Kingdom Hearts Movie Edition

Hope you brought some popcorn

Something that has always bugged me in western game discussion is how cutscenes are treated as a failure of design. To some western developers, if you have to take control away from the player for any reason, you messed up. This critique largely seems to be focused on Japanese titles, possibly because of the style being pioneered by Japanese developers in the Playstation era.

But I kinda love cutscenes. They’re incredibly useful design tools when we don’t want to design another game to tell the story that is necessary to create context for the game the player is already playing. A well done cutscene establishes a bond between the player and the character, setting the stakes and letting you know how to feel about what will happen in the next section of play, or enhancing the feeling of victory after.

Which is probably why the least interesting parts of the Kingdom Hearts compilations are the parts with no play to act as chocolate to the peanut butter that is cutscenes.

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Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance HD

Feel the Flow

According to Tetsuya Nomura, Kingdom Hearts started as Square Enix wishing to make a game similar to Super Mario 64.

Super Mario 64 is one of the finest examples of movement and platforming in three dimensions, a joyous physics simulation utilizing a bouncy hero with so many moves that future iterations of 3D Mario titles barely needed to change a thing.

By that metric, most of Kingdom Hearts is an abject failure. Of the four games I played before Dream Drop Distance, only Kingdom Hearts II felt remotely like a well done 3D platformer, and that still hid half of its moveset behind tedious grinding.

So imagine my surprise and delight when I booted up Dream Drop Distance for the first time and started moving.

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Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep Final Mix

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.

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Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix

Drive Wild

At its core, Kingdom Hearts really wants to be a shounen manga in playable video game form. It wants to fly around at high speeds, clashing with villains at high speeds with crazy over the top powers and absurd weapons. It wants super power-ups and fights won through the power of friendship. It wants a massive sprawling storyline that takes years to complete. And it wants the deepest lore so that it can be taken somewhat seriously.

It wants to be Dragon Ball. It wants to be One Piece. It wants to be Naruto and Bleach and so much more.

Kingdom Hearts II was the first time in my series crawl that I think the series started coming close to that.

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Kingdom Hearts re:Chain Of Memories

A Sleight Detour

The early 2000’s was one of the most interesting times in JRPG design. Fresh off the JRPG boom of the Playstation era, studios were now capitalizing on the appeal of the genre by experimenting with new types of combat systems. It was a wildly inventive era, pushing Action and Turn Based JRPGs to new extremes as the technology existed in a sweet spot between “enough power to do cool things” and “enough limitations to empower creativity.”

One oddity from this era is the rise of JRPG systems based on Card Games. For a time, some developers, seemingly inspired by the growing market of tabletop collectible card games, were trying to see if that kind of mechanic would work. If it’s an item, a piece of equipment, or a spell, you can expect it would be put in a card to be used in deck building.

Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories, and its PS2 remake re:Chain of Memories (which is the version I played for this series crawl), is strange even within this context. Card battlers tended to be turn based, but re:CoM maintains some of the action elements of Kingdom Hearts.

And boy howdy is it a strange game.

I think I like it?

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Kingdom Hearts I (Final Mix)

Simple and… Clean?

Returning to the original Kingdom Hearts in its Final Mix form, I had a certain image in my mind. I remembered a fairly straightforward action RPG without too many bells and whistles, and I figured “what the heck, I don’t recall it being too hard, let’s try it on Proud Mode.”

At least, that’s what I THINK happened. I don’t exactly remember my thought process because I took a break from the game due to travel for the holidays. I returned and started it up, still with that image of the game not being too hard but forgetting I had started the game on Proud Mode.

And I promptly found myself getting my ass kicked due to underestimating the game. After a while of banging my head against Cerberus in the Olympus Coliseum, I opened my menu to take a look and found myself wondering “why the heck did I start this in Proud Mode?”

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Kingdom Hearts

So you have come this far…

If you had asked me a few months ago what I thought of Kingdom Hearts, I’d have said “It’s alright. Haven’t played any games other than I and II, and I know I’m missing a lot. Kingdom Hearts III looks kinda cool. Maybe I should play the other games?” At least, that’s how I responded when I asked myself that very question. And then I grabbed the PS4 collections that I’d picked up a while back and started playing.

My initial plan was to play the series start to finish, getting as far as I could before Kingdom Hearts III arrived. Once III came out, I would switch to it, play to completion, and then go back to finish the rest of the story. I figured that there was a lot to get through, and didn’t expect to be able to finish.

I finished this week.

Going in, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot. I had some fond memories that I chalked up to nostalgia, but I was expecting some convoluted, opaque story as has often been alluded to. I also had some not so fond memories of the level design in Kingdom Hearts II, even if it had some fun combat mechanics.

Now on the other end of the journey, ready for Kingdom Hearts III, not only has my opinion of the series as a whole been raised substantially, I don’t even think it’s all that complicated.

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What’s all this then

Hello, I’m Touhi Touko.

That’s a pen name, of course, but my real name is kinda boring and doesn’t stand out, especially for the kind of things I want to write, so I went with this. Bonus points if you can figure out its basis.

In any case, I’m a computer programmer who worked in video games for a while, took a break, and is now trying to branch out in to other places. This blog is for my brain droppings. Basically, reader response essays to video games, mostly JRPGs and Visual Novels, and notes and thoughts for various projects I might want to tackle on my own. I’m taking courses in Game Design and Fiction Writing, so I want treat this as sort of a running journal for those topics.

To put my biases on the table, I’m a progressive left-leaning white cis male in his 30s, so all my writings will be filtered through that lens. While I will try to do my best to ensure my readings and writings are fair and respectful, I know I have blind spots, and encourage constructive feedback so that I can correct for them.

Just to give you an idea of some of my favorite things…

As I mentioned above, I want to focus my response essays on JRPGs and Visual Novels. I’ve liked JRPGs for most of my life, which led to liking Visual Novels later in life. I started playing JRPGs back on the Super Nintendo with Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy IV, and a lot of how I think about the genre started forming from way back when I didn’t know there was a distinction between western RPGs and Japanese RPGs. Eventually I did find that I mostly don’t like western RPGs, so my knowledge on those is fairly limited to “they don’t behave the way I want RPGs to behave.” As such, I’ll avoid talking about western RPGs as best as I can, to avoid generalizing about something I know little about.

I don’t like ranking things, but here’s a list of JRPGs I’ve really liked over the years, by console. I’ll blanket say I love the Zelda series but don’t consider them JRPGs. I also try to avoid repeating a series per console generation unless there’s significant gameplay differences. Games that are of particular importance to me are bolded. Games that I played later, such as through remakes, are still listed with their initial console.
SNES – Secret of Mana, Earthbound, Final Fantasy V, Dragon Quest V, Lufia II, Harvest Moon, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, Secret of Evermore
N64 – Paper Mario, Harvest Moon 64
PSX – Final Fantasy IX, Chrono Cross, Xenogears, Wild Arms 2, Grandia, Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete, Final Fantasy Tactics, Breath of Fire IV
GB/GBC/GBA – Pokemon Gold/Silver, Mother 3
GCN – Tales of Symphonia, Baten Kaitos, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
PS2 – Persona 4, Dragon Quest VIII, Kingdom Hearts II, Tales of the Abyss, Shadow Hearts: Covenant, Xenosaga (Series), Wild Arms 5, Grandia II, Disgaea
DS – Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, The World Ends With You, Pokemon Black/White
PSP – Wild Arms XF, Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, Zettai Hero Project
PS3 – Tales of Graces F, Valkyria Chronicles
Wii – Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story
X360 – Tales of Vesperia, Lost Odyssey
3DS – Bravely Second, Pokemon Sun/Moon, Fire Emblem Awakening
PSV – Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel
Wii U – Xenoblade Chronicles X, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE
PS4 – Persona 5
Switch – Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Other – Undertale, Cosmic Star Heroine

Wow that’s a big list! You’ll probably notice I might not have named your favorite, or that one of my favorites is one you don’t like. That’s okay! This list is in no way exhaustive and I’m always open to suggestions. I’ve lots of thoughts and opinions about JRPG game design and storytelling that I hope to talk about through this blog.

In any case, playing lots of JRPGs had me expecting a lot of story from my games, which is why I started clicking with Visual Novels, more specifically mystery themed VNs. Ace Attorney was my gateway drug in to them, and while I did try a few of the well known adult oriented VNs like Fate/Stay Night, I’ve mostly stuck with mystery VNs or VNs with some puzzle solving elements. My favorite VNs thus far are Umineko no Naku Koro ni, Danganronpa V3, and Virtue’s Last Reward. I want to play more VNs and talk about VNs through this blog.

I could see myself writing responses to other things in the future, but apart form this, I’m also trying to write more fiction and create games on my own. I can’t promise anything here, but I hope to share creative work in the future. I’ll PROBABLY use this pen name if I create anything related to JRPGs, VNs, or similar media.

My mission statement for this blog is to give my honest thoughts and critiques, and to be as rigorous and thorough as I can. My inspirations for how to style my critical responses are Lindsay Ellis, Dan Olson, Bob Chipman, Film Crit Hulk, Super Bunnyhop, Geoff Thew and Tim Rogers.

And with that… let’s get blogging.

❤ Touhi