lock-On lets me know just where the closest enemy is regardless if the game automatically moves the character in that general direction when attacking. I just find Locking-On very useful for visually impaired players and hope to feature stays when KHIV comes out.”
I can definitely understand where you're coming from as someone who has been dealing vision issues due to a recent eye infection.
Good take, only problem with your take, it's not really a hot take. Anytime I see an action game with no lock on, the biggest complaint brought up is "wheres the lock-on"
I tried disabling lock-on when playing custom games with Days and... yeah, game is unplayable without it.
Gotta love that Z-targeting.
About the Saïx thing, I feel like people wouldn’t care about the kh2 aspect if the Days movie kept his boss fight in. He got to be the main antagonist in 358 and has a similar role to Marluxia.
Personally disagree. When I first played KH2, while Saix wasn't amazing to me, all my interest in what Sora was fighting for left after Saix was finally beaten. And this was before Days ever came out.
As far as the Larxene take, if we're going to go off the fact she's the best character because the other female characters live to assist their male counter part ( which i'd says she's the most entertaining villian because she's the "bad, for the fun of it" archetype) you'd have to then admit the reality that Elrena's dynamic with Lauriam exists, the same dynamic is seen in CoM as they were working as a duo to betray the organization, and even by her own admission in kh3 she's only along for the ride and when sora asks with who. She says "My secret".
also the the orginal critism that females need their man comes from romantic movies where woman lives are often depicted as being incomplete without a man (to be fair, both genders are often time depicted like this, it just the nature of entertainment as a whole that there needs to be a problem to overcome and in romance movies, the problem needs to tie to the end goal).
kh has never been like that, because romance has never been the main theme. a lot of the females characters are written fine enough. Most of their motives are known, and we can understand why they do what they do. the female character who is poorly written, would be Ollet, and only because her role isn't meant to be all that large.
@@zero1zerolast393 what's poorly written about Ollette? Having a minor role doesn't make you badly written
@@harishramachandra1746 I think that's exactly what Zero means. She's the least well written by default because she's the one we know the least about. She's not bad, she's just there.
She's the best by default because she has an actual personality other than "nice girl." Kairi in KH1 had a similar personality to Larxene, and that's the best game Kairi's been in. Namine's story is tragic but it's fundamentally just "She's nice but is forced to be mean to Sora and Riku, how sad." And then she just gets unceremoniously schlorped into the Kairi stew to keep existing as a nothing character. Hell, KH3 basically forgets Namine exists until ReMind. I can't make a judgement on Xion because I haven't played Days, but from what I've seen she just feels like "Kairi but emo" and her friendship with Roxas is nice and, like with Namine, tragic, but everyone literally forgets she exists and it has no impact on the plot, which kind of just goes to show how pointless she was.
i also don't get the "female character revolves around a male in their life". almost every character in kingdom heart's motivations and actions revolve around their friends. sora's main motivation in both kh1 and 2 is to find his friends. so i don't see this as something that onlyh happens to female characters
I suppose it's a hot take in comparison to where the opinions of the hosts ended up, but I think the setting of KH as a whole is at its best when the balance of OC, FF, and Disney is fairly evened out. The best KH experiences for me were always Traverse Town, the many sequences in Hollow Bastion in KH1 and 2, and Twilight Town.
There's a lot of examples: talking to Cloud and immediately after having a conversation with Scrooge McDuck; shops that are manned by moogles and Donald's three nephews; the fact that the FF7/8 crew hangs out with old-Disney Merlin and respect him as the best wizard in HB; having practice sword fights with multiple FF characters like Seifer and Vivi only to dive head-first into Roxas' unique and mysterious story purpose-built for KH; defending Hollow Bastion from an army of demons alongside Cloud, Squall, Tifa, Donald, Goofy, and Mickey.
There's a lot of unique appeal to when KH is truly firing on all cylinders in a way that only it truly can. I mostly think it's a damn shame that that feeling is intensely condensed to the first two numbered titles. I wish it were more present in other stuff like BBS. Zack Fair was a lovely little hint of it.
You even pointed out that the Auron-in-Hades segment was pretty peak, and I'm inclined to agree. It wasn't an OC world meant to let characters blend together, but it gave Auron a big spotlight in a Disney setting and that kicked a lot of ass.
In regards to the Roxas, Namine, and Xion point: even if they don't grow or develop any further, there IS something they can do in the narrative: in KH4 we have "mission: find Sora," which, if EVERYONE is prioritizing, would leave worlds unguarded. Giving the former nobodies a place as a team of heartless exterminators. This also extends to the Wayfinders
Yensid isn’t prioritizing it
@@starvoltnexus3139 that’s because he’s Yen Sid
@@raheemaslam7363 he's too busy trying to tell his name backwards is Disn-
The Terra argument felt so good to finally hear
My issue with Terra is less that he's dumb and more that his story is annoyingly static. He does literally nothing wrong, has everyone yell at him that he's doing wrong, refuses to partake when tempted with the wrong thing, but then suddenly he's Darkness, Destroyer of Worlds out of nowhere at the end of the game when the only thing he'd done up to that point was shoot Braig and fight Eraqus, both in self-defense and defense of others. So the story is less that Terra is dumb or Terra falls because of bad choices, but more than Terra becomes evil because KH1 is a foregone conclusion and this guy looks suspiciously like KH2 Xehanort.
Meanwhile, other characters arguably make bigger mistakes. Just look at Eraqus going "Oh no, I can't believe Xehanort is still evil after he shot me in the face with the power of darkness and said he intended to start the apocalypse. Maybe I shouldn't have sent the student of mine struggling the most with darkness to see where he is." Or even Aqua and Ven, for that matter. Why doesn't anyone ever get on Ven for never telling anyone about Vanitas being on the Land of Departure or the things he said would happen to Terra? Why doesn't anyone ever put Aqua to task for accusing Terra about how she's seen all of the things he's done in other worlds when she left Castle of Dreams with a good opinion of him, never saw any indication he did anything bad in Dwarf Woodlands, and only heard hearsay from the evil witch trying to manipulate her in Enchanted Dominion?
I like how you just reminded me of a hot take I had about Eraqus and how he didn't even bother to console Terra. HIS LITERAL BLOOD CHILD. struggling with the darkness and didn't think to address more concern with that. The worst problem is, Xehanort, for how evil he is, was technically right,too. You can't just force down darkness once you have it. You have to weild it properly like you have to weild light.
Also aqua should have been put to task for the fact that Fairy god mother said that darkness can only really defeat darkness yet shoves the idea of light and Terra being in the wrong for something he literally cannot control. Not trying to help him resolve issues or ask. Just blaming and gaslighting him like Eraqus.
@@xenrusxenomorph2268 At the end of the day, Eraqus is a terrible teacher. You can see how Aqua perfectly inherits his bloodthirsty mentality and only gradually gets over it with time. But Kingdom Hearts III kinda glosses over Eraqus' mistakes and instead is just like "No, man, he was totally this wise chessmaster that puppeteered everything that counterbalanced Xehanort".
@@TheAzulmagia which is funny because of how it implies that his ghost dust was there the whole time in Terra.. like stayed silent while he was going through mental anguish. Kinda ruins everything that BBS set up though him.
@@xenrusxenomorph2268 literal blood child?
@@insertnamehere2746 I always thought Terra was Master Eraqus' bio child
the idea that it's "less mature" for the Nobodies to become independent people, when in fact the whole arc set up with Nobodies throughout COM, KH2, Days, DDD and KH3 examines a theme of personhood, is absurd to me. there are plenty of real people who are dehumanized in the exact same way Nobodies are in the series, and if the series came down to say "actually yes, you *are* less than other people, and your only true happiness is sacrifice in the service of another even though you clearly have an individual personality, thoughts, dreams and emotions" would actually be the immature take (not to mention it has kind of garbage politics attached to that conclusion). Sometimes death isn't more mature lmao. Even in KH2 it's clear that ATW is wrong about the Nobodies
To be honest though, out of the Nobodies we've seen, most of them pretty much retained their original personality, only Roxas really showed that he deviated from Sora, and I mostly assume that's just because Sora "died" in an unconventional way. I still do feel like the game is a bit weird with the needing to die to regain a heart, especially since it pretty clearly showed that Nobodies developed their own hearts. But on that, I don't think that before, during and after Nobody the person would be three different people, instead I feel that they're all the same person just at different points.
"Sometimes death isn't more mature" is a good way of summing it up. Darker elements don't automatically elevate a children's story, especially when it would completely undermine part of the point of that story, and i dont know why people always try to make children's media darker than they already are. Kids' stuff doesn't always have to be sunshine and rainbows but it doesn't have to be needlessly dark if it doesn't fit the world, themes or storyline, either.
@@bigboi8028 I think there's another example of a nobody being significantly different enough from their somebody to be considered a new person, that being, oddly enough, Vexen vs. Even. Not just with how he is in CoM vs. BBS, you can even see it within the same game, kh3, where he completely changes his personality depending on who he's talking to (i.e when he has to act like Vexen talking to people like Luxord vs. When he doesn't have to act, like when talking to Demyx). Vexen acts notably more 'deranged' (for lack of a better term) with his strange facial expressions, his perpetually annoyed/passive-aggressive tone of voice, erratic body language, and short temper. As Even, he's notably more soft-spoken, his body language is more reserved, his facial expressions are softer, and he's relatively kinder (as far as we've seen). It's nothing super dramatic but it's pretty clear there's a difference between the two. I think the issue is most of the other nobodies either don't have enough screentime to demonstrate the differences between their versions, or don't have enough personality to know if there is a difference. The outlier here is Axel and Lea, who get plenty of separate screentime, but I don't think they behave all that differently (besides, like, not being evil. Imo Lea is basically just Axel but nicer), which I'll attribute to a) the writers not wanting to change Lea's personality too much as to not diminish his appeal and b) his change being more gradual due to character development making the difference less stark. Vexen is just a unique case where he has a lot of personality to where it's noticeable when he's behaving differently, a decent amount of screentime as both a nobody and somebody, and his story in kh3 requires him to switch between those personas from scene to scene. It's not exactly game-changing but I think it serves as decent evidence that Roxas isn't the only nobody who's not exactly the same person as their somebody, which I choose to believe has been the implication from the beginning. I just wish it was demonstrated with more than two characters.
Also the amount of people who apparently believe that a total loss of identity and autonomy equates to a happy ending is worrisome.
And I think the fucked up thing is that Roxas and Naminé aren’t “dead” in 2, they’re still alive and conscious so having them be in Sora and Kairi might put a bad taste in people’s mouths if they interpreted as “dehumanization is ok because it’s a lesser being”
I think as far as Larxene being quite one-note, there is that weird part of CoM, where she feels VERY attached to Axel. Like Marluxia and Axel are the only people she is never hostile to, but she actively acts like she and Axel are closer than they are. Like idk if she had feelings for him or something but that is a very interesting dynamic that never gets brought up again.
Now that I am actually seeing my takes on there, I am suddenly feeling self-conscious over my writing, and my unpopular opinions 😆Perhaps this is a tiny window into what youtubers feel like starting out
about the "Sora does not deserve 2.B.A Master" take: I think the end of KH3 signified that growth in him. After Kairi gives him another fighting change, instead of relying on his friends to be his power, he is the one who single-handedly saves each and every one of them. He realizes his mistake of breaking down at the sight of losing his friends and becomes determined to save them no matter what. I think this is the moment he begins to deserve it. The moment in which he stops taking things for granted.
12:29 Oh, my take made it! 8th seed, out in the first round, but I'll just happy to be included. You were totally right to have Terra's not stupid as the hotter take. I usually get lost in the symbolism in the series before I even consider the characters.
I thought your take was very interesting! It was unfortunately doomed from the start going against such a goliath like Terra not being dumb, but I think it definitely could have gone farther if it had some better luck in its match ups!
Twas an excellent take. Personally, I've always believed it, and it's the only reason KH3 Xehanort's plan makes sense. The dude wanted to bring balance to the force. I can respect it.
In regards to "Saix is the Main Villain of KH2," The structure of Xemnas and Saix fall into a specific trope of villain structures. I forget the actual name, but the way I heard it is something along the lines of "The Emperor and the General."
Basically, the General is meant to be the foil-villain for the hero to have that emotional, personal struggle and beef with, and the Emperor is the larger shadow looming behind them, whose mere presence above the General helps to elevate their threat level, and make it so that just beating/killing/whatever the General isn't all that needs to be done.
GotVodka mentioned Ozai and Azula from AtLA, but there are other examples, like Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine from OT Star Wars, or in a different direction, the Black Knight and King Ashnard from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. In Star Wars, the big threat to the galaxy is Palpatine, but Luke has the more personal motivation coming from Vader, who killed his mentor Obi-Wan right in front of him, and Ike has a similar case of being far more focused on revenge on the Black Knight that made sure Ike was a true FE protagonist by killing his dad, than he does to King Ashnard, someone he's really only heard of in vague terms at best, but knows that the Black Knight serves Ashnard out of respect for his strength.
What I'm saying is that the Saix is the main villain take isn't a hot or cold take, because it's not even a take. It's an observation of a normal story trope that's been used plenty of times. The "lesser" villain has the connection to the protagonist, and acts as a bridge to connect their personal quest into stopping the main villain, because the big evil emperor has better things to focus on than crushing/psychologically mess with every bit of resistance personally. It's normal story structure, and good writing.
Regarding the FF character take, my opinion is that we don't need the Radiant Garden crew **specifically** in KH3, but I feel that a small part of KH's identity is lost without that small bit of Final Fantasy involvement.
What I hope happens in the future is we start getting a wider variety of FF characters, maybe even in Disney worlds that **aren't** Olympus. Pull characters from the older and newer games, like Lightning or Luneth, and blend them into their Disney worlds like they did with Zack Fair in BBS. Or let them exist as groups in original worlds that are independent of the Radian Garden and Twilight Town FF characters that still affect the plot and characters.
The point is, while they aren't a necessity or as major a component as the Dusney stuff, Final Fantasy elements in general are still an important aspect of the franchise that I'd hate to see put on the wayside.
The FF characters add a level of bizarre that is KH's signature.
I'm an outside KH fan, in that I've never actually gotten around to playing the games, but I love watching/listening to videos about them. I'm also not a FF fan, I've watched a friend play a few ages ago but nothing else otherwise.
So from my perspective, yeah, I fully agree. Nomura's new take that there can't be ANY FF because he'd rather focus on the KH original stuff makes sense for the main plot stuff sure, but falls flat when factoring in possible minor cameos.
For example one simple and easy case I can think of is that Quina and Freya from FF9 should have been featured in the Ratatouille mini game cutscenes in KH3. Quina is food themed and Freya is a humanoid rat, both would be perfect FF characters to give a cameo to in that situation. It simply feels like they are going out of their way to not even try to come up with creative uses of FF characters.
