February 27, 2022|

Filed under: Editorial

Dispatch from the Dive Chapter 8: Webster’s Defines “Duality” As…

Week’s image: Anti-Sora / Hooded Roxas and Jafar over Agrabah / Dive to the Heart (cut in half and combined)

Dang, what a week last week was. Well, it’s time to now move the plot of Kingdom Hearts II into next gear. It’s possible we’ll hit a stumbling block on our momentum, as we did in the climax of Kingdom Hearts I, but we’ll just have to find out.

February 20: Entered and completed Space Paranoids, fought the Battle of the 1000 Heartless

Well, seems we have hit a stumbling block. It was a big one, and it came from three reasons.

Reason Number One: Space Paranoids, a world based on the cult film Tron. I’ve never seen Tron (’twas before my time), but wow is it bad here. It’s the weakest of KH2’s worlds for all the reasons a Kingdom Hearts level can be weak. There’s the bad mechanical shift, with a terrible chase sequence on digital motorcycles. There’s the boring character in Tron himself. There’s the drab setting. There’s the forced comedy bit – Sora and Donald barging in and thoughtlessly screwing with the computer – that gets you there. It does one thing I like, making the computer world part of the broader plot, but being part of the broader part now is an issue because of…

Reason Number Two: the reveals about Organization XIII. The fake Ansem took the real Ansem’s identity! And the real Ansem is played by Christopher Lee, so DiZ is probably the real Ansem’s Nobody! And the fake Ansem has a Nobody named Xehanort! And Xehanort runs Organization XIII! And… it all just falls flat. Our relationship to Ansem was always limited, and this reveal had already been explicitly stated in the game’s first bit of supplemental material. And it’s based around the Organization, which is such a nebulous, mind-numbingly boring force – every character acts the same and everything they do is so vague – that its actions lack meaning. Another reveal, that their goal is to have Sora beat as many Heartless as possible and thus create a surplus of Hearts, should improve that since it’s actually tied to what we do. But that also doesn’t work for me; it’s too ill-defined. The stakes aren’t intimidating, which is also the problem of…

Reason Number Three: the defense of Hollow Bastion. Maleficent attacks the town with an army of Heartless, meaning it’s time for not just Sora, Donald, and Goofy but also King Mickey and the Bastion’s denizens to hold steady. This should be great, right? It’s a whole community working together to save their home. But it just doesn’t work in this case. While we’ve been with them since the start, the Final Fantasy characters have always been one of this series’ weakest casts. They’re stereotypes; every male character is equally grumpy and stoic, every female one is equally bubbly and spunky. The scenes of them interacting have no weight, and neither does the dramatic (and very fleeting) entrance of fan favorite Sephiroth. It’s just as bad with the good characters, though; Goofy’s not even half-assed fakeout death is absurd and incredibly cheap; he dies only to come back in Sora’s next scene. What should be this powerful, emotional drama is artificial and manipulative.

Literally back on his feet within minutes.

These are issues we’ve seen before: bad uses of the Disney IP, an inability to sell the original story, and cheap stabs at pathos. We saw them last week, which was the best concentrated time I had with the series. But it’s unfortunate now, and in such an intense amount. I’m sure the return to the Disney worlds will be better, so the momentum will come back. But dang, what a kick in the teeth after such a good run.

But, but, credit where it’s due: the Battle of the 1,000 Heartless was indeed very, very cool. I surf around with Rising Sun and use that drone’s laser attack for days, and it wouldn’t be a chore.

February 21: Returned to Beast’s Castle, defeated Xaldin.

Another frustrating day. Beast’s Castle is now chock-full of incredibly tough enemies, and Xaldin, the Organization XIII goon du jour, is a caricature of ultra-hard boss fights. I’m deeply grateful to that mechanic where Mickey saves you at least once in some boss fights if you die – twice, I think, in the bout I won – but it’s frustrating that the fight is so overbearing that I needed that much help. Some parts, like “learning” Xaldin’s jump attack to use on him, were fun, but his extreme damage output and mammoth health bar turn them into things you desperately throw out just in the hope that maybe, you’ll hold off the fight long enough for Donald to come back to life and heal you.

Yesterday, I decided I needed to finally get the dodge roll. Turns out it was only added to the Final Mix version of KH2, from the Limit Drive that I only just started using. I have to level up the Drive by properly executing its limit moves, which means unleashing one, then pressing △ at the right time and enough times to count (and since it costs a lot of magic, you only get two chances each time you activate the Drive). It’s a bit inscrutable, since the prompt flashes for less than a second and the game itself is short on explanations. So far, I managed to do it once with Sonic Wave (before dying and thus not getting the experience), partially because the Limit form never worked on Xaldin; Sora just turned into a weird shadow creature. Whenever I got that one, I would die almost instantly, but, once, probably the time I won, I did an insane amount of damage. That was cool. It’s hard to really remember which moments happened in which attempt, since they all blurred together.

I’ll admit it’s also a bit deflating to repeatedly lose to this guy. It’s like getting your tuchus kicked by Frasier Crane.

I guess this means I should also use Valor Form more. I feel like I’ve already used it a lot – just not, apparently, enough for regular Sora to get the improved version of High Jump that I need for the other puzzle pieces.

This has been pretty negative, but I do want to say I appreciate Sora’s being involved in Belle’s and Beast’s largely awful and exhausting relationship. It’s something that can only really happen in a situation where Sora’s spent time with these people. He fought with Beast to look for Belle, helped them patch things up, so it makes more sense for him to butt in.

February 22: Returned to and completed Land of Dragons, Olympus, Port Royal, Agrabah, Halloween Town, Pride Lands, and completed Chapter 3 of Atlantica.

Today’s also gonna be negative, but I do just want to get it out of the way that I’ve been enjoying myself so much more since getting out of Beast’s Castle. It’s been largely great! And I’m really excited to talk about why. It’s just that it’ll be better for pacing if I talk about it tomorrow and focus on this right now; I’d like these entries to not go on too long or focus on too many things at once. So again: positivity tomorrow, tsuris tonight.

I spent the day doing two things: returning to the Disney worlds to continue the plot (again, about which more tomorrow), and grinding. Not for Sora’s levels, though it’s also done that, but for those of his Drive Forms. Each one has a bevy of optional abilities – dashing, double-jumping, dodging – that Sora’s “regular” kit can inherit if he levels up the Forms enough. I’ve gotten the Valor Form, the first one, as far as it can go by this point, so my default Sora has been enjoying High Jump and a bunch of offensive abilities for most of the game. But I’ve not been as good to the others. While I’d really like to improve the Limit Drive, as I mentioned yesterday, I’ve decided that what I need to focus on are the Wisdom and Master Forms. The former has a dash that seemed like it would be immensely nice (and would turn out to be, you know, fine); the latter has a double jump that would get me those lovely, lovely puzzle pieces.

Leveling them up, however, is its own challenge. Each Form gets the experience points to level up in a different way: Valor from successful attacks, Wisdom from kills, Master from dropped Limit orbs, Limit from successful inputs, and the secret Final Form that I’ll only get later from defeating Nobodies. This is really cool, and it means thinking about how – and when – you should activate them. Using Wisdom is largely pointless against heavy and tough enemies, at least if you want to build it up, while Master requires foes who drop those orbs.

Of course, there are the twists. They require specific members of the party (Donald for Wisdom, Goofy for Valor, everyone with you for Master) in place, which is fair. You also have to hit a lot of enemies to fill up the Drive before using it, so you’re effectively grinding to fill a meter so you can grind in the Form. Most notable, though, is that the game punishes you for excessively using Forms with that shadowy, weak “AntiForm” that bedeviled me in the Xaldin fight and a couple times previously. Every time you select a Form, there’s a random chance the game will actually select this one instead, and each successful execution of a regular Form raises that chance. The Anti Form’s enjoyably fast, but it has no abilities of its own, so the filling of the Drive you just did is largely for naught.

Sora’s AntiForm, not to be confused with the recurring and visually identical Kingdom Hearts I enemy “AntiSora.”

I get not wanting players to rely on the system too often. But this solution of the AntiForm misjudges the situation. A lot of what makes the KH2 gameplay fun is the constant building and unleashing of the Drive, whether through Forms or Summons (like Peter Pan, who I met up with in Port Royal); using them should be encouraged. And it’s frustrating when it comes to situations like the one I’m in, where I’m sure I’m closing in on the end game but still really want or need those optional abilities. I should’ve worked at this earlier in the game, but now it’s harder; foes are bulkier.

Honestly, the game probably should’ve just not gated exploration abilities behind optional combat mechanics. Kingdom Hearts often gestures to platforming (and I do still suspect the series might’ve been better as more of a platformer), and gaiting abilities in that genre is a risky thing. At best, you’ll pull a Banjo-Kazooie; at worst, a Yooka-Laylee. But in this case, it has this side element of being tied to Drives, which emphasize specific kinds of play styles and excel in specific situations.

One point of frustration in all of this is that the Underdrome, this follow-up to Olympus’s Coliseum from the first game, doesn’t give you experience points. So that’s not great. But, it has one secret use I only learned after looking up advice for how to proceed. You go into the second Cup, instantly quit, and BOOM: Drive meter filled. And after getting some further hints about grinding in Halloween Town (for Master Form) and Timeless River (for Wisdom) – coincidentally, my two favorite places! – I’ve managed to bump both up quickly. I’ll need to do more, it seems, if I want a double jump strong enough to get the last puzzle pieces in Beast’s Castle, but this helped a lot. I do wish, though, that it didn’t take jumping through hoops to do this with some consistency.

But again, I do want to emphasize that tomorrow’s entry is gonna be a lot more positive. Just wait until you’re a couple lines ahead; you’ll see!

Like THIS much positivity. Though, and speaking from the night before this article was posted, I still haven’t seen this move. Just another excuse to keep exploring!

February 23: Returned to and completed Space Paranoids, Hollow Bastion is now Radiant Garden.

So yeah. Yesterday, alongside throwing enemies into Santa Claus’ carousel to pick the Limit orbs from their corpses, I rushed through most of the game’s fourth act: returning to almost every main world to get clues on Organization XIII. In practice, it worked like a cut down version of Act II, when Sora went to them for the first time. I checked out a few old locations, fought a boss, and spent a bit more time with the characters. Other than Agrabah, which did add a sizable and mechanically mixed flying carpet section, there were few if any new locations in each area. And that’s fine!

Because this was just us checking up with our friends, and on that front Kingdom Hearts II succeeds wonderfully. These follow-ups are coming at a point where we’re eager to get to the end, so taking too long would be unsatisfying. At the same time, doing this at all sidesteps the issue of the first two games’ “one and done” structure, where we see a Disney character do their most famous thing once and say goodbye. For the most part, the depictions of these characters are neither deep nor particularly compelling, so giving them more time (and time within a Kingdom Hearts game instead of from one game to the next, where they just do their most famous thing again) allows for actual character development. Characters like Simba and Iago and Belle get more to do, while the great ones, like Scar and Jack Skellington, only shine further. No one’s role feels worse this time – sometimes lesser than in the first chapter, but not worse. It’s really nice from a series that struggles with using the majority of its cast in a narratively dramatic way.

