Dispatch from the Dive Chapter 3: Winnie the Pooh is a Punk

Previously, on Dispatch from the Dive, I saw the adventure of Kingdom Hearts into its third act, a series of quests in the worlds of Pinnocchio, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Peter Pan. Now, the way to the fourth act – Hollow Bastion – and the end of the game seems open to me.

However, in a series of unmentioned conversations not unlike an awkward missed cutscene, I had been told about not just Hollow Bastion but several optional levels and quests I had missed: Atlantica, the Lost Pages side quest, and the advertised return to the Coliseum. For this week, my goal is to explore some of Kingdom Hearts’ optional content.

January 16: Didn’t play

January 17: Didn’t play.

January 18: Entered and completed Atlantica.

Perhaps I was too posi when it came to the Neverland flying mechanics. The controls are also used for swimming in Atlantica, the Little Mermaid level that’s also the stock underwater world, and they ain’t used too well. I’m not down on water environments the way other players are – the notorious Water Temple is one of my favorite Zelda dungeons – but it doesn’t work so nicely in Kingdom Hearts. The system was fine back when I was fighting Captain Hook; he was a normal-sized enemy, on one large platform in a wide space, and backed by only one goon at a time. I simply moved around him fluidly and swiftly, and that was great. The underwater caverns are indistinguishable and claustrophobic, and going from one area to the next was a pain. The new mechanic to swim fast sounded great, but then it turned out to mess with my vertical movement. Also, the whole mechanic of the clamshell, where you hit it and then have to… float over the open shell to get the item inside, is dumb and awkward.

I was pleasantly surprised when Ariel became this world’s guest party member. The game thus far had given its female characters a very pointed lack of agency, Maleficent aside; I was kind of expecting Sebastian the Crab or, like, Prince Eric to be prioritized over her. I’m aware this is something that happens across the series, a general sidelining of its female characters, but I’m still surprised it took this long for Sora to get to actually team up with one of the Disney Princesses – and in an optional world, no less.

I found Atlantica to not be as bad as I’d heard, but I’d put it and Wonderland as the two lowest points of the adventure. It’s just not interesting, and it fails to create any sense of excitement or joy out of freely swimming (something I’d personally have loved, since swimming is one of the things I’ve missed most since the pandemic started). It’s a shame, since I don’t think it had to be as bad as it was. On the plus side, it’s nice to have sub-mediocre level design to distract me from actual bad news in this asinine industry.

I guess I should also talk about the first Ursula fight, since it fits in with this. The gimmick – you have to shoot her magic back at her by casting spells at her mystical pool – is sound, but it’s confusing and hard to consistently do. Interesting, ambitious, but not able to fully back it up, which fits Atlantica as a whole.

January 19: Beat the Phil Cup in Coliseum, entered and explored Hundred-Acre Wood.

While I hope that me making and subsequently walking back declarative statements might make for fine reading, it’s a bit embarrassing when it happens. To wit, after presenting Atlantica as one of the worst levels of Kingdom Hearts, I’m now faced with the 100 Acre Wood: the actual worst level of Kingdom Hearts so far.

Let’s back up a bit. I knew going in that Winnie the Pooh (and more specifically, Disney’s adaptations thereof) is a big part of Kingdom Hearts. I knew that it is, at least primarily, used as a sort of mini-game collection. And I knew obliquely that it was part of this game, but it was only until I brought the Torn Pages to Merlin’s house and Sora got shrunk into the book that it clicked. And while the general imagery of Sora walking across the pages is very cool – it made me think of the episode of Infinity Train with Wayne Knight – it did little to mollify a sense of dread. Because when I started this project, and especially as I continued to explore this game, the idea of a Kingdom Hearts level with a mini-game theme filled me with dread.

The best way to explain why would be to start at the end, through the segments of 100 Acre Wood that I unlocked (three in total: the honey tree, Rabbit’s house, and the swing). Each had a mini-game; each was immensely frustrating and bizarre and inscrutable. Protect Pooh from hordes of bees! Run around so Tigger jumps on you instead of crushing Rabbit’s carrots! Push Pooh on a swing (?) until he flies into and breaks a cage of sticks (?) holding Eyeore’s severed tail (something that’s actually from the books?)! These sound bizarre in theory, but they somehow play even more oddly. Sora’s floaty, breezy movement works well enough for combat, but it’s awful for any kind of precise, limited motion. Actions like, say, jumping up a range of tiny tree branches to swat at a flock of bees is exacting. Every issue I had had swimming in Atlantica or climbing in Deep Jungle was just exacerbated. I did really try hard at each, but there was also this recurring thought that I shouldn’t, that trying doesn’t really matter because it’s all optional.

Just taken from afar, this is silly, and so is a lot of Kingdom Hearts. Sure. But one you go and really dig into the game and experience its strengths, the level’s weaknesses and problems really set it apart.

Unlike Atlantica, which I do believe could have been better, I don’t think this could’ve been improved. For all of the lauds I’ve given Kingdom Hearts, and the Wood doesn’t remove those by any means, it remains an awkward and messy work of art. This game was never gonna land the mechanics for mini-games when its main mechanics are already so shaggy. And once the they involved controlling Sora, that was probably it.

Narratively, it’s also a low point. While Sora made satisfying relationships with Tarzan and Jack and Ariel, there’s no real connection with Pooh, and even less so with the rest of the forest. And since the world has to dole out levels based on getting each page, there’s not really any kind of sizable narrative heft or growth. To an extent, that’s fair; this is a world that’s not just optional but easily missable. You have to find the pages – I only got three, and I feel like I’ve been pretty thorough with the exploration – and then bring them back, all with little signposting. Add to that a cast of characters that is probably less suited for the game’s plot and original characters than any other thing in the Disney umbrella, and it’s sensible that it carries less weight. But it still feels very disconnected, like one of those secret levels in sandbox Mario games that only exist to hide one star but stretched way too thin. What does Sora gain as a person beyond an upgrade to his Gravity spell? What ideas or growth does he take?

I must confess, though, that I really didn’t expect much else. As much as I’ve tried to be open-minded, and as many pleasures as I’ve found, the general conceit of “Winnie the Pooh level filled with optional mini-games” seemed like the culmination of all of Kingdom Hearts’ problems, and maybe with a few of its own. Mechanically unpolished, narratively inert, and just banal; it’s the “gold lamé vest and evil goatee Mirror Universe counterpart” to the highs of Agrabah and Halloween Town.

I expected nothing of 100 Acre Wood, and I got nothing of the admittedly limited sample. I feel bad about that, about being cynical and having that cynicism be justified. I was worried going in that I’d have a similar reaction to the series as a whole, and I’m happy that didn’t happen. But it did here, and… it feels bad. I suppose that in that sense, 100 Acre Wood was me confronting the issues I’ve had with this game and my concerns going into it in one concentrated form, which is rather intense for its most peaceful, friendly, easygoing area.

Sorry, everyone. This was dark. I’ll try to be more optimistic and positive next session.

January 20: Beat the Pegasus Cup (took two tries).

Tonight, I rewatched the Batman: The Animated Series episode “Mad as a Hatter.” As Batman stalked Roddy McDowall through Gotham City’s inexplicable (if very pretty, just like Kingdom Hearts) Alice in Wonderland park, I couldn’t help thinking “hey, this is based on that silly Kingdom Hearts level! Where the hell is Trickmaster?” I was also mildly disappointed that Phil appears to have no more voiced lines in this game, since I realized only after his first appearance that Robert Costanzo also played Harvey Bullock on Batman.

I spent a lot of the game really hating those large enemies who can only be hurt in the back. But it’s been a while since I fought the last one – maybe in Agrabah? – and I’m much stronger now, so it’s so much easier to dispatch them. I think the game would’ve done well to limit the invulnerability, since their size makes going around them kind of difficult. But beating them so quickly did feel great. Less good and more shocking was how quickly Donald seemed to crush all the weaker enemies in the earlier battles; I didn’t even have a chance to attack a single one several times. I’m so used to him being unhelpful beyond the occasional Cure spell that him outclassing me was a bit of a shock.

January 21: Didn’t play.

This is a few days late, but I really like how Yoko Shimomura’s battle music for Atlantica sounds like the beach theme she composed for Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.

They even came out only a year apart! They’re good tracks, too. In general, the soundtrack is much more like Mario & Luigi – another game whose greatest pleasures are in its music – than I expected. I’m much more used to Shimomura’s music in Street Fighter or Super Smash Bros., which tends to be more aggressive. That’s not a complaint. The score really fits and lifts up the game.

January 22: Ranked fifth in the Hercules cup (Cloud was just too much for me), finished the Postcard sidequest, grabbed some rewards from the Dalmatian House.

I did one story-related thing today. I talked to Cid, getting a flashback from Kairi’s memories and unlocking Hollow Bastion. It wasn’t my intent; I was just trying to find a way into the Item Synthesis shop. Turns out, the way to unlock it is to climb in from the ladder in the Accessory shop. That’s a bit needlessly complex, especially for a service that doesn’t seem to be that useful at the moment. Though I did fuse a bunch of items, if more for the experience of doing so.

Traverse Town is a lot nicer to explore when fights are more comfortably skippable and enemies die much more easily. It’s still a somewhat frustrating hub, though. It feels lifeless, especially for a zany crossover city that houses Huey, Dewey, Louie and Aerith, Yuffie, and Leon. And exploring it lacks a real charm or sense of discovery. Then again, it’s also not really as much of a hub as I’m used to in games; you don’t really have to explore it all that much or even return more than twice. And that does fit in with the game’s general breeziness, so that’s good.

Final Thoughts: This week was a bit of a bust, but I am genuinely glad that I didn’t skip any of it over. I’d heard so many bad things about Atlantica that it was nice to have enjoyed it more and struggled with it less than I had expected. I was so frustrated with 100 Acre Wood, but I did get to see this game attempt something else. Yes, the result was bad, perhaps very bad, but that’s interesting to me. More than any other quality, Kingdom Hearts is incredibly odd, and seeing the way that oddness manifests is genuinely fascinating. It also helps reorient my thinking; the game isn’t the morass of indistinguishable weirdness I used to see it as but a collection of very diverse types of weirdness. Some better than I expected, some worse, but all distinct.

Can’t say I’m particularly excited by the return of the Winnie the Pooh content in subsequent installments, but I’ll worry about that then and hopefully enjoy it more. I’m sure it’ll at least be more polished than it was here. Hopefully Pooh’s monomania with eating honey won’t be expressed quite so selfishly.

Next week, I take on Hollow Bastion and, ideally, try to finish the game. If I manage that, that’s one of the mainline games in under a month! Though apparently, Kingdom Hearts I is one of the shortest games in the series, so I may need to, in the parlance of legendary X-Files director Kim Manners, “kick it in the ass” going forward. I’ve also decided that I’m going to experience the entries by release date, not by how they’re ordered in The Story So Far. So next will be Chain of Memories, and then I’ll skip over 358 / 2 to do Kingdom Hearts II, coded, and then 358 / 2 Days and Birth By Sleep. That won’t require me to switch discs, I don’t think, so that’s cool.

Well, technically I’ll be playing Re: Chain of Memories, Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, Re: coded, and Birth By Sleep Final Mix, remakes or remasters from years after their initial releases. But you get my point.

Overall progress: Completed one world, explored another, and returned to two others.

Other Games Played: