kingdom hearts is good
ok i finished the first 3 games
i did not proofread this
my affinity for 1 is… grossly sentimental. not much else. i don’t mind waxing poetic about childrens games (sometimes), but it’d get excessive here.
1 is just a nostalgic, soulful, and charming game. point blank. it’s a fantastic experience. if you can look past some of the jank, i believe it’s something truly special. honestly, finishing 2 only makes you appreciate 1 more.
regarding my first, and currently only playthrough: i really did not like 1’s combat feel. i never got used to it. while i can look past some jank, bad cameras are a severe pet peeve of mine when it comes to older titles.
if you told me a month or two ago that i’d be looking forward to malding at a kh1 level one run i wouldn’t have believed you.
i was making a brief tierlist on the 3 games so far, and i was originally going to be content with that rather than my written thoughts. i wanted an excuse to talk about com lol...
it’s difficult to compare 1 and com, because 1 is a much much longer game than com. it objectively has more content. com is quite short, it just has artifical length due to potential rng lock…
when i think about com as a standalone title, i genuinely think its fantastic. it is almost a perfect game. i don’t think i’d replay it, it’s definitely a one-and-done situation, unless i was to play re:com, of course. i’m talkin about the gba version here though.
the gameplay has a steep learning curve, i’d say. i think it has a very unique gameplay system. once you get the hang of it… i actually think it’s pretty fun. it was definitely frustrating at first, and i did not really fuck with com at all early in my playthrough. its very fast-paced and rewards the player for speed and good reaction time, esp. with the later bosses.
the story is phenomenal in terms of being apart of kh’s story as a whole. it’s absolutely integral to kh as well. like, org XIII and twilight town are first introduced in com—the best version of sinister sundown is literally in com. DiZ first shows up in com. namine first shows up in com. castle oblivion. riku’s back!
speaking of castle oblivion, the graphics and general mood of the game is, simply put, excellent. i wish i were currently adept musically to properly explain why the castle oblivion’s theme is so good. it’s easy to hear dissonance in castle oblivion’s theme, as someone who’s currently continually studying music theory, i find it really cool that i can notice that so clearly now and figure out why it sounds so fitting. that’s neither here nor there in relation to com though. ^^’
a lot of my favorite tracks in the franchise so far originate from com! revenge of chaos, 13th struggle, graceful assassin, scythe of petals, sinister sundown, the force in you, castle oblivion. the ones that i already loved got amazing arranges, they sound fantastic in the gba soundfont - scherzo di notte, hollow bastion, dearly beloved, notably night of fate is so pleasing to my ears.
i only just finished kh2 yesterday as of the time i'm writing this, so my feelings are possibly tenative at best. i will update them accordingly here if anything major changes.
i actually... ended up liking and appreciating 1 so much more upon finishing 2. all the story beats in 1 got my ass and i was very very pleased with the ending, despite the seemingly typical pattern of long, drawn out final sections.
kh2 is a fantastic action game, easily one of the best i've played in the genre. however, it doesn't even come close to 1's overall feeling. it really, truly doesn’t compare at all. there’s no real sense of exploration or adventure, i feel. i know 1’s sequencing (and map design?) can attribute to that feeling by artificially lengthening the time spent in a world, but still, honestly.
there’s very little whimsy! however, the way i’m trying to look at it is that it forgoes the whimsy for the cool factor within the title. the game is much more sleek and polished as a result. it has a slight sharp edge to it as well, rather than 1’s airy and dreamlike feeling, which is fine! they’re definitely two different games, that's for sure.
i’m a motor, not a very good one at that. my interests are my driving force and my passion, so it’s nice to continually have it reignited.
kh is definitely one of those franchises that does that. i would say it’s slowly getting up there with cave story and touhou as some of my main creative inspirations. tetsuya nomura himself is already one of my main inspirations for drawing specifically.
i hold lots and lots of respect for nomura. his style (even beyond art) can be regarded as outdated or a bit over-the-top, especially with his design choices being seemingly bygone trends and strange fashion statements. kh is uniquely itself, and there’s absolutely nothing else like it.
anyway, kh expresses emotions very stylistically, i’ve noticed. this is probably a 4Head moment like - erm, yeah, kh is emotion-heavy? there is literally a location called “brink of despair” it’s blatant. we get it. darkness. light. blah blah blah boo tomato tomato tomato
well, i really really appreciate that and it’s something i’d want to do as well. like, the light and dark stuff is blatant, true. but the way nomura (and the kh team?) goes about emotional concepts is something i want to replicate in my own work someday. it’s not only just cheesy quips, while… there are certainly a lot of those, there’s environmental storytelling, music written with such clear intention, and subtle and not-so-subtle imagery.
i could go on and on about the allegories and imagery in kh and even how it relates to me, but that would be incredibly embarrassing so i’ll try to keep it simple as much as an aly possibly could.
i want a heartless tattoo so bad sorry
so - the emblems for nobodies and heartless! though these aren’t emotions per se, rather a division of them in a sense, my point still stands.
i really love it. it’s a cool representation of an overarching feeling contained neatly within an emblem. heartless, obviously, devoid of good, and emotions by proxy - and nobodies, devoid of, basically everything that once was, and simultaneously nothing by proxy.
another thing that really stuck out was the presentation of kingdom hearts itself. i really liked that it was a literal collapsing city...
ok, i have to keep it simple for my own pride’s sake.
…basically, kh expresses a wide range of emotions in aesthetically pleasing ways, and that's something i really love about it.
accompanied with its various themes - personal identity. friendship and the connections you make. love, by the extension of that. fear. loss and grief. longing and yearning. and you know, the whole light, dark and everything inbetween spectrum.
this is mostly personal jargon
i’m currently going through something strange (weird time in my life?) for a multitude of reasons. funnily enough, i always seem to finish games when i really need that sort of thing.
it’s very difficult to navigate emotionally and i’m having trouble expressing it through personal projects, so that healthy outlet can be substiansally lacking. i’d want people to relate (if not relate, understand? feel?) to whatever i create, of course, so i’d want it to be up to par and the closest representation of my feelings that it possibly could be. (this is just my personal agenda, for better or worse. ultimately, what you create should make you happiest above all else.)
ofc when you’re continually working on a skill or hobby, you aren’t going to spit out the results of it in an emotional frenzy. …unless you’re highly proficient? even then… i don’t really think so.
so, it’s difficult to be “up to par.” thus, it becomes frustrating to create because you are unable to convey what you feel. you’re unable to put your feelings out there in a tangible and digestible way right away because you want relief right now, so it becomes frustrating to try to do so. this feeling is only exacerbated when you’ll inevitably hit a wall when it comes to creating and learning. make sense? this also doesn’t only apply to more emotional pieces of work, it can be anything, really. the feeling of inability and frustration is universal, imo.
in relation to kh in general - it’s really nice to see all of that displayed so clearly when you aren’t in a place to do it yourself, whether its because you can’t express yourself well or you just don’t have the means to do so. it definitely is helping me process some things, i think, because the day after i finished kh2 i felt like some sort of weight was off lifted of me. i honestly wasn’t thinking too deeply about this stuff while playing, so it’s a weird feeling. the brain is weird! games always tend to set in hours and days after i finish playing them tho, hehe.
tl;dr game good lolz
