Together Retro: Final Fantasy Spin-Offs

[alienjesus]

I played about 5 hours of Kingdom Hearts today. Made it through the Tarzan, Hercules and Aladdin worlds.

I'm having a hard time loving this one to be honest. Here's some of my top issues:

1. The camera is awful. It's zoomed in too close so you frequently get hit by enemies off-screen that you can't see. It's also too low to the ground so your HUD and characters block your view all the time. It follows you when you jump, but doesn't turn downwards, so when you jump you lose sight of the floor where you're supposed to be trying to land in this games multitude of platforming segments. You also can't angle the camera up or down or zoom in in or out either.

2. The disney worlds are all tiny, and they pad out the time by making you go back and forth endlessly. The tarzan world had me go from the treehouse area through 3 screens to the camp area and back about 6 times. It also doesn't signpost where to go next so you spend even more time just trying to guess which area it wants you to be in now.

3. Not only are the worlds tiny, but so are the areas within the worlds. That means that the closed in walls block your view a lot and it's easy to miss exits from the area. It also often messes with you trying to hit enemies as they back into walls and your super unweildy key swings bounce of the wall instead of hitting the foe.

4. The game is full of unintuitive nonsense. The aladdin segment has an underwater cavern area where you need to find a switch to open a door. For the life of me I couldn't figure how to get to it. Turns out I needed to just swim into the next room - up a fucking waterfall. Apparently you can totally do that, despite it making absolutely no logical or intuitive sense.

I'm muscling through, and it's not bad enough that I'm going to give up, but its certainly not good. And it's not like the story is worth anything either - it's shit. The FF characters have no relevance and the Disney areas are mostly retellings of the movies story so there's nothing new to see here. It's not even particularly charming - which considering it's based on DISNEY CARTOONS is a bit of an issue.

[BoneSnapDeez]

That game is absolute garbage. I'm sorry man. Props for making it as far as you have.

[dsheinem]

I have never, ever understood the appeal of Kingdom Hearts.

I also don't understand grown adults who fawn over every Disney (and/or Pixar) animated film like they collectively compose some sort of sacred canon against which one should measure all other similar entertainment. I know people in their 30s (and older) who wrap their own identity up in this brand and collect fucking Disney pins so that they can wear them around in public and who talk about a trip to one of the theme parks as if it is the best possible thing that one can do for a vacation. I can get feeling an obligation to take your kids there...but if you are a reasonable well-adjusted adult Disney World is not a suitable fucking destination for your honeymoon or retirement celebration...

I mean, I get the appeal of nostalgia (this is a retro game forum after all), but I can't see subjecting myself to dozens of hours playing a JRPG (or a series of them) that is based on the fictions surrounding children's characters. "OMG I can't wait to see how Goofy and Donald resolve this relational tension with Tidus!" "Maybe Mickey will get enough gil to buy the Fantasia hat and summon Ifrit! OMG a cameo by Ariel!?! Be still my heart!" This is how I imagine players must be responding when they play that series.

[noiseredux]

How do you feel about adults who are into Harry Potter?

[dsheinem]

How do you feel about adults who are into Harry Potter?

What's a hairy potter?

There's a kind of continuum from "liking something" to "active fandom" to "encompassing obsession that is used to define yourself and through which you coordinate your life". My reaction to someone's level of enthusiasm for something typically corresponds to whether I think they are in a reasonable place on that continuum.

[noiseredux]

Understood.

I will say that Epcot was way more fun as an adult without kids than it was as a kid.

[PartridgeSenpai]

I also do not really get the appeal of Kingdom Hearts or Disney Land/World at all, even as I have many friends who do love those games and those places. I even grew up loving Disney movies. They just aren't some huge part of my identity. The only time I've ever actually wanted to go to a Disney park has been in the past month when I saw that SICK VR Star Wars experience they have, where you're doing the mission disguised as a storm trooper and such. That thing looks SO freaking cool, but I'm not sure I'd wanna take the drive down to Florida to do ONLY that XD

[ESauced]

I enjoy the Kingdom Hearts series and it’s definitely in large part due to nostalgia. I’m not Disney crazy (my wife is though) but I grew up watching these movies. The little kid in me smiles when I get to the hundred acre woods in Kingdom Hearts, or fight oogie boogie with jack skellington by my side.

But I also think that when the game came out it was a pretty solid action rpg. I get that the gameplay aged poorly but there are plenty of other 3d games from the Ps1 and PS2 era that aged just as terribly. If you played it when it came out you are used to the flaws and they don’t bug you so much; they’re much more glaring when you visit a game 10+ years after release. I mean, I imagine if you tried the original metal gear solid for the first time today, if your only exposure to the series was MGSV, you’d find some of the mechanics pretty off-putting.

[pierrot]

And it's not like the story is worth anything either - it's shit.

Wait until you get to the end of the game--. (IF you make it to the end of the game.)

I enjoy the Kingdom Hearts series and it’s definitely in large part due to nostalgia. I’m not Disney crazy (my wife is though) but I grew up watching these movies. The little kid in me smiles when I get to the hundred acre woods in Kingdom Hearts, or fight oogie boogie with jack skellington by my side.

As someone who played and enjoyed the first three Kingdom Hearts games around their respective release dates, those are exactly the same two worlds I would point to as reasons to revisit the games (100 Acre Woods, especially), but it's a pretty bunk series, in retrospect. I really like Alice in Wonderland, also, but more so the books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, and even the way the movie was adapted into the first game was kind of uninteresting, to me. I agree that the control issues aren't as noticeable from the perspective of playing it back in 2002, but objectively I still see AJ's points. Menus in the original are also something terrible. I think KH II is still pretty playable, though, and while they doubled down on some of the crazy, FF/Nomura, nonsense, I don't hate it now the same way I pretty much hate the first game. Weirdly, the point at which I realized I hated KH 1 was after beating the secret boss that was new to Final Mix. For some reason, it was at that point that I realized the game is kind of a hot trash sandwich; One that I still feel some perverse urge to defend at times, but a hot trash sandwich, nonetheless.

Something about Birth By Sleep makes me feel like it holds up the best of the games in the series. I never played anything after that one, but I feel like it maintained a fair amount of sanity in the narrative, and felt the most streamlined, even if it's probably (objectively) a lesser game than KH II. Admittedly, I don't remember most of the finer points of the story, and I'd probably struggle to even write the CliffsNotes, though.

I think that's enough talk of KH to tide me over for the rest of my life.

[Exhuminator]

I have never, ever understood the appeal of Kingdom Hearts.

Why play crap like this, this, or this, when you can play this awesomeness?

based on the fictions surrounding children's characters

Are you dead inside dude? Kingdom Hearts is soooo not meant for children. These games were created for mature cultured adults with experienced taste in gaming. I've personally played, beaten, and adored every Kingdom Hearts entry. It's probably the greatest JRPG series of all time. My panties are moist merely reminiscing upon their glory.