While I had the most fun time by far at Halloween Town, unsurprisingly (I mean, Jack cackles with holiday glee as he flies on Santa’s reindeer and then dances with Sally as the snow falls; of course it’s the most fun), the winner of the “most improved” award is definitely Agrabah. While I liked the first visit, there’s just so much more stuff now. There are plenty of new locations, an entire new gameplay mechanic based on flying on Aladdin’s magic carpet, and it manages to bring the main characters of Aladdin a bit more into their own story than they were in the last visit. Most importantly, it brings back Jafar, played with as much gusto as ever by Jonathan Freeman and clearly just having a blast.

If Jack Skellington is the series’ best heroic character, Jafar’s gotta be the best villainous one.

Another thing that surprised me was how seemingly every individual return had at least one new mechanical trope or gimmick. A lot of the time, it comes through bosses; you chase the hyenas across the Pride Lands, while Land of Dragons features a monster who walls off part of the arena with lightning. Other times, it’s mechanical, like the carpet (which technically is just the new swimming mechanic, but the context is completely different). But there’s always at least a little bit of new material, buttressed by how the plots aren’t always the same. I assumed after starting in Beast’s Castle that each visit would culminate in a fight against another Organization member, but most of the levels were largely separate from the conspiracy.

Even the dumb things are charming in that wonderfully dopey Kingdom Hearts way. The game needs a scene where Jafar has Jasmine chained up, but what’s this? No suitable interior room in Agrabah to serve as a prison? Just shackle her to a door outside! Need to spice up your Lion King homage with a crazy boss battle? Sure, let’s have lion cub Sora, the least platforming-suited character in the series, jump up a boss so stupidly, needlessly big that it’s the size of the first world from Kingdom Hearts I! And I guess Riku’s back now? Beating up Shang and threatening the Emperor of China, then just sort of… attacking Sora and then stopping so Sora can save the day? Yeah, that does sound like our boy.

I suppose I have some criticisms. The difficulty leap, especially within Beast’s Castle, is often inconsistent and unclear. The fight against Jafar is awful, and far too reminiscent of Kingdom Hearts I’s horrible final boss to have any right to be. The improvements also depend on each world and its characters; Jack Skellington is arguably even more fun than he’s been throughout this series, while Jack Sparrow is even more boring and sedate (Space Paranoids suffers greatly here thanks to having barely any characters). This system also can’t magically make bad characters like Tron or Will Turner good. And it doesn’t service everyone equally well, as characters like Mulan and Jasmine are still underserved.

If I have to make one main criticism, though, it’s that this should feel more connected to everything else. Part of this is that issue I’ve had from the beginning, where I feel that the Disney worlds need to interact with each other, not just Sora (and Sora interacting with them a second time only furthers this). But it’s also just the general story. In Act II, we go through these worlds to fight the Heartless. In Act III, we jump back to Organization XIII, who’s trying to get Sora to fight the Heartless. So in Act IV, we go back to the worlds, fight the Heartless again, and I kinda wish the connective tissue was at least a little better.

Despite that, these sojourns were not only fun, but actively additive to the experience. I could call Act IV padding, and it probably is, but that doesn’t keep it from having some of the best material in this game. This was great.

February 24: Returned to Twilight Town, entered the World that Never Was, defeated Roxas.

Oy, Roxas. What a dumb fight that was.

The first boss fight with Roxas is one of the first things you get into once you reach the World that Never Was, the obvious final dungeon of Kingdom Hearts II. It’s an extremely hard and onerous boss right after a long hallway full of enemies, so when you lose, you’re stuck going through the hallway again. But that’s just bad setup. It’s very clear that the fight is meant as an homage to the Riku fight from KH1; it’s just him and Sora, no partners or Summons. The Riku fight in that game is somewhat infamous for its difficulty, and while I didn’t actually find it that difficult (though I completely understand why it got that reputation), this one is absurd. Roxas had six and a half health bars, and virtually every attack of his was a combo that took upwards of sixty percent of my health every time. It’s a trial.

The main feature in the fight comes through its quicktime event, in which Sora can steal Roxas’ two Keyblades and subsequently use three at once. Imagine him with three arms! However, unlike almost every other button prompt in the game (which is mapped to the △ button), the prompt requires you to look at Sora’s UI list of four things to do, wait for one of them to feature words, and press it. It’s awkward, at odds with the rest of the game, but just bad mechanically – the timing is terrible. If you futz up, you lose a huge chunk of health, but if you don’t you get to power through at least one and a half of those health bars. I was very lucky in the attempt I won for the prompt to happen twice, and both at the end, after he had started using far stronger attacks.

Of course, that wasn’t the only thing I used. Aside from some that improved my ground combos, the most important abilities in the fight were ones from my various Drive Forms, most notably Aerial Dodge, Dodge Roll, and the Limit Drive itself (which saved the day in a pinch near the end, when I was out of magic and low on health). These made the fight winnable, but many of them were things I hadn’t even accessed until this week. All that grinding? It came to bear here, and while I would’ve liked the fight had Roxas had at least some less health and done at least some less damage, there’s something kinda frustrating and eye-opening about realizing how absolutely necessary all of those ostensibly optional fights really were. Every time I kept using Sonic Wave on the Mushroom enemy in Agrabah’s Cave of Wonders? That was vital to staying alive here.

And the twist to all of this? This fight was only added in Final Mix! It was originally only the one boring cutscene about the conflict in Sora’s mind! It’s just one more bit of evidence proving how different this version of KH2 really is. A fight like this should be tucked away somewhere as an option, maybe holding a super-duper final Keyblade as a prize for entering. Not a requirement that happens after Axel’s idiotic and emotionless sacrifice, or the follow-up to the revelation that Roxas was from a second Twilight Town all along? Had I not talked about the fight, I’d be knee-deep analyzing those plot points. But that’ll have to be for another day.

I was very fortunate that I got great advice from people when I asked online directly for help. Because before that, I had looked up some strategies from various websites, and the results were… predictable.

While I’m excited to explore more of the World that Never Was, I’ll also do some further grinding – that first hallway looks good for it; I leveled up the Wisdom Drive each time I fought the enemies instead of running past them – which is more than fine. It’s clear I won’t be finishing KH2 this week, and I’ve already played so much. So in theory, that’ll be four weeks for the first game and four for this one, which is pretty cool given how KH2 is much longer. I’ve been playing much more intensely with this one.

February 25: Defeated Xigbar, acquired Final Form, beat the next two 100 Acre Wood minigames.

Ugh, and another awful boss. Xigbar the gunman really loves that attack where he hits you with a flood of seemingly unblockable shots, huh. It’s good I have Once More.

I was really pumped, for just a second. Plot-wise, I reunited with Riku (who looks inexplicably like Ansem to “control the darkness,” even though the game was already obscuring his identity) and saw the tragic revelation that this plot is so incoherent that even Christopher Lee is struggling to explain the threads. Kairi was also there, I guess. And in terms of gameplay, I finally managed to unlock the Final Form that gives me access to Glide, thus letting me get the final puzzle pieces once I’ve built up better versions of it, High Jump, and Aerial Dodge. And I’ve done two more of the 100-Acre Wood mini-games.

While still miles above the mini-games from KH1, the third and fourth mini-game from KH2 are quite awkward.

The reason is that I agreed to hold off on Elden Ring until Saturday, since that’s the soonest my best friend can also play it (we’ve been excited about both playing a FromSoftware game at launch). And I figured, maybe I could just wrap this up. There doesn’t seem to be another save point in the World that Never Was, so obviously I’m close. But rushing it is silly, especially since it’s still just the third week with Kingdom Hearts II. There’s still the grinding and exploration, the puzzle pieces, the fight with Sephiroth, the conclusion to the Winnie the Pooh subplot, even the final chapter in Atlantica. Plus, I’ve still got to actually discuss the increasingly unhinged plot. There’s no reason to rush this, and I kinda wish I’d held off on the mini-games until next week for just that reason.

However much time next week takes to beat the game, I’m going to wait until an open week to start the next entry. Judging by the games’ release date (if not the ordering in the collection I’m playing), the next ones are coded (2008) and 358/2 Days (2009), both of which were remade as movies. It feels natural to spend one week just watching those and then move onto Birth by Sleep (2011), Dream Drop Distance (2012), and then another week just for a fragmentary passage and Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover (which is notably not a direct copy of Kingdom Hearts χ), both of which came out the same day in 2017. Then it’s III and Melody of Memory, and maybe the remains of Union χ?

Looking at the list of actual games to movies, seems a lot less daunting, don’t it? We can slow up the pace just a bit. Besides, Kingdom Hearts II is a huge game, and I’ve definitely ignored some stuff that would be good to talk about. The game isn’t just about Halloween Town and dumb villains with “X” in their names.

February 26: Didn’t play.

Final Thoughts: However, to return to Halloween Town and dumb villains with “X” in their names, I think my feelings on this week can best be summed up with the following collage. It’s largely an extension of the header, but I think it fits some of my thoughts on this:

A beloved Disney icon in perfect form who elevates everything around him. The company mascot, but draped in a goofy outfit as part of a goofy plot. And… Xigbar. Stupid, stupid Xigbar. This is the dichotomy of Kingdom Hearts II: fun and enjoyable Disney nostalgia on one end, convoluted nonsense on the other, and a few characters in the middle who navigate those harsh rapids. If you’re a character in Kingdom Hearts, you’re going to find yourself somewhere in this field.

This is a deeply odd and rather schizophrenic game, one that only gets more odd and schizophrenic the more of it you play. I knew that in abstraction going in, hearing of things like Nobodies and the Disney worlds’ lack of plot relevance, but actually seeing it? Playing it? Doing kickstands on a skateboard to deliver mail to pigeons? That’s something else. It goes from bizarre bit to bizarre bit without a second thought. I honestly figured I’d be ready for it knowing its reputation, but it’s thrown me for a loop plenty of times. Sometimes, that’s good. Sometimes, it’s not. It has been very thrilling most of the time, but occasionally that wild energy is crushing and tiring.

But more to the point, this is a game serving two masters: the one that wants a fun, slight, interactive Disneyland, and the one that has a grand plot about cosmic forces on its mind. And so much of what makes these games jarring is seeing these two aspects constantly chafing. Not all of it; Donald and Goofy making faces to show Aladdin what they “do for fun” would be insane no matter what. But whenever I see those black cloaks, I know that some stilted storytelling is on the horizon, because those original characters and the original plot are typically the weakest and least satisfying aspects. They have the least energy, but they’re also the main creations of this game. That seems unusual for a story like this, to say the least.

For all of my caterwauling this week, I do like KH2 – quite a lot, in fact. For the most part, it is heads and shoulders above KH1. But it only makes the bad parts so much more inexplicable. Why did it design the mechanics the way it did? Why did it feel the need to shoot itself in the foot with its few atrocious bosses? And why is Organization XIII, an original creation of the crossover that’s the narrative backbone and of so much interest to the game, so singularly boring?

This confusion and these frustrations have made Kingdom Hearts II a truly fascinating and compelling game in ways that are both positive and negative. It’s daring, I’ll give it that. And it’s for the most part able to use that really well. The game’s highs are great. And its much more infrequent lows are almost as bad as its highs are good, but that they exist together at all is wild.

Anyway, until next week. I’ll have thoughts on the end, the plot, and the realization that oh yeah, Xemnas has to be Ansem’s Nobody, not Xehanort’s, because the name of every member of Organization XIII is just someone else’s name but with an “X.” But let’s save that for next Sunday.

Overall progress: Saved Hollow Bastion, returned to every world, and fought through much of the World that Never Was.

Other games played: