nice nice!

Slams back in here!!!

SO YEAH, I finished it!! I think it had my favourite battle system of any Kingdom Hearts game I've played so far (using magic is actually rewarding and fun???). And I liked some of the characters more than I expected to!

Blatantly Evil Goblin Man is delightful tbh, Kingdom Hearts has always been about as subtle as a freight train so I for one welcome this surprisingly dexterous evil overlord.

That all being said, this disk I've been playing through has six Kingdom Hearts games (or in a few cases cutscene movies, lmao) on it - Kingdom Hearts, Chain of Memories, 365/2 Days (?), Kingdom Hearts 2, Birth By Sleep, and Re:coded.

"Surely," I thought to myself, "If I give in to Square's hideous bullshit storytelling and actually play all these games I'll be in a position to play KH3."

NOPE, TURNS OUT THERE ARE SEVERAL MORE GAMES BETWEEN HERE AND THERE, how the fuck does anyone defend this lmao

In particular Dream Drop Distance is supposed to be really important, and I've actually been looking forward to that one, so that's a real disappointment.

And this is why I borrowed this disk from my brother and why I won't be buying KH3 until I can get it pre-owned.

Because there might be aspects of KH I enjoy, but I'm not happy to financially reward Square's janky choices.

Having just looked into it, it seems the collection I would need to finish things up is.... sigh... "Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue"

which has Dream Drop Distance, some follow-on from Birth By Sleep called Fragmentary Passage, and then SOMETHING I'VE NEVER EVEN HEARD OF BEFORE NOW, GOD DAMN IT KINGDOM HEARTS

vandesdelca I really wanted to comment on your Kingdom Hearts plurk the other day but the conversation seemed to move very fast and in a direction that seemed like "actually it's the FANS who make Kingdom Hearts so inaccessible!" and I didn't really want to get too embroiled in that, but gahhhhhh

Y.....EAH..........

I didn’t know anything so I just went “okay I guess” but FROM WHAT YOU JUST DESCRIBED

THE SERIES IS JUST A FUCKING NIGHTMARE TO GET INTO AT THIS POINT

And that’s WITH all these major PS4 collections that are supposed to have, in theory, everything together and then there’s Final Chapter Prologue

Like, everyone was being friendly and pleasant so I'm not mad or anything, but my goodness, I really couldn't have disagreed more.

You don't get to write a story and then retroactively fill in the plotholes with prequels and in-betweens and whatever else you fancy and then say "oh but the protagonist is an unreliable narrator!" as if that. makes these things anything other than retcons?

BUT MAN THAT'S A WHOLE BIG CONVERSATION THAT PROBABLY ISN'T WORTH HAVING, Kingdom Hearts has a lot of spirit but by god is it not very good writing.

YEAH I UH...

Some of them were Professional Writers too so I’m just like “how...is this justifiable...”

“What do you see that I don’t...”

I think fandom has a very strong habit of justifying the things we like, and because a lot of (generally female-identified, but anyone really) fans are Creative, they tend to be willing to bend for the sake of defending a thing they like. They can understand because they want to, not because the actual canon has given them enough.

I think a lot of people in fandom are used to being outsidery/'weird' and so self-justification and defense comes naturally to us, and then we get into places where we defend games where the unreliable narrator is the goddamn person who created it, haha. Look, unreliable narrators are great but you, THE CREATOR, have to be an extra reliable narrator in that

case! You need to start at the end and work backwards so it makes sense, and boy has KH not done that, haha. These are my opinions, brought to you by me watching Gargant play all these. For some reason.

ivywell THAT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE thank you for those words and I think I can follow that.

I do think it may be a thing with fandoms centered around “girly” things to have a fanbase that tries to defend it a little more fiercely because those fandoms are already looked down upon cause “ick! girly stuff!” So there’s a lot of defensiveness already there and defensiveness tends to lead to justification.