#first off can i say riku and sora's dynamic in KH2 is my favorite

[mushroom-winners-proof]

the fact that once you have riku in your party in KH2 you can use RCs to have him teleport right beside sora to protect him shouldnt have me fucked up but it does

[khremixed]

Part 6:  Traverse Town and Getting the Gang Together

We’ve finally gotten to our first real world and man is it a good one.

I’ve always loved the look of Traverse Town.  The cobblestone streets, Victorian buildings, and bright neon signs just combine into something amazing for me.  Each of the three districts has its own unique flavor, but they don’t feel disparate from one another.  Traverse Town also has the feeling of being inhabited, at least in the First District.  The Second and Third Districts are overrun by heartless, so it makes sense in story why no one seems out and about.  It might be my favorite world, so I’m fine that it’s the world we are going to be using as a home base for this game (and miss it dearly in the games it doesn’t appear in).

The transition here is good too.  Donald and Goofy arrive and Donald notices a star going out.  Then Pluto runs off and finds Sora knocked out in an alley.  Pluto wakes up Sora, hears some noise outside human hearing, and then runs off, not to be seen again until the closing cutscene.  Sora wanders off into a nearby store and you meet Cid of Final Fantasy VII fame.

Real talk, but I’ve never played Final Fantasy VII.  Actually, I’ve never beat a Final Fantasy game.  I find turn based combat tedious so the only one I really enjoyed was XII (you know, the one everyone else seems to hate).  I played VIII for a while because of my love of Leon/Squall (more on this in a bit), but the battle system there is broken as all hell.  But anyway, I’ve never played VII, so when I first played this game, I thought Cid was like 35.  Yeah, he’s clearly older than the rest of the gang in Traverse Town, but it didn’t seem like that big of a gap.  His hair is bright yellow and he doesn’t move in a way that reveals being that old.  It’s a jrpg so I assumed that we were going with the anime convention of any person over twenty being treated as a senior citizen.  It wasn’t until Kingdom Hearts 2, when Cid gets a voice actor, that I realized he’s way older (wiki says 42 but that’s ancient in anime/jrpg terms).

Cid’s great, though.  I mean, you are some random kid who just wandered into his store who tells you a tale he’s probably heard a million times over (world destroyed, everyone scattered) and he just immediately offers to help you.  No ulterior motive there.  He’s one of the good ones.  Cid tells Sora to look around town to see if maybe Riku and Kairi did end up here and to come back if they really didn’t.

Sora heads to the Second District.  Everything is nice except for that guy that runs out and immediately gets turned into a soldier heartless in front of you.  It’s genuinely disturbing.  This is the closest thing Kingdom Hearts gets to when it comes to depicting death.  Plus, for someone playing this the first time, you don’t really know what’s happening other than the fact that that dude is terrified and you see his heart literally leave his body to turn into a monster.  Sora then fights a bunch of other heartless and will continue to do so as you explore the various areas.  There is also a great running gag of when you go into one place, Donald and Goofy just miss you as they exit another place.

Heading back to the First District, which is now equally overrun, you go back to Cid, because really, who else does Sora know?  Cid gives a pep talk and Sora goes back outside and this is the moment I’ve been waiting for.  A voice tells Sora that he really has no clue what he has and wonders why it would ever choose a kid like Sora.  And this, my friends, is how we meet Leon.

I’ve had a crush on Leon since I was 12.  Hell, I’ve had a gunblade on my keys since 2007.  As I said before, I love him so much I tried to get through Final Fantasy VIII.  And Leon totally owns Sora in this battle.  Even if you win, which isn’t that difficult if you hide behind the pillars to block his fireballs and nets you an elixir from him down the line, Sora still faints.

While Yuffie helps Leon collect Sora, Aerith finds Donald and Goofy.  Also, between these two scenes, we get our next big Final Mix addition.  Riku wakes up on Hallow Bastion (we don’t know the location yet, but it is) and calls for Sora and Kairi.  Watching him from afar is Maleficent.  At first, I really liked this bit.  It’s fun to see new stuff and I’ve always kind of wondered how Riku ended up with Maleficent.  But the more I think about it, the more I wish it wasn’t there.  Like Sora, the player originally had no clue what had happened to Riku for several hours of gameplay.  The reveal later that Maleficent is manipulating Riku was great and this new scene is detrimental to that reveal.

Anyway, Sora wakes up and has his first hallucination of Kairi, who then turns into a concerned Yuffie.  Since this is the first one, the player can assume that Yuffie’s theory that Leon gave the poor kid a concussion is probably accurate.  Donald and Goofy are in the adjoining room and whole explanation about the heartless is given to everyone by cutting back and forth between the two groups.  It’s a pretty dynamic way to get all the exposition.  This is also the first time we hear about Ansem and his report on the heartless.  I’m sure that that won’t be a reoccurring thing that will reveal previously unknown horrific facts!  I’m sure the whole mess that is Ansem the Wise/Xemnas/Xehanort won’t cause me to start screaming obscenities at the tv screen again!  (Sidenote:  but I totally forgot that we don’t find out that Ansem the Wise was the leader of their home world here or even that his title is “the Wise”).

On a character note, but I’d forgotten just how much of an apathetic asshole Leon is.  He just cannot be bothered to care about Sora’s friends or even feelings.

This is all interrupted by a heartless appearing and Leon and Sora go off to fight.  And this scene is bullshit.  Yuffie getting Leon’s attention, fine.  Her not attacking but instead running?  The hell.  And Leon is the one who tells her to run!  Why?  It isn’t to go protect the healer in the next room because Yuffie just blows past Aerith.  What is with this game and women not getting to do anything but get kidnapped unless they are evil or mermaids?  KH2 does have Yuffie fighting, but still.

Our gang still doesn’t hook up though.  You have to make your way to the Third District, where Donald and Goofy literally crash into Sora.  Cue boss fight!

The boss battle is pretty fun.  And in another change for the Final Mix, but they recolored the armor.  Don’t know why.  (Actually, the further in I get, the more I wonder how many of the heartless were recolored for this and I just can’t remember everyone’s original look so I’ve missed some.)  You have to kill each piece of the armor separately and they will attack independently of each other.  Nothing outstanding, but still fun.

Donald and Goofy try to convince Sora to come with them.  Unlike with Cid, who just wanted to help because he’s a standup guy, Donald is an asshole who straight up lies to Sora about the likelihood of finding Riku and Kairi (Goofy is a standup dude though).  Leon also says he thinks that Sora should go, but is more like Eeyore about it.  Goofy hugs everyone and says “One for all and all for one”.  Now that I’ve played KH3D and know that he was a musketeer with Donald and Mickey, I think that’s rather sweet in retrospect.

Oh, and also, Donald and Goofy tell Sora that if he’s going to join up, then he’s going to have to smile and have no sad faces.  Fuck them.  Sora just lost literally everyone he ever knew and loved and they want him to swallow those feelings.  That’s messed up, y’all.

You also get some stuff, the most important of which is the ability to dodge roll.  I love dodge roll!  I’m always mad when you don’t get it in other games.  There is literally only one ability I like more and that is the high jump (glide is close too).

Before taking off, you can go open up the secret passage to Merlin’s place.  Before Merlin shows up we get another Kairi hallucination.  She thinks that the room is like the secret place on Destiny Islands, but she’s a hallucination, she’s allowed to be wrong.  There Merlin arrives!  I always found his help sort of useless (the Fairy Godmother was more helpful in turning stones into summons but I think in all my years I’ve only ever used a summon once).  Also, feminist aside, but why does the Fairy Godmother hang out as an inanimate mini-carriage when not doing stuff?  Is it so they don’t imply anything going on between her and Merlin when you aren’t around?

When you leave you get the villain conference table scene where they discuss the unlikelihood of Sora winning.  It’s a good introduction of the villains, but I can’t tell if the Final Mix version changed the animation or if I’m just on a better tv because you can now see the silhouettes of all the villains rather than just hearing their voices with extremely shadowed shapes.