Report 2: Kingdom Hearts, Destiny Islands

I'm experimenting with different screenshot sizes and arrangements, so any feedback is welcome.

This used to be fairly common knowledge back when Kingdom Hearts was the only Kingdom Hearts game, but Destiny Islands is an anagram of "It's Disney's Land" minus the apostrophes. In retrospect this is a very Disney move, considering that Yen Sid is well...diS neY, but it reflects the tone of the first game well that the first world you're introduced to is a permutation of Disney Land, despite being an original location.

I remember reading a post a little while back about how the original Kingdom Hearts is unapproachable to modern players because it's so chock full of fetch quests until you hit the second tier of worlds. Personally, I would consider the unskippable cutscenes, platforming and lack of a magic triangle button to play the game for you more of an obstacle but...

...with regards to the quests I really can't notice them anymore because the locations for the two logs, rope and cloth are so ingrained in my memory that I go out and get them before actually talking to Kairi to finish the first day. With this out of the way, we're free to do as we please until we want to start the next day, and boy do we ever have things to do.

These are my stats coming out of the Awakening. We get dropped off Destiny Islands stripped of our wondrous Dream Rod and autoequipped with the less impressive Wooden Sword. For comparison, the Dream Rod has a base STR of 2 instead of 0 and is not hardcoded to go right through Shadows.

This is the guy we're after. There are four characters to fight on Destiny Islands, and a hidden fight unlocked by completing three of them. Wakka and Tidus are here representing Final Fantasy X, and they'll be our main focus. Selphie from VIII is a joke fight, as she's only worth as much XP as a Shadow and will actively trip over her own weapon mid-battle to let you get free hits in. Normally, Wakka and Tidus are worth the same amount of experience but...

Wakka's main attack is throwing his blitzball at you, which can take a nice chunk of your HP out as my attempts to simultaneously fight and screencap are demonstrating. Each ball can be repelled for 1 Tech point in the same way as Darkside's blasts, although since it has no homing you have to eyeball a parabola. Eight hits from his own blitzball will defeat Wakka for that 1 actual XP, although not all of the hits will connect so you may get more depending on how many miss.

Once his HP's been lowered, Wakka may occasionally start to shuffle toward you for a physical attack. Play a game of keep-away long enough and he'll crank his arm around, then bust out with an Overdrive that can actually act as a one-hit kill if you're low level enough. Reflecting this can be easier than his normal shots because of the faster timing, it's worth 2 Tech and deals more damage to him, though it also misses him more easily so it's basically just there for the extra experience points. It is also hard to capture in screenshots.

So we've gone from averaging 1 XP per fight to 9-10. Obviously, Wakka can be exploited to reach much higher levels than you're meant to get to on Destiny Islands, which can make upcoming boss fights--including ones that we aren't supposed to win--much more manageable. But it takes an entire 155XP to go from level 1 top L5 on a night playthrough, and 821 to reach L10. Wakka's not gonna cut it for what I have planned.

This is where Tidus comes in. Around levels 4-6, his battle becomes reasonably survivable, although you can use this other method right from level 1/2 if you know his pattern well. Tidus has three attacks, a normal slash, a spinning slash and a backwards-spinning slash. The latter two you can partially deflect by attacking with the right timing to prevent damage, but the initial slash in particular can be fully parried for 2 Tech points, and it leaves Tidus open for a full combo. Playing normally, you can get around 16 XP from Tidus per fight this way.

But you can also very easily manipulate Tidus' AI, as running away will cause him to give chase, which by default sets him back to the normal slash even if he was prepping a spin beforehand. So at the start of the fight you let Tidus come to you, parry, then run in the opposite direction until he chases you and turn around, parry again, and recycle the process. Since the parry doesn't deal any damage you can keep going at it like this for however long you like, this process translated to around 70 XP in ~3 minutes for me, and gives birth to the first in many Things You Aren't Supposed to Do: Infinite Tidus Grinding.

"Stop running away!"
 


"LIVE AND LET LIVE! LIVE AND LET LIVE! LIVE AND LET LIVE!"

With a little under a half hour of Tidus grinding, I was able to reach level 9, and seriously do something the game doesn't want me to.

I'm not supposed to learn abilities until the very end of the next world! Scan is the now-standard ability to see enemy HP bars, useful for gauging how long a fight is really gonna last. Level 5 is really overkill for Destiny Islands, so we're already set for like the next two worlds. Final Mix makes the whole thing even easier.

This isn't the reason to grind so early, but I'm going to take full advantage of the extra levels to put a certain optional boss in his place.

The first fight with Riku is completely avoidable. It's definitely one of the harder fights in the game, relative to the level you'll normally come into it at. Riku is Sora, but better; he can use guard and a dodge jump, he deals more damage, he can high jump, and he can counterattack.

His basic slash can be reflected for 1 Tech, but you have a very small window to stop it with, otherwise you'll parry the damage but not actually stop him and he'll go right past you.

Comboing Riku is dangerous because every other time you get into the second hit of one, he'll fall back into a crouch rather than stagger, then leap at you with a counterattack that you won't be able to dodge if you've already gone into the next swing of your combo. This is a lethal move that can halve your HP, or like with Wakka's Overdrive, one-hit KO you at lower levels.

Incidentally, the game occasionally confuses Riku's sword's hitbox with that of his butt. So his butt can reflect your sword strokes.

Don't tell me you're giving up already!

Riku can also hold up his sword and taunt you. Attacking him three times in this state will cause him to launch into what is pretty much his Impulse attack from Re:CoM, for even more damage than the buttkick.

Heh, you still don't got it.

Occasionally, Riku will high jump onto his tree and taunt you. Take the initiative and attack him in the brief window that he's vulnerable; when Riku presents you an opening, you take it, no matter what. He'll wipe the floor with you otherwise.

My turn!

The last thing to be wary about is that this is one of the only fights in the entire game where a boss can win through ring-out. If you fall off the platform, game over. This is basically Riku's main defense against your air combos, as air combos screw up his AI really badly, but he can also launch you off the platform if his attack connects while you're in the air. Or if you jump on the ladder. That counts too.

Defeating Riku gets you 5XP, a potion, and helps prepare the scoreboard for your inevitable loss in that dumb racing minigame on the second day. Speaking of, let's fast forward a bit. Talking to Kairi and beginning the second day opens up the Cove, where we'll find our next chance to customize Sora.

This is what we're after. Lifting up the box and moving it over to that hole you see in the background lets us jump up on it for some extra air, giving access to the hole's interior. It's these little kinds of platforming and exploration touches that I miss in II, where the most you could do with the environments was skateboard through bland scenery tubes, as if Tony Hawk's Pro Skater had added Toon Town to its list of locales. Really, all of the problems with Kingdom Hearts II are the same ones that Final Fantasy XIII has but in miniature, except that XIII can kind of own it as a deliberate aesthetic and part of its identity while in II it's just a cancerous Hollywood whitewashing of the original game's core elements.

II is dumb.

The Protect Chain is an easy-to-miss early game accessory that buffs our defense by 1, and while it won't be critical after the Islands are finished up, it will be giving us some free munny further down the line.

Anyway, I hope you came up with a really good name for your airship gummiship because Riku's gonna take that all away :V That said, there are a couple key points you can exploit to get the upper hand. Let's go over why this entire minigame is dumb.

First, this platform. If you step on it, it will collapse and drop you into the ocean below, at which point the entire race is lost. You can time your jump just perfectly to cause it to fall without you on it, but this requires such precise timing that it's honestly better to trip the trap before the race begins and then not have to deal with it. Riku never falls.

Then the zipline. If Riku makes it up this ladder, you lose. His time lead becomes too heavy to feasibly overcome, he'll get to go right to the platforming while you're trying to take the long way around, and he'll already be back at the starting line by the time you reach the star. So you have to head him off before he can reach it, except that his motions are choreographed so that he'll then ram straight into you and cause you to clip on the edge of the zipline tower while he runs around to get over the platforming section at a much faster pace than you're allowed to.

And when you finally get to the zipline, it turns out it's not that great! Riding it actually gives Riku a time advantage because his running speed is through the roof and his jumps are more accurate than the player can ever get, so you're really only up there to keep Riku from getting to it and it's better to then jump down and hop over a set of bush platforms to get to the palm trees...

...which you have to do quickly because Riku's getting more of a lead every second. I love the platforming and depth of the worlds in the original game, but there is nothing quite as frustrating as having to do the original Kingdom Hearts' awkward 3D platforming in a hurry.

And then we get to the actual star. It took me ten years to work out why it takes an entire minute for the star to recognize that you've touched it. It's not enough to reach it, you have to make it light up, and this can take forever because the hit detection on the star is awful. Your only real recourse is to constantly run into it until it lights up and hope that the game realizes you're at the goal. By which time Riku is smugly marching back to the finish line, taking his time because you aren't gonna catch up if you aren't neck and neck with him. And you do this, maybe five or six times in all before you actually win, each time having to sit through that dumb two minute cutscene of Riku talking about how if Sora wins he's captain and if Riku wins he's captain and gonna share the paopublahblahblahwith Kairi.

Your reward is 30 munny, except the game can't give you munny at this point because it hasn't been introduced as a plot element yet so it gives you a Pretty Stone instead and this accomplishes exactly the same thing.

And this scene is done with the low poly models and has no voice acting, while the other cutscene mixes low poly and high poly models for an actual cutscene (or in proper 2002 lingo "FMV") meaning the canon outcome is probably losing. You can't even grind the minigame afterward because it's just so frustrating.

The rest of day 2 is another extended fetch quest that my ten-year-old self memorized long ago. This is an exercise in how well you can explore the environment, and even now I still like it a little; two of the three mushrooms that you need are tucked away with the scenery and finding them is just a matter of picking out their shapes, but the third requires moving a pretty obvious boulder out of the way and ducking into this little cove to locate it. I like this last one because it requires you to be interact with the environment, something that doesn't happen in II.

Locating the coconuts and fish is more environmental interaction. The three fish are basically a pixel hunt and mad chase through the core ocean area to locate them, while the coconuts require you to make the logical leap that "coconuts grow on trees and I can hit trees to make them fall down!" Although, it's the yellow ones specifically that you need, as the others aren't ripe.

The seagull egg is just a neat touch. Sitting on top of a tree outside of Riku's island, with a unique model that will never come up again. You jump on it to get it. I like the detail, as despite the more graphical interface, II never has you touch objects like this to get them and instead everything is handed to you either in a chest or in a cutscene.

The fresh water item is also neat. There are actually two locations that you can get the water from, either the waterfall at the Seashore or the similar outlet at the Cove area, beneath the trapped platform. Like I said before, the whole goal here is environmental exploration and teaching the player to explore without actually telling them how to.

Incidentally, there's some ambiguity surrounding the empty bottle that Kairi gives you to fill with the drinking water. This is a blink-and-you-miss-it thing, but if you check the description before filling it, it's referred to as "A bottle Kairi brought from her home." The very first thing the game established about Kairi in her introductory cutscene is that she's from another world, and there are a couple other cutscenes in the game that deal with this subject matter, so "her home" can mean either her home on the Destiny Islands or her home world. If we assume the latter, it's also possible that this is the same bottle that comes up in II and 358/2 Days, which makes it a symbolic item for the series as a whole. This is stretching a lot, but blahblahblah death of the author I can read it however I please and either way it doesn't make a whole lot of difference.

The third mushroom, in the Secret Place, is also set up to trigger the next cutscene. (It doesn't trigger if you haven't completed the Riku race.) This is also the first time that we're introduced to one of the franchise's longest standing characters.

Wh-who's there?

I've always thought this sequence to be fairly unsettling your first time through. Brown Robe is introduced as a deliberately ambiguous character. He's a stranger that we can't trust, but he rightfully cautions Sora against a dangerous journey. He's also introduced before the main conflict of the game is, but brings elements of it into play. His mystery and presence as an outside force from another world indicates that Sora's home is being invaded, that the fantasy he's been pursuing up to now is coming after him instead, and consequently there is a danger approaching that Sora cannot do anything about.

Huh?

This world has been connected.



Wh-what are you talking about?



Tied to the darkness...soon to be completely eclipsed.

Well, whoever you are, stop freaking me out like this. Huh?

But he also frames the end of day 2, and the events immediately following it. I think you're intended to frantically save at the beginning of day 2 after your mom yells at you to stop hogging the TV even though you just got a new video game with Neverland and Hercules in it, then pick it up one real-world day later and play through the end of Traverse Town. The plot structure is set up so that you're reading from the meeting with Brown Robe until you actually see what lies beyond the door.

This is the point when Sora first seems to notice his presence. When just reading it, the dialogue suggests that he can already see him and was asking what place he came from, but Haley Joel Osment's inflection instead portrays Sora as hearing Brown Robe's voice and only now seeing the body it's coming from. The acting adds an extra layer to it, and that kind of reading changing the interpretation of the scene is something that you don't see in subsequent games, probably due to a combination of better direction and the actors getting more experienced. I like the extra depth it brings to the interpretation of events.




You do not yet know what lies beyond the door.

So, you're from another world.



There is so very much to learn. You understand so little.



Oh, yeah? We'll you'll see. I'm gonna get out and learn what's out there!



A meaningless effort. One who knows nothing can understand nothing.

Billy Zane does a fantastic job in this game, by the way. One of the many unforgivable problems with Kingdom Hearts II is that he was permanently replaced by Richard Epcar. Epcar's performance has improved a lot in subsequent games, but his take on the character is very different from Zane's. One of the things that I've long wished for is that HJO be replaced and Billy Zane be brought back, but as of Dream Drop Distance this is really unlikely.

I've spent enough time ruminating on fetch quest philosophy, so skipping past several more FMVs,

it's time for gameplay. Destiny Islands' invasion by the Heartless is a major change-up. All of the core areas are infested with Shadows, and now that I have Scan I can tell you for certain that the Wooden Sword goes right through them. No damage dealt. Back when I was ten and playing this game on a poorly lit Magnavox television with the brightness settings waaay too low for Kingdom Hearts, I was actually relying on the waterfall as a light source and it took me like a week to get to where Riku was and actually be blessed with my first Keyblade. The Kingdom Key, or Kingdom Chain as it's known in Japan, is leagues above all of our previous weapons, which speaks pretty well for what is essentially a piece of default equipment. Later games would give it Defender as its signature ability, but in its original incarnation the Kingdom Key is just 3 STR attached to some pretty considerable range.

So the Shadows are no real concern now, going down in three hits each. What is a concern?



Darkside retains his basic beam attack in the second round, and we can still repel it while locked on to his head for 18 sum Tech points, though it's significantly less threatening at level 9 than it was at level 1.

This is when the juxtaposition of screenshots from my first and second runs start to look really weird, since I didn't have scan the first time around.

He also has retains ground-punching attack, which we can combo like before for 2 Tech per combo. In this fight though, Darkside is much less shy about exposing his most critical weak point, and adds one more move to his repertoire.

Darkside will throw his whole arm into the ground, exposing his head briefly. Then he'll draw up an orb of darkness from the ground, hold it in both hands and start focusing. At this point you can scale his forearms to get at his head again, so the fight can actually be over by now.

Once he's finished charging, the orb will explode to create a field effect of slowly-dropping dark hazards, which inflict damage on contact with Sora and home in on whatever his position was at the time that they spawned. These can be dispersed with physical attacks. Darkside has 300 HP and 6 Attack/Defense this time, so he's not an enormous upgrade over the original and I'm a lot stronger than I was relative to his stats.

Next report: Traverse Town.