Dispatch from the Dive Chapter 7: Jumping ‘Cross the Ocean like a Game of Checkers

EDIT (2:02 PM EST): added the link to the series at the bottom

Kingdom Hearts II started off poorly and steadily improved, as a labyrinthine broader conspiracy gave way to a refined version of the original Kingdom Hearts. With worlds based on Mulan and Beauty and the Beast out of the way, it’s time to see what new and old intellectual properties await.

February 13: Didn’t play. It snowed and I was off work, so I did the honorable thing and read Calvin & Hobbes while watching the snow fall. It was magical.

February 14: Entered and completed Olympus, entered and completed Disney Castle, entered Timeless River.

While I’ve been spoiled on several of Kingdom Hearts’ plot points and features, there are some things that were just too pervasive. You know, things like “norting,” the sea salt ice cream, and, of course, “GET UP ON THE HYDRA’S BACK!” Philoctetes’ impassioned and incessant demand has been the thing of memes since the release of Kingdom Hearts II, and I knew about it long before hearing it in action (his delightful hopping, however, was a surprise). It was goofy, and yet not quite as overbearing as I expected. I mean, the actual practice of, let’s say, “ascending the Hydra’s dorsal region” was awkward, as was the game’s giving you the same message as Phil while he kept saying it, but it didn’t keep the fight from being fun.

Really, climbing atop the Hydra’s spine was less awkward than a bunch of the stuff around it, like Phil’s standard demand that you hit random things to prove your heroic status. The best is that weird sequence beforehand where Sora and the guy from Final Fantasy X get chased throughout the Underworld while James Woods endlessly lowballs “feel the heat?” I was planning to make fun of Woods in easy, reductive ways, so… thanks, James! Now I don’t need to do that.

On other casting notes, Megara is (as usual) played by Susan Egan, who was fantastic in Steven Universe as the imposing and overwhelming Rose Quartz. While Megara doesn’t really do much in this story other than get kidnapped and emotionally support Hercules, she has one of the game’s best performances. Actually, Woods is still good in general, as is Robert Costanzo as Phil (not Tate Donovan as Herc himself, though; he’s kind of nondescript), so it’s good knowing that the Hercules cast sticks around for at least most of Kingdom Hearts. I don’t know why, but good acting – especially from good actors – has been very rare in these games.

It was only for a short bit, but I did try one of the optional puzzles, the one whose pieces are scattered about the game as those crown symbols. It was the first one, and I was missing one piece, but I had a good time playing with it. This kind of puzzle is something I enjoy quite a bit, so I feel very invested in tracking all of them down. Much more interesting than getting all of the 101 Dalmatians last time.

Apparently, these were only added in Final Mix, which seems crazy; they’re immensely fun.

More negatively, I do feel like I regret – if only for a bit – being as positive towards the game for adding additional requirements to fights. It was fun enough protecting the Imperial Palace in the Land of Dragons, but Olympus, Disney Castle, and Timeless River have all featured fights that require you to protect something from enemies. It’s good as one of Kingdom Hearts II’s attempts to deepen the combat, but I feel that it’s perhaps getting overused. In practice, it seems to mostly turn into a series of fights where Sora has to keep enemies away from something and hope Donald and Goofy do the same. It’s mostly not bad, except for the trying sequence in Disney Castle when you have to constantly cajole Minnie Mouse away from powerful enemies, but I do feel that there are other ways to explore this. We don’t need all of the mini-games in Timeless River to be…

Oh, right, again. Timeless River. Well, let’s just save that for tomorrow…

February 15: Completed Timeless River, entered and completed Port Royal.

One of Kingdom Hearts II’s biggest surprises is seeing how quickly it’s getting to the fireworks factory. I expected any excursion to Disney Castle would’ve been way later in the game, maybe after finding Mickey, but it’s one of the earlier worlds. I expected to spend more time in worlds we knew before seeing the ones we don’t, but it’s only a wildly different Hollow Bastion and an expanded Olympus. Most of all, though, I really did not expect to see Timeless River – a famous and fantastic world built from the original, black and white Disney films – to come in until near the very end. Structurally, that feels natural. But no, we got it fairly early on, and I was delighted.

It’s always good to get a reminder that original Mickey was, as all good mascots of that era, incredibly unsettling.

The place is just so cool. It’s fun seeing these movies reimagined as this primordial world upon which Disney Castle will be built, complete with creakier audio and film scratches. It’s fun seeing Sora’s redesign here, which gives him his KH1 outfit and facial expressions to match 1960’s Osamu Tezuka manga. It’s fun seeing how put-upon poor Pete really is, and fighting him by swinging on a crane and whacking cargo at him. And more than anything else, it’s fun hearing that soundtrack. It may not be perfect – I don’t care for the mini-games where you’re forced to protect the settings of those Mickey Mouse movies – but Timeless River is strong in concept and practice. I’m aware that there’s a fair amount of backtracking in this game compared to the super-linear first game, and I’m excited for whenever I return.

It’s pretty much the opposite of Port Royal, the setting of Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. The level has some good ideas – well, only one, really, but the gimmick that you can only hurt the zombie pirates when they’re under moonlight is cool – but it struggles just by virtue of its source material. That’s a franchise that started to run itself into the ground with its second installment, right around the time Kingdom Hearts II came out, and in 2022 that hasn’t gotten better. What was admittedly a fun original film (which is the exclusive source material here) and a unique antihero were ground under the heel of po-faced sequels and the glib overacting of one Johnny Depp. The overacting isn’t a problem here – in fact, everyone kinda sounds like they’re on Xanax – but the icon he defined remains obnoxious and overbearing. Literally; you’re forced to keep him in your party. And he’s fronting a cast that’s uniformly insipid, with the exception of villainous pirate captain Barbossa. It did nothing to improve my feelings towards the franchise: an attitude not dissimilar to that of The Good Place, which suggested that the movie theaters of Hell would endlessly play the further tales of Captain Jack Sparrow.

Though I kind of would be interested in what form the Heartless might take in Pirates of the Caribbean 6: The Haunted Crow’s Nest or Something, Who Gives a Crap.

The greater problem is how much it dominates the proceedings. Typically, the way these levels work is that Sora quietly intrudes in on the ongoing story, forges a friendship with its characters, and leaves. It’s not the most interesting form of storytelling necessarily (nor does it leave the preexisting characters much room to grow), but it helps give him agency. Except he’s not really that important in Port Royal, which spends way too much of its time poorly recreating scenes from Black Pearl. Pete being Captain Barbossa’s inexplicable buddy helps, but the world is overall way too focused on capturing superficial aspects of the movie. It almost feels like Sora’s getting in the way of what the game wants to do, which goes in line with its graphics: a hyper-realistic art style that is, really, the only way to adequately capture the film’s live action look. It’s good that KH2 is exploring more graphical styles, but the dissonance between Sora’s design and Jack Sparrow’s kind of reinforces this issue.

But, small miracles, and one of those comes from Jack Sparrow himself: specifically, that he’s not played by Johnny Depp. It’s a bad and lifeless soundalive performance, as is the case for everyone in this world, but it is less singularly dominating and, as with Barbossa, removes an actor who needed removing (in all likelihood due to Disney not ponying up for their exorbitant cost, which I’ll still take). The Pirates theme, which is mostly used in lieu of original compositions, remains as good as it’s always been. And yeah, that whole gimmick with the enemies was pretty neat – especially after so many variations on the “protect the thing” trope. I can’t say that I was happy with Port Royal, but I can confess that, had it been based on almost any other Disney property, I’d place it quite a bit higher than I did.

And you know what? After Timeless River, I can take a bum level. I really liked Timeless River.

February 16: Entered (and had to leave) Atlantica, entered and completed Agrabah.

Now we’re talkin’! Agrabah is back, the new music’s good, and while it’s a bit harder to navigate than it was back in Kingdom Hearts I, it’s still fun. As was the case in Olympus, it’s nice seeing Sora’s relationship with each separate cast evolve from game to game. This series’ interpretations of Aladdin, Jasmine, and Genie are neither deep nor entertaining, but their ongoing relationships with Sora give the game an identity beyond just dumping in Disney properties.

Pete being in the mix helps as well. While it was enjoyable seeing Maleficent’s vague council of evil in the last game (something that’s been reused by Organization XIII to much less effect), her goon’s brand of villainy is ultimately much more fun. Maleficent is, like Ansem and the Org XIII clods, very much a passive and ominous foe. Pete’s more like an evil version Sora; he’s that same kind of intrusive and active force. He’s more fun than Sora, too – he’s better at selling the proceedings – and a stronger dark counterpart to him than Riku and Roxas have been.

My initial attempt to enter Atlantica was stymied by a need for some kind of magic I’ll find in a later world, maybe the one after Agrabah and Halloween Town. What was most notable was its very silly quicktime event musical number that Sebastian the Crab put on, which definitely went on too long but was a nice reminder of how weird this series gets. And I found this entry’s version of swimming to be a lot stronger, though who knows how I’ll think about it when combat’s included.

I never noticed before that Sora’s mermaid tail has a fin. It makes sense for it to be there, but it mostly makes me think of that LL Cool J song from Deep Blue Sea:

I really need to finally get on watching those Deep Blue Sea sequels.

February 17: Entered and completed Halloween Town, did the Piglet mini-game in 100 Acre Wood.

How do you make the best world of a video game even better in the sequel? Make it a snow level! Winter worlds are the best, in my estimation, and not just because I prefer the cold. The white of the snow reflecting the light, be it from the sun or moon or man-made device, is so pretty. The music, which can be cheery or spooky or threatening, is always great. And if you want to add auroras or holiday lights or spooky constructs or wiley monsters or slippery ice floes, all the better.

I knew my second main visit to Halloween Town would take place partially in the neighboring burg of Christmas Town, and even if I didn’t, it would’ve been an easy guess. After all, that’s the natural next step for a land based on The Nightmare Before Christmas. And it was just as fun as I’d hoped. With the exception of how Halloween Town itself felt a bit smaller and less grand, it was all excellent. The fight against Oogie Boogie was actually fun this time, and the villain was even more entertaining (his endless cries of “that’s right, away ya go!” and “hope you like the Oogie gift I picked out for you!” were great successors to the interminable “c’mon, baby!”). His ornery amnesia, and the way he just completely rebuffs Maleficent to be evil in his own way, was great, too. The inexplicable reveal that the jerky Santa from the movie gives presents to kids across the entire multiverse – including Sora!?! – was bonkers in a very appreciable way. And overall, it was just fun spending more time in this world and with Jack Skellington.

Another thing that was only added in Final Mix? The fantastic Christmas Town music. That definitely helps make this world so good.

On a related note, It seems the combined spirit of Halloween and Christmas (the latter of which does nothing for me normally, perhaps unsurprisingly) even stretched outside of the world. The first mini-game of 100 Acre Wood I played, protecting Pooh from a storm of rocks and trees, was actually pretty fun. I would try to collect and play at least some of the mini-games in the name of experiencing it anyway, but this was a great sign.

February 18: Returned to Twilight Town, returned for (and had to leave) Atlantica Chapter 2, entered and completed Pride Lands.

One intriguing part of Halloween Town was how it integrated the plot of Nightmare Before Christmas. In the film, Jack kidnaps Santa Claus, Santa is then abducted by Oogie Boogie, and eventually Jack puts things right. In Kingdom Hearts, though, Jack and Sora defeat Oogie, then the plot to Nightmare happens offscreen – albeit without the villain, who takes until this game to be resurrected by Maleficent. So the story still happened, just differently. It’s a neat touch that adds a bit of flavor, especially compared to the other worlds. In, say, Agrabah in the first game or the Land of Dragons in this one, the main plot of their original movies happens while we’re there; it’s just truncated, lacking in the movies’ actual pathos, and with Sora, Donald, and Goofy on hand to provide light emotional support (sometimes this works, sometimes not). In Olympus, the plot to Hercules had apparently already happened before Sora first got there. But our heroes’ time in Halloween Town orbits the events of the film.

A mixture of the two happens in the Pride Lands, the setting of The Lion King. Simba, the hero, was a summon in Kingdom Hearts I – one I actually did see repeatedly, unlike Mushu – so he has a preexisting relationship to our trio. But he’s a Simba who still hasn’t gone through the actual Hamlet thing (even though he was clearly the mature Simba in KH1, but I’m just nitpicking), so Sora got to know him before seeing him grow up, reconnect with Nala, and get a message from James Earl Jones’ recycled recordings as Mufasa. Neither he nor any of the other Lion King characters are particularly compelling in the context of this game, just by virtue of its structure and writing, but I think it’s just much more satisfying keeping our heroes in the mix.

Part of the reason is that Sora, Donald, and Goofy are the only characters who really explore each of the worlds. The Disney worlds never significantly interact with each other, so their interactions with Sora do something only this series, not their sequels, can do.

It’s a neat idea, and thinking it over, I would like more of the games’ worlds to adopt this kind of meta narrative twisting. It was good here, since you got to see sides of these characters and their lives that the movies can’t show. Otherwise, it’s just poorly recreating famous movie scenes with worse animation and acting, and you run the risk of Sora becoming secondary to the proceedings. The second point is also important because you need him to be front and center. He’s the hero. He may be a somewhat shallow hero, which is not a bad thing on its own (plenty of great fictional leads are shallow), but he’s our hero nonetheless.

I guess I should mention the boss fight against Scar. It’s very fun! Though it’s another example of how the structure of the crossover can limit drama as much as craft it, as his fantastic and famous death – hanging off the cliff, taking advantage of Simba’s kindness, and being eaten alive by his own henchmen – is largely excised. After all, we need Pete to turn him into a Heartless.

February 19: Didn’t play.

Final Thoughts: This was, without a doubt, the best week I’ve had so far with this project by a substantial margin. While there was a bad world and some poorly used mechanics, and the storytelling and writing still aren’t great, it was by far the best concentration of good Kingdom Hearts to bad I’ve experienced. Pete’s the best mainline addition to the cast so far, and his role as a weird, impromptu evil Sora has worked wonders. To a broader extent, it feels like most worlds have at least one fun character to really center things: Megara and Hades, Old Timey Pete, Iago, Scar, Sebastian, and pretty much everyone in Halloween Town. Timeless River was more imaginative than anything I’ve seen from these games thus far. Jack Skellington is as great as he ever was. Even the Winnie the Pooh mini-game was actually good. And perhaps most telling, there were only fleeting moments of the bland broader narrative: a barely there return to Twilight Town, some short moments with Organization XIII, and a couple optional battles against deceased Chain of Memories baddies that both ended with me dying almost instantly.

That last part is gonna change soon (well, not me being bad at those optional fights). Along with the inexplicable Tron level, I know more of the conspiracy stuff is coming back soon. The “Battle of a Thousand Heartless,” one of those Kingdom Hearts moments I heard of years ago, is probably the next thing I’ll have to do in Hollow Bastion. And after that, there’ll be the return visits to at least some of the worlds, something I only got a glimpse of in Atlantica. We’re definitely on the cusp of a dramatic sea change in the story, and hopefully the game will be able to keep up this momentum.

As had happened with Pokémon Legends (whose Pokédex I completed on Tuesday, I might add), my Kingdom Hearts time will be split next week when Eldin Ring comes out. I’m not going to suddenly stop, of course; I’ll keep the progress steady. But I’ll almost certainly be playing less than I did this week, though that would probably be inevitable. I went through a lot of this game this week, and it’s good to not play too much. There’s still a lot of Kingdom Hearts left to go, especially since it’s become very clear that I’ll probably have to play Birth by Sleep three – three! – times. But if there are more weeks like this, that’ll definitely help. A lot.

But, as a connoisseur of ice levels, all I’ll say is this: that Frozen level from Kingdom Hearts III is gonna have to work extra-hard to be better than Christmas Town.

Overall progress: Entered and went through eight worlds: Olympus, Disney Castle, Timeless River, Port Royal, Atlantica, Agrabah, Halloween Town, and Pride Lands.

Other games played: