telophase | KHII

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KHII

OK, farther into KHII right now. Still too much plot. Have just gotten to the Pirates of the Caribbean section and the "realistic" people are FREAKING ME THE FUCK OUT.

I also have weird qualms about the rushing around and opening chests (well, except for this pirate scenario when stealing is the in thing to do) especially if the owner is with me. I mean - in the Beast's castle, the Beast joins the party and wants to go rescue Belle rightwaythisveryminutenow, and I have to say: Hold on a second, dude, let me go LOOT your CASTLE RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU while your girlfriend is KIDNAPPED BY HEARTLESS. There's just something not right about that.

And speaking of girlfriends: I'm not sure if this is a problem with the material they're working from with Disney, if it's a Squeenix thing, or what, but the roles of women in this? Lame-o. I set Sora to head for the Land of Dragons, thinking "Mulan! There's a kick-ass girl!" and we get there, and it's the beginning of the Mulan movie, basically, and she's a total wimp who can't hold her own in a fight and mostly stands around looking stupid. I ended up taking away her ability to draw HP and MP balls and dumped all her ability points into healing stuff so she could at least be useful to me while standing there like an idiot. And then in a cut scene she brings the mountain down and all of a sudden gains the ability to fight, although she still runs like a girl, but by that point the scenario's almost over.

Megara from the Hercules section? Stands around and dispatches plot, then gets kidnapped, then gets pushed out of the scene by the main characters, then stands around and gets motherly at Hercules (well, as motherly as she can get). She does metaphorically push up her sleeves and say "I'm in!" right before the boss fight, but then vanishes during the actual fight.

Belle from Beauty and the Beast? Is kidnapped. Elizabeth from Pirates of the Caribbean? Is kidnapped. I'm sensing a theme here. Queen Minnie isn't kidnapped, but has the LOUSIEST ability of anyone in here - you have to get her from the library to the throne in the throne room while defending her from Heartless, but ... she won't move unless you hit a button that calls to her, whereupon she moves to where you are. She's got a solo attack, shooting white balls of light at enemies, but it's not very strong, and she gets overwhelmed unless you rush back and save her. You-as-Sora and she together can do a repulsion spell called Faith that pushes Heartless back, but it's only temporary, and she can't do it without Sora. And the Daisy Duck? Shows up in a cut scene and proceeds to be a bitch to Donald about him missing their date, when he's been out, oh, merely SAVING THE FUCKING UNIVERSE.

You know, I really don't think that they needed to be kept that close to their "classic" characters. It's a new millennium - we can allow the chicks to kick ass, too.

Kidnapped
Megara
Belle
Elizabeth

Not kidnapped
Mulan
Minnie
Daisy
Yuffie
Aeris

Pure Fucking Evil
Maleficent

And I do realize that the entire plot of the first game revolved around the Disney Princesses being kidnapped, and they attempted to give them some sort of importance by having them say they were holding back the darkness, although it looked a lot more like they were standing around chatting at a cocktail party. And why doesn't the doll Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas count as a princess, huh? Discrimination against the non-human!

But I kind of liked the section where they got thrown into the past and ended up looking like early Disney B&W characters. XD

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Discrimination against the non-human!

Definitely--they don't include any of the 'animal' princesses like Maid Marian or Nala either. Rrrr.

I don't know if the problem is with Disney or Squeenix, but there's definitely a lack of awareness about the makeup of the audience. I think it was

octopedingenue who mentioned an advertisement for a Disney Princesses manga which described itself as "Kingdom Hearts for girls", which made me want to grab whoever came up with that idiocy and scream "Half the players of KH are girls," right in their ear.

...Okay, I don't know if it's exactly half, but it's got to be a fairly large number to be turning out that much fanfic and fanart.

I'll give them Ariel, who is a definite princess since her father's a king, because they'd have to put more plot in about her getting legs, otherwise after she was released, she'd flop around like ... er, a fish out of water.

I think there's this thing that says Boys Play Video Games, but all the girls I know in RL play them - hell, they engage in LAN gaming with the guys and love shoot-em-ups - and it seems quite a lot of the ones I know online play them, too.

Deja vu! My roommate is playing KHII and went through all of those scenarios while I watched him play the past two nights, so I know exactly what you're describing. What you're seeing comes right out of Disney, as what I know about the female characters from all the Final Fantasy since VII indicates that they're stronger than that.

The Pirates of the Caribbean levels freaks out Donald. He took one look and said "this place looks different." No spoilers, but I will tell you that it gets even creepier. Also keep track of the moonlight.

As for the rest of your rant, I agree 100%, even down to the back to the future portion where they play in scenarios from the late 1920s and 1930s B&W shorts. That level was a hoot! Did you notice that Goofy's and Donald's character designs changed to fit the era as well and that the quality of sound became scratchy?

Do you have a clue who Organization XIII is? I don't!

Other than my roommate, all the people I know who play KHII are female. I can see why. It's got the right mix of cute, plot, and action.

Yes, I saw the character designs and the sound! XD It was great. :D And I loved the Heartless taking on shapes reminiscent of the era, too.

From what I'm gathering, Organization XIII is a bunch of Nobodies who have somehow gained intelligence and are trying to become ... complete? Gain hearts? I'm wondering if Roxas, who was a Nobody before, took Sora's heart while he was asleep. Ansem obviously seems to have something to do with it, while Maleficent doesn't - she's on her own side. So it seems like there's a three-way fight shaping up, and not all of the members of Organization XIII are really that bad.

The PotC section seemed hard. I know my friends kept running out of time. I'm sad I didn't see that part with the girls, because I liked Belle from what I saw of her.

Those 1930s shapes for the Heartless will reappear later in the game. Watch for them.

That's a hypothesis I wouldn't have thought of. I'll keep it in mind while I watch him play.

My roommate just loaded up his game. He's back in Minnie's castle. I'll keep you abreast of where he goes at the end of the night.

You have to let your companions do the fighting for you and put yourself in a position where your opponents can only come after you one at a time.

OK. :D After the castle, I went back to Hollow Bastion to do a bit of Heartless bashing and gather some munny and buy poor Donald some sort of accessory or armor, and found out that if you talk to Uncle Scrooge you get a mini-game where he gives you a skateboard and you can do tricks and stuff on it.

And then I went to Port Royal, because I'm going to skip Atlantica as long as I can. I resorted to GameFAQs to get Minnie to her throne, and there found out that there's now a tournament available at the Coliseum. I'll probably do that after Port Royal, because I *really* don't want to do Atlantica.

Sure you do. Atlantica is fun. Well not really but it is so bad it makes you laugh.

And the Daisy Duck? Shows up in a cut scene and proceeds to be a bitch to Donald about him missing their date, when he's been out, oh, merely SAVING THE FUCKING UNIVERSE.

Sadly, that is so in-character for Daisy it's pathetic. She's the only Disney Duck I actively hate.

I liked Minnie and Sora's combo attack.

If it seems girls get the raw deal in this game WAIT TILL YOU GET TO THE END. I am still mad about that. Please post when you get to the end so I may complain with you as the boyfriend wasn't as upset about it as I was. He agreed, but it wasn't righteous anger.....

I think the whole not-so-useful girls thing is all Disney. The Sqeenix history there brings of plenty of kick-ass ass-kicking women, you know. FF is riddled with 'em.

Altough the whole loot-the-houses thing in their RPGs has always bugged me, too. Where does that come from? Something in the Japanese culture? In Tokyo, do random people come dig through your drawers looking for cash while you sit calmly and not even notice them? Freaky.

*tries to remember* What was so distressing about the end? I...think I have a vague recollection, but I'm very curious. Most of the game bugged the heck out of me, personally. The Disney parts anyway, the rest was great but the Disney parts all seems pointless. You can comment in my latest journal entry to save people here from spoilers.

I think the problem is that many game development companies still refuse to believe that girl gamers exist, possibly because (comparatively speaking) there aren't that many women in the business. It's not quite as bad as it was back in the early days of computer gaming, but on the whole they tend to create games for the 16-25 year old male demographic and hardly ever for anyone else (with exceptions for games like Pokemon).

I notice this quite strongly in online games where male characters get covered in 17 inch thick platemail of "Ultra F**king Cool!", but female characters wear chain mail bikinis/ hanging fruit baskets that barely cover their rather ample assets. If I was going in to battle I would not prance around virtually naked with arrows painted to all my vital organs.

It's funny to see others reacting the same way to the chest thing. I also have an issue about leveling up and being completist WHEN YOU MUST SAVE THE WORLD ASAP. Is the end of the world really going to wait while I play umpteen mini-games?

Waaaaay back when I was young and stupid and acttually read Dragon magazine, my favorite cartoon ever was a one-panel thing in the back of it. It featured two warriors, a female human and a male dwarf, sitting at a table in a tavern, drinking and telling war stories. The woman was wearing a chainmail bikini, with every inch of it bristling with arrows. The caption read, "Fortunately, I was wearing my armor."

I know! I was in Hundred Acre Wood, with Piglet blown into a tree and pleading for me to come help him down, and I know from hard experience at this game that I'd better loot while I can before I help him, otherwise I'm going to end up with a cut scene and probably leave the area before I get all my stuff.

I'm annoyed that they hyper-gilified Kairi. When you get to a certain point,w atch her run.

WHERE IS THE CUTE LITTLE CHARGING BADASS WHO STARED DOWN ANSEM IN KH1 oh fuck you Disney and Nomura.

*girlified.

But - seriously, it bugs me. KH1 she's all VROOM EFF YOU I AM NOT LETTING SORA VANISH. Kh2 she does that takarazuka elbows-at-my-sides scamper. Bugs me. :F

Atlantica in KH2 is wildly different from KH1. I was dreading it, too, because I absolutely hated that world in the first one.

That said, I didn't particularly LIKE it in KH2, but it's not nearly as bad, in my opinion.

but looting beast's castle right under his nose is fun! XD;

meg actually throws you some healing spheres (hp... don't remember if there were mp ones, and i think there were also drive spheres) when you get close to the one wall during the hydra fight. so she doesn't really fight, per se, but she does help if you need a little healing. at least she wasn't as obnoxious as phil and his 'get up on the hydra's back!!!!1' :P

and yeah, i was annoyed at mulan for being so useless until after she caused the avalanche. it's like ok, i can understand that the armor might not be something you're accustomed to, but still...

as for queen minnie, she is kinda useful during that part for repelling heartless... that is, if you're willing to do faith every few steps and keep hearing the 'this way!' 'light!' 'this way!' 'light!' etc. for a while. but if you do spam faith by calling her over and then running up next to her and using it, you don't have to swing your keyblade at all. XD;

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KHII

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