#kh 2.8

[mazeadiel]

[luxustextbox]

aqua

source

[ok4ru]

The only thing we can actually hope for is that KH4 does the same as Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue did, adding a mini movie of KHML.

[meiloorun-notthefruit]

If Terra Kingdom Hearts has a million fans, I'm one of them.

If Terra Kingdom Hearts has five fans, I’m one of them.

If Terra Kingdom Hearts has 1 fan, that one is me.

If Terra Kingdom Hearts has no fans, that means I'm dead.

If the world is against Terra Kingdom Hearts, I am against the world.

[legitimatesatanspawn]

I just saw Yozora and I swear to God it's Riku. I thought it was supposed to be KH's Prototype Noctus.

So now instead of there being three people who look the same due to plot reasons, its four.

[xekutozoren]

Sephiroth's secret cameo in A Fragmentary Passage ( •̀ ω •́ )✧

Does anyone remember that scene in KH 2.8 where Aqua blacks out after finally catching up to her friends and being attacked... and then it pans to her just floating/sinking in the darkness until Mickey finds her?

I'm talking about this:

Arghhhh, this moment is so painful, my poor queen ; A ;

Go Terra!!! \(゜ロ゜\)

So, like, how did she go from being in a giant Heartless fist to just floating down in the middle of nowhere?

Been thinking about this little gap as an opportunity and came up with a scenario where Sephiroth was observing her for a while.

When Terra manages to get Xehanort and the large Heartless to disappear in that burst of light and Aqua collapses on the floor, it doesn't take long for the smaller Heartless to sense her light and come to feed on her heart. Sephiroth jumps out, quickly vanquishes them and picks her up. o(*￣︶￣*)o

But at that point they hadn't established a proper relationship yet, he's just fascinated by her light and how she isn't broken yet. He senses Mickey's presence and sees him searching for her, so he goes and softly lets her float towards the Disney copyright. ( ﾉ ￣ｰ￣)ﾉ

Ref from おいも

[7thwish]

can't be ASSED to do banners atm but uh. i wanna talk abt kairi's relationship with riku, or really, the lack thereof.

because through my Many playthroughs of kh games, kairi and riku always have the strongest relationship with sora, and virtually no bond with each other, save for kh1, but i cant speak much for kairi's thoughts about riku for the most part, but kairi is the one to suggest that she and sora take the raft, just them, and prior to that, she tells sora that she thinks riku's changed, as though she doesn't like that.

and i honestly think it boils down to the fact that kairi has more of an emotional attachment to sora, but she couldn't have sora in her life without riku. she accepted that the two of them were a package deal, and while she makes no real effort to drive any wedge between them, it's very clear that riku is not her friend, he is sora's. riku and kairi are only connected by virtue of their connection to sora. at least, that's how it starts.

because really, i think it boils down to kairi having struggled with her self-determination for her entire life. kairi has never had the chance to be kairi, whoever that may be. she's always the object of someone's affections, the carrot dangled on the stick, the princess, the ideal, the daughter, the light. and none of those are who kairi really is, but even she doesn't know by this point.

the only people who didn't expect anything of her were sora and riku, but kairi didn't know what to be. the version of herself she presented to sora changed as they grew, and by virtue of that, so did how she perceived riku. from the start, we don't see kairi show a lot of care or concern for riku the way she does sora, but again, she doesn't have a lot of screentime in which to do so in kh1, she's a prop for sora and riku's opposition. she is the thing they are fighting for and over, until she is no longer relevant. in kh1, kairi was presented as the damsel in distress, needing sora to come rescue her, and then she's the girl back home, who sora promises to return to. even riku tells sora to take care of her, but that speaks more to riku's feelings about kairi than it does to kairi's feelings about riku.

even in kh2, when her memories of sora are gone, kairi doesn't seem to spare much concern for riku, and while i don't think she holds any disdain for him concerning the events of kh1, it once again reinforces that riku is not kairi's friend, not from her point of view. in kh2 she seems to understand even further that she cannot have sora without sora having riku. and from what little we see of riku and kairi interacting, riku seems to care a great deal more for kairi than she does for him. & i'm not saying kairi hates riku, she doesn't. but the problem with her relationship with riku is that it's entirely reliant on her ability to define herself as a person and by what she wants, which she's mostly unable to do before the end of kh2.

by 2.8/fragmentary passage, we can see that kairi has truly grown to care about riku as a person, as by this time, she hasn't been able to spend much time with sora, and she's likely seen more of riku than she has of sora lately, which i think opens up the chance for them to actually be friends. it's only by kh3 that i believe kairi could truly, honestly say that both sora and riku are her friends, because it's only by kh3 that kairi has started to discover who kairi actually is, and even then, the narrative ( and the subpar writing ) are determined to reduce her to the princess and the love interest.

by the end of kh3, i think it's safe to say that kairi's bond with riku is just as strong as her bond with sora, even if they're different. riku is to kairi, at this point, a close friend, someone she would easily trust with her life. she cares for him deeply, and as we see, riku is deeply saddened when xehanort shatters her heart, though again, it's not and never will be quite like her bond with sora.

but the overall reason that kairi and riku are not friends from the start entirely lies with kairi. she's insecure with herself, struggling to know who she really is and weighing everyone's expectations of her with who she actually is as a person and i think, to some degree, riku and kairi can understand that aspect of themselves and see it reflected in the other. i think kairi and riku have the potential to understand each other in a way sora can't.

post melody of memory, i think kairi feels more secure in who she is and her relationship with riku is more familial, he's someone very dear to her, someone she cannot imagine her life without, just as sora is. she's more comfortable around him, she feels closer and more connected to him, and they lean on each other more, i think.

there's a parallel to be drawn about kairi's feelings towards riku and the evolution of their relationship to kairi's feelings about herself and how they change overtime. she was never sure where she stood with riku early on because kairi was unsure of where she stood with herself, who or what she was supposed to be. and although she and riku may not have always been friends, kairi intends to make sure they stay friends.

[kennycrows]

the three game genres

[kh-yumio]

I dreamed again about the story "Spin-off" about Lauriam, Elrena and Ventus on their journey to find answers about their past, yep, the exact one that later become my "Dreaming Memories AU".

But this time I didn't dreamed it as a new game, this time it was an exclusive Disney+ series,,,

[maryse127]

Square Enix asking basically full price for the new Kingdom Hearts Steam ports is kinda clown behaviour. Like I get that they can't make them as cheap as what physical PS4 copies are going for nowadays because they must have put in at least a little effort for these ports to happen but €50 for KH1.5+2.5 is stupid. Yes it is discounted to 40 for now but I got 1.5+2.5, 2.8 and 3 on PS4 for like 50 or less

[syrasenturi]

Starting up fragmentary passage and immediately remembering the dumbest retcon in kingdom hearts for making mickey shirtless in the realm of darkness

[dark-elf-writes]

Sitting here laughing as you replay KH series but I can't wait to see how you'll be with the others but especially ddd, re:coded, and bbs. I actually love bbs, but it is a mess (those poor characters). On the upside: replay won't happen with Chi; that one will be another cutscene film and you'll be spared the gacha.

I’m actually really excited for bbs and ddd as those were the two I never got to play originally and and for some reason never got to in my replay before three came out

[luxustextbox]

darkqua is sick of this shit

source

[kon-konk]

Y'all the Kingdom Hearts games are on PC through Epic Games AND they're on sale

[wildfyrevalkyrie]

i came into the fandom post-kh3

then ig lemme give you some perspective from someone who grew up with the series.

so base kh2 was my first kh game. im not sure how, since im pretty sure my family owned kh1 first, but it was. as a kid coming into this with absolutely zero context from the prior games, kh2 was not only understandable, but became one of my favorite games. the flashes of memory recapping the plot in the prologue was enough information for me to get the gist of what had happened before, and kh2 is written in such a way that it can both stand on its own and serve as a satisfying finale to the kh1-com-kh2 trilogy. this game set a standard for kh numbered titles.

the next game i played was base kh1. i couldnt beat kh1. i tried multiple times over the years, but each time i would get stuck at the lion head fight in agrabah. i still respected kh1’s story, even if i didnt get to see hollow bastion until i finally played the hd remake following kh3s release.

com was a title i was aware of. my family owned the walkthrough book for it but not the game itself. all i knew about it was that it was for gameboy, it features card games as the gameplay system, and that sora ends up in a bubble flower because of namine. as a kid, it was pretty obvious that handheld + vastly different gameplay system = spinoff, and that wasn’t a negative but a statement of fact. (honestly, i find it weirder that you associate “spinoff” as being equivalent to “bad”.) as such, while i was curious about com, i didnt feel like my experience in 2 was affected enough by this knowledge gap to go out of my way to play it.

i literally did not know about days. maybe it was cuz i didnt have a ds.

i was aware that bbs existed. i couldnt play it tho cuz i didnt have a psp. i think i was aware that it was a prequel series, maybe that it was connected to the keyblade graveyard seen in 2’s ending (remember i owned base kh2, so lingering william didnt exist), and i definitely had the misconception that took place back in the Ancient Times™️ when keyblades were common. (unironically, finding out years later that it was set only 10yrs in the past was very disappointing) so ancient history + following a completely new cast + handheld = spinoff, a really cool sounding spinoff that i wouldve probably played had i owned a psp, but nothing close to a console seller in my child eyes.

ddd i was not only aware of relatively close to release, but i had a 3ds and was hyped to play a sora-focused spinoff… and then i got pinpoint spoiled that its about sora and riku taking their mark of mastery exam and riku passes while sora fails. i decided in that moment that that was all i needed to know and wrote the game off. literally never found out about the dream eaters or any of the time travel nonsense, hell i still didnt know old man xehenort even existed. it just made so little sense to play a game that ends with the protagonist failing, and even less that sora would fail a keyblade mastery test while riku passed, so i skipped it.

i had a friend that played the mobile game back when it was a web browser game. she tried to get me to play it, but i think i was either still mourning the death of pixie hollow/toon town or was busy with other stuff.

re: coded im p sure i got as a christmas gift in like 2014? it was definitely after the web browser game came out, because i remember checking out the character editor thing included and thinking it was neat that you could make a web browser character. it was straight-up not fun to play, and the story wasn’t compelling enough to make me finish it.

0.2 i knew for being a tech demo and having a silly-long name. i didnt play it cuz i wasnt interested in paying full game price for a tech demo.

by the time of kh3, i knew a lot of the general story beats for the games i had missed (still not the time travel plot—apparently i had intense blinders on for ddd lmao), and i was so hype for a new mainline title. i didnt bother with playing any of the titles i had missed, because i didnt own them, because why would i do homework for a video game, and because kh2 had taught me that the numbered titles can more or less stand on their own.

kh3 doesnt stand on its own.

im sure thats obvious to you, having come into the series post-kh3, and likely already cognizant that all of kh was connected and going to culminate in 3, but that wasn’t obvious living through the releases, especially for someone who was a more casual fan.

so in response to your question of “why do kh fans ignore games they find irrelevant to the plot”, historically its got a lot to do with the accessibility of these titles and little to do with the “plot relevance”. now that things like the all in one package exist, making the entire series experienceable on one platform (plus or minus two ds games), people ignoring the titles between 2 and 3 is way less common. but back in the day, the general consensus was that most of these games were generally worth it if you owned the system it was on, but weren’t console-sellers. and that’s reflected in my own experience. i played (or wouldve played, rip days/ddd) all the games the were on systems i owned that i was aware of.

Y'know now that I think about it, the kh fandom seems to have a huge problem with ignoring or disliking games they find "irrelevant" to the plot. I came into the fandom post-kh3 so I can't say I know how the fandom's changed over time but.. it's kinda ridiculous to me tbh. Because from what I read it sounds like most people hated/ignored BBS and 358/2 days because they were "spin-offs." (Which is dumb anyway, like, even if hypothetically KH3 didn't exist and they were just spin-off characters- Why is that a bad thing? Why should you treat them like they don't matter? Why do some people think the characters from those games don't matter because they only care about the fate of the Destiny Trio?) And even still people consider Chain of Memories irrelevant because "Oh Sora forgets everything anyway, all you need to know is that." And then they consider Coded/Re:Coded irrelevant because "It's all data anyway." And THEN they consider DDD irrelevant because "All you need to know is the Xehanort time travel stuff in the finale." It's so weird to me how some people can claim to be invested in these games yet only care about the numbered titles. It can't be because they care about Destiny Trio that much if they consider titles including them to still be irrelevant.. So what is it then?? Is the concept of a spin-off inherently bad to these people? Like, sure, if you're thinking of the BARE MINIMUM KNOWLEDGE then yes I would agree you don't need to know much about those games beyond what I listed.. HOWEVER, that does not mean it's good to only go into the games with that knowledge. If you truly care about this series and its characters, you would value the ways those games expand on their characters. And even if you don't.. If you're only going into these games with the idea of "vaguely understanding the plot" but the plot alone. Not the characters. If all you care about is "How did Xehanort revive other versions of himself?" And not the buildup for the characters and how these arcs affect them, y'know, as characters..

I just don't understand how you can go into these games like that and still have fun with it. Like sure if I'm into a series where I appreciate the worldbuilding but there isn't much to the characters I can get behind that. (And I mean that in the sense of games with blank-slate protagonists, not to say the characters don't matter to me, but that the characters don't have much personality to get attatched to.) But in a story like Kingdom Hearts where it is about the characters, and the story is just how the characters choices affect each other- I dunno man. I'm not sure of the right words to explain what I'm trying to say but it just feels so dull and boring to only care about that in a series, and especially a series like this. I could go on and on about the ways those games affect the characters and the story more than those little one-sentence quotes.. And sure, maybe I will in addition to this, but that's not the point I'm trying to make here. Even if they didn't affect the story, even if they were solely character-building, or even if they barely served a purpose at all beyond a couple of scenes.. It shouldn't devalue the entire experience as irrelevant. (Chain of Memories I kinda get disliking due to the combat LMAO but aside from that + some people do like the combat-) The games are more than story alone. They're more than gameplay alone. And they're more than characters alone. All aspects of the game come together to create an experience, and if you want to devalue the entire experience as a bad game, because you find it irrelevant due to it not fulfilling your specific preferences of what you want out of these games- Then I have a hard time believing you appreciated this series at all to begin with. Also a hard time believing you have good media literacy or even care about having any but hey that's a topic for another day am i right

[xekutozoren]

Ermehgurd, they're in the same game 🤪

Aqua be standing on a platform or something to match her man's height. ♪(´▽｀)

Hopefully I'll overcome my laziness and make more of these.

Out of all the games, felt like KH 2.8 and FF7 Crisis Core were the closest in art style.

Tried to mimic the FF7 Rebirth text style.

I guess the OP/ED animations of KH work well with FF7 Rebirth too but there's barely any shots of Aqua compared to the sheer amount of screentime Sephiroth gets. o((>A< ))o