The Internet is a really stupid place. This game has been out for three years already and this picture is really the best one I can find? Give me a break.Anyway, Kingdom Hearts III is upon us, and as a result, all the major Kingdom Hearts titles are being revisited, remastered, and rereleased for the PS3. In anticipation of what will hopefully be an epic, wonderful conclusion to one of the greatest series in videogame history, I've decided to revisit each title myself, albeit on the comfort and power of my personal computer. I feel kind of silly doing this instead of just getting the HD ReMixes of the games, but the thing is, I already own all the games so why am I going to pay for enhanced graphics and official localizations of the Final Mix versions of each game? So what if I have to deal with a few bugs here and there, along with having to go on the Internet to watch the Final Mix cutscenes in English. I have the Final Mix versions of each game, and I really only play them for the added superbosses. With the help of Gamefaqs, I can just download a save file and go straight to each boss that I want to pick a fight with. This is great since I can pay through the English versions of the games and fight the extra bosses without having to play through the game all over again. I know the Final Mix versions, for some reason, have the voice-acted scenes dubbed in English, but I also like to know what people are saying during the dialogue box scenes, which was something that annoyed me each time I tried to revisit the games merely through their Final Mix versions.
There will actually be three games that I won't play on my computer, and those will be 358/2 Days, Re: Coded, and Dream Drop Distance. I'm not actually even revisiting Re: Coded because I chose to never play that game ever, but since I decided to do this whole playthrough of every Kingdom Hearts game in the series chronological order, I figured why not. So what, I deal with a shitty game. Can't be as bad as other terrible games I've played, like the Call of Duty franchise or Metroid: Other M. I still need to get my own 3DS for Dream Drop Distance, but the good news is that I've only just began the original Kingdom Hearts, so I should have plenty of time before I have to get to Dream Drop Distance.
As for this blog, I will try to write about my re-experiences with these games. First of all, I know there is already a "review" for this game...
Wait a minute, that review disappeared. Huh. Well, it doesn't matter, because I remember that it was never finished to begin with. As a matter of fact, it wasn't even a review, it was literally the entire game's story put into words. No wonder why I never finished it! That post must've been a million Word pages long.
Second, I know I haven't been writing here as much. I technically shouldn't even be writing here right now; I should be reading people's short stories and writing critiques. But I don't want to do any more work this semester! Agh. Why does life have to suck so hard? Why can't it just stop for a few months so that I can go through all the Kingdom Hearts games and write about them? Excuse me for a moment, I'm going to go cry in the corner about how enslaved I am to all this work.
Okay, anyway, so I know I haven't been writing here all that much. I'm not going to keep saying that's gonna change, because I've realized long before I tried to convince you Readers of this that it will never change, not for a long time from now. This blog is really more for me in the long run of things anyway, so yeah, deal with it.
Anyway, now that I have a reprieve from homework, onward to Birth by Sleep! Before I continue, you guys must beware, for there will be spoilers. If you had any interest in this game when it came out, I have no idea how you could possibly not know what's going on after all these years, even if you haven't played it. Still, if you haven't played the game yet and don't want to be spoiled, get with the program and play the game already!
This is the game that explains several of how things came to be the way they are in the story's present action lead by Sora and Riku. How does Riku wield a keyblade? How does Kairi wield one (who would've thought)? Who the hell is this Xehanort guy? What the hell was that armored guy that I fought in Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix? Why does Xemnas talk to a suit of armor and a keyblade? What the hell is Castle Oblivion? When will I stop asking so many questions? Birth by Sleep holds the answer (or key, if you will let me run with stupid puns) to these core questions of the franchise, which hilariously you would assume most would already have had answers to by the time Birth by Sleep was released. To give you an idea, Kingdom Hearts 2 was released in 2006, and Birth by Sleep came out in 2010. All of these questions plagued many fans of the series, and many assumed these would eventually be answered in Kingdom Hearts 3. Also, nobody had any idea what in Satan's Insane Asylum they were looking at when they saw the secret ending for Kingdom Hearts 2 (also titled in the Final Mix version: Birth by Sleep. Considering the radical theories, boy did we feel stupid when the game was announced).
I love all the really stupid ideas people came up with at the time, although I guess I cannot say I would've known any better. Somebody I knew said that somebody out of the secret ending was actually Xemnas revived, and now that I think about it, holy shit was he surprisingly close. Others thought this was a post-apocalyptic world where all the Disney characters were dead, where Riku was actually the boy in the mask and under another mind control since he fell to darkness and helped wreak havoc across the worlds, that the Evil Bald Guy was literally named Evil Bald Guy, that the boy who looks like Roxas is actually Roxas, that the dude with brown hair and yellow eyes at the end was either Sora embracing darkness or Sora or Riku's dad (because other people thought Sora was dead, even with Roxas running around somehow), and that the scene with Mickey was him in the past - that's right, before Kingdom Hearts 1 - looking into the future. But wait, who was the blue-haired chick? Kairi? Nobody had any idea because obviously she does not look anything at all like Kairi, at least not in this FMV. Still, it mattered little in the end, because people figured she would be useless since Kairi was "useless so far" in the series.
Man was I shocked to find that none of this nonsense turned out to be true. I mean, what would be the point of showing Mickey, in the past, seeing a vision of the future? Why not just show him doing that in the present at the Cornerstone of Light if that was going to be the case. There were some people, though, who refused to believe this took place in anything but the past, and I sided with them. There were two very obvious giveaways in the FMV: First of all, in the beginning, they quote the Ansem reports on when he hears about "legends of Keyblade Wielders." Gee, I wonder what that must mean. Second of all, they show Mickey wielding the Starseeker, and fans already knew at this point at least that Mickey used that keyblade during his training. So yeah, we have support for this to be in the past. Where people came up with "visions of the future," I have no idea. I know Kingdom Hearts right now has a really convoluted storyline, but what idiot would actually think of the whole complicated process of explaining why Mickey had to travel from the past to the future, rather than from the present when he is a full-fledged Keyblade Master? Only on the Internet.
So anyway, Birth by Sleep is not about Roxas, Sora/Sora or Riku's Dad, and Random Nameless Blue-Haired Chick Who "Doesn't Matter" fighting another Mind-Controlled Riku and Mr. Evil Bald Guy. Birth by Sleep pretty much starts with an event, over ten years before Kingdom Hearts 1, that left Ventus with a heart devoid of darkness. After a few years or so, Aqua and Terra take the Mark of Mastery Exam, where Master Xehanort notices the darkness inside Terra and sees it as a possible method for executing his dark plans. His goal: forge the Chi-Blade to open the door to Kingdom Hearts and start another Keyblade War, which will apparently somehow result in him becoming God and reshaping the worlds as he sees fit. None of this is flat out told... As a matter of fact, I'm not sure where most of that even comes from, but that's the way it is. To forge this Chi-Blade, Ventus and Vanitas, the boy in the mask, need to fight since Ventus is an embodiment of pure light and Vanitas is an embodiment of darkness.
Master Xehanort does not stick to one plan, apparently, and so he tries to lead Terra away from his own master, Master Eraqus, and send him across different worlds and convince him to embrace the power of darkness. Ventus chases after Terra (and later on Vanitas as well), and Aqua, now a Keyblade Master, goes off to ensure her friends' safety. And thus a journey ensues across nearly all brand-new worlds to the series (for some reason they threw in the Hercules world for no reason), including the worlds - worlds which had fallen to darkness during Kingdom Hearts 1 - of three Disney Princesses (Cinderella, Snow White, and Aurora), the city of Disney Town (as opposed to just the castle in KH2), Neverland (as opposed to just the pirate ship and the clock tower in KH [and that shitty excuse of a world in 358/2 Days]), and the prison ship where Dr. Jumba and Experiment 626 were in custody.
While nothing in the series seems like it'll ever get anywhere near as tragic and emotional as the story of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, there is a dark feeling looming over the events of this game. It looms over every scene where either Terra says for the thousandth time how he'll destroy the darkness, where Ventus says for the thousandth time how he'll be a Keyblade Master and fighting alongside Terra and Aqua, or where Aqua says for the thousandth time that she believes Terra and Ventus will be safe, because if you've played the previous games, especially KH2, you'll know that these guys are not around at all. So how else could you feel when knowing that their hopes are not going to work out, at least not for now? That gives quite the dark edge to this game (and my god, this franchise was meant for even kids to enjoy), although again it is nowhere near as insane and awesome as 358/2 Days.
Thinking about the game's storyline, I wonder what it must be like to have never played any of the Kingdom Hearts games and then decide to start with this one. I haven't played these games in years, but even then, nothing will make me forget everything that's happened in these games, so.
Well anyway, while the story is not as good as the other titles, it is still very solid. The characterization is a tad bit rushed, but the payoff of seeing how everything unfolds at the end is marvelous. The boss battles are among the best in the entire series, simply because what we see is so epic. We see how the Xehanort we know from KH2 is formed when Master Xehanort possesses Terra's body. Then right after, we play as Terra's armor, or the "Lingering Sentiment" from KH2 FM, because Terra's will is just that strong! Then we have the fight between Ventus and Vanitas. Honestly, aside from being a part of Sora's heart (and explaining why he looks like Roxas), I don't see how much of an impact this really has on the rest of the series (aside from being grounds for the Chamber of Awakening later), but the final fight with Vanitas is really incredible. You fight in a dive to the heart, and Vanitas shatters the stained glass tower.
Then, amidst a billion floating shards of stained glass, you have to finish Vanitas off with quicktime events, which sounds terrible in words but in application to Kingdom Hearts it actually works incredibly well. You actually have a sense that you are involved with the action, rather than watching a full cutscene of a really cool attack that you'll never actually do in real-time combat. They are also pretty challenging in this fight in particular, as you must time the button pressing appropriately.
Then there's Aqua, who gets her own full paragraph or ten. Some sexist idiots think that because she's a girl she automatically sucks. Some fools who believe magic "sucks" think that she sucks even more because of that. Aqua, however, can go severely ham without the help of Terra's overpowered strength and Ven's... I don't know what exactly. All of the characters can go ham, but anyway that's getting into gameplay and I'm not even quite there yet. So at the "end" of Aqua's story, I was a little disappointed, because you have these epic battles against Xehanort and Vanitas, and then here we have a measly battle against a possessed Ventus. In terms of story, yes that's pretty insane, Aqua has to fight and take down one of the people she swore to protect. However, this card was already played in 358/2 Days (and much more impactful too due to far better character development), and right after the fight, Ventus's body is at least safe. Man, for a second there, I thought this game would have a more complete and epic ending. However...
Once you meet the requirements, you unlock the "Final Episode." Here we see Aqua return to her world of study, the Land of Departure, which is in shambles since Terra unwittingly paved the way for Master Xehanort to come and plunge the land into darkness. Since Aqua is a Keyblade Master now and comes in possession of Master Eraqus's keyblade (who was struck down by Terra in an effort to protect Ven), she learns that she has the power to protect a world from darkness by completely changing its form and sealing its keyhole. So she places Ven on one of the Masters' chairs, seals the keywhole, and alakazam! The Land of Departure is now Castle Oblivion, a world where only Aqua can navigate through. And so Ven is left to recover in the safety of the Chamber of Awakening, which the Organization later tries to find and fails tremendously. But that's beyond this game!
After this, I guess Aqua apparently notices something weird about Radiant Garden as she tries to find Terra, because that's where she decides to go. As luck would have it, she does find Terra here... but something is wrong here. He does not remember who he is, and obviously he looks almost entirely different from who he really is. Xehanort's heart seems to regain control here and announces to Aqua that Terra is lost to darkness, and thus the two engage in a fight. While this fight plays almost exactly the same as Terra's final fight against his own body, it is still pretty awesome. From Aqua's perspective, she has to bring down not one, but both of her dearest friends. And as far as things seem right now, Terra does look like he is completely gone, after all that worrying and hoping that he will never fall to darkness. After this form is defeated, things don't just up and end yet. Terra-nort decides to go ham, and thus he summons the classic Dark Guardian that "Ansem" or Xehanort's Heartless uses at the end of Kingdom Hearts 1. This is top of the line, high quality badass fanservice right here, even if the fight isn't as challenging as the other end boss fights in the game. Many of the classic attacks come back here, and towards the end, you have a chance of dealing damage through a special even where you meet up with Terra's spirit and use a trinity limit against the Dark Guardian (thus making for a pretty epic finishing move).
After all this happens, Aqua and Terra fall into a pool of darkness. Aqua has to sacrifice herself and send Terra back to the World of Light with her keyblade and armor, and so she disappears into the World of Darkness. The game then truly ends with her wandering the World of Darkness, nearly giving up and letting the pure heartless kill her, but then Terra and Ven's keyblades come out of nowhere and save her. If you're playing the normal version of this game, all of this truly ends with Aqua meeting Ansem at the Dark Meridian, years after this whole game and some time after KH2. Here Ansem tells her about a boy with a keyblade out saving the worlds and when he tells her his name is Sora, hope gets renewed in her (so much that she's in tears. D'aw. That must be incredible to hear after running into him as a little kid so many years ago).
HOWEVER, there is also a Final Mix version of this game, meaning you get to actually play as Aqua during some of her time in the World of Darkness. Total badassness ensues, with incredibly awesome field and battle music, along with the fact that you're fighting heartless! And in the series, this is apparently the first time anyone has encountered these things, since Aqua has no idea what they are. You get to go through a couple of rooms, fighting Shadows, Neoshadows, and Darkballs.
Then at the end, you fight this crazy heartless boss that jumps around and shit. It even sends clones after you. And it comes with a whole cutscene of Aqua dodging it and trying to figure out what these creatures are, and the way you fight the boss at first is preparing yourself whenever it goes into second-person perspective, as in the fights with Xigbar when he takes aim at you.
After this awesome fight, the game truly ends with a scene in a place that looks pretty familiar. Aqua looks up, and gasps. "This is...!" she says, and then the camera pans out to the Castle of Dreams engulfed in darkness!
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| So badass! |
I must admit, her looks take up a lot of the reason why I like her so much. But there's more than just that! First of all, unlike what most idiots seem to think, Aqua is not useless! I mean, seriously, I wonder if people even played through the game in its entirety. Sure, she fails at saving Terra and Ven from their ultimate fates, but she does manage to still keep Ventus safe. If she let Terra fall into the Realm of Darkness, who knows if we would ever see him again. Also, Ventus and Terra end up pretty much losing their lives by the end of the game. Sure, Aqua disappears from the world as well, but she can still put up a damn good fight through the Realm of Darkness. For anyone to be able to take down the darkness and all the heartless for over ten years is not something to be sneezed at. Aqua is a Keyblade Master for a reason, guys. Also, how about she has pretty much her own world that only she can navigate through? How about the fact that forcing its secrets to be revealed has proven frustrating to some of the most powerful forces in the game? And if story and lore aren't enough to buy you into something, how about her abilities in terms of gameplay?
Here is where I will finally talk about gameplay, although I won't dwell too much on it as I have with the story of the game. The battle system in Birth by Sleep is based around building your own "deck" of abilities, which reloads over time. So there is no cost to doing anything other than waiting a few seconds. Also, the drive gauge sort of returns, but now it's called the Focus Gauge, which fuels the ability to do something called a Shotlock. Shotlocks are basically charged up and aimed at enemies to do a really powerful and pretty looking attack. There are quite a variety of these in the game, and Aqua's ultimate Shotlock has her doing a ballerina twirl and shooting orbs of light out of her body. It sounds pretty strange, and it is, but it's also pretty cool (and it deals pretty crazy damage too).
The other feature of the battle system is the Command Gauge. Basically, every attack you make fills up the gauge, allowing you to go into a sort of limit form when it fills up. First, there are Finish Commands. If you fill up the gauge without going into a limit form, you get to use a powerful finishing attack. I love Aqua's ultimate because she summons large magical orbs of light, and then she floats in the air and teleports and spikes each orb down on her enemies. During most of these finishing moves, you are pretty much invincible. Then there are limit forms, which are divided into Level 1 forms and Level 2 forms. Basically, if you use a certain combination of abilities from your deck of commands, you will enter a form based on the attacks you used. Aqua's ultimate limit form, called Ghost Drive, is so badass, because she basically starts teleporting every time she does anything. When she dodges, she blinks across a small distance. When she attacks, she teleports around the enemy and leaves behind little "shadow clones" (to borrow from Naruto... ugh), and she pretty much kicks a ton of ass. Then there are her commands themselves. Aqua is specialized in magic, which a lot of people say is useless.
Sure, she's useless alright. Having the best blocking ability in the game must be so useless. Ven and Terra can only lift up their keyblades and block what's in front of them, leaving you to rely on luck most of the time whenever somebody sends an attack from behind or even to the sides. Aqua, being specialized in "useless" magic, can cast up a barrier that surrounds her in every direction, making nearly all attacks impossible to hit her. Aqua can also learn really powerful magic spells that no one else can. I haven't explored all of these yet, but there are a couple of commands she can learn which are pretty amazing. First, we have this one ability called Time Splicer. Sure, Ventus can use it too, but you have to go out of your way to get it on Ventus, meaning it is truly an ability for Aqua. Just envision this: you see a bunch of enemies fighting Aqua. She runs up to them, and then all of a sudden, she vanishes. Suddenly, all the enemies she fights are stopped in time (Time Splicer has the added effect of casting Stop on everything), and she is teleporting all around her enemies, striking at them and leaving behind shadow clones. It is essentially the Ghost Drive form without having to fill up the Command Gauge twice.
Next there's Magic Hour, which is essentially the Jump ability in this game. Jump is one of Final Fantasy's signature overpowered abilities, where the character using it literally jumps in the air, becomes untouchable, and strikes down hard on their targets. Aqua once again teleports and strikes down through columns of light, constantly teleporting after each strike. There is another special unique ability she learns called Raging Storm, where she floats around and is guarded by three pillars of fire. Basically you use that to run into enemies and destroy them, and as cool as the spell looks, it really isn't all that great honestly. Enemies can still hit you, in some way, and turning with that spell is such a pain you might as well be driving a golf cart on a winding road covered in ice.
There is another spell only Aqua can learn that I love using, and that is the Seeker Mine ability. While not as extravagant as the other abilities she learns, what she basically does is lay out a set of mines that home in on enemies that step near them (and, since Aqua's magic power is through the roof, these mines hit hard). This spell is a staple for some of the "cheapest" strategies against bosses. Like, for example, in the fight against Vanitas's Lingering Sentiment, all you have to do is spam dodging and never stop. Then, when he uses a cinematic attack that leaves him open, drop down those mines and have him chase you to them. Keep this up without getting hit, and you win. It's a pretty funny strategy that works on most bosses, I've never tried it against the "Unknown Man," (actually Time-Travelling Xehanort from the Past) because that guy is pretty tough.
Last in my deck of commands, aside from the staple healing spell Curaga, would be Wishing Edge, another Aqua-only command. There's nothing incredibly special about this, all it is is an strike that hits an enemy as if you had hit him with three of those strikes. It is really useful for dealing a lot of damage in one quick blow, especially considering that Aqua does not really hit all that well until about the middle or so of the game.
Terra is the physically overpowered guy who can land heavy hits and obliterate his enemies... However, that is if he lands those hits. This guy is slower than a truck going up a hill. At many points throughout the game, this gets really annoying as sometimes enemies will hit me and cancel an attack before it will even land. Late in the game, though, Terra does get some pretty good abilities. Being tempted by the power of darkness, Terra has the ability to use all those really cool dark spells. Like for example he has a version of Sonic Blade where he teleports and uses darkness to temper his strength. He also has Dark Haze, a strike that has a chance of casting Doom on enemies. Doom is basically a countdown until your death, there is no way around it. However, on bosses, the chance for it to hit is either so low it barely works, or it doesn't work at all. Terra's ultimate limit form is Dark Impulse, where he is in full-fledged dark mode with even a screwed up hand of darkness that really destroys his enemies. His ultimate Shotlock involves transforming his keyblade into a cannon and firing a flare that obliterates enemies. Terra's pretty cool, offense-wise, but I like Aqua's style better. Plus, this guy can't even dodge! He does air slides, which enemies can still hit you through. Terra has like no defense whatsoever.
Then there's Ventus. I don't know a whole lot about his Shotlocks, but his ultimate form is pretty cool. A bunch of blades of light pretty much become wings, and all of his attacks utilize these blades in a flurry of strikes. His ultimate commands involve powerful light-based abilities, since his heart is pure light and stuff. These attacks basically send pillars of light all across the field, making it pretty much impossible to dodge. They also heal Ventus, but they have to be charged, so the healing pretty much only makes up for any damage you've taken while charging up these moves.
Beyond general combat, there are times when this game switches things up a little with minigames and stuff. Aside from a particular ice-cream DDR minigame in Disney Town (as much as I love ice cream), there are a couple of minigames in that place that prove to be pretty fun. There is a sort of water-polo-volleyball-without the water minigame in which you must spike balloons over a net and into the enemy's goal net. At some point so many balloons fly around it gets pretty hectic and funny. Then there's Rumble Racing, a shameless and very shitty knockoff of Mario Kart, in which you use the Keyblade Glider to race across different areas of Disney Town. This minigame is pretty fair for the most part, but after a while it does get pretty droll. There's also this thing called the Command Board, a shameless knockoff of Mario Party/Monopoly where you can level up Commands you place down as tiles. This game also gets old after a while, especially when the AI starts being cheap and stealing your money. I just found it easier to level up Commands by using Stitch's D-Link, which has a double exp for commands passive ability.
I forgot to mention D-Links here, but that just goes to show how little they are of actual use with all these other things going on. Basically, D-Links let you use special abilities based off the characters you "summon." That's about it really.
Back on the minigames front, we then delve into the outright terrible: escort missions and really stupid space sequences where you fight and fail on the Keyblade Glider, because attacks never really hit anything you mean to hit. And escort missions are self explanatory, because we should all be filled with hatred against those awful things. There is also an arena world, the Mirage Arena, where you get to take on waves of Unversed and stuff. It's a pretty fun challenge, and I would say it is the best incarnation of the Coliseum yet (making me wonder why Hercules is even a world in this game). There is also multiplayer, which is actually pretty legitimate in comparison to previous incarnations of multiplayer (Chain of Memories had pretty stupid card duels. 358/2 Days merely had scant co-op mission modes). In this game, you can Rumble Race and play the board games with your friends, as well as help each other out in the Arena. They also seemed to have finally gotten a basic Versus mode done right, but the problem is that most of the abilities in this game are negated by general strategies like dodging and stuff. My friend says Dark Haze can hit players with Doom, and if that is true, that makes Versus mode virtually pointless. The one really cool thing about D-Link comes into play here when you can forge one with your friend, allowing you to call upon the abilities he had equipped at the time the D-Link was forged.
There are some sidequests in this game as well, although not quite a whole lot. Disney Town has this whole Million Dreams Award thing, where the last character you play as gets an ice cream flavor made just for them. This holds little effect on the gameplay, but there is an ice cream store where you bring ingredients to make ice cream. Ice cream in this game allows you to instantly go into a command style. These ingredients are dropped by rare Unversed that spawn across all the worlds. Once you get all the ice cream flavors, you get a keyblade called the Sweetstack, which is designed with several scoops of ice cream as the blade.
That would probably be my keyblade in real life.
There's also a limit form called Frozen Fortune, which you randomly get using the ice cream commands. What could be more awesome in Kingdom Hearts than the Power of Ice Cream?
Anyway, because I love ice cream, I loved that sidequest. To wrap things up, since this has been going on for a while now, this game is actually probably my favorite in the series (we'll see when I finish playing through all the games). The story is nowhere near as good as the other, but it's not bad at all really. I cared quite a lot about the friendship between these three, and it was also amazing to see how all of the mysteries came about. Aside from Hercules, each world was a fresh experience, even with Radiant Garden since we get to see what that place was like in the past (sort of ). The combat is probably the best yet in the series, or at least almost as good as KH2 if I find that combat more to my liking. I loved everything about Neverland, from the pirate stuff to the music to the detail they put into designing the land. I loved it so much. And the boss fights throughout the game were always posing some form of a challenge, and they were almost always epic. The game itself is epic in scale, with incredible graphics that fully exploit the power of the PSP and worlds so detailed this whole game could have easily been a full-fledged console game (and it will be in KH 2.5 HD ReMix!). Playing it on my computer also felt pretty great, not having any load times and getting a taste of what the game would feel like on a console. There are still some jarring moments, though, when I'd notice that a background or skybox had a very poor resolution for a 2D render. As with remastered versions of movies like The Nightmare Before Christmas, things may look nicer, but you will also notice things you were never meant to see.
While playing through each character's story was an interesting approach to this game, I got tired of it after a while, especially since I felt like I needed to restart Aqua's story in order to see the Million Dreams Award from her point of view (I started with her when I played this on my computer). I found myself skipping cutscenes and rushing through things a bit, which is not the way this game is meant to be played. However, the payoff at the end of each character's story (Aqua's being the Final Episode/Secret Episode) was awesome enough to sort of offset this problem. I loved seeing how things like Castle Oblivion and "Ansem" came to be, and what other Keyblade Wielders were like. And of course, I love Aqua and everything about her, even if her English voice actor can get a little dull sometimes (her character development also doesn't go very far, but I forgive all that). Here's to hoping she will be even more insanely awesome in Kingdom Hearts 3!
Next up is the game that started it all: Kingdom Hearts 1! Where would we be without this game? Tune in next time for a dive into nostalgia, to a time when this series was so much simpler and less flying off the walls as it is today.
