juushika

My sleep schedule is, uh, weird rn, but I need to make these notes before I can play Kingdom Hearts III, so whatever: they're notes.

• I've called many of the side games "backloaded" but Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance is the most unbalanced of them all. "It basically has no narrative!" I thought, until the 80% mark, when it reaches the last world and becomes a chain of memories cutscenes and boss battles.



• Part of this is that there's only two big plot points:
  
  ( spoilerinos )
  
  
  And while the former could/should have been spread over the narrative, it would have required moving forward some late reveals; and the Disney worlds are meant to serve a similar function, a reminder that the worlds are tied to Sora and vice versa—which would work better if the conceit were "these are the worlds before Sora," but whatever. The latter is a big deal on a meta-narrative level, but as a single plot point to dump here? It's not that complicated. (As a statement. The details as apply to 204249 characters is infinitely more complex.)



• So I had a lot of lategame feelings & I am excited for KHIII, but it was no 358/2 Days or Birth By Sleep in terms of either pacing or a complete side-story still contributing something significant to the meta-narrative. It was significantly more like Coded, particularly in that both share a not-really-real-ness—I mean, all the side games are narrative cul-de-sacs in that they're dreams or simulations or prequels, but those two especially so, moreso given they each offer one meta-narrative plot point at the end of the game.



• There were multiple instances of "remember that Treasured Disney Franchise™?" that fell flat, particularly The Hunchback of Notre Dame & new Tron. No, I don't remember, because I've never seen them! I've had many & conflicted feelings about which worlds work as settings, particularly in light of upcoming KHIII, a decade after, with so many new franchises to draw on.
  
  The TL;DR version is: Golden Age Disney works because they're visually iconic & part of the public consciousness; good for setpieces and for borrowing characters (Maleficent) for meta-narrative. Renaissance Disney is the bread-and-butter; it's the most successful and the micro-narratives map well alongside the KH macro-narrative. Live action franchises work if a) they feel cartoony and b) are actually good: Pirates of the Caribbean feels Disney, even with the human models, but new Tron feels wildly out of place despite the stylized aesthetic. Post-Renaissance Disney is a crapshoot; use at your own risk. Second Renaissance is a) too new to know if they're classic narratives and b) also, tbh, a crapshoot. "We bought Pixar" movies are same but moreso. Successful, classic narrative matters, because the emotion that makes the worlds work alongside the plot comes from nostalgia and/or quality. But Disney needs to emphasize Second Renaissance/otherwise more recent franchises, because: $$$$.
  
  I'm very nervous about this re: KHIII! I'll probably love it anyway! But some of these decisions are still, objectively, A Mistake.



• Not a mistake: Prankster's Paradise and Fantasia. Especially Fantasia. DDD is too sterile—the maps are huge but, because of limitations, also empty. Running through a depopulated Pastoral Symphony was bizarre, but running through it has been a dream since childhood, so ty, KH. These worlds are vibrant and evocative, and Fantasia has, of course!, a rhythm mini-game.



• Dream Eaters/Spirits are a mixed bag. Pros: very cute, surprisingly robust given the one-off appearance, I love me a new skill tree. Cons: crafting mats way too hard to come by, pls make more physical attackers who are cute, some gameplay issues on account of "physical objects wandering around a lot." And they feel out of sync with ... all other KH enemy design, honestly? On a similar note:



• The flowmotion/Dream Eater/drop system is a lot. I spent most of the game feeling like it was the lightest on narrative but would perhaps be one of the more satisfying to replay, on a pure gameplay level: there's so many mechanics, and they make for robust, if messy, exploration. I'll be interested to see how flowmotion translates to the bigger/better/denser/also you can move the camera vertically aspects of KHIII.



• I played the last 15 hours of the game over about two days, and I will tell you this for free: that dense an aesthetic + that long staring at a tiny screen is a head-trip; also, a headache.

That's it! A moment of silence for Tumblr; but a year ago, this wall of text would have been multiple posts on that hellsite, probably with images of my favorite Dream Eater (spoiler: Me Me Bunny, who I painted dark purple, which was beautiful against the warmtoned accents).

Goddamnit, Pandora. Please to stop playing Utada's "Sanctuary." I love this song. I love it in the depths of my beating heart. I love it so much that I really do not need to be getting teary-eyed at Starbucks, you get me? And I don't want to replay Kingdom Hearts. I have two video games running, and other games lined up next, and neither KH game is among them. But every time you play this song I get an undeniable craving to pop them in the PS2.

So give it a break, would you? Because I haven't the heart to skip it when it comes on.

What's left of me, what's left of me now?

ETA: Oh god, this piano cover is so beautiful.

Title: 'This is the world in its true form.'
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Rating: NC-17
Pairings: Riku/Roxas, slight Riku/Sora
Summary: A retelling of the second half of the battle between Riku and Roxas, just after Deep Dive/Another Side, Another Story. Riku defeats Roxas and then takes Roxas back to the mansion, to determine if Sora is truly somewhere inside him.
Word Count: 7,700
Warnings: Dubious-consent, swearing, explicit sex, channish, partial AU. Spoilers for Deep Dive/Another Side, Another Story and Kingdom Hearts II.

Riku knees Roxas in the chest, knocking him down. His shoulders hit the wall and it stops him, but Riku has climbed onto the bed, his knees on the outside of Roxas's thighs, his hand fisted again in Roxas's collar. He lifts his shoulders from the wall, then slams him back down so that his head hits it with a crack.

"I said," he says, "shut up." And then, as soft as two single drops of rain, he adds, "Sora."

( Read 'This is the world in its true form.' on FF.N )
The fic is posted on FanFiction.Net because I'm afraid of LiveJournal's new policies and TOS.

Or ( Read 'This is the world in its true form.' on LJ )
The fic is friendslocked because I'm afraid of LiveJournal's new policies and TOS.

X-posted here on khyaoi and here on rikuroku.

Feedback welcome anywhere. Enjoy!

I just finished replaying the first Kingdom Hearts game, and am currently deciding between continuing with (ported) Chain of Memories or a replay of Kingdom Hearts II. Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the pleasant glow that comes with completing a really good video game. And true to my over-analytical form, I come with some thoughts on the game, and how it was to replay it.

Kingdom Hearts was the second console game and RPG that I ever played (the first was Final Fantasy X, which I've also loved and replayed). I played it for the first time some years ago (just after it came out, I believe), never played Chain of Memories (as I don't own a GBA), and played KHII as soon as it was released. I loved both games, but I noticed a gap in information—years had passed since playing the first game, and since I'd never played the sequel, I was missing a lot of information coming into the first game. Granted, KHII is playable under those circumstances, but they aren't ideal. So it made sense to come back to the first game—and, well, it's a great game in its own right, and warrants replay.

For those that don't know, Kingdom Hearts is about a young boy named Sora. He begins on Destiny Island, and has two close friends, Riku, an older male who has always been his competition, and Kairi, a female that often becomes the source of contention for his friendly battles with Riku. The three of them dream about leaving Destiny Island for the greater worlds beyond, but their dreams become reality when their island disappears into the darkness, scattering them on the worlds beyond. Sora awakens in a world-between-worlds called Traverse Town and soon teams up with Goofy and Donald, who have been sent by their King Mickey to track to find the Key: a magical weapon that holds the power to fight the darkness, and to save and seal the worlds threatened by the darkness. Sora is the Keyblade Master, and together the three go off to discover and seal new worlds, and to try to find Riku and Kairi. It's an RPG with real-time "slash and hack" action battles, and a combined effort of Square (who contribute a plot worthy of Final Fantasy and many FF cameos) and Disney (who contribute many character designs and the worlds that Sora and his friends visit).

( Some thoughts on Kingdom Hearts, a replay. )

There were definitely some annoyances, but I was incredibly pleased with this replay of Kindgom Hearts. The story, plot, and characters speak for themselves: they are all at once idealistic and realistic, with sights set on concepts such as the Heart of Hearts, Light, and Darkness while struggling through the personal issues of identity, belief, choice, and fidelity. The combination of Square and Disney is remarkable and unexpected—it's a bit foolish and exaggerated, but the plot and the characters still bring it back to the realm of delicate and nuanced. The gameplay is fun, and a friendly mesh of RPG and action, which means that it works well for players that rarely stray beyond RPGs and/or are somewhat lacking in manual dexterity (myself included).

It was a fun game to play the first time, and even more enjoyable this second time. I'm glad I came back to it, and let me tell you, the bittersweet glow at the end of the game is truly enjoyable—and it glows all the brighter knowing that I have the sequels sitting there just waiting for me.