Backlog 2019

[Sir Stardust]

Thanks! ^o^ I’d like to play more with time limits when I have more time to actually plan out what I want to do, but I’m heading into my (hopefully!) last semester of school, so that probably won’t happen anytime soon.

[Kikki]

Wow, ryume. I understand feeling obligated to finish the series, and yet, it sounds like it's going to be torture for you to do so. :/ Eh, I can't offer any advice. I'm not sure if I'd give up or do the same as you are. (I THINK I would give up and not buy, as I'm always on the edge of frustration with how many games I have to force myself to finish because I bought something HOPING it would be to my taste...usually against my better judgement...and finding out that my mark was missed.) I hope it's better than you fear.

[ryume]

Kikki, if you have any interest as to why KH is convoluted/difficult to keep track of, this excerpt from a Reddit post, replete with major spoilers, is a fine example of WHY it's such a tough storyline to hold onto. The post is long, and it's primarily discussing the origin of 2 major characters.

Spoiler:

Let's look at two characters: Sora and Ansem.

Initially we're introduced to Ansem offscreen as a wizened researcher. At the end of KH1, it's revealed that he's a heartless and evil.

In KH2, we're told that the Ansem we fought in KH1 was not Ansem, but instead Xehanort's heartless. We then meet the 'real' Ansem, Ansem the Wise. We also meet Xemnas, Xehanort's nobody. Keep in mind that at this point, we haven't even met Xehanort himself. Also, Riku is going around dressed up as Xehanort's heartless, but gets turned back to himself in a blast of deus ex machina light that also may have killed the real Ansem (but probably didn't).

In Birth by Sleep, we finally meet Xehanort himself! But this time he's an old man, not a young one. It's revealed that he bodyjacks a protagonist, Terra, turns his hair white, loses his memories and ends up studying under the real Ansem, before stealing his name and turning himself into a heartless, leaving his body behind as a nobody. (If his body is Terra's body, why does his nobody just act like him? Is the soul or mind included somewhere here?)

In DDD (and actually interviews prior) it's revealed that killing both a character's nobody and heartless leads to them being revived. So the Xehanort's heartless and Xemnas you killed? The original Xehanort is back. But probably still bodyjacking Terra.

That was fairly straightforward. Let's do Sora next.

We start out with Sora just chilling on an island. Eventually he's chosen by the keyblade. Near the end of KH1 he commits dark keyblade seppuku, because it turns out Kairi's heart is trapped inside him. He becomes a regular heartless, gets turned back by the power of love, and that's that.

All his memories get scrambled and overwritten in COM.

Come KH2, it's revealed that his brief out-of-body stint led to the creation of a nobody, Roxas. Also, he somehow played a part in the creation of Naminè, Kairi's nobody. We're ignoring that nobodies are the bodies left behind after hearts are taken, and that both Kairi and Sora have perfectly functional bodies. Back to Roxas: he has two keyblades, because they look cool. He's forced into recombining with Sora in order to wake him up and make him whole, despite Sora functioning perfectly well during COM. After that, Sora can use two keyblades too.

Now we step back ten years, to Birth by Sleep. Here I'm a bit rusty. There's a kid called Ventus training to be a keyblade warrior, who looks exactly like Roxas, but is stated not to be Roxas. Xehanort runs a test on him and splits the 'dark in his heart' off into a separate vessel, Vanitas. (Who, incidentally, is the source of all the evil creatures in BBS.) Ventus forms a heart-bond with Sora's heart, as a random, pretty-good kid. (I'm not sure whether that happened before the beginning or at the end of the game.) At the end, we see his 'dark half' has Sora's face and hairdo, except black hair. So they fight for a bit, creating a super keyblade that looks absurd. Ventus ends up in a permanent coma. He's dumped in castle oblivion for the next ten years, but his keyblade follows Aqua around the world of darkness, killing things. Why did Vanitas look like Sora? Why did Ventus look like Roxas? mumblemumbleheartconnectionmumblemumble

Then there's Days. This introduced Xion, a black haired Naminè recolour that wields a keyblade. Turns out she's a fake clone of Sora made to steal Roxas' keyblade. He ends up defeating her and taking her keyblade, getting two. (Or at least, I think this is how the keyblade count goes down.)

This? This was just from trying to understand who the protagonist and antagonist are. « Harvest Goddess » forbid we try to understand the hinted time travel plot or the metaphysics of soul/body/heart. Counting keyblades will leave you with a headache. Trying to understand what Kingdom Hearts, the McGuffin, actually is? That's another headache and a half. What's the story behind world-travelling and the heartless? I thought they were supposed to be stopped after KH1. What do keyholes into the heart of worlds actually do? What does shooting those keyholes in the sky do? Is the world of darkness really one big boring black place? If killing a person'a heartless and nobody resurrects the person, how do you permakill someone? Do you have to res and then decapitate? What happens if you take a keychain off a keyblade? Where is the plot even going?

[Kikki]

That's so much nonsense strung together that it sounds like the creators just threw a few hundred idea fragments into a jar, shook them around a lot, then grabbed out a fistful and threw them into a story framework randomly.

Honestly, I thought the whole Disney character thing alone was already bizarre and annoyingly nonsensical, but I figured they made it work, somehow. I've only tried the demo of Dream Drop Distance and even the battle system made no sense to me, lol.

I don't think I'd want to stick with that. Good luck to you on not hating your time with it, though, if you've decided you're gonna see it through no matter how much it bugs you. I have to wonder what on earth the devs were thinking, though. But it's Square Enix, right? To be honest, I've always felt like Squeenix makes stories that are often just a jumble of random bits thrown together without proper connections. It's one of the reasons why I can never get into most Final Fantasy, and the reason why I loved the Pocket Edition of FFXV...they cut out all the puppy doodoo. If I have the euphemism right.

Maybe some people like that looseness, though. I guess they must? Perhaps it gives them lots of reason to imagine the story their own way, or something, because you have no choice but to use your own logic to piece things together, since the game clearly has none of its own.

[Bluie]

Spoiler:

dark keyblade seppuku

I freaking snorted.

And it's even more convoluted than that. I recently watched a summary of all the games (I only played BBS and OG CoM) so I could be up to speed for KH3. It's a bloody mess.

Nostalgia factor seems to be a big driving force in the fandom (grew up playing it therefore wanting to see it end) while newcomers are a mix of confused and put off by all the ridiculousness. I'm in the camp of 'I want to see where this dumpster fire ends'. My love for the series fizzled out, I have a general distaste for Nomura (thats a whole 'nother can of worms), but might as well see how this turns out.

*Waits for the entirety of KH3 to be uploaded on YT*

[ryume]

HAHAHA omg, love your comments, Bluie. 100% agree on the dumpster fire camp bit!

Yep, it's SE, Kikki. KH is probably one of the worst example of their brand of story telling.

[Sir Stardust]

The only one I ever played was 358/2 Days. Maybe it helped that I had no idea what was going on, it helped me just have fun and play without trying to understand the story. I’m pretty sure that’s the only way those could be enjoyable. D;

[Pachi]

358/2 Days was the only KH I got to play as well. I didn't get to finish it because of school then, but I remember having fun. It was kinda light, like slice-of-life ish. I just went to the dungeons and complete quests and eat ice cream with Axel and Xion. I probably didn't progress in the plot enough


Backlog stuff:
I'm in the middle of town plan #4 in ANB. I was getting bored waiting for wheat to grow for Soseki's house so I started playing SMT IV last night, and I'm about to finish the 3rd quest/tutorial in Naraku. Tbh I think scouting/negotiating with demons during a battle is kinda odd and they ask for a lot D: compared to Devil Survivor's auctions.

[Sir Stardust]

It starts out fine and cute enough, but drops off a cliff into heavy stuff and despair by the end. D:

I just liked playing in Neverland so I could fly!

[RopeMaidenKirie]

KH is fun, but yeah the story is pretty much pure nonsense lol. I just liked seeing all the various mashups between SE and Disney, so I'm sure I'll get the 3rd one eventually, but definitely not right away.

Restarted AC: Odyssey! (traded it in and rebought it on PC since husband is usually playing on the big screen) I finished a lot of games last year, so this year I'm going to try and go with a quality > quantity rule and only buy games I really would like to play immediately this year.

That means I really don't have much to pick up the next few months at all, so a perfect time to hopefully get through most of my backlog. Maybe YIIK since I've been waiting for it for quite awhile, but I'll see how good it is first before I decide to pick it up.

[Kikki]

It's frustrating that it's so hard to break bad habits, isn't it? Some stuff I started doing right in 2018, but then started going wrong again as I got closer to 2019...

Spoiler:

I did really good on the whole 'only buy games you know you'll like' thing in the first half of 2018, but it seems to be my nature to always be willing to at least TRY something before I condemn it as 'not for me', even if I know from 30 years of experience that I probably won't like it. I really have to stop doing that and just trust in my own narrow-mindedness, lol. (Narrow tastedness?) It ends up with me having to play through games I don't like in order to not have my backlog heap up.

Well, at least I did keep my backlog from heaping up! I pared quite a few games off it in 2018, so that's great, but in the latter half of the year I definitely gradually reverted to scooping up more a few more games than I should have (always due to sales!) because I thought I might like them...and pretty nearly always ended up NOT liking them. As is simply my way, lol. I'm lucky Pocket Edition was such a big surprise, but FFVX streamlined sounded perfect for me so I guess it wasn't that big of a gamble. And I, er, got it on sale, too...

I think I'm playing XC too much. Last night I fell asleep thinking of Shulk's gem layout and telling myself that tomorrow I have to change the weapon gems to the best Double Attack and Haste gems that I can get my hands on...and wondering if the achievement 'Truly Outrageous' that I got for equipping a character with the maximum number of gems possible (8) is a reference to Jem and the Holograms. It's gotta be, right?

Okay, so...I'm off to either make, trade, or buy some high quality Haste gems!

EDIT: Amazon.ca claims I will receive Vesperia on release day as initially promised. I hope that's true, with the parcel backlog thank to Canada Post's recent strike. I think they've been striking over something every few years since I was a teenager.

[Bluie]

I finished Moonlighter. It's about a 10 hour game if you're just aiming for the ending + all shop/town upgrades. Ending was kinda meh, but it feels like they're trying to keep it open for a sequel. While the game was fun, it's not worth the overpriced price tag. I'm glad I got it on sale and didn't cave before then.

I'm debating on playing Iconoclasts in the meantime before Tales of Vesperia on Friday. Seems it's also a quick one (around 10 hours to beat, apparently), but eh, idk.

[Sir Stardust]

I started working on reviewing Mana Khemia for the little blog I run. Now I wanna play it again. I got Nikki’s ending last time, maybe I should go for Muppy’s now.

[Katgirl]

I finished Moonlighter. It's about a 10 hour game if you're just aiming for the ending + all shop/town upgrades. Ending was kinda meh, but it feels like they're trying to keep it open for a sequel. While the game was fun, it's not worth the overpriced price tag. I'm glad I got it on sale and didn't cave before then.

I'm debating on playing Iconoclasts in the meantime before Tales of Vesperia on Friday. Seems it's also a quick one (around 10 hours to beat, apparently), but eh, idk.

OH I actually played through Iconoclast recently (it was the PlayStation plus game a bit ago) It's isn't very long at all. Looking back at my playthrough it took me about 14 hours, although I didn't go for all of the chests with are the main 100% completion collectible.

The story, world, and characters are the best part (although the ending was... Not great.) And there are a couple good instances of storytelling through gameplay as well as some scenes/bosses that I found genuinely unsettling (in a good way). Plus if you really want to go through it quickly, they added a relaxed mode that makes it so that you don't take damage. I will admit I may have used that for some of the last few bosses to just get through them and see what happens ^^;

[Bluie]

*SLAMS THE RELAXED MODE BUTTON*

Well, I guess i'm playing Iconoclasts through before Friday.