Dispatch from the Dive Chapter 2: Raising a Glass with my Childhood Friend, Jack Skellington

Last week, I began my journey into Kingdom Hearts. At first, I struggled with it intensely, but by the week’s end I found myself closer to its wavelength. With the Alice in Wonderland, Hercules, Tarzan, and Aladdin levels behind me, what trials – and what IPs – await?

January 9: Didn’t play.

January 10: Entered and completed Monstro.

Well, that boss is just unsightly. And fighting it twice… ugh. Just some nasty stuff. Though I guess I can’t really complain about nastiness when it already involves going inside a giant, ugly beast. All those pulsating, lightèd walls. But that’s not the point.

What’s more important is that Riku is so, so dumb, and I am here for it. Showing up to mock Sora, then team up with him for a boss fight, then kidnap someone offscreen while still being on the scene? And then trying to put Sora in his place by complaining about how much he’s “showing off that Keyblade these days?” Holy hell; that’s wonderful. If Kingdom Hearts is a long running shōnen in JRPG form – and it’s become increasingly apparent that it is – then Riku here is our stock rival. Rivals in action or high concept stories are rarely my favorite kinds of characters; they seem to always exacerbate the issues of a bad story or bad author. And they’re always supposed to be so cool, despite the fact that there is no character more uncool than the one a bad author thinks is cool. Just look at any role played by Gerard Butler.

But there’s nothing problematic or awful about Riku. He’s a dope who the game thinks is cool for utterly inexplicable reasons, but just presented in the most charmingly goofy way imaginable. He just sort of randomly shows up in this whale’s stomach, kidnaps a doll, helps you rescue the doll before kidnapping it again, and disappears to be further manipulated by someone more evil and with more on the ball. If I have one problem, it’s that Sora doesn’t really rise to meet the energy Riku’s bringing. In fact, the kid seems to be less talkative than normal, though maybe that’s due to him processing that flashback. The one that didn’t provide any information or perspective we didn’t already have.

Wait a sec. That first boss fight was in the Bowels; how did we get to the belly by dropping into a hole right afterwards?

January 11: Didn’t play.

It’s kind of astonishing to me just how indebted Monstro is to Jabbu-Jabbu’s Belly. It’s not a complaint; even a lesser dungeon from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is still an Ocarina of Time dungeon. But it’s all there: the walls all glowy and pulsating, the maze of hard to distinguish corridors, the gross, kind of… fruit-shaped (?) boss with a bunch of tendrils. But it’s just a little weaker, in a bunch of tiny ways. The walls are a bit too gross. Pinocchio and Geppetto lack Princess Ruto’s spunk. Orientation is much harder.

You know, I actually started a replay of Ocarina of Time after it came out on Nintendo Switch Online. I stopped when I accidentally saved over my own save progress right before retrying Phantom Ganon, an embarrassing act that’s just one reason why I’ve been liberal with my Kingdom Hearts saves. I should get back to it this year. Later this year; I’ve still got Obra Dinn and starting Psychonauts and some… bad games for “The Forgotten, the Maligned.” Stay tuned for them.

January 12: Entered Halloween Town, went up to the Evil Playroom.

It turns out I was slightly mistaken when I started this project; there was a Disney work for which I have very deep nostalgia. And that’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, stop-motion horror classic and about the last time I’d like anything with even a touch of the Tim Burton). I’ve not watched it since I was a kid – it came out when I was two, so I saw it a lot – but it was probably an early start to me being the one who organizes Source Gaming’s annual Halloween listicles. I loved and so deeply connected to Jack Skellington. He was perfect: that smile equally spooky and sincere, that wonderful pinstripe suit and lovely gait, and most of all that unabating view of Halloween and horror as things of joy and celebration. That’s an empowering feeling for someone with as many phobias as me. Sorry to do two Venture Bros. references in a row, but it’s hard to keep back just one tear when Dr. Orpheus extols the virtues of my favorite holiday.

(Other characters I associate with: Superman, Koro-Sensei, Chidi Anagonye, Dale Cooper, Mulder and Scully, Fire Princess Azula, The Cheat, the Mighty Monarch, Pearl the Crystal Gem, the Phantom of the Opera (all versions except Love Never Dies and, obviously, Gerard Butler), Lemony Snicket, Benjamin Sisko, and, naturally, Columbo. Feel free to psychoanalyze away)

Somehow, that Kingdom Hearts visits this side of Disney completely slipped my knowledge before going on this project. But the moment the shadow of Oogie Boogie showed up in Maleficent’s order of theatrical bad guys, I was just a bit excited. This would be the first time in literal decades that I’d see the Mayor in non-King of Town form.

Fortunately, the level mostly kept up its part of the bargain. I can’t deny I was cursing the endless hordes of identical fights a bit more than normal, but Halloween Town is the most impressive and fun location that Kingdom Hearts has yet produced. The music is my favorite piece from the soundtrack thus far, the level is flat out gorgeous and structurally neat, and in keeping with the film’s inventive art style, it feels more distinct than anywhere else. It’s interesting; both Jack and Genie are so perfect representations of their forms of animation in their movies, but one works so better here. Jack is also the best companion yet, if only because I can be friends with one of my first fictional idols.

I actually decided to stop playing early, just because I didn’t want to go through it all in one go. I’m at the Evil Playroom, so I’m sure the Oogie Boogie fight (which’ll likely not even be a fight against Oogie Boogie) is nigh. But I do want to savor the level, and really, I’m going to need to start playing in shorter increments. It’s better for the actual experience, and trying to just play instead of hit markers of completion will be important for when the games start introducing larger levels.

