Dispatch from the Dive Chapter 6: Sora left. Now you are like Sora, but you are Roxas

With Chain of Memories done, it’s time to finally sink our teeth into 2005’s Kingdom Hearts II – or rather, its remastered version Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix. I’ve been excited to jump back into playing again, so this should be fun.

February 6: Started Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, played up to finishing the Struggle tournament.

The title for this week’s chapter comes from an old interview RiffTrax did with Greg Ellery, the actor who played Steven in The Room. In a film filled with the inexplicable, Steven – a character who appears only in the climax to replace another character whose actor had to quit late into production – is one of the most inexplicable. He serves no purpose, takes the place of an already established player, manages to have one of the film’s worst performances, is only named in the credits, and yet the film and characters treat him as though he always existed. It’s a delightful kick of surrealism in The Room’s final scenes.

Roxas, the new protagonist of Kingdom Hearts II, is not the game’s Steven. After all, he’s the avenue Tetsuya Nomura is using to bring us into the game (after another intro that’s just a bunch of scenes from the last game). But an hour and a half in, he certainly carries an aura of “Stevenness.” He looks like Sora, acts like Sora, has Sora’s Keyblade and apparently some of his memories, but he’s obviously not Sora. He’s got a different haircut and rides a skateboard, but more than that, he’s got a life that’s too deceptively similar to Sora’s. There’s the bevy of similarly boring friends – Hayner, Pence, Olette, and Young – and a similar enough home in the quaint Twilight Town, the world Naminé had seemingly made up in Chain of Memories.

It’s a good name for it, Twilight Town. It’s the time of day when day turns to night, where hawks turn into ladies, and where things feel just a bit surreal and mysterious. And right from the start, Kingdom Hearts II feels rather dreamlike. Sora is totally MIA, as are his marketable Disney entourage. Not a single Disney character is here, in fact. Kairi, the bland friend and possible love interest he’s promised to see again, has moved on with her life and left Destiny Islands for school. Riku and Mickey Mouse, who Sora has been trying to find, seem no closer to being saved. It’s a tea table fully upended, with the things we know and like in the wind.

What’s in their place? The Organization from Chain of Memories, for one thing. They’re back, with Naminé still in their clutches and a guy named “DiZ” with red facial bandages. Vivi from Final Fantasy IX is also here in a cameo, which delighted me (I’ve long been interested in FF9). They’re coming with Twilight Town in tow, which suggests that it either wasn’t invented by Naminé or that it – and, by extension, this entire game thus far – was. There are the side characters, who are uniformly boring whether they’re goodies like Hayner or baddies like Seifer from FF8, who I keep mentally calling “Seifer Kutherland” because I am a child. But more importantly, we have Roxas. He’s fairly nondescript, as was Sora back when he started. He’s dreaming of things that Sora did. But he’s just so similar that it feels wrong. He’s a Mockbuster, yet we’re supposed to know he’s a Mockbuster. For any game to take this direction is incredibly bold.

At the same time, this doesn’t work for me at all. The only thing interesting about Roxas is his teased but unclear connection with Sora; there’s nothing about him now that’s compelling. He feels like a husk Sora left behind after molting into a stronger character during Chain of Memories. His world hasn’t picked up the slack, either; like Destiny Islands, Twilight Town is a pretty but vacuous jumping off point. And the Organization’s presence feels no more exciting than it was before… well, that’s not entirely true. Because what the hell is an apparently still alive Ansem doing as one of its members? And now played by Richard Epcar, who plays Jigen in most Lupin III dubs, no less.

In a way, it reminds me of Twin Peaks: The Return – at least, a much weaker version thereof. That show delightfully played with our expectations and wants, adding characters we didn’t know and tragic versions of ones we did. Or, given that Kingdom Hearts II precedes The Return by a decade, maybe the better analogy would be fellow PS2 sequel Metal Gear Solid 2, which also traded in its hero for another model. But unlike those examples, this game isn’t doing much to stir that meta discomfort into more serious drama. It’s hard to imagine this doing a lot for eager fans or first-timers – at least, not those who hadn’t played the very different, GBA-only Chain of Memories. The Organization, Axel, and Naminé have more screen time than any of the original main characters, and the big selling point of the first game, the Disney characters, aren’t here at all. Yet the situation isn’t really treated as exciting or disturbing or much else. The start of Kingdom Hearts II is weird, aggressively so, but also in a way that feels too passive and casual.

