khremixed

[khremixed]

[khremixed]

if Org13 had camera phones

xemnas’s instagram feed is nothing but pictures of kingdom hearts with different filters and pretentious captions. nothing else. multiple pictures a day

xigbar’s feed is 50% “extreme selfies” (aka selfies in strange impossible places) and 50% weird pictures he takes of other people without them knowing (ex. axel drooling on himself in his sleep)

lexaeus is the only person who added vexen back on snapchat. lexaeus frequently gets 3am snapchats that are just blurry pictures of experiment results with the caption “LOOK IT WORKED”

saix refuses to participate in any of this except for faving every single picture of kingdom hearts that xemnas posts on insta. sometimes axel sends him stupid snapchat stories but he does not return the gesture

marluxia takes more selfies than everyone else put together. more than larxene. more than xigbar. more than axel. he doesn’t even send them to anyone he just is determined to perfect it as an art form. his instagram feed is just selfies and plants, and selfies with plants, and selfies of plants

demyx is secretly a vine celebrity (secretly because nobody else in the org cares enough to follow him and discover this fact). half of his goofing off around the castle and on missions is for the vine

someone starts a tinder account for xaldin’s sideburns as a joke and xaldin finds out about it when he gets matched with them. but he never finds out who did it because that would require admitting he was using tinder

[khremixed]

Part 20:  The Return to Hollow Bastion

When you get back to Hollow Bastion, you have to get all the way back to the room where you fought Ansem.  The princesses are, except for Belle, waiting for you outside the Grand Hall.  They’ve apparently been using their powers to hold back the darkness somehow but that’s not going to last much longer.

The Grand Hall is pretty much the same, minus women in jars.  I would suggest scoping the room for chests before going through the portal because the Oblivion keyblade is waiting for you.  This is another of the signature keyblades and it is a powerful one.  

Through the portal you find the keyhole and Behemoth guarding it.  Why do you fight Behemoth here?  Because we needed a boss fight, silly!  This is one easy fight, too.  Just get up on his back, lock on to the horn, and go to town.  Before Sora locks the keyhole, though, he hears Leon praising him.  The crew from Traverse Town is waiting in the Grand Hall.  They reveal that this is their home world.  They also tell Sora that, should he succeed in restoring the worlds, the barriers between them will come back.  Sora takes this rough.  He won’t get to see his friends again.  Leon, who has undergone some slight character development, consoles him with the knowledge that whatever happens, they will all be in each other’s hearts.  It’s a sweet moment undercut by Chain of Memories existing.  At least Sora will remember them by the time KH2 rolls around!  Sora then locks the keyhole.

Before you leave, go to the library.  Belle is there and she has a nice little reunion with the Beast.  Better, she gives you a new keyblade!  Leon’s crew is also there and if you talk to Aerith enough times, she’ll give you the rest of the Ansem report and even up your cure magic.  The three of them are also full of contempt for Ansem and his experiments.

From here it is a pretty good idea to go revisit previous worlds to see if you can find more puppies, trinities, and torn pages.  Oh, and maybe finish up the tournaments, especially since the Hades Cup is now up and running.

[khremixed]

Part 19:  The Overdue Heart to Heart

Okay, so now we are back in Traverse Town.  Sora fills in Leon’s gang on what was going down, and they take the fact that their beloved and wise ruler is now the main villain of a video game and possessing the body of a teenage boy really well.

Leon also tells you that Jasmine never returned to Agrabah, so she’s probably still on Hollow Bastion.  And if it’s true for her, it’s probably the case with the rest of the princesses.  I really want to know who Leon’s contact on Agrabah is, by the by.

The most worrying and immediate problem is that there is darkness just pouring out of the door back on Hollow Bastion and Sora and co. need to close it before everything is overrun with heartless.

You go to see Cid about getting back to Hollow Bastion.  He’s understandably resistant to sending a fourteen year old back into a war zone, but relents when it is pointed out that their only hope is the keyblade.  He tells the group that he hid a special gummi in the underground cavern.

When you get down there, Kairi is there.  At first I was going to ask who showed her this place, but let’s be real, it was Yuffie.  Yuffie totally took Kairi down there to be alone.  Kairi says that the place reminds her of the secret place on the Destiny Islands (which is reaching, but whatevs) and also admires the weirdly changed mosaic on the back wall.  Going back there reveals the gummi.

You also get a nice cutscene between Sora and Kairi.  She wants to come with and he says it’s too dangerous, blah blah blah.  In fairness to Sora, she really has no clue how to fight.  Kairi gives Sora the charm that she was making earlier, of the palpu fruit made of seashells, and makes him promise to bring it back.  It’s sweet.  Better, but this is a new keyblade (and a signature one of the series to boot), Oathkeeper!

And it is here that we get another new scene!  Like with most of them, this is centered on Riku.  Specifically, it is him in the Realm of Darkness alone.  Or at least his heart, which Ansem has excised from his body?  I don’t get the logistics.  A disembodied voice (it’s Mickey’s, by the by) and him talk about what’s going on and that Riku needs to get to Mickey to help Sora.  Importantly, Riku’s first concern is what has happened to Sora and Kairi.  This shows that he’s on the path to redemption (which he never really falls off of again).

Real quick, since I didn’t mention it anywhere else and this section would be super short without it, I guess I will point out now that Geppetto and Pinocchio have moved to Traverse Town.  There was an empty section in the First District where they have not only gotten a house built in a relatively short period (Geppetto tells you that Leon hooked him up, so I’m just going to assume at this point that Leon is basically the mayor or city planner) but Geppetto has decided to get into the gummi trade.  Oh man Cid, looks like you have some competition for your one customer!  Pity Geppetto is even worse at business and will just give Sora free samples.

[khremixed]

Part 18:  THAT Battle

We’ve finally gotten to the part of the game that was the bane of many a preteen.  Let me tell you, being able to skip cutscenes is underrated.

Okay, so when we last left off, our heroes had made it to the Grand Hall, where the Princesses of Heart are in little pods and there the big heart shaped evil glowing portal ahead.  More important to Sora, Kairi’s body is lying on the platform in from of the evil heart portal.

Riku’s possession has progressed since we last saw him.  David Gallagher, Riku’s voice actor, is gone and Billy Zane has taken over.  Sora realizes finally that something is wrong and we get the introduction that we’ve been waiting for.  This is Ansem, Seeker of Darkness.  We will just be calling him Ansem for the rest of the recaps.

Ansem reveals that Kairi’s heart is currently inside Sora himself and that with his new keyblade, made from the hearts of the other princesses, he can release it and finally complete the door.  At the last moment Kairi’s heart calls out to Sora and he announces that there’s no way Ansem’s taking Kairi’s heart.

I remembered this as the hardest battle in the game.  So hard that I went to find out how to beat it and ended up starting another save file to find the best keyblade to use to fight him.  And in the original version of this game, there was no skipping cutscenes, so I ended up memorizing the whole preceding cutscene entirely because I watched it so much.  I know I wasn’t alone in this.  There is a whole community of people who can still quote bits of thing.  It didn’t help that this is one where Sora goes in alone.  I give Goofy and especially Donald a lot of shit about their uselessness in boss battles but this really makes you appreciate them.

Anyway, this time I beat the whole thing in one go.  Only used like one ether too.  Maybe they made it easier for the Final Mix?  Or maybe in the last sixteen years I’ve gotten better at video games.

Beating possessed!Riku sets off a whole chain of events.  Riku/Ansem teleports out.  Sora tries to lock the giant keyhole but can’t because it isn’t finished.  There has to be seven princesses of heart, but Kairi’s still out.  So Sora just stabs himself with Ansem’s keyblade.

In fairness to the kid, it works.  Kairi’s heart is released (as are the hearts of the other princesses from the evil keyblade).  Kairi wakes up to see Sora falling but when she rushes over to save him, he dissolves in her arms.  Girl is going to need so much therapy.

Ansem shows up in his “real” form to be creepy at Kairi, but since it is still technically Riku’s body (even if it doesn’t look like him at all now), Riku, in a phantom heart form, holds him off while Kairi, Donald, and Goofy escape to safety.

We then get to control a heartless.  You can only walk and jump, but it’s still a fun if weird interlude.  And this may be the most important moment in this game for the rest of the series, because that heartless is Sora.  Stabbing himself with that keyblade is going to cause some major blond haired issues down the line.  

Once you get back to the Main Hall, heartless!Sora goes to be friends with the gang and we get a good moment where Donald is all “I’ll protect you” and then just hits the little shadow on the head with his wand.

Lots of other shadows show up to ruin the party and Kairi decides that it’s now her turn to protect Sora.  She hugs the shadow to her and there is a burst of light.  Kairi has literally loved Sora back into being a human.  Guess that answers who’s winning the ship war, huh?

Things are still hairy but Beast decides to be the hairiest.  He tells everyone to go (though refuses to go himself while Belle is still there).

[khremixed]

Part 17:  Hollow Bastion

Oh boy, y’all!  It’s Hollow Bastion Time!

I love Hollow Bastion.  I love it’s design echoing a gothic cathedral mixed with futuristic technology.  I love the story revelations we get here.  I love it’s name.  It is a good time all around.

When we’d last left our heroes, Sora managed to find Kairi with Riku on Hook’s ship, but Riku used his brand-new powers of darkness to teleport her away.  Sora also got a new gummi after locking the keyhole in London Town.

Back in Traverse Town, Cid hooks the new gummi up in the ship to take the team to Hollow Bastion.  It’s clear here that Cid knows full well where they are going, but he never says.  I kind of get that.  Hollow Bastion is his home world and all of the members of Leon’s gang have a fairly difficult time discussing it.  

When they do, it is in a way that dissociates them from it.  Despite the nine years that have passed, to the group that loss is still immediate.  On the other hand, some warning about what they are up against would have been good.

One other major thing.  When Cid goes off to attach the gummi to the ship, Sora has a weird dream sequence of an old woman in a library telling a very little girl a story about the death of light to darkness.  She tells the girl that the light managed to survive in the hearts of children to rebuild a new universe, but because it wasn’t the true light, the worlds are separated.  But all is not lost!  The true light will return.  And it is then that the little girl is revealed to be Kairi.  Dream Sora calls to Kairi before he snaps out of it and Cid returns.  There’s nothing left but to head to the world in question.

Sora’s immediate impression of Hollow Bastion is that he’s been there before.  This is clearly impossible.  Donald and Goofy tell him to walk it off.

The area where they land is stunning.  It is all these waterfalls and floating rocks, giving the player the initial impression of something mystical.  It’s bright blue contrasts really well with the pink of the castle.

On the way up the waterfalls and rocks, the group overhears Riku taunting the Beast.  He wants to know how the Beast ended up on Hollow Bastion and the Beast really doesn’t know.  He simply wanted to come save Belle and refused to disappear with his world.

Riku’s pretty glad that Sora’s shown up with the Keyblade, though, because Riku has come to the correct conclusion that it was never meant for Sora anyway.  And through sheer force of will, Riku convinces the keyblade to become his.  I remember this being a genuinely shocking moment as a kid.  As an adult, I have to say that this really wasn’t foreshadowed at all.  It sort of just happens.  That said, it is still a twist I adore.  Donald and Goofy both decide to follow their king’s orders to stay with the key and leave Sora.  I will say that my absolute favorite part of this scene is when Riku says something to the effect of “There can’t be two keyblade masters!”  Of course there can’t.  I’m sure that will stay totally true for the rest of this series, let alone the rest of this game.  Or this world.  To add insult to injury, Riku throws Sora a wooden sword.  Damn, but that’s cold.

And it also sucks as a player because like back at the beginning on the Destiny Islands, a wooden sword does jack and shit.  It’s really a good thing Beast is a tank.  Sure, your magic still works, but you will run out of mp before coming killing a heartless and you now have no way other than ether for regaining it.

Sora gets out of his funk over this because the Beast will not quit until he’s saved Belle, injury or no.  Sora uselessly tags along.  Hey man, how about you use some of your healing magic or potions on him?  You have to go through a maze under the castle to find the mechanism for opening the gates, and man, do I miss the Skyrim’s habit of having dungeons loop so you don’t have to backtrack through the whole thing to get back.

Going into the main hall triggers a cutscene where the Beast thinks he sees Belle turn into a heartless and he flips out and runs off.  Thus Sora confronts Riku alone.  But when Riku throws a fireball at Sora, Goofy uses his shield to save Sora.  Donald joins immediately.  Even though they are loyal to their king, our boys will not just stand by when Sora is in trouble.  Sora then has a whole speech about how he gets his strength from his friends.  It is the most Sora thing I think he ever does.  Anyway, this convinces the keyblade to return to Sora.

This fight with Riku is pretty easy.  Beating him causes Riku to runoff to complain about how can his heart be weaker than Sora’s, dude’s a dumbass.  The creepy cloaked dude from all the way back on the Destiny Islands shows up to tell Riku that it was in that moment and the only solution to this is to delve even darker into darkness.   Riku glows lime green to highlight the wisdom in this.

You head into the library, which like the rest of this world is a maze.  This time it involves finding different books and returning them to their respective places.  Kingdom Hearts:  the thrilling game where you correctly shelve library books!

Okay, so you have to complete a bunch of puzzles to unlock the door that opens to the lift platform.  I hate hate hate the lifts.  They take forever and if you can’t remember exactly which ones you need to go on in which order, you can end up backtracking multiple times and having to deal with the awful, unskippable animation over and over.  Combined with the fact that it is relatively easy to fall off of the castle and have to go back up again, it sucks.  There are also no saves past the library until you get a boss battle, which makes everything super tense.

There is a discussion between Maleficent and Riku here.  Riku’s voice is now two different voice actors at the say time, but I’m sure that’s just puberty or something.  He’s totally not possessed.  I mean, no one seems worried about this development.  Maleficent tells Riku that she’ll go deal with Sora herself.  Which she does when he finally makes it to the chapel.

We get a fun little battle where Maleficent floats around the room on a bolder and shoots magic at you.  It’s not that difficult to fight and at the end she runs off.  Chasing after her results in a cutscene where the obviously possessed Riku shows up with a sinister black and red keylade.

He then proceeds to just straight up stab Maleficent in the chest.  Instead of being pissed or dying, she starts going on about power and shit before turning into a motherfucking dragon.  Respect.

This is a more challenging fight then the one before it.  However, turning into a dragon may be Maleficent’s signature move, but it’s never turned out successfully.  When it’s over, Riku’s back.  He grinds the remains of dragon!Maleficent under his boot while telling our heroes that for all her pride at being free from the heartless, she was a pawn of them all along.  He then teleports away.  Back out into the chapel, a new doorway opens.  There’s nothing else to do but save and head forward.

I think this is a good breaking point.  Next we’ll be dealing with one of the most notorious moments of the first game.

[khremixed]

Part 16:  Second Star on the Right

Why is this level deemed to be Neverland when we are only ever on Hook’s ship or in London?  I don’t get it.  At least we really will get to the actual Neverland in future games.

Well, hope everyone’s ready for some shit to go down!

As Sora and co. are flying off to a new world, they are intercepted by Hook’s ship, which goes full ramming speed on them.  Sora wakes up alone on the deck of the ship and is taunted by Riku, who has now fully embraced being evil.  Riku demonstrates that he can control the heartless.  Sora calls him out.

Sora demands to know what Riku’s done with Donald and Goofy.  Riku moves aside and reveals Kairi.  She is now catatonic.  Riku won’t answer any questions about her and instead uses dark powers to rip Sora’s shadow away and sends Sora down into the hold.  Riku then issues orders about setting sail.  Hook complains to Smee about having to take orders from a fifteen year old on his own ship, but it can’t be helped.  Even if Riku wasn’t now higher on the hierarchy of evil, he can control the heartless.  

Sora is thrilled that Kairi is here.  I honestly have no idea why he isn’t more worried about how she’s nonresponsive and currently being held by the forces of evil.  In the hold Sora meets fellow prisoner Peter Pan.  Peter Pan is a sociopath, guys.  I mean, I get that he’s immature forever and all, but he has no sense of empathy for other people and is extremely selfish.  What I’m saying is that he’s the worst. But he is awesome as a party member, so I’m going to let it slide a little.  Peter tells you that he doesn’t need to team up to escape because he is waiting for someone.  Alas, Tinkerbell is pissed off at him because he won’t abandon Wendy, so she leaves him trapped with Sora.  Peter agrees to work with the gang to escape the hold but in a really jerk way and only until they’ve found Wendy.

Goofy is the only party member curious about how Peter can fly.  Tinkerbell rejoins the group conveniently so Peter can dust everyone with pixie dust but when Donald tries it out, he crashes and Tinkerbell silently mocks him.

You get to go through the hold of the ship to try to find Wendy and Kairi.  When you do find them, they are being held in a room above and the conversation takes place through the netting.  Wendy is the only one to be kind of worried about Kairi’s state other than Riku.  However, when Sora calls out for Kairi, her hand twitches.  Before anything can come of this, the girls get dragged off.

While that was going on, Wendy was revealed to not be a princess of heart.  Riku ordered her thrown overboard.  It was Captain Hook who took issue with that, though not out of decency, but because it was really hard capturing Wendy.  With the knowledge that Peter Pan is helping Sora (and that they’ve escaped the totally unguarded hold), Hook decides to use the ladies as hostages.

The gang eventually manages to get to Hook’s cabin.  Good news:  Riku and the cationic Kairi are there.  Bad news:  Riku immediately darkness teleports away and Sora now must do battle with his own shadow.

After the battle, you finally find Wendy.  Peter Pan totally just ditches you to go take Wendy back to London.  In fairness, she is out cold.  But he doesn’t even bother explaining that if you want to fly you need happy thoughts or whatever.  Dick.

Well, there’s nothing left to do now but go and fight Captain Hook.  Hook is also pretty annoyed that Riku bailed on him.  He at least has the decency to tell you that Riku went to Hollow Bastion.  Hook also reveals that he has captured Tinkerbell somehow.

Captain Hook uses his pirate heartless to try to send you overboard.  He’d watch, but the reappearance of the crocodile has given him a case of the vapors that he must recover from in his cabin.  Sora goes off the plank, only to finally fly.  Yay powers as the plot demands!  Peter Pan shows back up, all proud that you figured it out with no help from the stupid bastard himself.  He also makes some comment like “you didn’t think I wouldn’t come back, did you?” because Peter Pan is the worst.

There is a fight with hoards of heartless.  After that’s dealt with, Peter impersonates Smee (who’s disappeared) to get Captain Hook out of his cabin.  Now it’s time for the real boss fight.  It’s a swordfight where Hook throws exploding presents at you (why?) but it isn’t a difficult fight, especially since your cure is upped right before it.

Sora and co. defeat Captain Hook.  Peter takes Wendy back to London and you get some really nice views from the top of the Clock Tower which houses Big Ben.  Side story, but this is the most choked up I’ve gotten the whole game and it’s entirely unrelated to Kingdom Hearts.  I lived in England for a year and my fiance lives in London.  There’s a lot of feelings here, is what I’m saying.

Okay, enough reminiscing about England, back to the game.  You hit the panel of the clock that’s the wrong time until it reveals the keyhole.  Tinkerbell decides that she’s had enough of Peter’s crap and that she’s going with your team now.  There is a really great bit of foreshadowing from Wendy here.  If you go talk to her here, she tells you not to worry, if Sora keeps Kairi in his heart then he’s sure to find her.

Meanwhile Maleficent is chewing Riku out for teleporting like he did, with no vessel.  He was left unshielded in the vastness of space, which in this cosmology means that Riku was vulnerable to darkness leaching into him.  Maleficent also reveals that he had a stowaway.  Though not named, this stowaway is there for his princess.  You get a roar as a hint who it is.

And I think that’s a great note to end on before we head off to the big turning point of this game:  Hollow Bastion.

[khremixed]

Part 15:  Pumpkin Screams

Hot damn, Halloween Town!  I really like this world.  It has a really nice aesthetic, with a great color pallet and cute monster costumes for the trio.  It isn’t a very plot heavy world (in fact, it is totally possible to completely skip Halloween Town and go straight to Neverland if you want and nothing in the rest of the game would be different) but it does make for a nice breather before we hit some really tense stuff after it.  My one major gripe is that this is the first world where not having all of the original voice actors from the movie really grates on me.  I’ve noticed in other places (most notably in Agrabah with the Genie and Jasmine) but here is the worst.  At least Chris Sarandon returns as Jack Skellington to fight Oogie Boogie to the pain.

This is the first (and possible only) world that is not actually a Disney movie or original world to the series (at least before KH3 hits and we get some Pixar in here).  The Nightmare Before Christmas was distributed by Paramount, which is a company owned by Disney (it was actually the company that Disney used to release all of their PG13 stuff under).  It isn’t that big of a deal, but I found it interesting because this could be the precedent that they use to include anything from Disney’s other subsidiary companies in future games, most notably stuff like Star Wars or Marvel.  (For the record, I really hope they don’t go that route.)

You show up in Halloween Town to find the main square filled with heartless.  They are just floating there, though, not attacking no matter what you do.  You overhear Jack and the Mayor discuss how the heartless won’t dance like they need to for the Halloween Festival and the Jack is going to get Doctor Finkelstein to fix this.  At the lab, the good doctor is says he’s going to make a heart for the heartless, starting with a locked container.  Sora wants to help them, though Donald is against them.  Honestly, Sora makes a really good point.  If they can figure out a way to control the heartless (or at least a way without using darkness powers) than they won’t have to fight their way across the universe anymore.

First you need to find Sally at the cemetery to get forget-me-nots.  She is against the plan to get the heartless to dance.  Jack just brushes her off in his normal oblivious fashion.  Next you need “surprise” from the mayor (which is a memory game leading to a pumpkin explosion).  

While you have been collecting stuff from people, Lock, Shock, and Barrel have been conspiring to steal the heartless controlling heart for Oogie Boogie.  I don’t know when this is supposed to be set, in regards to the movie, by the way.  Sally and Jack are clearly not an item (she sputters over her feelings when you first meet her) but Oogie Boogie is really soundly thrashed at the end of the film.  My best guess is that anything from the movie that contradicts this game didn’t happen in this parallel dimension but everything else did.   Anyway, those three pesky kids rob Finkelstein and you need to rush after them to Oogie Boogie’s house.

Oogie Boogie’s house is terrible.  Now I don’t mean aesthetically.  It looks downright cool.  But I have a tendency to fall off stuff while enthusiastically whacking things with my keyblade and having to re-go up it multiple times sucks.

There is some catharsis in beating up a gang of kids though!  Once you thrashed Lock, Shock, and Barrel, you have to head all the way down to Oogie Boogie’s main lair.

When you get there, Jack demands Oogie Boogie return the heart.  Oogie responds by eating it.  He tries to call the heartless to do his bidding but is pissed when only two answer his call.  Well at least there are four schmucks there for him to take his anger out on.

Oogie Boogie has made the whole room into a roulette torture room.  This is one boss battle where Donald and Goofy are going to be even less helpful than normal.  Most of the battle is avoiding Oogie Boogie’s exploding dice and various torture machines while waiting for some buttons on the ground to glow.  Once they do and you manage to step on the correct one to fence the two of you in the same segment of the room, you can attack him.  It’s a little frustrating because being trapped most of the time unable to hit him makes the battle artificially long.  

When you’ve finally thrashed him enough, Oogie Boogie dissolves into a pool of bugs.  Jack is unmoved by this, simply noting that the heart was a failure.

After calmly leaving the manor, there is an earthquake.  The dust clears and it is revealed that Oogie Boogie is now 1) gigantic and 2) merged with his house.  Sora is as confused by this development as I am.  No time to dwell though, there are black globs on him that we need to destroy.  The only hard part of this is the hoards of gargoyle heartless that show up to bother you as you are trying to find the one glob you missed and you keep falling off the house/Oogie hybrid.

Once that is done, though, Oogie Boogie and his house go down in a cloud of dust.  This reveals the Halloween Town keyhole.  There is a pretty shot of Sora shooting the moon to have light cascade down onto the keyhole to lock it.  The last bit of roundup for the world is Jack admitting that maybe using heartless for the Halloween celebrations is not a good idea.  Sally promises to help him come up with a new idea.

[khremixed]

Walk into the club like. Tweet by booch!

[khremixed]

Part 14:  Down Where It’s Wetter

Ariel has the distinction of being our only female party member in this game, so that’s cool.

When the gummi ship first gets to Atlantica, there are some concerns about how they’re going to deal with being on a world so predominantly water.  Donald’s magic takes care to that.  One spell later and Sora is now a shark mermaid, Donald is half octopus, and Goofy is a sea turtle.  They also immediately run into Ariel and her friends.  This is good because Sebastian is willing to explain the swimming controls.

My biggest issue in Atlantica is how you now have to pay attention to the vertical and horizontal axes.  It can get overwhelming when heartless spawn way beneath you or way above.  Kingdom Hearts’ notoriously wonky camera doesn’t help.  I have a tendency to lock on to random enemies way more in this world than the others.

After the swimming tutorial, the heartless show up and Sora gets to fight them.  Ariel reveals that the heartless have been showing up more and King Triton has responded by putting the kingdom in essentially lockdown.  Sora offers to help Ariel back to the palace.

Atlantica isn’t the most intuitive place to navigate through and obviously the game devs knew this, since there are trident arrows everywhere pointing the way to the palace.  

They get to the palace, pursued by heartless.  Triton blasts them apart, because while he’s got his trident, they aren’t getting in his house.  He then moves on to a busy schedule of being an overprotective father.  Ariel wasn’t supposed to go outside.  The trio are strangers who quickly try to lie that they are from another ocean.  Goofy spills that they are looking for the keyhole and Triton loses it.  He claims there is no such thing and tries to ground Ariel.  Ariel, being a teenager (this is before the movie so she’s fifteen), swims off in a huff.  Sora, Donald, and Goofy follow.  Triton just wants his little girl safe.  Sebastian tries to get more info on the keyhole, but even being a professional yes man doesn’t help him her.  Instead Sebastian tells Triton that their suspicions were correct:  Ursula’s grotto is ground zero for the heartless invasion.

Meanwhile, back with our heroes, they’ve headed to Ariel’s grotto.  Sora and Ariel bond over their shared desire to see other worlds while Sora tries desperately not to reveal that he’s actually in the process of doing that right now.  Ariel is all fired up to find the keyhole, especially because she’s tired of being treated like a child by her father.

The search for the keyhole eventually takes our heroes to grabbing a dolphin to be taken up current to the sunken ship.  There are a few chests inside the ship itself but that’s not really a top priority because a goddamn shark busts through cabin’s window like the Kool Aid Man.  It’s a jump scare (there is a little foreshadowing of the shark’s shadow when you go down into the ship).  The chest next to the now gaping hole has a crystal trident.  

Leaving the ship triggers the fight with the shark.  It’s very similar to Sabor back in Deep Jungle, and after this initial encounter, will operate the same in randomly showing up for a quick miniboss fight in different areas.  

After that, everyone heads back to Ariel’s grotto.  Sora places the crystal trident in the conspicuous trident-shaped plaque on the wall.  Unfortunately, this is the exact moment Triton chooses to show up to chastise his daughter about not staying in her room.  He spots the crystal trident and blasts it apart.  This is kind of horrifying.  A heartbroken Ariel swims off.  Triton deflects from all that by confronting Sora about how he’s obviously not a mermaid but the keyblade wielder and he shouldn’t be meddling in other worlds’ affairs (and also totally ignores Sora’s very good question about where Triton learned this stuff).  As Triton views it, the keyblade master is not a force of good but one of chaos.  That’s a really cool concept and wish it was explored literally ever again.  Triton swims off with a final “thanks for saving my daughter but fuck off”.  

Cutting over to Ariel, she’s having a good cry over her messed up relationship with her father.  Flotsam and Jetsam find her.  They tell her Ursula can help and right on time, the sea witch herself shows up to offer poison honey words of comfort.  Ursula knows about Ariel’s desire to see the universe and says that’s not a hard wish, I mean, Ariel’s new friends are from another world.  Ariel is shocked.  Ursula continues that it is the keyblade helping them travel but, hey, Ariel’s got something like that too, doesn’t she?

Sora heads back to the palace to find everything having gone pear shaped.  Ursula now has the trident, Triton is injured, Ariel is upset that this isn’t what she wanted, and Ursula is ready to send everyone to the Realm of Darkness.  Too bad the keyhole isn’t there.  Ursula doesn’t have time to dwell on that, though, as Sora’s crashed the party, so she just teleports away.

Fixing past mistakes and getting the trident back means going back to the sunken ship.  Yeah, there is a lot of backtracking in this world.  Behind one of the crashed smaller boats is a button that most of the group can’t get to but luckily they have Sebastian with them this time.  He gets in there and secret passage opens up, leading to Ursula’s grotto.

This first fight with Ursula is in my opinion the worse one.  I know there are people who hate the second fight (more on that soon), but I can’t stand having to lock on to her cauldron and cast magic on it while avoiding being hit by the goddamn eels.  Until her cauldron gets overloaded with magic, you can’t attack her directly.  At least when you beat her, Flotsam and Jetsam die in a cloud of ink.  Ursula swears revenge and swims off.  And we all get the mermaid kick ability!  Our days of riding dolphins are over.  Now we are the ones who can swim against the current.

There’s a passageway on the other side of the current from where the entrance to the sunken ship is.  With our newfound ability to swim better, we get over there to confront Ursula again.

She’s ready and waiting with villain monologue and spell making her a giant.  This fight can be really tricky, though casting aero and attacking the back of her head as much as you can helps a lot.  She’s got some nasty spells to watch out for.  Once Ursula goes down in a cloud of ink, the trident is reclaimed.

Ariel apologizes to her dad.  Triton admits that his strict parenting was to blame and explains why he destroyed the crystal trident.  See, by placing it in the plaque, the group was unwittingly going to reveal the location of the keyhole.  Now he wants nothing more than for Sora to lock it.

Ariel uses the trident to reveal the keyhole.  After Sora locks it, he apologizes about not telling her the truth about being from another world.  She’s okay that and reiterates her desire to travel too, hoping one day to find her own way.  And with Sebastian wanting no part of her hypothetical journey, we are done with Atlantica.  Or at least until KH2, when we’ll get a very different experience.

[khremixed]

Part 13:  From Hell’s Heart I Stab at Thee

We’ve waited long and hard for this people and we are finally here.  The world where we finally, finally get high jump.

Also there is some shit about Pinocchio and Riku does unambiguously evil shit and the nature of the soul is discussed.  So let’s do this!

Before we get there, though, we need to go back to Traverse Town and actually meet Pinocchio.  Once you get the green trinity and can unlock the moogle shop, head to the Accessory Shop.  Pinocchio is chilling on the ground and talking to him unlocks a cutscene.  Jiminy and Pinocchio have a whole conversation about lying.  Both of them seem to have assumed that Geppetto was with the other.  

With that out of the way, try to fly somewhere on the right side of the map past Agrabah.  Unfortunately we aren’t getting there anytime soon, because right the fuck out of nowhere Monstro comes and swallows the gummi ship.  (Also, in my most recent play through, I realized I’d never met Pinocchio after Agrabah and I decided to just go back to my last save to meet him, only to find I never saved following beating Jafar and had to go through those fights again.  Whoops!)

This leads into a flashback I’m pretty sure is a Final Mix addition with Sora and Riku when they were roughly five and six respectively.  Sora tries to convince Riku that there is a monster in the secret place on Destiny Islands, but the exploration there shows it was just the wind howling through the hole in the roof of the cave. One thing I noticed is that the walls don’t have all the graffiti on them, so I guess my assumption that generations of kids were drawing there was wrong.  Riku notices the very obvious door, but since it won’t open, he quickly deems it boring.  Riku then makes Sora promise that when they are older, they are going to leave the Destiny Islands and go exploring places that aren’t so dull.  That’s cool with Sora, but for now they are going to have to settle for going to see the new girl at the mayor’s house.

Sora wakes up inside the mouth of the whale and it is clear that the whale has been swallowing a lot of ships, but they are all wooden.  Who the fuck is using wooden ships to fly around space?  Like, that can’t be airtight?  I mean, I guess this universe has an atmosphere in outer space because that’s the only way Monstro makes sense.  Probably is oxygen rich too, judging by his size.

Anyway, Donald and Goofy are pissed because someone keeps throwing items at them from on top of a woodpile, and wouldn’t you know, it’s Pinocchio!  This is somewhat worrying because he was last seen in Traverse Town.  Pinocchio grabs a thing and heads back to the only intact boat in the whale’s mouth.

When you catch up to Pinocchio, Sora asked how he got there.  GOOD FUCKING QUESTION.  We never get an answer, by the way.  Geppetto introduces himself as Pinocchio’s father instead.  

Gepetto apparently never bothered to instill his child with a fear of strangers, because Pinocchio goes wandering off after Riku.  How long does everyone think Pinocchio is going to last as a real boy before he gets himself killed through negligence?  Yeah Blue Fairy, giving him a sense of honesty was a way more important priority that teaching the kid common sense.

It’s pretty gross that this level is the literal belly of a whale.  Walking around makes all these little squishing noises.  But it does mean I’m singing the Decemberists to myself the whole time.  I also wish the heartless in here were more themed after bacteria like the boss.  I’ve never gotten the ghosts either here or in Atlantica.  Never.

A bigger issue with the level design is that all of the chambers basically look the same and they all seem to cross back into each other.  It makes navigating around confusing as all hell.  There are also sections that are easy to fall off and you have to start completely over.  

Anyway, you run after Pinocchio.  Sora tells the puppet that now is not the time to be playing games, but a voice behind says “But I thought you liked playing games, Sora.”  Riku follows up with asking if maybe Sora’s too cool for that now that he’s the keyblade wielder.  Riku grabs Pinocchio and drags him off.  

After going through the awful maze that is the inside of Monstro, Sora and co. manage to catch up.  Before they do, we do get a little scene with Riku and Maleficent.  She wants to know if he still cares about Sora.  Riku brushes that off, saying he’s just messing with his ex-bff, and Maleficent gives some of her usual “beware the darkness in your heart” advice, which Riku does not appreciate.  When Sora gets there, we get a fight.  Sora wants to know what’s up with Riku and Riku retorts that all Sora seems to do now is “run around and show off that keyblade”.  He frames it as “Do you even want to save Kairi?”  Their fight is derailed by Pinocchio screaming in the next room.

Heading to the bowels (ew), we find that Pinocchio’s managed to get himself trapped by the Parasite Cage.  Riku is more than happy to jump into battle with Sora and company, and for a moment, we get what should have been if Riku hadn’t ended up at Hollow Bastion.  They work well together.  Too bad it won’t last.

Parasite Cage coughs out Pinocchio and Riku immediately follows the pupped down the hole.  When Sora goes to, he finds Geppetto pleading with Riku to return Pinocchio.  Riku refuses.  See he’s there because Pinocchio is a puppet with a heart and he gives us our first hint that Kairi has lost hers.  However, he’s not going to elaborate.

The fight with Parasite Cage disturbed Monstro enough that the water in his mouth has gone down, allowing more areas to be accessed.  Even better, there’s a new chest on Geppetto’s boat that gives us the best gift of all.  Oh high jump, how I’ve missed thee.

Heading to the stomach by way of the throat (again, ew, and also does the internal anatomy of this whale make any sense?) we find Riku and a non-responsive Pinocchio.  Riku hopes that “a puppet that’s lost its heart to the heartless” is the key to saving Kairi.  He tries to convince Sora to join him but Sora isn’t having it.  This isn’t right.  Riku is angered that Sora would choose a puppet over him and Kairi.  Sora’s retort, “Heart or no heart, at least he still has a conscious” is great from both a comeback point of view and also because said conscious runs over to beg Pinocchio to wake up.  For probably the first time, Jiminy is thrilled when Pinocchio lies, saying he isn’t going to make it, so it turns out that Pinocchio is actually totally fine.  Sora and Riku gear up to fight when Parasite Cage shows up again to crash the party.  Riku teleports away and we get a reprise of the previous fight, now with acid!  After killing the Parasite Cage, Sora tries to find Riku, having not seen him leave.

Monstro sneezes you out and everything’s okay!  The team do go “hm, I’m sure Pinocchio and Geppetto are fine” which is kind of a dick move.  I would be way more concerned considering that they are traveling space in a wooden boat.  Which for the record they didn’t even take, it is still in Monstro on subsequent visits.

The last bit we get is Riku and Maleficent on Hook’s ship.  Riku has indeed managed to find Kairi, but her heart is gone.  Maleficent says it was the heartless’s doing and that the only way to find out how to save her is to open the door to Kingdom Hearts with the seven princesses of heart.  I think that this is the first title drop, by the by.  Riku agrees to help, because he’s gone too far down this road to stop now, and Maleficent gives him the power to control the heartless.  This will end well.

I’m torn about how I feel about Monstro.  The level design is, as I said before, terrible.  But storywise, this stuff is great.  The contrast between the technically not alive Pinocchio with a heart and the real girl Kairi without one is fantastic.  Honestly it might be the best use of a Disney character within the first game.  Pinocchio having a heart is also somewhat retroactively foreshadowing for Dream Drop Distance, so put a pin in that.  We will be revisiting this idea.

Riku’s arc also gets a lot of development here.  Earlier I said that I believed Riku is mainly jealous that Sora is special now but I’m revising that theory a bit.  Don’t get me wrong, jealousy is still a big component of this fall to the dark side (especially considering his “too cool now that you’ve got a keyblade” comments), but I think that Riku ultimately is more upset about Sora having new friends than I originally gave him credit for.  Riku strikes me as the kind of person that makes friends with a lot of effort, unlike Sora who is your friend if you are within each other’s general proximity and you aren’t actively evil.  Even worse, while Sora has trusted companions, Riku is surrounded by the villains who he knows better than to trust completely.  I think that Riku is also refusing to acknowledge the jealousy that is going on by convincing himself that Sora really never cared about him or Kairi.  To Riku, he’s the one that’s actually doing something to help her.  And Maleficent is fueling these thoughts for her own gain.  But she hasn’t been totally successful and knows it.  Riku’s attempts to convince Sora to help him at the end are definitely from a place of wanting them to go back to their previous dynamic.  But it’s too late.

Speaking of Maleficent, I honestly couldn’t remember if she already knows that Kairi is one of the princesses of heart or not.  The more I think about it, the more I want to say no, she thinks Wendy is the last one.  Right?  We’ll see, I guess.  

[khremixed]

Part 12: Arabian Days

Now that our gummi ship has been improved with the power to go through wormholes, we can visit all new worlds.  First up is Agrabah!

We get a little prologue to the main adventure by seeing Maleficent checking up with how Jafar’s part of the plan is coming.  It’s all good except for the fact he hasn’t managed to find the keyhole and now he’s lost Jasmine.  Good going there, bro.  He summons some heartless to go find her, and Maleficent warns him not to seep himself too much into darkness, it has a tendency to be bad for the user down the line.  Jafar blows her off.  Meanwhile, Jasmine is hiding in a merchant stall behind them.

Sora, Donald, and Goofy start off their trip here with a bang, as the game just immediately throws you into a battle with no warning.  You explore the city and eventually find Jasmine hiding behind some barrels.  She starts to tell you that she’s the sultan’s daughter, but after he was deposed by his vizier, she was being helped by someone.  That someone is now off taking care of something else.  That’s all you get out of her before Jafar shows up.

Jafar tries to sweet talk Jasmine into coming with him, with some crap about finding her suitable company or whatever.  He then switches gears to threatening “the boy with the key”.  Jasmine runs off and you get to fight some heartless.  Good times.  More exploring of the city after that has you find Aladdin’s house and the carpet trapped under some boxes.  You help get him free and he flies off to the desert.

This initial section of exploring Agrabah really highlights just how empty this world feels.  The previous places we’ve been had good reasons for having no one around, and even they weren’t this totally barren.  Wonderland had the Queen’s whole court to see.  Deep Jungle has the excuse of being a jungle.  The residents of Atlantica are hiding out while the heartless are running around.  Traverse Town and Halloween Town both have a bunch of townies and the implication that more are in the buildings you can’t enter.  Here, there are like three human residents (five if you count the two merchants who only appear after you beat Jafar and the heartless aren’t spawning).  It’s a city in broad daylight with dozens of market stalls and no one.  This unfortunately won’t be the last time the series has this problem.

Leaving the city and heading off with the carpet to the desert, you find Aladdin in a sinkhole.  You go to save him from the swarms of heartless that show up, and he eventually pulls out the lamp and uses his first wish to get rid of the heartless.  We get a whole thing from the Genie about his deal (three wishes, small lamp, etc.).

Aladdin is about to use his wish to become a prince, and explains that it’s to be with Jasmine.  Sora finally remembers that Jasmine needs help and everyone heads back to Agrabah.  I’ve got some questions here.  In this version of Aladdin it seems like Aladdin already knew about the Cave of Wonders and headed there to get the lamp to make the wish specifically.  But he was in the middle of protecting Jasmine from a coup.  I really see no reason that he would leave her behind other than because the plot says that he did.  Especially since he never actually uses any of his wishes for selfish reasons in the end.  Anyway, on the way back Aladdin promises that he will free the Genie with his third wish.

Getting back, you find that Jafar has gotten to Jasmine first.  Aladdin uses his second wish to save her, until Iago snags the lamp and Jafar undoes the wish.  Jasmine is dropped into a large pot.  This begins the great pot centipede fight, which is overall kind of fun.  Alas, though, Jafar escapes with Jasmine.

We now head as a group to the Cave of Wonders.  There’s a miniboss fight here against the possessed lion head doorway.  It can be a little frustrating because it is hard to reach the eyest to smack them and it keeps summoning heartless.

The inside of the Cave of Wonders is the best area of Agrabah.  It’s bright and colorful.  There’s a bit of a maze but it isn’t that bad (even if I have a tendency to fall off the upper floors.  You have to destroy a pillar to get to Jafar and the still knocked out Jasmine.

Jafar has used his second wish to reveal the keyhole.  Don’t really know what his plan is here.  None of the other villains ever seem to care about keyholes other than that they exist.  Whatever, time for a boss fight!

I would like to point out that the Genie has limitations in the movie, one of them being that he won’t kill anyone.  This Genie has no such rule.  Avoiding him in the fight is easy because he’ll yell out beforehand that he’s coming with apologies and warnings.  The battle is mostly hard because Jafar won’t stay still.  He flies around the room and you can’t cut across to get to him because he’ll create and ice storm that will decimate your health.

Beating Jafar means that he will use his third wish to become a genie.  He also takes out the center of the room and you get to go in after him.  I forgot that this was a two part boss fight.  I thought the second half, with the lava room and chasing Iago to get the lamp, was in II.  Nope!  Honestly, that wouldn’t have made sense because he’s good by that point.  I prefer this second part.  The shifting platforms are fun.  Once you’ve sufficiently attacked a parrot, Sora tells Jafar get in his lamp and the day is won!

Well except for while that is going on, Jasmine wakes up only to have an unseen figure kidnap her.  Sora and co. get back to the keyhole, where Aladdin freaks out over her missing while Sora locks the world up.  The Cave of Wonders starts to collapse and Aladdin has to be literally dragged away.  It’s kind of weird that no one suggests that maybe Jasmine just woke up and wandered off somewhere in the Cave, but maybe they simply didn’t have time for it.  The escape sequence has never made sense to me.  It feels like a minigame, in a similar way to the sliding section in Deep Jungle, but it isn’t.  You can literally not do anything as you escape and you’ll be fine.

Aladdin is bummed that now Jasmine is missing entirely.  Sora promises to look for her on their journey but they have to turn down Aladdin’s request to come.  It would be too much like meddling.  Genie makes the point that Aladdin can just wish her back, no pain, right there, but instead Aladdin frees him.  Sweet, but ultimately stupid.  The reason this occurs is because Aladdin freeing Genie is in the movie and is one of the most important emotional beats of the film.  Here it’s just absurd.  There are fucking four other people in the room.  I don’t think Genie would begrudge anyone for Aladdin passing Sora the lamp and Sora wishing Jasmine back.  Hell, between Aladdin, Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Jiminy, they’ve got thirteen wishes.  Pump the brakes, y’all, and make a spreadsheet.  Off the top of my head you can wish for:

Jasmine being saved

Alice being saved

Knowing where Kairi

Knowing where the King is

Knowing where Riku is

Getting all the Ansem report pages

Getting better equipment to fight the Heartless

Finding out what the deal with all the Heartless is

That’s five wishes left over to free the Genie!  Use your resources better!!  

Short sighted decisions aside, Aladdin asks if the Genie can go with the trio to find Jasmine.  The Genie does his whole thing about how he no longer has to take orders but this is a favor.  Which means we get a new summon!

Back with Team Evil, Hades is concerned about Jafar, but Maleficent thinks he got what he deserved for being an idiot.  Riku says that he fulfilled his part of the bargain (i.e. kidnapping Jasmine).  Maleficent tells him that his ship awaits to take him to Kairi and Captain Hook says that this will be no pleasure cruise.  Look Hook, my nephew’s favorite show used to be Jake and the Neverland Pirates.  I know how you run your ship.  Riku’s going to have a great time with Sharky and Bones.

I like that even though Riku has decided to go down a road paved with good intentions, he is still smart enough to be suspicious about why Maleficent’s intent.  He asks her what she’s getting out of all of this (which is dumb, she got the girl you kidnapped out of it dude).  Maleficent tells him that he’s like a son to her and touches his cheek.  It’s super awkward and I think that’s because Maleficent has no social skills when it comes to being nice to people.  “I seriously doubt that,” Riku says, as he pushes her hand away.

Remember how I said back at the end of the Olympus Coliseum section that Cloud is Riku’s tale in miniature.  Yeah, this whole scene has highlighted that.  Evil figure that the guy really should know better than to work with, a morally shady act being asked for, a reunion being the price.  It’s the whole thing.  Hades is even hanging out in the background the whole time!

[khremixed]

Oh hey I summarized KH1–

[khremixed]

Part 11:  Back at it again in Traverse Town

Since we’ve now beaten the first three worlds (huzzah!) we have nowhere to go but Traverse Town.  It took me forever the first time to figure out what to do next.  Because I was a dumb preteen and missed the fact that you learn the red trinity at the end of Deep Jungle.  But since I’m older and wiser and have played this before, I now know all the tricks.

The team gets back to Traverse Town and decides to show Leon the weird gummi the tree in Deep Jungle pooped out.  This is a dumb plan because he clearly graduated in stoic mercenary studies with a minor in bitchy loner, but I guess they really don’t know that many people who can help, so what can you do.  Yuffie tells you that he’s down in an underground cavern behind a storm drain in the back alley.  So you just go to the drain and destroy town property to access it.  Dick move on our parts, really.

The underground cavern is a pretty cool area.  Not much to do in the way of gameplay, but a really nice ambiance.  Leon is practicing his moves, his favorite hobby after wallowing in manpain, and Aerith is watching him.  I assume she’s there for “safety”, if you know what I mean.  I see and respect you Aerith.

They are thrilled that you’ve managed to close some keyholes, because that’s the way that the heartless enter worlds and make them disappear.  There is also speculation that Traverse Town has a keyhole of its own.  Leon gives you a stone and sends you to Cid, because really.  That’s Cid’s field.  If you want waltzing lessons, then go to Leon.

Cid berates you for flying around space without any basic knowledge, to which I’m like fair enough.  It’s a navigation gummi, so now we can go to some cool new worlds.  In exchange for installing it, Cid gives Sora a book that he tried restoring, telling Sora to deliver it to Merlin.  One, this is the 100 Acre Wood book and it’s going to be a sidequest/miniworld throughout the game, so I’ll have a roundup of the whole thing when I complete it down the line.  Two, why was an engineer trying to restore a book?  Like, I get that he’s running an unrelated store to his field, dude’s gotta eat, but book restoration isn’t really an easy task.  There was no one more qualified in town?  Whatever.

You also hear the bells go off and everyone is surprised but Cid tells you to check it out on your own time, deliver the book.  So you do, the stone that Leon gave you turns out to be Simba, and then you leave.  And run right into Riku.

Sora is thrilled to see Riku, who now has a cool, evil looking sword.  Riku is happy to see him to and even more excited about how they are finally out in the universe like they’d always dreamed.  Riku is as cocky as always and he starts in control of this conversation.  He’s surprised that Kairi isn’t with Sora, but not really concerned.  Most importantly of all, while Riku is saying that Sora shouldn’t worry, he’s going to keep him safe, Sora kills the heartless that was sneaking up on him.

This leads into Sora trying to tell Riku how hard they searched for him and Kairi all over the other worlds.  He breezes over who Donald and Goofy are, which dick move dude.  Introduce your friends to each other.  Anyway, Donald starts with how amazing it is that Sora is the keyblade wielder, and while Sora is taking offense to Donald’s backhanded compliment, Riku disappears.  Sora isn’t concerned about this because he at least now has confirmation that Riku is okay, which means Kairi is also okay.

Our trio heads to the abandoned house, now the small house after being co-oped by Leon’s crew.  This is where Sora learns of Maleficent.  Leon’s group asserts that it was Maleficent who led the heartless in the destruction of their world nine years ago and she’s doing the same thing to Traverse Town.  I’d totally forgotten this.  And I think it is fascinating, because later revelations prove that that’s not what happened to Radiant Garden/Hollow Bastion.  It also means that Radiant Garden/Hollow Bastion was destroyed only a year after the events of BBS.  I think I’d assumed that there was a larger gap there, but thinking about it, that timeline fits.  It has to have been nine years ago so that Kairi could be teleported to the Destiny Islands when she was five.

There follows a cutscene of Riku and Maleficent outside the house looking in where she tells him that he can see that she was right, Sora simply replaced Riku and Kairi with new friends.  This is punctuated with them watching Sora pal around with Donald and Goofy through the window of the small house.  She tells him to forget Sora and Riku leaves with her.

First, Riku isn’t worried about Kairi not being with Sora, while I think Sora is kinda of worried that Riku doesn’t have Kairi.  Sora has always seemed like he believed that his two friends were together and now he knows that’s not true.  On Riku’s side, I think he might be relieved that Sora isn’t with Kairi.  Because remember, both of these guys have feelings for her, but Riku is the one who is taking it more seriously.  If Sora and Kairi had been traveling around together for however long it has been since the Destiny Islands were destroyed, then that would give Sora an edge up in the fight for her affections.

Second, I think that it is important to note that the change in the whole reunion comes with Sora proving to be competent by killing a heartless.  This is the moment where Riku has to first acknowledge Sora, not as his sidekick, but as an equal.  Maleficent convinces Riku to leave with her later by saying that Sora replaced him and Kairi, but I think she’s more giving him an excuse to leave.  You can certainly read Riku’s decision to leave when he did as him realizing how close Sora’s become to Donald and Goofy, but I don’t.  Sora’s attention in the whole scene until the very end is on Riku, to the point where he can’t even spare a moment to introduce Donald and Goofy when Riku asks who they are.  Even his scwabble with Donald is about Riku coming with them.  No, the reason why Riku leaves is because Donald mentions that Sora is the keyblade wielder.  Sora has proven to be special, something Riku always believed he was.  This envy is the true wedge between Sora and Riku, not the fact that Sora has new companions.  And I think Maleficent knows that and chooses instead to convince Riku that it’s Donald and Goofy who are the problem.  If Riku recognizes his own envy, you see, he could possibly choose to put it aside and go back to the path of good.

Anyway, back to the game and not speculating about Riku’s gradual fall to the dark side.  Leon’s crew mention to Sora that there is some rumor about the bell tower, which we’d heard go off a little earlier, and that maybe Sora should check it out, hint hint.  This is the bell tower over the gizmo shop in the Second District, which had previously been blocked off with boxes, but this time you find them moved.  You ring the bell, and with each tolling of the bell, the mosaic on the fountain across the square turns.  On the third ring causes it to reveal a butterfly picture that reveals the town’s keyhole.

Closing the keyhole is more difficult than just running up to it, because the armor boss from before is back, but this time he flips some parts around to become a more powerful version.  A more powerful version that is an energy cannon.  But beating him allows you to close the keyhole.  And you get aero!

Before you leave, you can go talk to Cid.  He’s quit his shop and become a fulltime gummi ship supplier/mechanic.  This seems like a shortsighted business plan.  Who’s his clientele other than Sora?  And I’m never going to buy anything from him because I hate dealing with the gummi ship.

[khremixed]

Part 10:  Villain Fun Time!

So we’ve gotten a few cutscenes of the villains at this point.  Mostly just some cryptic “ha, that boy and his weird animal friends think that they’re so cool, but they’ll never suspect our REAL plan” stuff.  I think that mostly the villain council scenes serve to give teasers of the worlds you’ll get to go explore down the line.  The major exception to that is Maleficent, whose home world we won’t see until BBS.

You get the feeling that none of these guys like each very much and would be at each other’s throats if it wasn’t for Maleficent keeping them in line with her sheer presence.

The most important thing that is revealed in these cutscenes is that they have Alice for some unknown reason and that she has been labeled as a “princess” by them for some reason.  I would like to point out that from the point of view of our heroes (and from the player up until the first villain scene after beating the boss in Traverse Town), the heartless attacks are random.  It’s almost like a cancer.  Sure, everyone has darkness in their hearts, but not everyone is going to be consumed by it like this.  It is an infestation without any clear purpose behind it.  But now we, the player, know better, if not what the actual plan is.  It is a tantalizing teaser of stuff to come without too many cards being played at once.

[khremixed]

Part 9:  Gorillas in the Trees

When you get to Deep Jungle, Donald wants to bypass the whole place because it is a backwoods that the King surely is not bothering with, while Sora is concerned that maybe his friends are there.  They fight and crash the gummi ship in a way that will not hinder them from leaving later and Sora gets separated from the other two.

It’s okay because Tarzan comes to hang with Sora and Sora has another Kairi hallucination while trying to overcome the language barrier.  Tarzan is a way better party member than Donald could ever hope to be, for the record.  Sure, Tarzan still won’t heal you either but he doesn’t get knocked unconscious at the drop of a hat.  Speaking of Donald, he and Goofy see a gorilla poop out a gummi and decide that means maybe the King IS here after all.  They then get found by Clayton, and for a big game hunter, I find it totally unrealistic that he doesn’t just shoot them dead on the spot.  They are giant animals and he’s a horrible person!  It’s totally out of character.

There is also this tree sliding section and I’ve never figured out why it is here.  If you know, please tell me.

Everyone gets brought back to Jane’s tent and she fangirls about gorillas.  The game has decided adapt out Jane’s dad, so it appears that she is Jane Goodalling it up herself.  Good on her.  Sora and Donald are glad to see each other before remembering that they are currently involved in a pointless fight.  Sora is convinced now that Riku and Kairi are here and you have to search the campsite for Jane’s slides so Tarzan can think how none of them represent the word he’s looking for because expecting that of six slides is ridiculous.  One of the slides is of a castle, which is important because Sora thinks it’s weird how familiar it looks despite being like nothing he’s ever seen back home.

Clayton points out that he and Jane have been in the jungle for weeks and have only found one person:  Tarzan.  He then suggests that maybe Kairi and Riku are with the gorillas and so we get to take a trip to watch Tarzan plead with his parents over letting his friends come to the house.  Clayton comes too because everyone is genre blind around him.  Eventually the group catches him try to kill Turk (the small female gorilla that is bros with Tarzan).  This leads to the gorillas seemingly rejecting Tarzan’s pleas (this is inferred because they never talk) and to Clayton being chewed out by Jane and co.  His anger and greed summons the heartless, so I’d say that that went well.

I got to say that it’s pretty cool how no heartless show up until Clayton snaps.  Before that you are just fight Sabor whenever he shows up, but after that you have monkey heartless.  Though based on their tails they should be new world monkeys, not old world.

Also, sidenote, but in the scene where Clayton is confronted by everyone for trying to kill Turk, everyone has this death glare but Goofy, who’s just smiling like always in the background.  It’s great.

Anyway, eventually Jane and Turk get kidnapped by Clayton (Turk isn’t even a human woman and she still has only served to be threatened in this game) and you have to go save them by hitting a giant black fruit until spores come out.  This was just a distraction because somehow Clayton managed to corral all of the gorillas and is going to shoot Tarzan’s mom!    

Luckily Sora and co. arrive just in time to save everyone.  My favorite part is how the gorillas all casually stroll away from danger.  There is no urgency.  Clayton goes nuts and summons an invisible chameleon to ride into battle.  Points for style.

Story Time!  It took me forever to beat Clayton and his stupid chameleon the first time when I played this when I was 12.  By forever I mean like months, because I would get so frustrated I had to put the game down and seethe.  It is one of two battles in this game that were so difficult that I cried in frustration (the other is way, way later and if you’ve played the game, you know the one).  Adding insult to injury is the fact that when you do beat them, you get cure.  Anyway, years later, in college, the girl who lived in the dorm room across from mine revealed that she had the same experience (though she never went back to the game).  Which is weird, because since beating it the first time, this battle’s been a cakewalk.

Also, I hate when video game opponents have healing potions or spells.  Cheaters.

The waterfall caverns are beautiful.  I either actively dislike most of Deep Jungle’s design because it’s way to green and impossible to tell apart at times or just kind of ugly, but this part is great.  The scene of all of the butterflies around the keyhole is one of those shots that stays with a person.

When Tarzan gives his explanation of what his grunting thing means, Jane immediately goes “oh, you mean heart” and like, what?  How did you get to heart from “the place where friends are” or whatever.  It was shoehorned in if you ask me.

Sora and Donald makeup and everyone’s happy, except Donald because Turk has taken a shine to him.  He protests because his girlfriend would literally murder him.

Before we leave, I do have one other thing to cover.  Deep Jungle will never come up again.  There’s apparently some legal issue with the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate over the rights, so in every game and manga adaptation has just ignored it.  For all intents and purposes, this world has been excised quietly from canon.  Since it is the least plot relevant, that’s fine, but still a little sad.  I don’t even really like it that much.

[khremixed]

Part 8:  Holding Out for a Hero

Olympus Coliseum is another world that is light on plot.  Come to think of it, that’s true off all three of the first group you can visit.  That said, this is the one you will be visiting the most.

You initially get there and meet Phil, who mistakes you for Hercules because he lacks the ability to tell people’s voices apart.  (Sidenote:  I love Phil’s pronunciation of “games” and use it all the time.)  When Sora’s weak noodle arms fail to move the pedestal that Phil wants moved, he goes back to Phil and Phil insults him for being young and short.  He at least lets you take some tests to prove that you’re a hero.

I have no idea how smashing barrels in a specific time period shows my worthiness of being a hero, and really, neither does Phil because he still rejects Sora and co.’s bid to enter the games.

Also, okay, I get why Sora is so gung-ho on entering the tournament.  He’s fourteen and has a competitive streak.  But why are Goofy and Donald enabling this behavior?  The next world has a whole subplot about Donald not wanting to stop there because he thinks it is a waste of time.  Of course, winning a tournament directly serves in showing the greatness of Donald Duck, while Deep Jungle has no purpose to him.

Sora leaves when it becomes clear that Phil isn’t going to be budging on this point any time soon.  On the way out though, he meets Hades.

Hades gives Sora the entry ticket and again I have to ask, how are Donald and Goofy not doing anything about this?  They are the adult supervision here.  They should be the ones stopping this stranger danger.  But guess no one cares, time to compete!

The tournament is different rounds of different groups of heartless, with fun names for each group.  My favorite thing is that Phil tells you straight out that the heartless entered the tournament (he calls them weirdos or something).  Sure, they may seem like hoards of thoughtless monsters, but they are smart enough to organize for semiprofessional sports.  A few rounds in you get a shot of Hades telling Cloud, who is working for him and has Vincent’s hand for some reason, to just murder you.  There is no ambiguity here.  Hades says straight out that Cloud was hired to kill Hercules, and Sora and co. are acceptable casualties.  And when you fight Cloud a few rounds after that and win, Hades sets loose his backup plan of Cerberus to kill everyone.  Hell, you don’t even need to win.  If you lose, Cloud decides killing a kid is not a thing he’s prepared to do and Hades sends in the dog.  Hercules shows up to hold off Cerberus while everyone except him and Cloud get to safety, but after saving, you can just go right back in.  It’s like a tag team match, with you relieving Hercules and an unconscious Cloud.

Cerberus really justifies the existence of dodge roll.  Rolling around you can get away from his horrible black vomit that shoots out of the ground.  Which is helpful when at least one party member (Donald) is unconscious the whole fight.

Am I still mad that Hercules has to tell Phil that he wore down Cerberus?  Yes.  Yes I am.  Asshole.

Phil and Hercules also label our heroes as junior heroes, which I’m okay with in the case of Sora.  I don’t mean to harp on this, but he’s fourteen.  He still has a lot of growing up to do and he’s only been the chosen one for a short period of time.  Yeah, he’s started to save people, but this is just the beginning of his career.  But with Donald and Goofy, it’s kind of insulting.  They are adults.  Both of them have fairly prestigious jobs in their home world as well as their own background in heroism.  Phil’s just being a dick here.

When you leave the room you get a cutscene with Cloud, and this scene is the most important part of the whole coliseum business.  It’s like two minutes with Cloud telling you that he is trying to find someone special to him and since Hades offered to help, Cloud fell into darkness.  Guys, this is Riku’s story.  In the original version of the game, Riku has been missing for three or four hours, no hints to his whereabouts.  But before Riku shows back up soon, we have Cloud telling us Riku’s deal.  It’s really good foreshadowing.

The sort of button on the world is Hades seething over Sora’s victory but coming to the conclusion that he can just kill everyone later.  Maleficent shows up to taunt him.  And from this point forward, Hades is pretty much out of her cabal.  Sure, he still shows up to the meetings but the only schemes he’s participating in are those to kill Hercules and now Sora.

That’s it for now about the Colosseum.  I’ll come back after we are through with Hollow Bastion to do a tournament roundup.