As an aside, to follow up my comments on Chapter 1, this is still a very awkward game. Kingdom Hearts has so many cutscenes, but there are times when it feels like the game’s missing one crucial scene whose events just get papered over. Sora, Donald, and Goofy enter the town in great Halloween costumes that are only passingly commented upon. Jack is… studying the Heartless, and it’s just treated with no weight? That should be a game-changer, right?

January 13: Defeated Oogie Boogie (I was wrong!), completed Halloween Town.

“C’mon, baby!”

Okay, so maybe there are some things I might have changed about Halloween Town. Ain’t exactly Cuphead when it comes to high stakes gambling-themed bossery by a spooky Cab Calloway analogue.

It’s also set in this arena that looks really cool from this art but is dingy and unpleasant to actually navigate.

The level actually has a notable emphasis on platforming. Monstro, too. It’s making me feel that maybe the game could’ve worked just as well as a platformer, or at least more of a platformer / JRPG hybrid (I’d say “better” and would mean it, though that would probably force Donald and Goofy’s role to be significantly different. Maybe all three would have unique abilities). The level design of the second Oogie Boogie fight was a bit scattered for a climbing sequence, but it hinted at an interesting, maybe more interesting, direction for the gameplay. And clambering across the Disney worlds already has a neat, tactile feel.

January 14: Entered and completed Neverland.

You know, the soundtrack for this game is fantastic. Just fantastic and zippy and dramatic, to a degree that a lot of the rest of the work doesn’t fully match. It’s a shame that Sora brought such little music with him into Smash Bros., which “Hand in Hand” aside isn’t as good as the Neverland or Halloween Town or Agrabah themes. I’m assuming this is the result of rights issues; there’s the stuff Disney doesn’t own (like “Simple & Clean”), but there’s also a very clear discomfort with letting other people handle their animation properties. And at least the Halloween Town music is a direct riff on the movie’s score, so stuff like that’s probably out – or gated behind an exorbitant cost. Sora must’ve been one of the most difficult licensing deals Nintendo’s made in recent memory, and probably expensive, too. I get how deeply Donald and Goofy’s absence in Ultimate is felt, but even putting aside my feelings on the matter of non-game stuff in Smash, I don’t think Nintendo was ever gonna be able to get them. The one second shot of the Mickey keychain in the trailer alone probably cost a lot.

To be honest, I’m talking about this partially because it’s more interesting to me than the level itself. Neverland is pretty bad, all cramped and visually indistinct. The Captain Hook boss was great, due in no small part to the wonderful new flying mechanic that I feel proves my point about the platforming stuff, but dang, was that evil Sora boss before him so terrible. It’s that odd combination of being both bad to play and utterly uninteresting. It doesn’t help that thanks to both playing Return of the Obra Dinn and having just started watching The Terror, I’ve been enjoying not one but two much more interesting misadventures on 19th Century boats.

I would LOVE, though, to hear Hook talk about the dangers of the unknown or tell Peter Pan to take exactly what he gives him. Side note, but the only Hook image that worked was from Chain of Memories, so clearly I’ve got another couple boat rides to look forward to.

I guess I should talk about mechanical stuff more by this point. After a friend explained the presets, casting magic has been significantly easier; I’m still largely leaning on healing magic, but it’s so much less scary. The summons feel oddly unimportant. I’ve been bad about regularly checking abilities and worse about switching replacing weapons, but I’m trying to be better (what spurred me on was Jack giving me an item that, as it turned out, is a pretty good new Keyblade). I also came off my high horse and tried to make a better Gummi Ship, only to find the actual system of making it utterly beyond me. So I’ll just play the starting one for now.

January 15: Didn’t play.

Final Thoughts: This was a big bump for me, this week. And looking at it, a lot of it came from one area. Monstro was bad but at least short, Neverland had a great mechanic that it only gave me for the last boss, but Halloween Town was a genuine torch lighting my way (my “second star to the right” if the last level had been the good one). Maybe it’s just nostalgia? I mean, yesterday I watched Nightmare Before Christmas for the first time in literal decades, just out of enthusiasm for seeing Jack again (I’m also eyeing rewatching Hercules and Aladdin – not really any other Disney movie, though). Reconnecting with it was good for me; seeing the level was, too.

This has some potential ramifications for the project. To my knowledge, none of the other Disney properties for which I have affection have a significant (or any) place in Kingdom Hearts, so I won’t be able to rely on that kind of nostalgia. Preparing the header image clued me in that Nightmare and Halloween Town do return in several games – that’s Jack’s art from KHII, which I thought better suited the tone – so that’ll be helpful, but I don’t want that to be a main anchor. I want to get more out of the project. It’s important for me as a player and a critic. And at the moment, with my feelings on the gameplay pretty established and largely neutral to negative, it feels like the story and world building is the best place for that “more” to come from.

Fortunately, I’ve already been able to find and hold onto some things to which I lack any emotional ties. The crossover element has become zany enough to carry me through what’s an otherwise uninteresting plot. I am enjoying the odd mix of styles, which isn’t deftly handled but is certainly fun. And the music is great, as great as I’ve heard. I would not say I find Kingdom Hearts to be a “good” game at this stage, but it’s certainly interesting. The kind of interesting that makes me want to see more, even when the pumpkins and two-faced politicians – a joke I only now, at 3 AM before this is supposed to come out, get – are a thousand worlds away.

I mean, ain’t no way Gerard Butler’s gonna be in any of those sequels.

Overall progress: Explored and completed Monstro, Halloween Town, and Neverland.

Other games played: