memaha19

[memaha19]

My poster for Episode 81 of Batman The Animated Series “Harley’s Holiday”

[memaha19]

Let’s Play Kingdom Hearts re:Chain of Memories! Day 1, 2, & 3

So. Chain of Memories. This is probably my least favorite Kingdom Hearts game. I mentioned in my initial post that I really can’t stand the gameplay and that I’ve never managed to finish this game and that, if I can’t finish it this time, I’ll just move on to the next game.

(Also, it’s always bothered me just a tiny bit that, rather than re-doing the animation, they tried to fit the English dialogue to the Japanese lip movement. I understand re:CoM is a kind of “corner cutting money-grab” and they probably didn’t have the time or the desire to re-do all the lip animations, but it leads to some really awkward English dialogue. Also, I’m gonna say it. Marluxia and Larxene’s Japanese voice actors are much better. At least in this game. By KH3, both the English voice actors sound way improved.)

Well, since I’m writing these posts retrospectively (AKA, I just kept forgetting to make these posts so now I’m going back and posting them all in one day), I can tell you I finally managed to actually beat this game! It only took like 16 years, right?

How did I finally beat it, you ask? (jk, I no one really cares) Well, two ways:

I forced myself to open each room in each world (except for Castle Oblivion, which is already massive) at least twice, to give me more heartless and more chances to level up.

I cheesed this game HARD. I used a deck made solely of magic cards and used Firaga and Blizzaga for almost every world and boss fight, except for Hollow Bastion and Castle Oblivion, because they have those Wizard enemies that absorb magic. Cheap? Yes. Effective? Yes.

(And, also, I played this game on Beginner mode. Haha.)

So, here we go!

Day One (June 6th)

Traverse Town (First Floor): I have nothing to say about this, it’s the basic tutorial level and the part of the game where I’m trying to tell myself not to instantly hate on the card-based battles.

Axel I

Ending Level: ??? (I totally forgot to write down my ending level the first couple days)

Day Two (June 7th)

Agrabah (Second Floor): These levels are all so similar to their KH1 counterparts that it’s hard to really write anything about them.

Wonderland (Third Floor)

Olympus Coliseum (Fourth Floor): I stopped right before the Cloud fight. Because I was really trying hard to do the “fight every enemy in every room so you can maybe finally beat this game” strategy, these levels took me a long time.

Ending Level: ??? (Again, I forgot to write it down)

Day Three (June 8th)

Olympus Coliseum (Fourth Floor): Finished the rest of this level

Monstro (Fifth Floor)

Halloween Town (Sixth Floor): I think I only did the first story room and I left the rest of the level for another night. 

Ending Level: 33 (Look at me, I finally wrote it down!)

[memaha19]

Let’s Play Kingdom Hearts: Days 10, 11, & 12

And here we have the final three days of my Kingdom Hearts playthrough.

Day Ten (May 30th, 2020)

Wandered around (?): I have a memo on my phone where I keep track of what I do each day I play and “wandered around” is all I wrote for this day. I can’t remember for sure, but this was about the point where I had the “do I finish the game or do I try to totally complete the journal and get Deep Dive?” crisis, and I ended up picking “totally complete the journal and get Deep Dive”, so “wandered around” probably meant something like “wandering around trying to get synthesis items” because in my mind, Ultima Weapon = ability to beat the optional bosses.

Ending Level: 71

Play time: About 1.5 hours

Day Eleven (May 31st, 2020)

Synthesis: Literally just hours of collecting synthesis items. I spent at least two hours trying to get Serenity Powers from those big pink and green mushrooms in Deep Jungle. Those dang pink and green mushrooms. But by this point I was obsessed with getting the Ultima Weapon, so I knew I had to keep going.

Ending Level: 84

Play time: ??? (At this point, I stopped writing down how long I played each night)

Day Twelve (June 4th, 2020)

Synthesis: Yes, more synthesis. Because I hadn’t quite finished getting all the items on Day Eleven. Bless the FAQ that let me know that there were some random Dark Matters I could get in-game (I missed the one in Hollow Bastion and the one for doing the third slide in Deep Jungle) because I was about to have to synthesize three dark matters, which would’ve taken even longer. So, yes, I finally got the Ultima Weapon. (Big shout out to Final Mix for adding all the Stones and all the optional enemies to make synthesis like 50% harder. I still see the Pink Agaricus and the Sniperwilds in my nightmares. The Grand Ghosts, though, they were cute.)

Traverse Town: By the time I finished synthesizing the Ultima Weapon, I was at like level 97, so I slapped a few EXP boosting items on my party and went to the gizmo shop to fight wave after wave of enemies until I reached 100.

Ice Titan: At level 100 with the Ultima Weapon in hand, it was time for the optional bosses! So I went with who I thought would be the easiest and since I now remembered that you could hit square to Guard, this fight was a lot better.

Phantom: Actually a really fun fight, I thought! I got into a good rhythm of casting stop on the clock, getting a couple hits in on Phantom, and then floating away to another clock face while he would do his weird “homing ball of darkness” attack. While I was hiding from his attack at the other clock face, I’d cast Stop again, so the Doom meter over Peter Pan never went lower than 12. I know you’re probably like “no duh” but the only other times I’d tried Phantom, I never got very far, so I was pretty proud of myself.

Unknown/Xemnas: uh, my strategy for this was pretty much “hit him a lot and defeat him fast.” This isn’t one I would have wanted to do at a lower level, I definitely lost track of what exactly he was doing and I was just trying to hit him when I could.

Sephiroth: Good ol’ Sephiroth. Another one I would not have wanted to do at a lower level. He hits like a truck. My strategy for this one was pretty much just lots of frantic dodge rolling and trying to hit him when I saw an opening.

End of the World: After the optional bosses, and because my level was maxed out, all the Ansem fights were a piece of cake.

Ending Level: 100

Play time: ???

Time for Chain of Memories!

[memaha19]

Let’s Play Kingdom Hearts: Days 7, 8, & 9

Okay so it’s been like 84 years (cue the Titanic gif) since I made a post and I know no one is reading these and they’re really all just for my own benefit, so here’s the rest of my Kingdom Hearts playthrough.

As you can see, I actually finished this game in May, I just never made posts. Whoops!

Day Seven (May 27th, 2020)

The rest of Hollow Bastion: And by “the rest of Hollow Bastion”, I literally mean just the Riku II fight, but since I still have traumatic memories of the PS2 days when you couldn’t skip the cutscenes and I had to hear “open your heart, lead me into everlasting darkness!” like 50 times (because 12-year old Megan COULD NOT beat this dude), I ended up wandering around Hollow Bastion for a little bit and leveling up about three levels because I was nervous. It ended up being fine and, like every other time I’ve fought him since, I wonder why I was ever so bad at this fight, because it’s really not that hard.

Ending Level: 50

Play time: About 1.5 hours

Day Eight (May 28th, 2020)

Hollow Bastion II: Fought Behemoth, unlocked White Trinities.

White Trinities: Revisited each world for the white trinities. So clever how each world has exactly one white trinity so you’re forced to go back to each one.

Hades Cup: I’ve always thought it was funny that Hades is the 10th seed and not the 1st seed, because he’s VERY ANNOYING. I don’t want to “feel the heat!”, Hades, I don’t. Meanwhile, Rock Titan literally sits down and lets you wail on his head and he’s down in like sixty seconds. If you want to count it, I got my third “game over” right here with Hades, but I intentionally dodge-rolled into his flame attack so I could start from the 19th seed because, by the time I got through all the other seeds, I had used literally all of my ethers and knew I wouldn’t be able to get through him without re-stocking my items.

Ending Level: 61

Play time: About 3.5 hours

Day Nine (May 29th, 2020)

End of the World: In my head, I thought the End of the World was going to take a lot longer to get through than it actually did, but I got to Final Rest and was like “oh, already?” so I knew I had a decision to make. I was previously trying to just get through the main game as fast as possible. I could’ve probably just finished the game on this night but right about this point, I was like “...I want to get the Deep Dive ending...” and since I was playing on Normal mode, I’d have to fight the optional bosses to do so. So, that brings us to:

A failed attempt at Ice Titan: yeah, so, I forgot hitting the square button to guard was a thing and spent the whole time trying to hit the icicles back at him with the X (attack) button, which didn’t work, so I gave up on this dude pretty fast.

Kurt Zisa: I was maybe not leveled high enough to do this guy but he’s always seemed the least gimmicky optional boss to me (no Sin Harvest, no “cast stop on the clock or you’re gonna die”, etc.) so I gave it a try and actually won. I was like one hit away from dying but thanks to the power of dodge roll, I did it! He was the first KH1 optional boss that I actually beat and at this point I was thinking the chances of beating the other four weren’t looking great.

Ending Level: 65

Play time: About 1.5 hours

[memaha19]

Beautiful works by Alex Cho

[memaha19]

Let’s Play Kingdom Hearts: Day 4, 5, & 6

(Wow I’m really bad at that whole “I’ll make one post for each day I play!” thing, yikes.)

Day Four (May 23rd, 2020)

Halloween Town: Yep. That’s literally all I did this night. Halloween Town. I had big plans to make it through Neverland and I’m not sure what happened? I fell off Oogie’s Manor and had to be carried back up by the bathtub like 10 times so maybe that’s what took so long?

Ending Level: 38? I think?

Play time: About 2 hours

Day Five (May 24th, 2020)

Neverland: The weirdest thing happened to my game right when I began the fight with Anti-Sora. The fight started, and then most of the screen went totally black. Most of the screen. I could still see the menu, the HP/MP bars for Sora/Donald/Goofy, and the HP bar for Anti-Sora, and the sound was still working, but the rest of the screen was black. So I tried to blindly fight Anti-Sora but even though I could hear him making his “attack noises”, nothing ever seemed to connect and Sora, likewise, wasn’t getting hit by any attacks. So I rebooted my game and had a lot of “oh god what if my file is corrupted, I’ll have to start all over” panic before everything turned out fine.

Olympus Coliseum: Did the Hercules cup, got the Yellow Trinity

Traverse Town: My plan at this point was to finish 100 Acre Woods and then revisit all the worlds to get the treasures I couldn’t get until I got Glide, as well as activate all the Yellow Trinities. I only had the Bouncing Spot and the “find all your friends in the mud area” part left in the 100 Acre Woods, but it ended up taking forever for some reason? Anyway, 100 Acre Woods is sealed!

Ending Level: 41? 40? I can’t remember.

Play time: About 2 hours

Day Six (May 25th, 2020)

Revisiting Worlds: I went back to all the worlds (except for Atlantica) to get some chests/Dalmatians now that I had Glide. I also did the Yellow Trinities in Monstro, Agrabah, and Neverland.

Ran Into Some Mystery Enemies: These have to be a Final Mix thing, because I don’t remember them from the original game. (Tbh, I played Final Mix on the PS3 and don’t remember them from that game either). I’m talking about Pot Scorpion in Agrabah (fine once I remembered how to Guard), the pink monkeys in Traverse Town (which I ran away from because I didn’t realize they just kept spawning), the Chimera in Halloween Town (I still don’t really know what happened here, I just kept hitting it and getting like 5000 tech points?), and the flying thing you find on the ship deck in Neverland.

Hollow Bastion: Oh, Hollow Bastion. One of my favorite worlds, even if it’s home to the boss fight that scarred me for life when I was 12 (I’ll give you one guess who, and it’s not Dragon Maleficent.) Anyway, my plan was just to get through the first Riku fight and call it a night, but I forgot how soon the first Riku fight happens once you get there, so I kicked his butt and still had some time to spare. Then I told myself “I’ll beat Maleficent and call it a night” but Dragon Maleficent happens right after that, so I did that too. However, I still have massive Riku/Ansem fight anxiety (surprise surprise, this is probably the #1 “Kingdom Hearts fights that scarred me for life”), so I was like “nah, I’m good, I’ll wait”.

Ending Level: 47, I believe. Maybe 48.

Play Time: A little less than 3 hours

Up Next: Probably gonna wander around Hollow Bastion and treasure hunt and try and level up some more. And then I’ll do Riku/Ansem. And, lord willing, I’ll beat him, seal the keyhole, and take a White Trinity/Hades Cup detour before heading to End of the World. I still haven't decided if I’m going to spend time trying to get the Ultima weapon or not.

[memaha19]

Let’s Play Kingdom Hearts: Day 1, 2, & 3

(These were all supposed to be their own post but my tumblr app was acting really weird and not posing anything.)

Day One (May 20th, 2020)

Starting level: 1

Awakening: I did +sword/-staff, which is basically the only way I’ve ever played. I just learned a few days ago that the item you choose to keep changes the order you learn abilities, so that was news to me. I always pick the sword because I like getting Scan as early as possible so I kept it the same this time around. I picked the bottom three answers of the Selphie/Tidus/Wakka. I like to start “in the dead of night”.

Destiny Islands: I did not beat Riku and I definitely lost real hard to him in that stupid race to name the raft. (I was under the impression that it had only been a year or two since I last played KH but then I thought about it and realized it had been about six years and yikes I was very rusty with the controls.)

Traverse Town I: I did manage to back Squall into a corner and beat him, woo!

Wonderland

Olympus Coliseum I

Deep Jungle: It was getting late so I didn’t finish the level. I beat Sabor and called it a night. Had I remembered that there really isn’t much left after that point, I probably would’ve just finished!

Ending level: 14

Play time: About 4 hours

Day Two (May 21st, 2020)

Deep Jungle: Literally all I really had left was the Clayton/Stealth Sneak fight. I’m still scarred from the first time I played this game when I was 12 and I COULD NOT beat this guy.

Traverse Town II: So, full disclosure, up until this point, I was really committed to relying on walkthroughs as little as possible, and I made it through Deep Jungle just on my own memory of the game. But I got to TT and I could not figure out what to do after talking to Squall in the waterway. I went everywhere and talked to everyone and probably took about twice as long as I needed to in this area. So I caved and read a guide and saw that you have to talk to Squall twice to get him to tell you to go see Cid, which then sends you to Merlin, etc. So, anyway, I started using a guide from this point forward so I don’t spend 80 years in one level.

Agrabah: Nothing really to report here. I got my first “game over“, on the Jafar fight of all things. The Jafar fight!

Olympus Coliseum II: Went back and did the Phil Cup

Green Trinity Revisit: Went back to Wonderland, Deep Jungle, Olympus, and Traverse Town to do the green trinities.

Traverse Town III: Green trinity & first couple parts of 100 Acre Woods

Ending level: 25

Play time: About 3.5 hours

Day Three (May 22nd, 2020)

Monstro: Got my second “game over”, courtesy of the second fight with Parasite Cage, another fight that tormented me when I was 12. I keep forgetting that if you move around while you’re mid-cure spell, it cancels the spell out, so I thought I had healed myself. I hadn’t. I died.

Atlantica: This is a level I try and get through as fast as I can, because underwater levels in ANY game are the bane of my existence. (Another thing I just recently learned: you don’t have to go to Atlantica, I guess? You can skip and just do Halloween Town? But this is basically the only game where I’ve successfully gotten the secret ending and I want to do it again, so I sucked it up and did Atlantica.) For the Ursula II fight, I definitely employed the cheap strategy of swimming around the edges while Ariel and Donald beat her down to her last hit point, and then floating in and finishing her off. And yes, it took forever.

Olympus Coliseum: Did the Phil Cup with just Sora and the Pegasus Cup with everyone

Traverse Town IV: Since I had torn pages from Monstro and Atlantica, I did the next two 100 Acre Wood sections.

Ending Level: 34

Play Time: About 3.5 hours

Next up: Halloween Town, Neverland, and maybe the Hercules Cup

[memaha19]

Get a look of Elsa’s nightgown test in those 2 videos..!

The animators wanted to to test Elsa's nightgown before animating her in INTO THE UNKNOWN!

Some trivia for all the Frozen fans, the animation in the first viseo was not originally used for Elsa, can anyone guess which show it’s from and who was animated this way?

Enjoy! ❤️❤️❄️❄️

[memaha19]

Let’s play: the entire Kingdom Hearts series!

Disclaimer: I don’t really expect anyone to follow along with these posts, but I’ve decided to replay most of the Kingdom Hearts games and I wanted a way to track what I accomplish in each play session and how many days each game takes me to complete. I couldn’t really think of anywhere else to post this other than Tumblr so here we are. (All of these posts will be tagged with "megan plays kingdom hearts” so I can keep track and if anyone does want to follow along!)

So this is just like a preliminary post so I can lay down the “rules”

A few things:

I’ll be playing the PS4 “The Story So Far” version of the games, which means I won’t be playing 358 Days or Re:coded. (So I guess I’m not really playing the entire series!)

I have played 358 Days on the DS exactly once. I never played coded or Re:coded

I’ll be playing the games on Normal mode because I’m not good enough at these games for Proud mode.

I’ve played the main games (KH and KH2) many many times. I’ve played part of Kingdom Hearts 3, but got disappointed and abandoned it at the Pirates of the Caribbean world. Hopefully this’ll all culminate with me actually finishing KH3, included Re:Mind.

I’ll be going in the order the games came out, I guess? Rather than the chronological order.  It’s gonna go KH, re:CoM, KH2, BBS, DDD, 0.2, and then KH3. Somewhere in there I’ll watch the cutscenes for 358 Days, Re:coded, and the Back Cover movie.

I’m really bad at Chain of Memories. I’ve played it on the GBA, PS2, and PS3 and always seem to get stuck at the first Marluxia fight. (The last time I played through, I got stuck at the first Vexen fight so I might actually be regressing!) I’m not patient enough for the card system. So, in the spirit of honesty, if I can’t complete re:CoM without wanting to break my PS4 controller, I will probably just abandon it and move on to KH2. (I’m sorry, I just really don’t like Chain of Memories’ gameplay!)

I’ve never played DDD or A Fragmentary Passage, so those’ll be new!

I’m not going for 100% completion on all these games. I love doing the side quests and mini-games and getting all the dalmatians, but I know myself and I know some (let’s be honest, most) of the optional bosses required for 100% are too hard for me. I’m like perfectly “okay” at these games. Not awful but not great.

So, here we go!

[memaha19]

I made four new friends and only killed one of them. I’d say that’s a pretty good start. 

[memaha19]

Bruni is having a little trouble with reading but it’s fine

[memaha19]

curious head tilts!

[memaha19]

Be with me...

[memaha19]

We did this together, and we’ll continue to do this together.

[memaha19]

Harley freakin’ Quinn.

Why yes, I’d like to report a terrible crime…that it took me this long to draw Harley. Needless to say, I had an absolute blast and I hope you like it. 

Illustration by me.

[memaha19]

HARLEY FUCKING QUINN

[memaha19]

Harley meets Bruce ~