Then again, Twilight Town also has its positives…

Compared to all of that, the gameplay is largely the same. I’m very much not a fan of the Reversal move that’s replaced traditional dodging, nor of the related introduction of quicktime event button prompts (though them all being one button is better than when, say, God of War did it the same year). But given that I couldn’t keep going on Chain of Memories with its more difficult system, that’s ultimately for the best for this project.

Fun fact: I actually restarted the game. When Roxas gets in his first fight, the game gives you the same option that Kingdom Hearts I did for prioritizing offense, defense, or magic. I wanted to choose the third option this time, so I quit and started over when I accidentally picked the first. Of course, it didn’t end up mattering since the game gave me the same choice again – though between both choices I’ve still not had any time to actually try any magic, so maybe this format just doesn’t work.

February 7: Didn’t play.

February 8: Finished the Roxas part of the story, found Sora, and sealed the Hollow Bastion Keyhole.

…Wait, DiZ is played by CHRISTOPHER F___ING LEE? He who shed the blood of the Saxon men? I mean, I knew Kingdom Hearts was going to bring in the big name sci-fi and fantasy actors sooner or later; I’ve been excited for Mark Hamill. And as was the case with Mark, I had been told that Saruman would be part of this series. But I had forgotten, and DiZ’s voice is just too distinct, the performance too good; it had to be a big get. I had to check. One Google search away and yep. That’s Lord Summerisle, alright. Mind blown.

Two hours after starting up the game, we got the answer we were always going to get about Roxas: that he is, in fact, an aspect of Sora brought to life. Specifically, he’s a Nobody, a fragment of Sora who came to existence after our hero lost his heart – around the time of Chain of Memories, maybe? Regardless, Roxas appears – appears – to have given up his identity to save his counterpart, which means Sora, Donald, and Goofy are BACK, baby! While I do deeply appreciate the desire to deepen Roxas’s life and treat him as more than just a satellite of our hero, he was just so dull. There was nothing meaningful distinguishing him from Sora, nothing to him but the mystery. So I’m happy to say “bye” to boring Twilight Town and be off on a traditional quest to stop Organization XIII from doing… something. Haranguing people via monsters who look like a cross between fetish gear and potato sacks, it seems.

The entirety of the Organization are also Nobodies. I suppose that makes our new Ansem a Nobody, too, though our first new Ansem report makes it clear that the Billy Zane Ansem from the first game was a fake regardless. They’re not good, these folks. At the same time, we know that Yen Sid, Mickey’s master from Fantasia, is wrong when he says they don’t truly exist or deserve to exist. Some of the Organization members themselves deny their own worth, but it rings hollow when they act like people – people with emotions and goals and beliefs. We don’t spend two hours with Roxas to think he shouldn’t exist – well, we’re not supposed to. I don’t think the game is dismissing their existence as illegitimate, at least so far, though this is a kind of plot point that can get very ugly very fast. So I’ll be keeping an eye on it.

But for now, it’s just good to be back. While I’m still figuring out the auto-refill and the Valor Form, things are much more comfortable with the three-man team in tow. Even Sora’s regular swings have so much more heft and zing behind them. I got a kick out of seeing the new and improved Hollow Bastion, which still has ominous music but is actually livable and somewhat homey. And despite his extreme views, I’m into Yen Sid, if only because he’s got them Gowron eyes:

“Yesss, Max, son of Goofy. You must restore honor to your family name.”

My biggest question, now, is what the hell was Mickey even doing in Twilight Town?

February 9: Didn’t play.

February 10: Entered Beast’s Castle, fought and joined up with Beast.

One thing I had heard about Kingdom Hearts II was that it was much greater in scope than the first Kingdom Hearts. So far, it’s living up to that. The introduction was much larger, getting to the Disney content took longer; even the first Gummi Ship section was substantially greater in both length and content. And while I know we’ll be revisiting some of the first game’s worlds (not Tarzan, though, since the Burroughs estate isn’t referenced in the credits), our first two options are new: Beauty and the Beast and what appears to be Mulan. I chose the former, since I thought it was Wonderland and figured Sora would want to see an old friend first. Which, since we’ve already met Beast and Belle, actually ended up working out anyway.

Size is not always a good thing, and I do think things are a bit mixed so far. The problems with the Gummi Ship were always that it wasn’t fun or connected to anything else, and the new combat system doesn’t change that. Getting access to maps is helpful, but I’m not sure how to see them in full, since Jiminy’s journal doesn’t seem to provide that. And while I respect giving old enemies new moves, it’s made those frustrating large enemies from the first two games all the more frustrating. I think I’ve died three or four times just from that new rolling attack. But, I also found at least three save points in Beast’s Castle, which is more than most worlds in KH1 got.

I’m still getting used to the combat system, which is not to say it’s bad. Instead of solely copying the “attack to do magic” pacing, KH2 shifts it into the Valor system. There’s a meter that lets Sora sort of fuse with Goofy and dual-wield Keyblades for a short time, the tank empties whether you quit or let it run out, and it only gets refilled by doing regular or magic attacks. Magic, meanwhile, only refills after being fully depleted, but the time it takes to refill is painfully long. It’s a good way to prioritize aggression (which I’m already doing), incentivize using items (helped thanks to the Auto-Reload system I’m also learning), and discourage using healing magic (which I still haven’t gotten). In theory, that’s a good answer to the problems at the end of the first game, where I’d just hit the boss enough times to build up some magic, run away, heal myself, and rinse and repeat for ten minutes. But I also wonder if this is going to push me into being even stingier with offensive magic than I was last time. I’ve been forcing myself to use it more aggressively, but this is still the relatively easier intro. All of those many deaths excepted.

February 11: Completed Beast’s Castle, entered and completed Land of Dragons, entered (and had to leave) 100 Acre Wood.

Huh, I saw Mickey again! I died against the boss fight in Beast’s Castle due to not having enough Potions on me (I assumed that the Auto-Reload kept refilling your items during the battle, not only after it), and Mickey randomly came in to save the day. It was incredibly shocking, and I wasn’t clear as to whether it was a second chance system or something that had to happen, or what. Turns out the game has a chance of providing that randomly when you die in certain boss fights, which is very neat but just as jarring.

One of the main consequences of the greater focus on scale? Level design. Rooms are bigger, there are more of ‘em; even the number of save points in each level has gone up. It’s a mixed bag (except for the save points. They’re good). In places like Beast’s Castle, the size is great for the aesthetics, while in the Land of Dragons, the Imperial China from Mulan, it feels a bit overstuffed. Part of me is worried the size might get in the way at some point, like how Banjo-Tooie chased size and scale to the detriment of everything else, but I think it took about the same time to finish the Land of Dragons as it did most of the worlds from the first game.

It’s also just kinda bland visually, with minimal textures or animation. It kinda reads as rushed.

The latter world also had a fun gimmick in the morale system. Your morale constantly goes down during battles, and it can only be restored by collecting orbs dropped by enemies. It’s basically just the system from the Twilight Town tournament set on a time limit, and it doesn’t really make sense in context, but I like it. Though it does lead to interesting scenarios. Like when I built up the army’s morale by defeating a gang of jiangshi in a way that also burned down a fifth of the camp. But Captain Boring was happy, so clearly I did something right.

The great Ming-Na reprises her role as Mulan. It’s not a great performance, to be honest, but it’s also not a performance that gives her anything (and really, Kingdom Hearts II would have to work way harder to waste her nearly as much as The Batman did*). Mushu, meanwhile, is no longer Eddie Murphy, which is honestly more of a lateral move than what happened to Genie. Mushu actually appeared as a summon in Kingdom Hearts I and even showed up as such in this game’s opening, but I never saw him. Made his reuniting with Sora a bit silly from my perspective. It’s fine as an impression but not great, and Kingdom Hearts I’s standard of voice work – ringing mediocre performances out of fantastic actors – seems back in full.

* That would be The Batman, the cartoon with the “Batwave” and some astonishingly atrocious writing, not The Batman, the film starring pastam’n Robert Pattinson.

It’s interesting how the 100-Acre Wood is now an established part of the world and not just this weird thing many players probably missed completely. Though I’m not looking forward to Sora having to dramatically save his friendship with Pooh Bear through the magic of mini-games.

February 12: Watched the cutscenes from the Riku Mode of Re: Chain of Memories.

At the behest of three separate people following the release of Chapter 5, one of whom is Source Gaming’s own NantenJex, I promised to watch the Riku story of Chain of Memories. It was apparently critically plot-important, which seems insane for the bonus mode to a side story game, but such is life. This time, I only watched a ninety-one minute collection of the route’s cutscenes. I’m sorry, but I’m not watching another eleven-hour video in one week, let alone one day. Won’t be good for me; won’t be good for this series. Here’s the one I watched:

Of course, this provides even a more limited taste of the experience than last time; I’m not sure how different the actual gameplay experience of Riku’s side is. It was also affected by the exhaustion I felt watching that playthrough last week, which by the end had also curdled into a bit of resentment (towards the video and the act of watching it, specifically). I did kinda just wanted to get this version over with, though in the end I found myself appreciating it.

It’s filled with mammoth revelations, this route. It turns out Riku really was in Castle Oblivion, that he’s become a darkness-sniffing “Hero of Darkness” to compliment Sora, and that King Mickey is walking with him as an all-in-one Disney partner. It also confirms that the Richard Epcar Ansem, or “Jigensem,” is both the Nobody and remains of the Billy Zane Ansem, or “Phantonsem” (I will not use these names going forward). Naminé is apparently also a Nobody, of Kairi naturally, and even DiZ is back, too! But he’s played by Corey Burton, because I imagine even Disney balked at bringing back Chris Lee for just a few lines. He’s also a good guy, not a member of the Organization like I had thought from his scenes in KH2 – he’s actually trying to bring them down with subterfuge. The route even explains Mickey’s recent appearances, and why he’s wearing those goofy Organization cloaks. It’s very clear that yes, playing Chain of Memories not once but twice – twice – is essential to understanding the plot of the game I’m playing now.

But those are just things to explain the events. What I ultimately got out of it most is how it managed to make Riku less of a total putz. Throughout Kingdom Hearts I, he was funny, but also just deeply unlikable with his nonsense. “The Worst,” you might call him. And that stayed in Chain of Memories. He was just this obstinate jerk, and I kind of just assumed he was always going to stay like that. But the route shows him actually getting better not by shedding the darkness that really only encouraged his boorish behavior, but accepting it as a part of him that doesn’t need to dominate his personality. That’s pretty good character development! He’s actually helping at least one person in Mickey Mouse, who’s getting to be more tolerant of the darkness as a concept thanks to his time with the twerp. Even the painfully awkward things had at least a campy charm. Riku’s casually disconcerting “I knew when I met you. You and Kairi smell the same” is the kind of line of line Neil Breen would write.

You know, actually, Breen’s first film, Double Down, did come out the same year as KH2…

I’ll confess that I think I might be more confused by some things, though. A lot of it is wondering how Ansem appeared in that scene in KH2 if he’s part of Riku, but most of it has to do with Organization XIII. Their “plan” so far is just a series of vague attempts to seduce Sora and Riku and Roxas. And for a shadowy gang of thirteen bad guys, five of its members died in its first appearance: Vexen (whose crazy eyes were very noticeable in this viewing), Larxene, Marluxia, Lexaeus, and Zexion. That’s a bad track record. Chain of Memories is important just on those grounds, since by the time the game I’m currently playing started, they were really Organization VIII.

Final thoughts: I’ve seen plenty of other boss fights and worlds, and it’s clear there’s more of a game for Sora to experience, but I can’t help thinking of Roxas. It’s such an odd way to begin a game. He’s not some dramatic shakeup that forces you to reexamine your relationship with Kingdom Hearts. He’s not different enough from Sora to adequately feel like an interrogation of him, in the way Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2 was both a deconstruction of Solid Snake and his own character. And the game seemed almost reluctant to keep the mystery going at all. Maybe it’s not fair to shellac the game for this when Roxas will surely come back in some capacity, but it sets up this whole paradigm-shifting plot twist and then just… gives up on it?

Despite how much I disliked Twilight Town – mini-games where you skateboard around town to deliver mail to pigeons excepted, of course – I think it was done a disservice. It’s utterly lacking in the things that were fun about Kingdom Hearts, i.e. you and Aladdin running around and whacking people with swords set to awesome Yoko Shimomura music. And it doesn’t really deepen the lore or make the mysteries more exciting. It should’ve been excised, or it should’ve been expanded to let Roxas’ story be… more. More than just a twist. As it stands, it felt more like the game holding itself back.

Especially since the rest of Kingdom Hearts II‘s first hours and worlds were more engaging than those of its predecessor. The fight with Shan-Yu was pretty delightful, especially when I got to kick his stupid falcon to the curb. And the Valor system has been pretty cool, too, even though I can only use it with Goofy in the party at the moment (I’m assuming I’ll get a form that reacts to Donald instead soon). So things started out rough and are evening out, like last time. Just a bit more extreme with the highs and lows. That’s not bad. Next time, I’ll be going back to Olympus, and it’ll be nice to see Herc and Phil, and to make fun of James Woods. After all, is that not what Kingdom Hearts is all about?

Overall progress: Started Kingdom Hearts II and explored four worlds, and watched the Riku route in Re: Chain of Memories.

Other games played: