It's staturday morning. So what better thing to do then play Kingdom Hearts. Planning on taking a good chunk out of it this sitting.
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So now we have two options of new places to go as shown by the world map. So we went to the one with the lower "battle level" of five stars. But it being new, gummi ship mini game! Weeeeeee! We end up in Atlantica and immediately meet Ariel, Flounder, and Sebastian. And apparently Sora turning into a mermain/shark, Goofy into a turtle, and Donald into a 6 legged octopus is a result of Donald's magic. Which is really kind of half-assing an explanation at best. Though if Imp, Toad, and Moogle are spells, Merman, Turtle, and Octopus can be spells too. Anyways, soon after we are attacked by heartless. And with new controls for moving around underwater it freshens up combat, if only just a little bit. Anyways, we're working our way to the heart of Atlantica. While grinding our way to the castle, I noticed they disabled our summon spells. Not that we were using them seeing as Cure is all you really need. It's here I also noticed that 'munni' is a lot harder to pick up here. Which got me thinking. We haven't really bought anything since the very beginning of the game. What do you even do with money? Like the game gives you plenty of healing items through drops and chests. Accessories are drops too. And the new weapons are given after you beat a world. So we're sitting on thousands of... munnies(?) and really don't know what to do with them.
Anyways, we make it to King Triton. When asked about the keyhole he makes it fully obvious that it's there, but lies his kingly ass off about it. I'm sure we'll get the "I'm sorry, I didn't know I could trust you" speech later. So Triton tells Ariel she can't leave the palace, so obviously we go immediately outside the palace. After visiting Ariel's collection of human stuff, Ursula has a little cutscene very similar to all the other bad guys "Blah blah blah, never find the keyhole. Blah blah blah heartless on my side." Despite the worlds being dramatically different, it's actually starting to get a bit formulaic. New world very very loosely follows the movie, have to fight the antagonist from the movie, princess of movie gets caught, unlock keyhole, and move on. Aside from the, the story doesn't make any real advancement until your run into Riku, which has only been twice since the beginning of the game.
It took us a long time to eventually wonder around long enough to find out where it wanted us to go next. Long enough to make me tired of hearing Under the Sea on loop. We eventually find a thingy that was shaped like the thingy in Ariel's human stuff room. We get there after fighting the shark and try to put thingy one in thingy two. Triton comes in and breaks thingy two. Ariel runs away crying... you know, because she was soooo emotionally attached to a thing that she didn't even know what it was or what it does. Triton reveals that he knows we are the key bearer and that we're from another world and commands us to leave (so obviously we won't). It then shifts to Ariel weeping over the loss of her unkonwn thingy. Ursula comes in and starts talking Ariel into taken the both of them to the palace to find the keyhole. In exchange, Ursula well show Ariel how to go to other worlds like Sora. Anyways, Usula makes off with Triton's trident and Ariel joins back up with Sora to pursue. And by pursue, I mean try and remember how to get back to were we found thingy two as supposedly, that's where she went. So we eventually make it to Ursula's place. The key to the fight was making her magic pot backfire on her, which was interesting. We beat her and she runs off, and for whatever reason, we LET her run off... with Triton's trident. Smart. Now we go all the way back to Atlantica. Making this the FIFTH trip through this dungeon with Under the Sea on loop the entire time. I hope you can understand and forgive why I'm getting tired of this. Anyways, on our trip back to Atlantica Ursula breaks us off and attacks us. She turns giant and for some reason, she's now wearing Triton's crown. Really shouldn't have willingly let her run away, guys. So after beating Ursula, Triton gives us the whole "sorry for not trusting you" bit. Also, Triton's trident also works like thingy two, so I guess that makes the trident thingy three? So yeah, we get another keyblade, unlock the lock, and I assume we are free to leave.
The next trip through the gummi ship take us to the Halloween Before Christmas. I think the world looks as good as it can despite the fact taht the movie was shot in stop motion and not the traditional method. Anyways, Jack is trying to put a heart into a heartless they've found. So the best option instead of you know, immediately slaying the heartless is to actually help Jack. And to do that, we need to go through a dungeon slaying the heartless. A bit conflicting to the current objective. As we travel through the world, the magic of it all seems to kind of drain about this time. I don't really know why that specifically is. Could be because of the incredibly basic combat. Maybe it's all the random encounters all over the place. Or the overly complicated dungeons that require way more traveling then necessary. Either way, by the point where it's time to move on, I'm usually really glad. Anyways, we meat up with Sally and she gives Jack the item needed to give the heartless a heart. So it's back the way we came... On our way, we get a scene with Oogie Boogie. And it's another "Blah blah control heartless" scene. Got to keep up that formulaic status quo!
So we finally get back and make the heart for the heartless and it is then stolen by Oogie Boogie's cronies. So back into the dungeon we go to get it back. Seems like every other world is a fetch quest, and I'm not really fond of it. So we head to Oogie Boogie's place. Part way, we have to fight Oogie Boogie's little kids. Eventually we get to Oogie Boogie himself. He eats the heart we made for the heartless and somehow that gives him the ability to control the heartless. Really don't get how that works, but whatever. After you beat him, Jack mentions that the heart was a failure. Despite the fact it actually worked to control the heartless. I dunno. Anyways, Oogie Boogie turned into his own tower. So now we have to fight Tower Oogie Boogie, which wasn't really a boss fight and more just a platforming from orb to orb, breaking them. It wasn't very good platforming either as has been par for the course most of the game. It seems I either just don't notice it, or hate it. After breaking all the orbs, Oogie Boogie silently dies and a giant lock appears under him. So we unlock it and then see Sally and Jack talking about how they will better prepare for the next Halloween. So once again, new keyblade and off we go. GUMMI SHIP, HO!
So we meet with Hook's ship at the end of the mini game, but once we board, they say we are on Neverland. Which is weird. But Riku is there and Sora finally sees Kairi for the first time. Riku talks evilly and dumps Sora in the ship's hold. It's there we meet up with Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. With that out of the way, I assume it's time for some more dungeon crawling. Half a dungeon later Hook and Riku have a conversation about how Kairi's heart is gone for good but Riku won't give up. Then Peter and Sora find the place Wendy and Kairi are being held, only to be stopped by rope. So the long way around they go. After the other half of the dungeon, we face a shadow clone of Sora as created by Riku. Then Peter finds Wendy and immediately leaves. And then immediately comes right back being like "didn't think I'd leave you here did you?" ¬_¬
Anyways, now we can fly because Sora attempted to jump off the ship into the croc's mouth... the one the scared off Hook. And his faith gave him the ability of flight. It works just like swimming in Atlantica. After the fight, Hook comes back out. After beating him, he gets chased off by the croc, and you head to clock tower in Wendy's home town. And here we found the keyhole. Unlocking it gives us a flashback. Which revealed absolutely nothing. Then we get a scene of Maleficent powering up Riku again. I guess the first time wasn't enough. Anyways, we are awarded a new keyblade, ability, spell, and Tinkerbell as a summons. Then we are ordered to go back to Transverse town. Once we get there, we talk to Cid and he upgrades our ship, I think. Sora then has some kind of vision of an old lady talking to a young Kairi about light and how people were fighting over it and it caused people to turn evil.... or something like that. Once Sora snaps out of it, we head to the new location. What's really great about this though is that it's the LAST TIME we have to fly around in a gummi ship. This entire time we never upgraded the ship and it never increased in difficulty either. So my original of curiosity of why this is even a thing still remains.
So we made it to Hollow Bastion. We meet up with Riku and he takes the keyblade. Since Goofy and Donald were specifically told to follow the keyblade master, they leave Sora. But as luck would have it, Beast from Beauty and the Beast is here looking for Belle. So he teams up with Sora. So now that Sora was without keyblade has to use a wooden sword that Riku gave him in it's place. So it's here we save for the day and quit. ___________________________________
Three worlds down this time and we've started the final one. Having played through them all now, I wasn't super impressed with really any of them. The initial wonder of being in any given Disney world degraded fairly quick. Neglecting all the story in the Disney segments and just going on the core story with the three main characters, I don't really feel that involved. The main story has only made very little progress at very few intervals of the game. And at the tail end of it, there's a lot that has gone unanswered. So next time I write, it'll probably be the end of the game and my final review. I promise I'll do my absolute best to be fair with it and not bias-ly just blast it. I will admit that the game has merits and I'll be sure to account for them.
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 "Belief extremely stately towards great accomplishment." -eruperade
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