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How Arendelle Became the Worst Kingdom Hearts World (Video)
- Thread starter jukeboxhero2396
- Start date
Yeah, the whole world reeked of Disney interference. At least Corona had a scene with Marluxia talking to Mother Gothel. Larxene never interacts with anyone but Sora. Not to mention Hans just shows up out of nowhere, which is really jarring unless you've seen the movie.
I wonder if they'll continue using Frozen in future games. They implied a possibility with Elsa & Anna being part of the New Princesses of Heart. And if the next game focuses on Kairi... we'll just have to see.
No that's Dream Drop Distance.
I wonder if they'll continue using Frozen in future games. They implied a possibility with Elsa & Anna being part of the New Princesses of Heart. And if the next game focuses on Kairi... we'll just have to see.
No that's Dream Drop Distance.
I also agree that Arendelle was the worst world. The labyrinth was neat, but everything else just falls flat. Even the other worlds which had story retreads were more engaging to me.
Toy Story, Monsters Inc, and Big Hero 6 gave me a slight glimmer of original story in worlds, something KH could really use to make its main plot not be held to endgame. The franchise is pretty limited by how much control Disney has.
It also didn't help that we didn't have an excuse for arriving to worlds (after Olympus) like in KH1&2. At least you're sealing keyholes at the end of those worlds.
Toy Story, Monsters Inc, and Big Hero 6 gave me a slight glimmer of original story in worlds, something KH could really use to make its main plot not be held to endgame. The franchise is pretty limited by how much control Disney has.
It also didn't help that we didn't have an excuse for arriving to worlds (after Olympus) like in KH1&2. At least you're sealing keyholes at the end of those worlds.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but did Sora even ask Hercules about that?
He did. Herc gave him some generic Hercules wisdom in response.
Pirates is the only world I am not a fan of, well the world is fine, but I don't really like the ship aspect of it so I don't like it. I enjoyed everything else so far, I still need to go to Big Hero 6 though.
I hope this is the last KH game with Hercules, I feel it's been done enough.
For whatever reason, it's Nomura's favorite world. I'm sure we'll see it again.
It wouldn't have bugged me as much if they brought the battle arenas back.
I found Corona worse. It was basically a 1:1 retelling of the movie, more so than usual. Arandelle is also that way to a large extent, but it felt like more effort was put into the level design.
Really? I'm not aware of Hercules being anyone's favorite Disney movie, but what do I know?
Nomura really likes Olympus for some reason. No idea why. Maybe he just really likes Hades?
Honestly with Frozen, Elsa I feel should've been a boss battle and Anna and Kristof as party members. But whatever.
Yeah I liked the design of the world but story wise it was a major disappointment.
KH3 was never going to live up the hype but man did it drop the ball in so many ways.
KH3 was never going to live up the hype but man did it drop the ball in so many ways.
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I felt Tangled's world captured the spirit of things better and recreated the story in a more satisfying way (even though it led to massive plotholes like Flynn leaving Rapunzel on the boat for no reason at all)
Frozen is probably the best example of Kingdom Hearts' tendency to have its Disney worlds just be "the original story, but with Sora, Donald, and Goofy off screen the whole time". Nothing carried any weight at all - at least with Rapunzel and Flynn you got to see their character arcs, meanwhile Elsa appears after leaving the castle, we barely learn her backstory, and it all gets resolved with zero input from the party.
Visually it was super boring too, to the extent they had to throw in a rando ice palace just to make sure it wasn't grey snowy mountain tops the entire time. Frozen has plenty of creative locales (Arendelle, the place all those rock trolls live, the cabin areas, the ice lakes), so it was even more confusing.
But yeah almost all of them were kinda boring. Gameplay wise they were probably the best yet, but there was no real incentive to do anything in them besides follow the plot path.
Frozen is probably the best example of Kingdom Hearts' tendency to have its Disney worlds just be "the original story, but with Sora, Donald, and Goofy off screen the whole time". Nothing carried any weight at all - at least with Rapunzel and Flynn you got to see their character arcs, meanwhile Elsa appears after leaving the castle, we barely learn her backstory, and it all gets resolved with zero input from the party.
Visually it was super boring too, to the extent they had to throw in a rando ice palace just to make sure it wasn't grey snowy mountain tops the entire time. Frozen has plenty of creative locales (Arendelle, the place all those rock trolls live, the cabin areas, the ice lakes), so it was even more confusing.
But yeah almost all of them were kinda boring. Gameplay wise they were probably the best yet, but there was no real incentive to do anything in them besides follow the plot path.
They're so protective of Frozen that you can't even use Arendelle as a location in the Photo Studio Mode added in RM
KH1 Atlantica
KH1 Atlantica
They need to go back and use older and less popular IPs again. Steamboat Willie in KH2 is still one of the best levels in the entire franchise.
I've been dreaming about a Black Cauldron world since KH1 came out.
As someone who played KH1 in elementary school: What? Yes, monstro is confusing -- it's supposed to by a laybrinth and it's not the greatest. But the other's are okay. I mean, how do you really get lost in Deep Jungle or Atlantica? The shark thing in atlantica is the only real issue I can think of.
For deep jungle, it's basically a straight line. It does not take long to figure out what to do. What, were people running back and forth through the vine-swinging level or something?
You are not sealing keyholes in KH2. That game has the worst approach to worlds among the "important" games (KH1, KH2, BBS, DDD, KH3) by far.
Yep, the excuses you have in each game for travelling are
KH1: Seal the Keyholes to prevent Heartless from taking the world/find friends
KH:CoM: A trap from the org involving Sora reliving memories/ look for friends
KH2: Literally open a path to the next stop to keep looking for friends
KH BBS: Investigate the origin of the Unversed/ Follow Terra's antics
KH DDD: Restore each world by waking it from the sleeping realm.
KH3: Journey to train and recover powers for the final battle / Protect the New Seven Hearts*
1 and DDD are the most relevant.
OP
OP
In monstro, the doors that glow green are the correct ones. It's just a path that goes straight basically.
Atlantica with the sea urchin and dolphin is confusing.
But back tracking the KH3 labyrinth was confusing as fuck.
Atlantica with the sea urchin and dolphin is confusing.
But back tracking the KH3 labyrinth was confusing as fuck.
The places are obtuse without any enjoyment. It's not fun trying to find where to use the dolphin to get to the depths or which part of deep jungle you need to go to find where to go considering how little it tells you where to go.
The only actually well designed placed in KH1 is hollow bastion. otherwise, it's generally worst than the corridors of kh2. And cool, that you played it in elementary? So did I. I've also played it four times since with one of those play throughs being last year. I don't see your point.
It's one of the best worlds in all of KH. People exaggerate the amount of times you have to climb up the mountain (only twice). Additionally, every time you climb up the mountain opens up a whole new route. The world has so much variety in terms of gameplay compared to others worlds from snowboarding, scavenging to reassemble Olaf, navigating an ice maze, and fighting through a blizzard. It has one of the best story bosses in the game as well. You can also roll around on snowballs and have freaking Marshmallow as a companion! Larxene was one of the most fun organization members messing about in Disney worlds with her sense of humor too.
No idea how people think it's one of the worst worlds when Monstropolis exists which is just narrow hallway after narrow hallway with no Rapunzel energy to make things feel more alive.
No idea how people think it's one of the worst worlds when Monstropolis exists which is just narrow hallway after narrow hallway with no Rapunzel energy to make things feel more alive.
But that's it: It's not hard to figure out. KH1 is mainly about exploration and exploring those areas is not difficult. For deep jungle, the level is laid out like a straight line and it is not difficult to figure where to go. Just move along the line. Frankly, I actually really like Deep Jungle. If you just want to move directly between plot beats then you're approaching KH1 completely wrong.
This is as opposed to KH2 which is just a bunch of set-pieces where you fight extremely repetitive gimmick battles -- on top of the regular random encounters -- to extremely grating music. It get's old quick. KH2's battle system, Vanilla nor Final Mix, is not good enough to justify that. For RPG's, having a variety of game-play scenarios -- ranging from combat to exploration to minigames, is important as the change-ups keeps the player's attention and makes the game greater than the sum of it's parts.
Side note: The elementary school part of it just means that if an elementary school kid can figure it out without a problem, then anyone should.
Other note: Actually, all this KH talk recently inspired me to whip out my PS2 and replay KH1 to see if it holds up, as opposed to just nostalgia. I have to say, despite it's faults -- it's not perfect -- I'd still say it's a good game. I've noticed that a lot of people who love KH2:FM and claim that it's a great action-game also seem to dislike KH1 and in particular hate the more exploration focused worlds. I think these people, like yourself, are just looking for a pure action game and not an action-adventure RPG like KH1 is.
A common misconception is that Disney controls everything to such a degree that it restricts the devs. It's actually the opposite, they prefer retelling the movies over creating an original story. Thing is, Frozen isn't exactly a film ripe with potential for video game levels. So they emphasized verticality....over and over again.
Dunno. The worlds themselves in KH1 aren't... Particularly interesting. Design wise nor exploration wise which doesn't make it that interesting to go through (with exceptions of course), and the Gameplay itself in KH1 doesn't really hold up for that. To be fair though, if that's your opinion of kh2 FM, I don't think we'll really find a common ground regarding this haha.
For me, the best action-games are DMC3:SE and Bayo 1. Bayo 2's combat can go die in a fire. (But keep the QoL upgrades, please.) DMC4 and DMC5 were okay, but I'm not a fan of the constant style switching styles.
With that in mind, no one has ever been able to explain to me why KH2 has a good combat system. Outside the nobodies, most of the enemies have uninspired movesets, with poor AI's and bad animations. The various extra systems in KH2 are superfluous and often a bit janky. And they removed interactive special moves in favor of...drive form button mashing.
Heck, I've had people say that BBS has a good combat system, and it's like...what? What are you smoking?
If someone could explain what the appeal is of KH2's battle system without resorting to fan-stanning nonsense, I'd be grateful, because these peopleare everywhere. If you could compare it to DMC3 or Bayo 1, that would be great, thanks.
Quick edit: (Secretly, I think the combat in KH1 is better than KH2.)
The Frozen and Toy Story worlds were the worst ones in KH3, as they both felt way too empty. Toy box was worse (imo) because of how much content was there (3 movies!) for locations and bosses that was completely ignored. I don't care if it was Disney's fault, that's what it is.
There were quite a few stinkers in the game overall though. I'd say Corona was the best world because it wasn't ambitious to a fault and let the player experience the flow and locations from the movie without being boring.
There were quite a few stinkers in the game overall though. I'd say Corona was the best world because it wasn't ambitious to a fault and let the player experience the flow and locations from the movie without being boring.
I agree with your opinion on bbs, but I'm curious in what way you think KH1 is better than two?
Just for the record, my opinion of kh2's systems is largely built on having done critical and lvl 1 runs of the game. I think critical is outright "critical" to experiencing the game the best way.
For the most part though the way the differing movement abilities coalesce in the game make Sora just so enjoyable to control. Dodge rolling in to a quick run, jumping into a double jump to deflect projectiles to gliding away to dodge more attacks, just feels good.
I also think 2 has outright excellent bosses with special consideration to the secret bosses and Roxas. It's not like other action games per say where it's wailing on them and dodging. It's learning their patterns and what to do at certain points that makes it more of a rhythm game at points than a general action game.
I also think the finishers especially some like magnet burst just feel much better than anything in KH 1. Couple that with great limits and the general flow of the attack combos just being smoother, and it makes for an excellent time imo.
I don't really expect you'll agree with what I've said considering what you said before, but that's why I like the game's combat.
Disclaimer:
This post ended up being much longer than I originally wanted. Also, text does not emote well so this might come off as more aggressive than intended. I'm not trying to totally rip apart KH2 or any games you like...but...text. You've been warned!
So, first off: You can't just ignore KH2 Vanilla. That was the original game. I paid $60 for that game on release. I wasted a lot of time with that game. It took a decade for FM to come out. You can't ignore it, especially when not much really changed between Vanilla -- which everyone says is bad -- and FM, which everyone loves. All critical mode does is some very basic brute force balance changes. Difficulty balancing is important, but does adjusting damage output and HP really fix the issues with the battle system?
I've played KH2FM on critical and was not impressed. It was just more tedious than regular proud mode.
Aside from that. To address your points:
*Superbosses account for only a tiny portion of the game. Having well designed superbosses in a 40 hour RPG does not redeem all the mediocre gameplay required to get there.
*"Learning patterns" and "being like a rhythm game" really applies to most good action games. Sure, maybe not God of War -- but that's not considered a good action game. Game's like DMC, Bayo, or the older Ninja Gaidens very much require what you just described. Hell, Bayonetta, in Bayo 1, can explode most bosses and enemies if you know them well enough.
*Finishers "feeling great" does not ring as a good endorsement to me. Finishers are just one small game-mechanic of many in KH2. The attacks in any good action game should be reasonably satisfying. Saying that it's a major reason why it's better than KH1 just comes off as shallow. What about everything else? You know what I mean?
So, to answer your question, finally:
The enemies and encounters in KH1 are better designed and more thought out, with somewhat better AI. In particular, enemies have much better attacks and animations, with better telegraphing and a more interesting variety of attacks. Said attacks work with the combat design instead of interrupting it. The encounters often take advantage of this too with more interesting enemy layouts with few enemies that are actively annoying.
More abstractly, combat in KH1 revolves around teching enemy moves to cancel or reflect their attacks. Hence why you get EXP for it. Basically, depending on your play style in KH1 you're either going to be aggressively parrying attacks and deflecting enemy attacks, blocking/dodging em and counting, or just exploding everything with magic. Heck, this probably why the Sword/Shield/Rod thing exists. It's a bit more methodical and requires your attention on the enemies. For example: Are you fighting an early game arena fight with a bunch of fire-bells and power-wilds? Reflect those fire-balls onto the powerwilds to clean up quickly!
Sadly, the game has some hidden mechanics, like recoil or MP, that are not obvious and can make playing a bit awkward if you don't know how it works. Also, KH1FM introduced a bunch of really bad balance changes and some poorly designed new enemies.
In KH2, it's almost like Musou where you kinda just explode everything that's not a boss. Enemies have much cheaper animations with questionable telegraphing and start-up times, and generally worse forms of attacks. For example, the plants and dog enemies. Aside from not being much to look at, their attacks don't seem to really fit into the combat design of the game and seem to be there more just to pester you by making fighting more difficult with no sort of interesting way of dealing with them -- except for just straight up killing them. Enemies also are just generally less interesting and have less pathologies around them. The general encounter design is also lacking with enemies just kinda being dumped in almost at random. There is also a lack of enemy variety with only a few things being used commonly, and an extreme emphasis on pop-corn enemies.
So, like I say, it's kinda like a Musou almost.
I really don't know what to tell you besides I disagree. I think the encounters are tighter I. Kh2 with a far better flow from sora than KH 1. In fact, it feels like sora got a handle on actually knowing how to wield the key blade as a weapon rather than a stick to make stupid swings out of. I also think the general bosses in KH 2 are just outright superior to.... Pretty much all of KH 1 bosses to be honest. Arguing that KH 2 doesn't have or encourage teaching is also a weird take when blocking is super important.
I'm flabbergasted by the comment that critical is a more tedious than proud mode. Like I straight up don't understand that comment. Did you... Like die a lot or something? You do more damage in critical, and I can't fathom how that would make it a more tedious experience for you tbh. Proud is pretty easy in general tho, so I'd say it's far, far more tedious than critical considering you do lowered damage.
Also, base KH 2 is still leagues better than 1 having played both also. FM with critical is just actually balanced in a way that encourages things like summons and limits people didn't use in the base game.
Hm, so I didn't die a lot in Critical Mode or anything. I just meant more generally tedious with dealing with enemies. Although; I did forget damage output was higher for Sora in Critical mode. I agree Proud mode is easy.
Also, blocking things in KH2 isn't the same thing as teching in KH1. Heck, unless you choose the shield in KH1 you'll probably not get the block ability for at least half the game! In my last play through, I think I got blocking either in Halloween Town or Neverland!
In KH1: Teching is a combination of countering enemies, which is usually done by attacking, or performing special actions, such as using the correct magic spell against certain enemies. (Ice against Fire-Bells, or gravity against Pirate ships, etc.) While it's not super complex, there is some subtle to it here and there and it's not just about blocking. Also, the hidden recoil stat strongly affects how well this works and is a consideration when choosing a Keyblade, depending on play-style.
So.... It's generally more tedious despite taking enemies out quicker and not dying a lot? I... How?
Reduced EXP gain for starters. Sure Sora get's a multiplier, but he is also going to be a lower level unless you grind!
Also, Double-Damage + Half HP is more annoying than anything given how hitstun and and the enemy AI works. It requires you to be overly cautious unless you want to get hit out of a combo by an offscreen enemy or even the enemy you're combo-ing!
I mean... You can't button mash, sure, but i don't feel like that'd make it less tedious personally since you're probably just mashing otherwise, so it making you cautious is a good thing haha. Levels don't matter all that much either as well honestly. You'll certainly have more power/do more damage if you're leveling at all. You get almost all your good abilities through beating bosses/sections rather than level ups.
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That's really interesting, thanks for the insight! Why is the Frozen team so strict, do you know?
