Tuesday, March 28: Slacker goes to dinner with his in-laws and is given a Best Buy gift card for his birthday.
Wednesday, March 29: Slacker’s birthday! Slacker eats lunch with his parents, and coincidentally picks a restaurant right next to Best Buy, where Kingdom Hearts 2 had hit the shelves that morning.
I loved the original, being both a Final Fantasy fanboy and to a lesser extent, a Disney fan. The new one looks pretty good so far. A few random comments:
Good stuff
The combat seems very solid. It just takes a while to get to the point when it starts to get varied.
Great voice acting just like last time.
Visuals look good for an aging system.
Not bad, but not as good
The exposition is long long long. I thought I was never going to get to the main storyline.
Speaking of which, this is a kid’s game right? Maybe my old age is setting in, but the story is pretty hard to follow. I didn’t play the Gameboy game, so I’m sure that would clear some things up, but overall I still find it pretty convoluted.
Overall it’s getting a passing grade from me so far, but I’m confident it’ll start blowing me away as I get going. Anyone else checking it out?
Got my copy last night as a late birthday present from my parents. (They actually bought me an evil video game that’ll make my brain turn to mush. :rolleyes: I have a feeling I only got it because it has Disney characters in it.)
I haven’t started playing it yet though, due to Stupid Adult Responsibilities that I had to take care first.
I am pretty psyched about some of the characters in this one, though my favorite FF character has been left out again. Probably because everyone else from 7 was already in it and they didn’t wanna have too many from one game or something.
So, when you say you didn’t play the Gameboy one, do you mean you haven’t played the first Kingdom Hearts or is there another one that I just haven’t heard of?
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is the mentioned Gameboy game. I tried it for a bit, because I like to get all parts of stories in order and the like, but I could not bring myself to get anywhere in it. At least in the beginning, the story is just a complete rehash of the first game with extra mysterious (wiggles fingers) things, and the gameplay is absolutely horrid. It’s a card-based game, which I generally like, but the card combat is done in real-time with a terrible action RPG engine. And you go through randomly generated dungeons fighting things.
So at this point, I would pick suffering through a bit of not knowing what’s going on over trying to pick up that game again.
I came into Final Fantasy games in a weird way. First I played Chain of Memories about a year ago (well, actually first I played the original with the spites and oxayle and all, but that doesn’t count) and I loved that game so much I went out I bought a PS1 and a couple of the FF games for that system so that I could figure out who exactly people like “Tidas” and “Yuffie” were. I finished FFX over the weekend and just started the original KH. Holy crap! I can see why people who played KH1 first felt cheated by CoM. They only added a bit more plot and for the most part rehashed the original. I was a bit confused by the story as I was new to the KH and CoM begins right where KH1 ended. Here’s my summary of Chain of Memories.
[spoiler]Sora and Co. come across Castle Oblivion while searching for Riku and King Mickey, a place where the longer they stay the more their memories fade. In order to progress thru the castle the heroes must relive their memories of worlds. Eventually they discover that the castle itself isn’t destroying their memories, but rather a girl named Naime who is being controled by “The Organization,” a group of evil dudes who seem to have some connection with the Heartless. A couple boss battles and boss v. boss battles later and Sora has cleared out the Organization, at least the people who we met in it. Naime offers to return the heros’ memories, but it will take a year of slumber plus forgeting all of their experiences in Castle O to do it. They agree and go to sleep.
Sounds like nothing’s changed, right? Somehow during all this Riku (because of the ties of his and Sora’s hearts or something) manages to return from beyond the Door and lands in Castle O. Nothing much happens during his story, but he does manage to get the King back (ties of hearts, or something) and he accepts the darkness within him, vowing to use it for good the same way Sora uses his light. He and the King also meet Naime and see Sora and Co. sleeping. The King and Riku decide to explore the world learning to walk the line between good and evil. Or something. They also get help from a figure shrouded in red clothes who calls himself DiZ while in Castle O.
So at the end of the day, Riku and the King are back and there’s a mysterious Organization doing bad things. And there’s that DiZ guy who the King swears “seems familiar…”[/spoiler]
I actually liked the CoM battle system…
This thread might have got more responses if we weren’t all playing this game. I’m already over 73 hours.
I was getting a little anxious after the 4.5 hour long prologue. I was so excited when I saw Setzer and I couldn’t wait to see Locke or Terra or at least Celes. Sadly none of them showed up.
Thank goodness I played the gameboy game. This is really Kingdom Hearts III.
I went straight to Proud mode and still found the game fairly easy. Except for that one optional boss, you know who, and those 2nd missions for the cups. 10000 points! No freakin’ way. Maybe once I finish upping strength and magic to 99.
I stayed away from all news about it so I was so stoked about The black and white world and Tron.
And the secret ending this time left so many questions.
According to Wikipedia “While Nomura has stated he has ideas for a Kingdom Hearts III, there is no official confirmation of such a project at this time.” So yeah, looks like the game design for 3 is back at square zero. But the only thing left uncompleted after this game seems to be Ansem’s other apprentices. We only defeated their Nobodies. Mickey’s letter could have been nothing more then a thank you making them all knights or something like that. They looked mildly amused while reading it.
The rumor mill however seems to be working overtime for players of this game though.
So I’m thinking of starting this game today. I’d like some advice.
I finished KH I except for one thing. There’s this black wraith guy you battle in the air, in front of a clock tower. Never did beat that. Should I, before starting this game? Am I a bad person for not having completely completed the first game?
Anything you wish you had known about the game that, if you were going to play through it again, you’d do differently? I hate missing something important, but I don’t like reading through walkthroughs and having everything explained.
He’s just an extra boss battle that has no meaning in the story line at all. Ignore him at your own leisure. Took me a long time to kill him too.
Do Proud mode. It’s not that difficult and it makes it a hell of a lot easier to get the secret ending.
Was there a secret to beating him? Are the controls pretty much the same in both games? It might be good for me to reacquaint myself with the controls by beating that guy first. Not that it’s that big a deal or anything. Maybe I’ll start the game, play awhile, then go back and beat wraith-guy.
Here’s the GameFAQs FAQ on how to beat him. Basically it’s just watching the color of his … (man we’ve beentalking about this a lot lately) ball and attacking appropriately.
About that spoiler When you beat KHII in normal mode you have to complete Jiminy’s Journal to get the secret ending. In proud mode I think all you have to do is beat each world twice. Getting the secret ending in proud mode is much, much easier. I believe you cannot get it in easy mode. And like I said, proud mode isn’t too hard, especially if you’ve played the first game.
I’m impressed. I took a few months off the game and then came back to it recently.
I’m sitting right before the end, wondering if I really want to try going for 100%. You-know-who is a real pain. The various cups might be okay, but I really don’t know how you got all the synthesis items w/out going nuts.
I might have to look up the optional ending on youtube. I’m not worried about the final boss, I’m sure I can take him. But 100% completion on this game is a bear!
I completely understand. I have many games (almost all Final Fantasies, right now Twilight Princess) sitting around where I was going for 100% but then gave up after awhile and just finished the damn game. I always intend to go back and get that last piece but invariably just start over. It’d be an interesting thread to see what games people got 100% in.
I was playing the game on my pc’s monitor while I watched TV. Then you just pick a place that you can keep hitting quickly with a high chance of dropping the item you want. Usually I’d get at least 1 of each type per visit of an error even for rare stuff.
For cups there are a few spots where you can stop and just build up points without advancing. That’s how I got the points needed.
For gummis the trick was to realize that once you get the piece you can blow up and still keep the piece. So now you have to decide if you have to be really quick or really powerful to get the piece and overload the ship in that direction.
Wow, I just read that they’re releasing a PS2 version of Chain of Memories. Cool
I finally synthesized the Ultima weapon and thought I was pretty close to done with that stuff. Then a whole bunch more recipes show up as ??? and my lists also filled up with “collect 30 of this, collect 45 of that.” Urg.
I haven’t even begun to think about gummies.
Jiminy can take his journal and - well you know what he can do with it.