@@TheNamekianClown The FF15 Boys would have fit in at Twilight Town too. Ignis having a rivalry with Ratatouille?
yeah, like we have enough original worlds to put some FF character variants here and there
It's very simple to describe what KH loses without FF cameos, to me at least. I watch a lot of playthroughs for reactions to the game, and nothing beats the reactions to reveals like Cloud or Sephiroth or Auron or Tifa or Neku. It's that extra burst of hype that people get meeting and doing things with characters you know. And lets face it....while a lot of us have nostalgic Disney memories, if you know FF games then it's still way more hype to team up with Auron than it is teaming up with Hercules. Games are about these memorable fun moments. And even better when you can turn these one-off moments into a more significant investment, which is what you get when you make these cameos play a longer part in the story.
No, the FF characters aren't "needed". But hell, a lot of Disney or even original characters aren't even "needed". One potential Disney world is always replaceable with another, it's a grab bag of what we get, and what worlds they choose is often based on hype level and the capabilities of the devs. Captain Jack Sparrow isn't "needed" over Jack Skellington. Hayner isn't really "needed" over Neku or vice versa. The story at most needs the main original characters that appear at the very end in the main conflict. That doesn't mean the unnecessary characters don't have significance to the games as a whole.
16:12 - To some degree, yes it is indeed possible they were tracking mickey. They were tracking Riku in days for taking Xion, literally sending Roxas out to kill him, I believe it is possible they were also tracking Mickey for the same reason. This is in-addition to the fact that he just sent Sora to someone who told him to kill the rest of the organization.
Also that month time period between kh2 and DDD was filled with Re:Coded.
okay but is that really an excuse? mickey could have just not bothered with some dumb shit in jiminy's dumb book, and none of the events in re:coded would have happened nor would it have mattered since it wouldn't have opened up the backdoor entrance or whatever. it literally would have made more sense for mickey to have just been dead asleep relaxing the whole time having totally forgotten about Aqua than being on a fucking computer
god i hate re:coded
I think on the writing of the franchise, KH2 had great writing for dialog post-prologue, particularly in Sora's sassiness and interactions with Donald, Goofy, and Riku. The writing of Saïx in those "main villain" scenes you focused on for that take was great and sinister. DiZ and Mickey's dialog was also really good if you can look past Mickey's surrealistic presence.
There were good moments of writing scattered throughout the series, and now that you bring it up, I think Saix passes that villain description test where others would fail.
Wow, BOTH my takes made it in, I'm surprised! Still, thanks for including them dude! I finished DDD RIGHT before making these takes so I can see where I was coming from with them. While I still think the drop gauge is really good (I personally never had a problem with it) I absolutely see your point about me being able to work AROUND the game mechanic instead of it being actually well-designed.
I'm glad I was able to convince you on the dives, though.
The thing about the drop meter is that it’s so pointless. There’s zero reason to not delay dropping as long as possible since you’ll accumulate the most droplets for the next guy. So all it ends up amounting to is putting a drop-me-not in your deck for second then taking it out. It’s litterally just a medication you have to take every 20 minutes in game
I'm 100% on your side with the drop gauge. I love that it's all up to the player how much they want to interact with the time limit via drop me nots.
I agree that the Drop gauge is a good idea in principle. Especially when there's a way to work around it if you don't like it. It's just that 99% of the fan base don't like it. Just as well, a lot of folks love to overblow and rant about what they don't like in video games. 😆
My only gripe with the Drop gauge is the restting bosses thing. However, programming it in a way that would be able to perfectly recreate your state in the battle would be a bit much. Plus, it'd be kinda silly for you and the boss to be fighting, but then the boss stops mid attack to wait for you to finish your beauty nap. 🤣
I think the drop meter is a neat concept. I think that the intention there is for you to proceed through both stories at roughly the same pace to give the feeling that Sora and Riku are running two parallel journeys and so that you reach the conclusion at the end at pretty much the same time, and turning that into a gameplay mechanic instead of just forcing a perspective change at set points in the story is a legitimately interesting idea. I can't even say I remember personally ever having a problem with that mechanic but I do understand other people's problems with it, and I think it would have been a simple fix to make it not trigger until after a boss fight if you ran out of time during it. It's definitely not high on my list of things that are wrong with DDD though.
The drop gauge is really cool I love it as a mechanic. Makes DDD really unique.
Been binging your entire channel and I love it. Kingdom Hearts 2 is my favorite game so it's so good that I can watch you come up with so many problems with the game that I completely agree with, but don't change my opinion on the game at all. But your videos encouraged a replay of kh1 for the first time in 15 years and made me appreciate it so much more. Appreciate you man!
The KH 2 magic bar is one of smartest decision made for kh 2. It makes you consider whether healing is worth giving up your magic options and cure gives you an out for one mistake but forces you to learn why you got hit and adept to since if you make the same mistake again without having mp you didn't learn from your mistake the first time.
Alternatively, with the robust dodging mechanics. If you are struggling, it now means that you are now spending 30 seconds to a minute of just dodging waiting for your MP bar to recharge. Your only consequence is a timer within the attempt, that often just makes the fights last longer, and not dying and having to start over.
Maybe that's better, to have like a soft checkpoint within an attempt that just requires some time to maintain, rather than having to restart? I don't know.
To me it just seems to artificially lengthen hectic battles.
While KH1's magic, would basically give you x mistakes forgiven, and then you have to actually fight to earn more forgiven mistakes. It also wasn't a party heal, so you had to choose if you wanted some more support from an ally that was downed, or if you wanted to give yourself full health.
In both cases both systems have their ups and down. But in the end it boils down to , how do you want your mistakes forgiven?
By forcing the player to go into the danger zone and continue the fight, or by stepping back from the situation and dodging and observing until the bar comes back?
It sounds like you prefer the latter. It is all down the preference I guess.
Awhile 2 has a much more punishing system when it comes to magic, it also has different ways to be able to manage like using drive forms or using different summons that can restore some of your MP.
i think overrall kh1's system works pretty well for hte most part, but it starts to fall apart once you start getting other abilities. mp haste is fine, but mp rage will pretty much always let you do a cure if you get hit, so as long as you won't get oneshot you can always heal after getting hit with this ability. combine this with second chance and leaf bracer and you're pretty much unkillable. i think kh1fm would've been a bit better leaving leaf bracer out because it is way to op with kh1's magic system, and makes a lot more sense with kh2/3's system@@tiggy4591
@@tiggy4591something I like about 2's MP recharge is that dodging isn't always the safest option.
I tend to keep being aggressive while the bar is recharging because me attacking means the enemy isn't attacking me.
Oh wow, my take is in there! Yeah, I was definitely looking at KH1 Maleficent exclusively. Looking at everything else she has done (or didn't do I should say) would knock her way below Xehanort overall. But I still stand by the fact that she would have won easily if Ansem hadn't gotten in her way in KH1.
Loved participating in this! Not sure how you'd do something like this again (tournament with viewers submitting entries) but I'd do it again in a second.
Yeah. Maleficent was pretty great in KH1.
It definitely makes sense. I think I remember hearing somewhere that Maleficent was originally the main villain and that Ansem Seeker of Darkness was added as an afterthought.
"FF not needed in KH3" only really deals with Leon's gang and not the other FF characters. Despite being childhood friends of SRK, Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie have just been completely forgotten. Seifer and his gang are also randomly absent in Twilight Town. The inclusion of Leon and the gang may not have been needed for KH3 due to their story being done, but that same argument goes for Roxas and Xion as well as most of the Organization XIII characters that have been randomly pulled back for this game despite having more satisfying endings in previous games.
Id say my main take is that the ones we've had arent needed. If they wanted to bring back Tidus and Wakka thats cool. The Seifer gang would've been cool to see but theyre not exactly plot relevant. Whereas characters like Xion and Roxas are plot relevant and their story wasn't done. As apparent in needing more keyblade wielders, they were only after roxas, and Sora vehemently telling Roxas that he's his own person in DDD
Outside of arguably Roxas and Xion, there were no "Organization XIII characters that had more satisfying endings in previous games". Every character who was an Org member between the old and new one, got an infinitely more satisfying end in KH3 than they did in whatever game they first 'died' in.
Also, I guess this depends on how you define "need", but there were good reasons to have them to be there. We have scenes in BBS, Coded, and DDD that all hint towards the idea of bringing the characters who are lost back, which includes Roxas and Xion. Building up three games worth of set-up and not paying it off would be... pretty terrible, honestly. And from a meta-perspective, the point of the "Real" Organization XIII was basically to have them be a giant tribute to the entire series up to now. A collection of iconic characters (and also Luxord) from across the series. It's why there's at least one boss from every past game in there. It's a celebration of the Dark Seekers Saga, having all these characters who meant so much to it (and also Luxord) be there for the end of it.
"FF not needed " well that depends what final fantasy aspect we are talking about. Like most spells are directly from FF as well as gumi ship parts. Not to mention the whole vibe of the story.
This was a really fun and entertaining video; I especially appreciated the way Pat snuck that "He did it. He opened Kingdom Hearts." reference in at 2:34:22.
For some reason that's become one of my favorite running jokes from this channel, ngl.
It was exciting to be a small part of this, thanks fellas!
Always enjoy listening to you chat about a series near and dear to my heart.
1:07:32 That's only true of BBS. You absolutely can walk into any battle with 2 Formchanges loaded and ready to go in 3 and then switch between them whenever you want to. Formchanges are so much easier to access than Drive Forms.
I think there may be something to Namine being manipulative in kh2. If only because manipulating others is basically all she's done since she first started existing. So purposely or not thats what she defaults to when presented with needing Sora back while Roxas is around.
That take was weird cause I couldn't tell if the person was trying to say she was malicious with her manipulating or not. If the argument is just "she manipulates" then yes you are correct, but it partly sounded like they were trying to say "manipulative and evil" which I don't believe is.
@@ShyRanger That's fair.
I feel like her manipulation is due to her being manipulated by the Organization and then working with Ansem the Wise. Both parties used her for her power over Memories. I believe she didn’t have a chance to develop to be her own person until she met Sora and Riku in CoM and then Kairi in KH2.
Pleasantly surprised my Terra is not dumb take was a number one seed (I forgot to put my username on it before I submitted it). It's something that I'm oddly very passionate about to the point that I can feel my blood pressure rise whenever people try to dunk on him but they can't because he's just too tall.
( okay, okay that was a bad joke. I'll see myself out LOL)
If it helps. Me as someone who never delved super far into the kh community much prior to recently. As a younger human playing through bbs on my psp 1000 or whatever. Liked Terra quite a bit. Albeit aqua is my favorite of the 3, only bcuz of the fact I'm gay. And she's hot. Lmao.
So until recently I wouldn't have even seen how it was a hot take.
In short. I Def agree with your take pretty fully
Excellent take! I'm sure I will absolutely be falling back on some of your points the next time I find myself in a duel for Terra's honor.
Your take shouldn't even be a hot take man, it should be a fact. Terra was arguably the smartest from the bunch of the main cast excluding Xehanort himself ofc. It's more of that the fanbase believes it because of the characters constantly bashing and shaming Terra for learning to manipulate and control darkness and believing everything any villain says about him without any consideration, but then Terras actions and decisions completely contradict and debunk the belief that he's dumb
A very based take.
Not only was all of what you said true, but people berate him for believing Xehanort even tho *everyone* trusted Xehanort. Ven, Aqua, Eraqus, all of them fell for it.
Not only that, but while it is obvious that he is manipulating Terra to us, people need to pay attention to what the old man was saying. He never told Terra anything that was a lie. The Unversed and Vanitas had to be stopped, Ven had to be saved, Darkness can only be channeled not destroyed so he should embrace it and use it just as he uses light, Eraqus was blinded by light, there needs to be a balance, yadda yadda.
Yeah, we know he's just trying to manipulate him but people wipe all of what he said under the rug because "he's just so evil, look at him!" (which, should we judge people on appearences?) while failing to realize he's just speaking facts and that Terra had zero reason to be suspicious of him.
All the BBS characters are dumb, both heroes and villains. PWNd.
The only thing I have to say about that "Larxene is the Best Written Female" was when gotvodka said "Larxene does this because she's just an evil bitch" which is really not true due to what we now know from Union X where Larxene's Somebody was in the Dandelion group alongside Marluxia's Somebody. So technically, Larxene also does things because of Marluxia and her connection to him before they were Nobodies.
RE: Drop Gauge. One thing I really REALLY like is how it mechanically is making these two campaigns feel like they're happening at the same time. I kinda think the team wanted to accomplish that after BBS because BBS is always touted as having an "order" (the game even recommends an order" so you re-tread events. And by the time you're at Aqua you're still consciously aware these are all at the same time narratively but Aqua is just something you do after the other two. Idk, I see that take and respect it.
2:02:00 as a kid i didnt read the reports and how i always interpreted the sacrifice was kairi sealed a piece of herself in sora in the beginning when she flew through him. Then the "Dark Keyblade" which can unlock the darkness in ones heart unlocked soras darkness and freed Kairis heart at same time which made his sacrifice more meaningful to me as a 10 year old, not only are you sacrificing yourself but relegating yourself to lose yourself and become evil to save someone
Got another hot take related to but distinct from "Terra isn't dumb": namely, "Terra doesn't care about power".
I say this mostly as a response to Eraqus's remark after the Mastery exam where he claims that Terra is too power-hungry and that's why he failed, except nowhere in the rest of the game does Terra show interest in or behave in a way that suggests getting stronger is even a secondary motivation for him.
It isn't the promise of power that suckers Terra into Xehanort's clutches, it's *recognition* as a Master; in other words it's *approval*.
And even with "cool uncle Xehanort" saying that darkness needs to be controlled rather than eliminated -- which really might have made Terra's life easier if he'd learned to control his darkness instead of suppressing it until it became overwhelming -- he still tries to get rid of his darkness instead (as shown in Olympus) because he wants ERAQUS to approve and be proud of him.
The fact that Aqua, his only real perceived "peer" as a student is something of a Teacher's Pet who, despite their friendship, still calls Terra a "boy" and treats him like more of a delinquent than he really is (including admitting that she was more or less trying to spy on him in the first half of the game) almost certainly plays into and reinforces this insecurity, this *lack of approval/respect* that drives Terra further and further down the path destiny set out for him.
Even in 358/2 days Saix is more of an antagonist than Xion, how he seems jealous of their friendship with Axel and helps drive them apart
Also being the third to last final boss in that game
The Gummi ship vs Dive arguement is good, but unesessary when you realize we can just merge them together. Pretty sure during he KH3 hype season, The Gamers Joint suggested the idea of Sora diving FROM ORBIT out of the Gummi ship. We could get both aspects and I personally would want that so much.
"pop a drop-me-not" is such a satisfying collection of syllables.
For the bit about how Axel should have been the one to drop the Organization’s plan on Sora…didn’t he? Like, he explains to Sora how the Organization set him up, and then Saix shows up and elaborates…why, I’m not sure, but maybe he figures the cat’s out of the bag.
…One thing that did occur to me would be that they should have better taken advantage of the fact that Kairi’s their hostage by saying “Hey, if you don’t keeping collecting hearts, who knows what’ll happen…” A bit more a personal reason for Sora to go along with their plan. That would actually probably give the Organization some villain cred - if Sora finds out they’re using him, they’ll have a backup plan.
I think they just rolled the dice on the whole “yeah, Xehanort sounds and looks super evil, but this is a Disney universe, maybe he’s actually a good guy like the Beast” but they came up snake-eyes.
@@neveroddoreven6597 nah I mean in BBS
this but also not judging someone based on their surface appearances is also just like. common sense and basic human decency in the real world as well lmao
1:22:03 my take made it in! Ik it's labeled under anonymous, but I didn't attach my G-Mail or anything because I didn't think it'd make it! That's awesome man
On an alternate note to the Drop Gauge is Great take, particularly with the bosses, I think it could have been interesting if they played into the "split apart in layers of the world but still helping each other" aspect of Sora and Riku's test if, during a boss fight, you still could drop, *but* the other member would be able to sub in to help in a similar way to how Mickey can defend you in certain KH2 fights. I don't know how it'd be best implemented and is obviously not a real feature that'd ever exist, but it would have added a neat layer to the feature both for gameplay and narratively. Even if they're separated, they're still able to defend and help each other when the need arises. Alas this is all meaningless wishing for mechanics that will never be
i have never played a single kingdom hearts game and i watched this entire video and idk what or who or where is going on but i felt the passion of the takes and the responses
Re: Saïx as the primary antagonist of KH2, I feel the conflict of Xemnas as a person (heh) is better felt against Roxas. Xemnas has met him multiple times, and may've been the first person (heh!) Roxas even saw. Roxas deliberates about Xemnas, about their roles toward each other and the Organization (I just...really like the throughlines of Beast's Castle in Days?), and when actions are meted out against Roxas or Xion, it's either to their faces or understood in the chain of command. Roxas knows Xemnas more, and Xemnas has direct history with his errant Keyblade wielder. Saïx certainly was no slouch either, being Axel's foil and a constant grindstone and *we were robbed by the HD Cinematics skipping Roxas's escape* , but Xemnas had both a dynamic and a distinct dynamic compared to Saïx, an abuse of power compared to a dismissal of personhood. Maybe if there was a segment of KH2 where Sora subjected himself to Xemnas's command, perhaps leading out from his groveling before Saïx, then we could've had some time to build up the clashes of perspectives and methods as happened for Roxas, and have some conflict borne from direct engagement rather than reputations (and leave that *just* for MX). At least Young Xehanort got his gloves dirty by proactively antagonizing Sora, as theirs may be the most founded beef among the 'norts.
Only in Kingdom Hearts can we make a knowing chuckle after saying the word “person”
(Heh)
Seriously though i will forever be salty that the HD collection of 358/2 days robbed us of the final confrontation with saix. He has been the ONE thing constantly standing in the way of ALL the protagonists of days, moreso then xemnas. Xemnas might be the one calling the shots but saix is the one acting on them. And his battle in days in so damn satisifing. Taking away his confrontation in days also takes away so much of all the seasalt trio's characters, including saix's. It makes his actions in 3 so much more impactful and for people who never played days and only have acess to the cutscene won't have this other level of depth to all the seasalt fam. We were robbed i tell you. ROBBED.
Definitely. Xemnas is the counterpart to Roxas like Ansem is to Riku. That's why the 3v3 at the end of KH3 should have replaced Mickey with Roxas. That leaves Sora v Young Xehanort, which kinda ties with DDD, having Sora want revenge for almost getting norted even though it was Riku who beat YX.
To add to this (a year later, sorry), Roxas's entire character journey is self identity. Every other organization member sees him as Roxas while Xemnas always sees Roxas (and Xion) as Sora or a method to obtain his power as his plans endgoal for CoM, 358, and for the majority of 2 was to have Sora under his thumb. It's to the point where each of his few conversations with Roxas being about entirely focused on Sora and he never bother calling Sora 'Roxas' in their one on one unlike every other organization member excluding Axel who does because he sees them differently.
Oh wow my take’s in! I’ll admit my take was a bit on the semantic side, but it’s something that’s been on my mind for a while and it was nice to get it off my chest.
Most content creators release a 2 and a half hour video
Me: Nah, I'll pass
Regular Pat releases 2 and a half hour video
Me: Oh hell yeah, can't wait to watch this after work
9:50 : But it actually happen. Three of the 13 darknesses are not defeated and dissolve, but changed side (Xion, Terra and technically, Xigbar).
There was an lack of balance, which is why the darkness became a danger to the realm of Light, that was corrected by the 3rd Keyblade War
48:00 : I actually prefer KH2 and 3 magic system because it's a good balance to force the player to use items. It's always a problem in RPG to force a player to use his stach of items he accumulate but never use unless they really needs it. With Bar magic, yes enemies can re-empty your life in three seconds, but you can also use potion items while the gauge is reloading or using an ether to reload it faster.
2nd take is facts, especially considering that you can use the drive forms to get your MP bar back and you have some summons that have MP restoration properties.
I know it’s a bit late (I have to find time to watch videos this long) but as someone who’s favorite game is KH3, I slightly disagree with the KH1 camera being good for the series moving forward. The minute the design team started making more enemies appear and bosses appear and move faster, you needed a pulled back camera to see it. In fact, the whole “god” like camera is used creatively sometimes like data Luxord in 2 and 3. I’m not saying the KH1 camera is bad, it fits its game beautifully, but I don’t think it’s fair to compare them when the enemy and boss designs in each game demand something different from the camera.
1:52:00 Their initial 'get Radiant Garden back' story might be done, but there's so much more potential for scenarios beyond that. The thing about the Final Fantasy characters being 'done' is that there's a whole 16 mainline games to pull characters from for the writers to *give* them something to do, more than just relegating them to bit parts in one world, maybe two. It's more of a wasted potential of a crossover to tie it in to the 'KH is not a crossover' hot take. I *want* it to be a crossover, so I want more Square characters to show up and intertwine themselves in the story.
Haven't started watching yet, but man I can already feel the heat
Edit (After Watching): There was hot ones here, but overhaul, really well written and argued points. There was maybe only one I got heated by, but most of the ones I disagreed with weren't ones that keep me up at night and we're basically inconsequential.
2:05:34 - That’s my take. Sorry for forgetting to use my name. First let me say this whole project is fantastic and I enjoyed every minute. Then, I’d like to say I am so happy that my take was able to get you guys thinking, which is all I really want. I want people to think critically about narrative choices that may feel good emotionally in the moment, but may be a detriment to the series’ potential down the road. I don’t think Roxas, Namine, and Xion coming back ruins KH per se, but I’m not sure about the significance they’ll play in the future, or if bringing them back is a narratively superior choice than the ways their arcs ended in previous games, albeit with some changes.
I wish people would stop equating Roxas’s return to Sora as a death. It’s not. Roxas and Sora are literally the same person. Different in many ways, but sharing uncannily similar traits. Let’s not forget that had it not been for Ventus’s heart being in Sora at the time, Roxas would have looked just like Sora, which only strengthens their duality. Sora in KH2 is a lot more of a smartass and has a bit of an edge to him. He calls out people a lot even if it may hurt their feelings and he has almost no mercy for his enemies. Just like Roxas. This should feel out of character, but it isn’t, these aspects have always been a part of him and manifested mostly as Roxas. They are one and the same.
And Xion death is certainly tragic, but having an ending where people remember her is so much more significant than one may think at first. CoM’s theme was all about memories, the importance of them, the feelings they give you, and how you live on in people’s hearts through them. Sora never remembers who Namine is, I don’t think, and that’s kinda sad, but also good because it was a sacrifice to be made that felt right and earned. What matters is that Sora still helped Namine through all of that even if he doesn’t remember, and that’s the very core of the theme. Similarly, Xion is a being that shouldn’t exist, yet she made her mark on the world and the friends she made in it. All she wanted was to not be forgotten, for her friends to know that she existed and to keep her story in their hearts. What could be more fitting then, for her friends in a future game to remember her and keep her story and existence alive in their memories? I see this as a win. An act of defiance against a world that tries to say she is a nobody. I find that beautiful and more emotionally compelling. And I don’t think any of it runs counter to KHs optimistic themes. These characters are punished by the KH universe, and yet despite this, they find ways to defy its supposedly undeniable laws. Roxas and Namine become whole again, and if Xion is remembered, then it proves her heart was real all along and that her existence has permanence in the world, despite what the universe may say. Is that not a miracle? Is this not the exact kind of Hope and inspirational power that KH is meant to have? These characters found their light in the darkness. It is the series’ most prominent theme.
It’s not as if KH is unfounded in it’s bittersweet endings, either. Pretty much every primary arc of the series has a bittersweet ending, quite literally a light and dark ending combination, and so it fits that some character’s stories are tragic, but ultimately end with something good.
I feel Kingdom Hearts series will suffer if it doesn’t mature in some aspects. I’m not saying death needs to happen all the time, heck I’m a believer that death should never happen unless it’s necessary. But I fell in love with how the series could make such sad stories, balance them out with goodness, while also being pretty grounded and taking its themes and concepts seriously both with optimistic outlook that doesn’t shy away from tragedy, and instead teaching people that though bad things may happen, there is still light in the darkness, there is still hope and goodness. Sure, the return of these characters embodies this theme too to an extent.
But does it embody the themes better than their original endings? I personally don’t think so.
Anyway, this was a long response but again I’m glad I got ya’ll thinking!
Hold on, Axel IS the one who reveals the organizations plan, not Saix
Axel reveals that the organisation are using Sora to gather hearts. Saix reveals what they are doing with the hearts.
@@justjames2555 Exactly, by the time Saix arrives the bulk of the damage has already been done. Whatever it is the Org are gathering hearts for, it surely is something bad. If anything, Saix humanizes the Org's pursuits by revealing that they're just trying to be whole again.
@@Kalernor Exactly, I don't know how they forgot that.
@@Kalernor That's a really interesting realization here. The reason why Saix shared their plan at all was basically damage control, to maybe help convince Sora to keep going. The only reason Xaldin fought Sora is pretty much just that he's fucking pissed that Sora ruined this year long thing of turning Beast into a nobody, at least that's how I think of it. Demyx? Why did Demyx fight and die to Sora? Actually a great question. Not much justification for it other than Demyx is a dumbass, but even then we wouldn't expect him to fight either way.
I see my take in there. I'm satisfied it made it this far. Thanks for the work, Pat and Kiwi. I've been looking forward to this.
EDIT: Thank you for the compliments on my "bad writing" submission. Win or lose, this was a fun ride. I feel like I should have emphasized more that I think the insistence on maintaining a plot that always builds on itself is bad for the series. That's better than the blanket statement I made. As the comments have reminded me, good lines come and go. Between the translated aspect of the series and the crossover format it must adhere to, it's difficult to give a thorough and accurate analysis of the dialogue, world-building, and general story writing.
Can we all just agree on one thing, though? KH3 should have done so much more with its extended cast once they were all on screen. I wanted to see everybody interacting with everybody else, and what we got was a super limp scene of everyone generically hanging out on the beach. None of the characters individual personality shone through. I didn't just want Roxas and Ventus to look at each other, I wanted them to talk. Kingdom Hearts has so much personality lying just under the surface, and a lot of my take stems from frustration that it doesn't use this more. That's why people like the manga! Hopefully there'll be a spinoff set in the normal KH reality at some point that lets everyone interact in a satisfying way.
I love these kinds of videos. Thank you for all of your content Pat!
The KH1 camera take was so good. I don't even know if it's actually true but I am 100% sold now.
Congrats on 30k my dude 🎉
1:26:24
Im upset because I agree that Left or right on the Dpad could cancel it. I think he would have been better by mentioning that the Shortcut Menu *itself* invalidates the sifting around Command Menu.
In KH3, you can map Magic, Items, and summons to Shortcuts, and you have 3 Shortcut Menus to swap between, only thing you can’t map is activating Situation Commands.
As for a substitute, Zelda BOTW’s Rune/weapon swapping comes to mind.
I do like the Command Menu, though, it adds a lot to the game and it wouldn’t be a KH game without it.
So for the command menu take, I'd love if kh4 used the battle system that ff7 remake did. Just press a button to bring up the menu that slows time
It's actually an option that you can turn on in Kingdom Hearts 3. Unfortunately, you do have to be in a menu like items or magic
oh boy I can't wait to listen to this for hours on end while working on other stuff, this is gonna be a fun one
Although; in regards to the crossover take. Isn't the actual Crossover Square Enix and Disney and not just FF and Disney? The merge isn't just characters, it's mechanics, directors/producers and concepts.
Edit: In particular, I'm thinking about the Shin Megami TenseiXFire Emblem crossover where if you based it on the characters it'd be a Fire Emblem game, but the combat and story is far more of a SMT game with FE elements.
Great video! I can listen to you and guest star Regular Pat talk for hours! Your videos are always so creative! Months of hard work really paid off!
Even tho I didn’t win the bracket I still won a nearly three hour video to fall asleep to! Thank you!!
Also you really pit govodka against gotvodka!? During women’s history month? Brutal💁♀️
I really like the drop system from DDD. Never understood why people complain so much when you have total control of the gauge, using Drop-me-nots or just dropping when the bar is too low, so it won't happen on boss fights.
It's more interesting for me playing the same worlds at the same time than having to play all the game three times to see everything like in BBS, this can be very tiring.
Is a camera really the best because it is the most immersive is the question? I definitely think biases were not left at the door for this one lol.
Given that in the modern day all the cameras function without issues, yes that is a huge feel difference from the player playing any current copy of KH1 (being the final mix)
@@themuffinprincesa21 I don't disagree that the feel is different. I'd just argue different doesn't always equal better. More immersive for sure, and if that is your measure I can understand that, but can't say it is not frustrating being hit by something clipping out of the bounds of the tight camera POV.
@@zacharyowenmartin8247 definitely isn't perfect & I prefer the farther camera as I used to play a lot of MMo games. The camera immersion is nothing that ever made a difference to me, but I know it has for many others.
2:13:54
I think there could be a case for Organization Bad in terms of how they effected Kingdom Hearts. The first story was a pretty straightforward one, a classic tale of the hero searching for the damsel in distress against the Big Evil, with the Lancer rival being the wildcard in the mix. But once the Organization came onto the scene, they've DOMINATED the series with their presence.
Pretty much any of the "KH is confusing" memes comes from shit that involves them, having to explain so much about where they came from and what they're trying to achieve. And the prequel games of BBS and Days made things even more complicated. You'd almost forget that this is a Disney hack-and-slash, in fact that's sort of why it's so hard to integrate the original story points with the Disney since you have to spend SO much time explaining the KH part.
So my version of this argument clashes with another one of the hot takes; the simplicity of KH1's story is what makes it one of the best in the series, because the Organization caused Nomura to let his ambitions get away from him.
Agree with this one tbh
I'm kind of upset that you're right, since I do like some later stuff but shit's gotten a bit too bloated in the past couple of games
I would love to see a theory tournament where people share either their own personal theories or a theory they saw on the internet somewhere. Think it would be a neat way to see the thought process and ideas that people have regarding where the story has gone and is going
I think another reason why people give terra so much shit is his gameplay being slow and then tacked on is his story rather than terra being actually bad
If anyone was dumb it's erauqs
Terra actually has my favorite gameplay in Birth by Sleep because every button press is a commitment. You really have to think about what you're doing and not just go in all willy-nilly.
@@edgeofultima7483 i like terra's gameplay cause you Really feel that smack when you hit something (also cause darkness has combo's for days)
Here's the thing about Ansem in my experience: a lot of the core around the discussion is whether or not you see him dying in and of itself as making up for his past actions. I personally don't; to me, death isn't an atonement, it's a cop-out. There is no work being done in death to rectify the mistakes done in the past, there's no healing of those he hurt, and him dying didn't really help the situation all that much. Making a big exit via explosion with what is admittedly *the* best death speech is easy. Turning to face the remnants of what he put Roxas and Namine through, of addressing the things he had Riku do, and apologizing to *them* while living with the knowledge that he may not be forgiven is _hard._
Whether or not what he does after makes up for it leaves more room for debate to me. I think it's a step in the right direction -- not a full atonement, but a progress which I think makes for a much better character arc -- but the mad rush to forgive him and slot him in the _noble hero_ position personally put a bad taste in my mouth about how he was handled, but it's a similar complaint I had with how easily Isa was accepted by Roxas and Xion. He has his good points and I appreciate him putting in effort to rectify his past mistakes, but having him be immediately accepted warmly is an annoyance to me.
I'm not the biggest fan of Ansem the Wise myself, but in the interest of fairness to him there are couple of things to bring up.
He does acknowledge his past mistakes pretty often. When he's talking to Mickey at the end of Kingdom Hearts 2 he does admit that everything that has happened to Riku is his fault and right before he blows up he apologizes to Roxas. He must have not cared as much about Namine since he doesn't really bring her up until Kingdom Hearts 3 after he's been nabbed by Ansem SOD, but he is one of the people that helped bring her back.
His explosion in Kingdom Hearts 2 did actually have a pretty big impact, since it is what changed Riku back to normal. How intentional that was is debatable but he did say that anything could happen and something did happen.
There's also the fact that if his device hadn't released so many hearts from Kingdom Hearts then Xemnas would have been much more powerful in the final battle and it probably would have been the end for everybody.
Absolutely. Ansem's consistently a bastard up until 3, only ever going "Maybe I shouldn't have been so racist to Roxas" at the end of 2. However, because he helped make amends for his mistakes in 3, being a potentially key player in giving Roxas his body back, I'm inclined to say he's redeemed.
@@gusgarrison9211 "Racist towards roxas" Lmfao is this a fucking joke? Yes Rucksack got the short end of the stick but at the end of the day, Roxas was not the man of the job and Sora was. It became apparent to Ansem the wise what Sora had accomplished had accomplished at the end of KH1. Ansem knows that Sora is likely to take some indirect path to taking out Xemnas just like he did to Ansem SoD. Roxas was about to take a DIRECT path to KH through the entire remaining organization and that was not a smart idea (at Riku said so). Plus you conveniently forget that the realm of darkness had twisted Ansems mind somewhat, so of course he wasnt going to have the demeanor of the forner sage king of radiant garden
"Him dying didn't help the situation much"
Holy shit that is CAP if ive ever seen it. By holding that machine up prior to its explosion, Ansem basically ensured that Xemnas obtaining KH would be delayed. Xemnas had to bargain with KH and he was far less less powerful than what he would have been because there were A LOT less hearts in the KH, THANKS to what Ansem did. If the KH that powered Xemnas had even a few more hearts powering it up, Sora and Riku may very well have lost
@@AuroraExhale Hey 🤡 "this person" said that ansems death was a copout even though the guy took the steps necessary to save the world. You say ansem simps this and that but all roxas simps have been doing for the past 16 years is bitching 🤡
I actually totally agree with the command menu thing.
To answer the question pat had regarding how you’d possibly map it, you could map the D-pad’s first set (one-click on the d-pad) with items or magic, and then have the shortcuts menu to have basically an overlapping set of mapped other items or magic spells.
Press D-pad direction ones activating mapped item or ability.
Hold the shortcuts menu then use the D-pad again to use another set of items or abilities.
My counterpoint hottake to hating on Fairy Godmother, it’s the same logic as with Mickey, she probably wouldn’t have known what happened to Aqua post-BBS (I mean she only met her for like an hour, I don’t think Aqua is in her thoughts at all tbh)
I just wanna heavily disagree with the roxas xion namine take in another series I may have agreed but in kh the story book ending just feels right and honestly I can see heaps of potential plot lines for both roxas and xion (not so much namine but I’m not a big fan of her in general) because roxas whole arc is about wanting to be his own person and having a reason to exist, now having him deal with all the implications that come with that and the responsibility he has towards everyone around him could be quite compelling, roxas and xion have fought so hard for the right to exist now to see what they do with there existence, well I’m excited, I won’t be surprised if we don’t hear from them soon but I think they have tons of future potential
Also great video
1:15:51
Literally the biggest issue with the Drop Guage isn’t even having to restart a fight or just force switch to a character you didn’t want.
It’s that the developers weren’t committed to the idea.
Not only do Drop-Me-Nots exist, but you can force a drop from the World Map, a Save Point, and *THE PAUSE MENU* .
I’m replaying DDD as Sora first. Everytime I drop and go to Riku, I just pause, triangle to drop, and resume what I was doing as Sora.
If there wasn’t anything to refill the Guage, and no way to force a drop yourself, I’d actually think it would be *less* infuriating.
Incredible video with some scorching takes! Great way to get through my overtime shift!
I'd love to see a round robin on all these takes, disqualify the top two extremes and bottom two extremes and seed the rest.
I like the idea of letting an idea battle every other idea, rather than by chance making it up to the top because it happened to face less popular ideas, or getting snuffed out by the more popular ideas.
As a film major and a movie lover I wholly appreciate the more intimate camera of Kingdom Hearts 1. I too have always felt those same sentiments about the KH1 camera being more significant in some way, but didn't know how to express it, and then here comes a hot take explaining so succinctly my thoughts. It was perfect, it was bliss, it divulged everything I wanted to say. I whole heartedly agree with this tournament's winner. It hits home hard and it was well deserved. Well done!!!
