What Matters
In the JRPG, character is the heart of the matter.
You can have the grandest storyline, the most compelling combat system, the most stunning visuals, but if your characters are not compelling, you have nothing.
Final Fantasy IV would be nothing without Cecil. Final Fantasy VII would be nothing without Cloud. Xenogears without Fei, Tales of the Abyss without Luke, and so on and so forth, all these incredible JRPGs we love would feel hollow without their hearts.
And when I completed Birth By Sleep, I have to add Terra, Ventus and Aqua to that list.
Let’s get this out of the way before I start gushing about characters the way I gushed about Kingdom Hearts II’s combat. Birth By Sleep’s combat system and level design is some bullshit. While not the muddy mess that is Chain of Memories, Birth By Sleep makes some frustrating changes to how Kingdom Hearts works that feel like going back to Kingdom Hearts I all over again.
Platforming feels heavy and clunky in this title, with jumps never quite feeling right. Areas are tiny and yet force some rather obnoxious platforming that Kingdom Hearts II eschewed. And worst of all is the Command Deck system, which is a well-intentioned misfire of staggering proportions.
In a nutshell, the Command Deck system is a cooldown based loadout system similar to that seen in Xenoblade Chronicles, though with a cleaner interface clashing horribly with combat that actually requires dodging and platforming in a system with every action feeling slow to fire.
Maybe if the movement didn’t feel so slow, the Command Deck system might not feel so awkward. But blocking requires almost preternatural foresight given the slow pace of guard raising and the low amount of active frames, and attacks take an unfun amount of time to wind up.
The shotlock system is poorly explained, too, and not required until much later in the game. It also feels cumbersome to use, with first person lock on aiming taking the place of target selection. What feels like it should be an automatic beamspam, similar to a move in Zone of the Enders 2, instead requires you to quickly pick out targets before your time is up and hopefully let off a maximum barrage in order to get the quick time event that makes shotlocks worth using.
About the only things that feel good are finisher forms and high level spells like Mega Flare. Using enough abilities to charge a meter grants a damage and speed boosting power up that has the right shounen combat feel, but sadly it isn’t enough to pull the game right. Huge screen clearing effects like Mega Flare make short work of small monsters and have the right amount of pep to their animations to feel good. It’s just a shame there’s so many effects that feel bad to use.
But it’s a good thing that while this game, largely an experiment like Chain of Memories, focused most of its attention on its characters, because the result is the best story in the series so far.
So I only recently joined this fandom, is it played out to point out just how great these characters are and how well their stories are told (one annoyance aside)? Because oh man if this isn’t the best rendition of the friendship themes thus far, told within the context of a heartrending tragedy.
The game’s story is split among three parts. The game recommends the order of Terra, Ventus, and Aqua, so I went that path, but I don’t think anyone would be faulted for changing that order however they pleased. Each character travels along their own path, and each story needs to be experienced to get the full picture.
Terra’s path plays out like the best version of Anakin Skywalker’s fall to the dark side, a stubborn man who has difficulty keeping his darkness in check and is easily swayed by those who would exploit that. Unlike Anakin, however, he strives to improve himself throughout the story, his reconciliation with Ventus and Aqua tragically cut short as Master Xehanort enacts his plans. His story follows a theme of making amends with friends after he makes several colossal mistakes.
Ventus’ story has a more youthful exuberance to it, which makes his fate truly heartrending. The young boy that looks up to Terra and Aqua as though they were his big brother and big sister is also exploited by Master Xehanort, who plays off his youthful naivete to force him in to a situation requiring him to fight the one being he should not. His story follows the theme of chasing after ones dreams and friends.
And poor Aqua, my favorite character in this whole mess! She presents the ideal hero for this series, a selfless giver who sacrifices so much to try to bring her friends out of their dark fate, only to be trapped wandering through a dark world with no escape. Her story asks what responsibility we have to our friends and how do we help them.
(As an aside, the largest annoyance in the story for me is Aqua’s visit to Olympus Coliseum. It’s bad enough that Phil and Zack sexually harass Aqua for the entire duration of that story, but it drives home all the more just how awful it would feel to be on the receiving end of that kind of leering nonsense when it’s done to a character who had been defined by far more than just appearance up to that point. It might be my least favorite world visit in any Kingdom Hearts.)
I’d also be remiss to ignore the importance of the way Terra, Aqua and Ventus connect to Riku, Kairi and Sora. Terra and Aqua both meet a young Riku and Kairi, and in their own ways form a bond with the two, but Sora’s acceptance of Ventus in to his heart, not once but twice, ties him to our hero in such a deep way I couldn’t help but appreciate Sora as a character once again. He truly is the hero this series needs.
As these stories intertwined, I found myself being drawn more and more in to the world. I didn’t care one lick about the lore. All I knew is these three characters were important to me, and what Master Xehanort does to them is what finally made me think of him as a truly well done villain.
A well done villain, at least in shounen manga, isn’t one that causes the most carnage, but one that impacts the characters the strongest. The strength of shounen is getting us to care enough about the heroes that when a villain comes along to screw with their happiness, we want only for the hero to find that villain and deliver justice. And as such, Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep prepared me for the story of Kingdom Hearts III like nothing else.
Because I found what matters most in this series isn’t the lore. Hell, the only asshole who cares about the lore in-universe is Xehanort. And fuck that guy.
He hurt my friends.
❤ Touhi
Touhi Touko's Blog 