The GHZ Forum

English Intro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC31zg_Z6D0

Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories is now out in NA. Anyone interested in card battles and the mixing of SE and Disney should take a look...

Ordered 2 copies of it yesterday on Amazon & clicked 1 day shipping option (1 of them is to be a present for another).

Depending on one's tastes, RE:CoM is either the culmination of everything good about KH or everything bad. The Sora, worlds & enemies of the 1st game mixed with the antagonists & game design tweaks (enemy life bars, camera control, cutscene skipping & heavy use of triangle) from the 2nd. Sandwiched in between are the card mechanics that divide the fanboys & critics. If you despised the button mashing of the other 2 games, then CoM's gameplay is a colossal improvement, timing & a degree of strategy are absolutely essential now. Of course if you just to simply bash bash bash, you're not going to like it very much.

IMO, CoM had the best script of the series to date, partly due to the organization having (much) more screentime but mostly due to them being so dang mysterious. In fact the theme of mystery has pretty much displaced the Disney & FF as the main draw of the franchise now. The biggest downside I think is the near complete lack of sidequests, bonus dungeons or superbosses of any sort. Sephiroth doesn't even make the obligatory appearance.

Voice acting is something that'll gather mixed opinions. As can be seen in the above video, pre-puberty Sora is voiced by post-puberty Haley Joel Osment which is jarring but at least it's still the same actor, which can't be said for Diz, Namine & Kairi. Oh & Laxrene? The Disney worlds not having voiceovers at all is rather odd & is further proof of Disney's decreasing relevance.

n fact the theme of mystery has pretty much displaced the Disney & FF as the main draw of the franchise now.

Which is kinda why I stopped caring about it. Nobody takes an interest in a fangasmic crossover for the metaphor diarrhea surrounding a bunch of original characters.

Rob-Bert wrote:

n fact the theme of mystery has pretty much displaced the Disney & FF as the main draw of the franchise now.

Which is kinda why I stopped caring about it. Nobody takes an interest in a fangasmic crossover for the metaphor diarrhea surrounding a bunch of original characters.

I wonder if the series would have benefitted more in its current state if it was only the original characters, as many have proven to like them.

I never bothered with this series. I'm sorry. But I can't get my head around the premise. Why Square, and why Disney? It's a crossover, yes, but the question with any crossover is... why? What about these two worlds makes sense when combined? Sure, both are popular... but that's the thing. If their popularity is their only common trait, I can't see it as anything but a commercial decision.

It happened in a freak accident actually, but as stated above, the crossover aspect is pretty much no longer relevant, so forget about that.

DackAttac wrote:I never bothered with this series. I'm sorry. But I can't get my head around the premise. Why Square, and why Disney? It's a crossover, yes, but the question with any crossover is... why? What about these two worlds makes sense when combined? Sure, both are popular... but that's the thing. If their popularity is their only common trait, I can't see it as anything but a commercial decision.

It's a Disney RPG outsourced to Square, plain & simple & clean. Not exactly much different in concept than a Disney platformer developed by CAPCOM. Ok sure, there are some Final Fantasy characters but they're nothing more than really minor cameos for the amusement of the developers & are basically glorified cases of when studios make easter egg references of their past works. Then there are those people who love crazy crossovers just for the novelty (I.E. me).

Past that, the series has a weird unexplainable charm to it, must be the nostalgia & fanservice factors.

I've long held the opinion that any game which features Mickey in goth garb, regardless of how entertaining or "unexplainably charming" it may very well be, simply isn't worth playing. The fusion of long-established Disney canon with Final Fantasy's token brooding, androgynous, spike-haired male leads (And all the banalities they entail) is just, like... It's irreverent, man. Downright unholy, even.

I only ever cared enough to Youtube some select scenes from one of the games- the Lion King segment in particular- and what I saw was hardly compelling. It was basically a carbon copy of the film's plot, but with fucking furry Sora shoehorned in with all the tact of a Mary Sue Star Trek fanfic. It's good to know that the fight between Simba and Nala was broken up because Sora was there to arbitrate. "Hey guys, stop fighting! This isn't what the true spirit of friendship is all about." It made me gag a bit.

In closing, I'll only ever consider playing a KH game if Max Goof is featured as a summon or something. He could, I dunno, erect an impromptu concert hall and groove the fuck out to lower the enemy's morale. I'd buy the game on principle.

I've decided I'm never playing a Kingdom Hearts game again until Mary Poppins shows up.

Meh, Final Fantasy/Disney crossovers are SO 2001. These days, it's all about the giant fucking robots/Disney crossovers.

What Rob-bert, Dackattac and especially Ritz said.

I really hated Chain of Memories. I don't care if it had the "best script" in the series: every world was exactly the fucking same. Sure there were a few different gimmicks and enemies, but mostly I was doing the same thing over and over again, like an arcade game made in 1982. And then there was the battle system and how you could only attack in a few directions while the CPU could effortlessly move and attack with no problems whatsoever. Don't even get me started on the requirements on opening areas in the worlds later on in the game.

I was first excited by Kingdom Hearts because hey, I like Disney and Square. And though while I enjoyed the first game, the series is still little more but Nomura jerking off to his Final Fantasy creations while sometimes having a Disney hero or villain here and there. Oh, and freakin' Utada Hikaru. The Disney concept also becomes increasingly shoehorned in the more and more you go in the franchise. None of the new spin-off bullshit interests me in the slightest. Why take 6 games to explain things when you could've explained them in 2 or 3? What's the point?

Why even have to explain anything at all? It's supposed to be a massive crossover video game laden with fanservice, not a goddamn 1000-page novel full of pretentious metaphor bullfuck.

It's Squaresoft.*



*Or Squeenix. Whatever. You get my point.

Yeah, but it's also Disney, and in this particular case the aforementioned pretentious metaphor bullfuck should come in spades from the included Final Fantasy characters, not come almost entirely from these lifeless originally-created rejects.

It's an elaborately constructed frame to display a picture of a hairy man shitting.

This is one of there games I would have loved if it didnt had any Disney characters, I wonder why Squaresoft just didnt a crossover of their own games without involving any other company characters.

You must be my bizzarro self then, I feel the complete & utter opposite. I only played the original FF prior to KH1 but have been a fairly consistent fan of the Disney films my whole life. & even though I have been catching up on Square's work in recent years, I'd still take the Disney over the Square any day.

You'd probably be more interested in this one then.

Fuck, I love absurd crossovers. The more nonsensical and absurd the BETTER. I wish they'd toss some more shit into that. Crossover with Smash Bros so we can have pointy-haired teenagers waxing in faux philosphy while in the background Pikachu and Mickey are beating the shit out of a giant demon and Star Fox is flying around with WALL-E on his wing blasting down aliens and Sonic and Solid Snake are rocking out on the background for no reason. Best THING EVER.

That sounds delightfully absurd. However, I'm either misinformed or the KH series takes itself wayyy too seriously.

Zeta wrote:Fuck, I love absurd crossovers. The more nonsensical and absurd the BETTER. I wish they'd toss some more shit into that. Crossover with Smash Bros so we can have pointy-haired teenagers waxing in faux philosphy while in the background Pikachu and Mickey are beating the shit out of a giant demon and Star Fox is flying around with WALL-E on his wing blasting down aliens and Sonic and Solid Snake are rocking out on the background for no reason. Best THING EVER.

I'm all about kitsch, but in Square-Enix's hands, you'd get Mario waxing philosophically and a mediocre blaster/gunblade faceoff between Squall and Falco between who can brood the most.

DackAttac wrote:That sounds delightfully absurd. However, I'm either misinformed or the KH series takes itself wayyy too seriously.

This is where the problem lies. I barrack for the same thing as Zeta, but between what you just said and the fact that it's a crossover at all has been pretty much pushed into the background, I've lost my patience.

Oh, and seeing Mario wax philosophically would be even more hilarious that seeing Mickey wax philosophically. He'd probably look better in goth garb, too.

On the topic of weird crossovers, I'd be all for a Sonic/Metal Gear Solid game. The Sonic characters (and half the stages) looking like in Sonic 06, since while it was a stupid idea, the "This is what Sonic would be if it was somewhat realistic." was pretty well executed in there graphically. Sonic would blast through stages designed kinda like Sonic 1's if they were 3D trying to locate and destroy the Metal Gear EGG being developed by Robotnik in cooperation with an evil big company or government whereas Snake or Big Boss or whoever would do the sneaking (occasionally being aided by Rouge?).
There are also the usual stupidly long cinemas so we finally get a CGI Sonic film alternating between fun and goofy and grimdark and deep. Bosses include cyborgs being half-human and half-badnik: Masochistic Caterkiller, Seductive Pata-Pata, Berserk Motobug...
Secret unlockables include Tails beating off to pics of Raiden and a 60-minute cutscene of Otacon watching Sonic the Movie!

Please extend the post edit limit to 10 minutes. :(

P.P.A. wrote: There are also the usual stupidly long cinemas so we finally get a CGI Sonic film alternating between fun and goofy and grimdark and deep.

Badly worded. Better would be: "There are also the usual stupidly long cinemas, alternating between fun and goofy and grimdark and deep, so we finally get a CGI Sonic film."
<Metal Liquid> BRRRROTHER

Bosses include cyborgs being half-human and half-badnik: Masochistic Caterkiller, Seductive Pata-Pata, Berserk Motobug...

I forgot something. And will add the weeaboo names before someone complains.

Bosses include cyborgs with TRAGIC PASTS being half-human and half-badnik: Masochistic Nal, Seductive Pata-Pata, Berserk Motora...

P.P.A. wrote:stuff

Mesaru Gear Solid. Plus some extra budget.

Also, what this dude said.