THAT'S THE POWER OF THE KEYBLADE! - KH1 BloggingThis'll be on the shorter side, but I just felt like gushing a bit over a game I feel I can finally fully appreciate. I've been replaying Kingdom Hearts again, which I'm sure is ENTIRELY IMPOSSIBLE to tell from some of the graphic design choices I've made on this site. But I swear, every time I replay it I somehow manage to forget just how fun of a game it is. The start of the game makes me think it's gonna be a sloppy shitty 3d platforming bumblefuck adventure, and while it can be that at times, by the time you get high jump the only thing that's really fighting you aside from genuine skill issues is the occasionally janky camera... Hmm, I'm not really selling this game, am I? I swear it's better than I'm making it out to be. And there's Characters. You'll have to forgive me for playing a ps2 game (technically, HD 1.5 Remix is a ps4 game, but it'll always be ps2 to me, baby) instead of writing fic. But it seems writer's block is here to stay for a while, so maybe Sora can help me defeat the darkness in my heart that prevents me from writing. Or whatever. Anyway, I just finished up Hollow Bastion (and rescued the last 3 dalmatian puppies--- you're WELCOME, Leon. Maybe you and Cloud can go adopt some of them to make you less emo) and I'm currently working on farming some item drops for Moogle* shop item synthesis. (I always want to call them "materia" even though I know they aren't actually called that in KH.) Luckily, this game is so goddamn fun that I mostly don't mind grinding for once. The Pink Agaricus (Featured on my Misc. Fandom page!) is probably my favorite thing ever to fight. The best area to farm it is in the Tarzan world, Deep Jungle. You enter an area with the treehouse from the start of the movie, and then you have to find three White Mushrooms (Also featured on the Misc. Fandom page, as well as the Fandom Selection page in Chain of Memories GBA .gif form!) throughout the area. You have to use the Stop spell on them--- they appear to be frozen in time as a clue. Once you do that, they dance happily and give you MP recovery bubbles. These enemies are basically about the same size as Sora, also. You have to use Stop again on this one (I like using Aeroga first), but contrary to the small White Mushrooms, you then have to get as many hits in as you can before Stop wears off. A combo of 100 hits nets you a special item called a Prime Cap, but ironically enough, this item is actually not very good! So don't even bother killing it.* I only had to farm it for the Serenity Power crafting item, thankfully, which only requires a combo of 40 or above, which is simple if you use a good MP build. Compared to how ecstatic I was to farm mushrooms all day, I'm not very happy at all that next I have to farm the stupid Sniperwilds in Traverse Town. Ugh. Sniperwilds I can only manage to kill if I cheese them by summoning Mushu, spamming triangle, and praying they stay stunlocked. And I can only ever end up killing like 4 or 5 of them at a time, max. It's brutal. I hate it. I fucking hate those monkeys. I hate video game monkeys. Especially when there's multiple types of monkeys in one game.* Anyway, like I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, after I get fed up with item crafting tedium, the next actual plot move is to go do the Hades cup tournament in the Hercules colosseum world. I remember it being really annoying, and I remember the Cloud and Leon team round being impossible--- but I also remember both Jafar's bubble and Maleficent's dragon boss phases being near-impossible, and I beat both of those bitter queens on the first try this time. So idk. Perhaps the power of a brunette&blond uke team knows no bounds. But perhaps I was just incompetent last time I played. Who can never be sure? More important than the engaging gameplay, tight controls, charming visuals, or masterfully crafted Yoko Shimomura soundtrack--- I forgot how actually shippy some of these cutscenes are?!? I'm not fucking talking about you, Leon and Cloud, that pairing is one step removed from crack in KH1, even if I do ship it. Obviously, I mean Riku and Sora. I had kind of forgotten the basis is actually there? I remembered it as mostly only visible with really thick goggles on, but... I dunno... Some of Riku's cutscenes just do not make sense interpreted in any other way. The power of darkness manipulating him only explains so much, Riku. He says he's doing all of that to save Kairi, but that's not quite it. The more Riku is affected by the darkness and the more he starts doing things the evil way, the more his priority shifts to selfishness. It's not about saving Kairi, it's now about upstaging Sora's attempt to save Kairi. Sora is really the only one looking for ways to save Kairi, and Riku is just so mad that Sora got two new loser friends in Donald and Goofy that he's decided to do it bigger and better, and eventually his focus on Sora overtakes his ability to see what the best way to actually save Kairi would be. It's a very tragic love triangle, really. Just... Not in the way I think the writers originally intended it. To me, it's not the intended Sora ↔ Kairi ← Riku, it's instead more Riku ↔ Sora → Kairi --- and very crucially, they're all idiot teenagers about the whole thing. (And Sora asks Leon for some uncomfortable advice. And gets an answer that makes both parties unhappy.) I do admit some of my favorite scenes are the ones where it really is an interpretation made with goggles on. The scene from the beginning where Riku gives Sora the paopu fruit? And I'm supposed to believe he's teasing Sora by insinuating he should go share it with Kairi? Fat fucking chance, buddy. That is NOT what happened in that scene. I sense it in my fujo heart. Speaking of cutscenes... I've also been quoting You're_Stupid!.wav over and over uncontrollably for weeks. That, Iwon'tletyoutakeKairi'sHEART, and the titular That's The Power Of The Keyblade! So by the time I finish KH1 and CoM and start up KH2, you can expect me to be walking around parroting Got it memorized? and That's Undeniable Proof That We Totally Owned You Lamers and even ISN'T IT ROMANTIC?! or Dance, water, dance! And maybe we'll also be getting up on the hydra's back, too. I just love so much about this game. The whole thing is so nostalgic and comforting, even when I'm doing something annoying, even in my least favorite levels, I can't help but be charmed by the art and sound design if nothing else. It truly is a genius concept with perfectly iconic character and enemy design. I'm honestly not a huge Disney person--- I haven't even seen Peter Pan or Pinocchio all the way through (and I don't think I have a very good chance of enjoying them now), and I think the only Disney branded thing I own (Not fucking counting the IPs they technically own now, stfu More to the point: Even I, someone who has a middling at best view of Disney branding, adores this franchise and its usage of the various Disney canons. Mixing edgy Final Fantasy JRPG shonen protag story sensibilities with various Disney movie plots sounds so, so stupid and bad. But then you play them... and the plot for each world is... so, so stupid and bad. But you don't even notice or care because the overarching plot is cool anyway, and the entire game is so fucking fun and pretty and it sounds amazing and the combat is engaging and it has a high skill cieling and theres secrets and even more gamer buzzwords that indicate I enjoy the title! The Final Fantasy series' gameplay has never drawn me in very much (I've tried many entries in the series and I have not gotten invested in any of them.), but I always appreciated the art direction and the music. Kingdom Hearts takes all of that and says MORE bishies MORE cute enemies MORE whimsical setting AND ALSO DISNEY! ...Sure! Like, how do you not love it? Even if KH1 doesn't grab you with the gameplay, just watch the cutscene movie and SoRiku should. And if that doesn't, then in KH2 AkuRoku should. If that fails, I'm not sure how else to sell you. ...Stitch is there? ...And as I end this blog entry, I realize I didn't check the hourly clock tower doors in Neverland at all in my last play session, and now I can't go there without beating the stupid Specter boss. Fffffffuck. Okay. Blog post over. Now go watch "why i cant introduce kingdom hearts to my friends" again. I won't even link it. I know your heart will guide you--- Your kingdom heart(s HD 1.5 remix)
Just fought Cloud and Leon! They cheated by using teamwork, but I still managed to beat them on the first try, even if I was forced to use an elixir. I was also repeatedly shouting "THESE BISHIES ARE SO ANNOYING!" and "Cloud!!! Stop thrusting at me!!!!" before I realized the second one was an example of Things Leon Has Never Said To Cloud. (The beauty of Leon x Cloud is that they're both Ukes and yet they also both think they're the Seme. It's a hilarious dynamic to me.) Anyway, after I beat up the emo couple and their pet tree-frog Yuffie I died to Hades twice and got pissed off enough to go back to item farming. Also, I got both heartless equipment drops for Donald and Goofy!! That's a 0.5% droprate for each of them (including luck buffs), so I'm really happy. Technically the Mighty Shield you get in End Of The World is better than the Defender shield drop, since Defender's MP boost isn't that great for Goofy, but... but the Defender has a puppy face on it... So obviously I have to keep that one on... Okay, okay, end of blog post for real now.
Another update (because I can't leave well enough alone!): I FINALLY figured out a strat for the Sniperwilds so I could get Power Stones, grinded out enough items to make the Ultima Weapon, and kicked Hades' ass! (The strat is to be overleveled and use the Stop spell a lot.) After that, I finished up the remaining Colosseum stuff I hadn't done (aside from the Platinum match, LOL. Sorry, but Cloud's on his own in fighting Sepphie. I am NOT dealing with that shit no matter how good One Winged Angel is) and then went on to beat the shit out of Ansem in record time and lock Riku inside the guest bathroom with Mickey. To celebrate, I blacked out on nostalgia fumes and wrote a little CLeon thing based on the cutscene where Cloud returns to the library in Hollow Bastion with Cid. Not sure if I'll ever finish or polish it but it's a small scrap of a scene because I can't stop thinking about these stupid smexy bishies. I figured I'd post some of it here, like I did with the excerpt from my Ghosts fic in my last blog post:
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-Hooray for crackship Yaoi!!!!! Now time to start Chain of Memories and resent the card battle system!
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Nostalgic
I had a lot of success with equipping Spellbinder, since the actual strength of your attacks is meaningless for these enemies. That and using Ragnarok a lot seems to guarantee a combo of at least 60 every time--- even when Donald and Goofy fucking bogart all the MP bubbles from the White Mushrooms like dickheads.
) is a little Pleakley keychain. Which tells you everything you need to know, really.