Having played KH2FM critical mode for the first time recently, the only segment that comes to mind that felt really sloppy with it is the Hades chase. I don't think any other segments really felt that unfair, and it feels like that take feels far more applicable to something like KH3's critical mode.
Agree
It feels more like they were talking about a lv 1 crit run but I can't really speak on that bc I've only ever done a lv 1 run randomized so it's VERY different than playing the game normally lol. I think that critique is also more applicable to kh3 as well because kh2 starts you off only facing about 3 enemies at a time while kh3 just throws so many mobs at you right off the bat. I think I dislike those flame cores way more than those horse enemies from Land of Dragons. 😆
Like krebin said, it feels like they were talking about lvl1 crit, which indeed, does not allow you much room for error, and it can be really annoying and painful at times.
Even then I wouldn't call lvl1 crit poorly designed as a whole (at least the part that I got to play, which was up to the first visit of Halloween town after visiting Agrabah), far from it, I think it's mostly well done CONSIDERING WHAT THE CHALLENGE IS MEANT TO BE, the "next to no room for error" type of challenge, which is not for everyone, not even me in other games such as the souls games. And that's fine, and that also doesn't mean you can't criticize it either, but criticizing it for what it's trying to be is stupid. And I almost forgot to mention that the weakest parts of that mode usually are the weakest part in the whole game, which, as much as I fucking love this game, there are, there are quite a few.
It definitely feels like a lvl 1 crit run like others have said. Hades escape the reason it is sloppy is because you can get one shot by those lancers.
Once you get movement, cure, and reflect you have a lot more options to get out of a situation so it feels a lot more fair.
I think the command menu take had valid standing but was poorly thought out. The issue I have with the command menu is that for anything outside the attack command (especially with the 4 hotkey magic L1 menu) it can easily become an annoyance. I think this is more to the design of it not really being updated with the series so it stays in a kh1 feeling and pace while the rest of the game has shifted away from it. instead of a menu being navigated by the dpad it should instead be a series of quick select options controlled by the dpad. So instead of pressing down to search the menus instead the different menus are assigned to the directions on the dpad and a neutral selection defaults to attack. Example: if I want to use an item currently i need to press down to highlight > select > search for the item > use (depending if it is single target or not) it really breaks the flow of gameplay now with so many things happening. instead it could just be I hit right to access the item menu > I select the item I placed in one of the dpad directions > then it gets used. The command menu could actually be a really cool aspect to the game series by allowing you to customize the 4 dpad options to hotkey different gameplay elements. magic menu, items, drives, summons, weapon swapping ect. it's not bad for the game it's just outdated.
I take on the command menu. I think it’s not a problem. But I think the shortcut menu should add the d-pad as options as well, quickly giving you access to 8 actions instead of just 4
Yes! Also it'd be cool if you could shortcut special attacks like the ones in limit form on base Sora similar to FF7R
@@edgeofultima7483That’s something I’ve wanted ever since they did it with Limit Form, the only drive form I use. Not a really a fan of drive forms post KH3
I think the final fantasy characters helped push the main plot forward as they were always more tied to the main story than the Disney filler worlds. I think their absence in 3 is really noticed as everyone says the pacing is god awful. I think a few visits to a world with FF characters wouldve pushed the story a bit more forward rather than having to slog through every disney world to get more story.
On the point of Larxene being the best female character.
Besides Luxord, she is my favourite Organisation member, and for something a lot more simple, and less degrading to the other female characters.
She's the closest thing the Organisation has to a Disney style villain.
She's utterly insane, and delights in being evil because it's fun for her. Everything she does is over the top, dragged out and even flamboyant. The things she does in Chain of Memories would make her fit right into any Disney story as a prime foe. In fact my only gripe with her is in Kingdom Hearts 3, they didn't give her a proper villain to team up with and have some fun. She'd probably be best friends with many of them!
I know this video is old af, but I think alot of what you guys were saying about the Drop gauge take is pretty easily countered by just managing it better. Even if you don't abuse drop me nots and nevers, if you feel like you're about to run into a boss fight, just drop manually. That way you can buff the other characters next run, and in return, buff yourself up before the boss. I don't think it's the games issue if you have double drop speed, low drop gauge, and do a boss fight like that because you weren't paying attention. That's the while point of it.
Anyway, I just found your channel and have been binge watching your old content lol great stuff
the people who only play the 3 mainline games and then talk about the series as a whole are the bane of my existence and every time I see one I just sigh in frustration. It's like the people who only saw the movies in the mcu with the word avenger in it's name and where then confused by everything going on in endgame. Also yea not sure what people where expecting from a series where donald is a fucking mage, Goofy is the leader of Mickey's royal guard and where the main master and probably the most powerful dood in the series is named Disney backwards.
Here’s a take. Captain Hook is actually the good guy in that movie.
He only ever attacks Peter Pan.
Peter Pan literally steals people’s children and discards them like trash when they get too old. (Suspiciously similar to a certain type of disgusting person irl who steal kids and take them to a Fantasy Island)
You should try the "KH-ReFixed" PC mod since it has a camera option for KH1 to make it more like the camera from later instalments. Wonder how you would feel about it after the KH1 camera hot take
Oh man, what a brilliant video idea, listening through while cooking dinner
I just really don't care for the camera take just because a huge part of it is based in the idea of immersion, which has never been something I understood or cared about.
My take got at least one person to buy ReCoded and that's literally all I could ask for
Actually there are TWO confirmed ReCoded purchases. This is the greatest moment of my life
I am so glad to hear someone defend Terra, I love him so much, and seeing people hate on him makes me depressed
Loved this video so much! Hopefully there could be another hot take tournament for the next year! Was super busy and haven't been keeping up with the channel.
I was going to further the Terra not dumb idea, but it lead to another hot take that I'll save just in case for the future 😉 Also congrats to the winner! That camera idea really opened up my mind 10,000%
I absolutely love your discussions and you elaborate on your positions so well that I learned just as much from you guys as I did from these takes, amazing tourney!
I think the only thing about the drop gauge that I actually really like is that it makes sure you play the stories side-by-side. without it, I'd probably have to force myself to switch characters so I don't accidentally end up playing it like BBS, and that's probably not how they wanted the story to be told. but that's probably not a problem anyone who TALKS about KH (or frequently engages with the games and community) would have. it feels like some of these takes don't take the average player into account.
KHIII Only serves to completely destroy the main point of 'Larxene is the best-written female': that being that unlike the others, her every move isn't dictated by the men in her life. Her "My secret" line throws that all out.
Xion is truly the best-written female, and in my opinion, the only well-written female. While it is easy to argue that same as the others, a lot of her actions are for the men in her life; it can also be argued that it was for a greater purpose. Having been born from nothing and not understanding anything, her learning what friendship is and the time that she spends with Axel and Roxas gives her all the reason to stay with them. She makes the active decision to leave them, knowing she won't be remembered because she needs Sora to stop the Organization.
The thing about the final fantasy characters is that, yeah, maybe the ones that have been established in KH so far have ended their roles but there are plenty more in the ff series that could have been incorporated into the story if they had put in the effort and tried.
And in that vane, how much are the Disney worlds/characters relevant to KH anymore? Sure there were tie ins in KH 3 but most of the focus in the series now is on dumb lore shit and creating more mysteries than are actually solved or explained.
I feel like KH3 really forced the narrative that Sora can’t do anything without his friends even though there’s plenty of moments in the series where he has to confront something alone or is the person who paved the way for others to continue forward. In many ways, the characters around Sora are as, if not more reliant on him than he is with them.