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Official Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep (PSP) Import thread of Convoluted Nonsense
- Thread starter Bebpo
- Start date
MAtgS
Member
I'm not sure you quite follow him. There are bosses in this game that have to be fought with multiple playable charactersduckroll said:
the multi-part giant robot unversed counts as a recycled boss because you fight 3 times during the course of BbS. Also the magic mirror & Braig are fought twice & Vanitas a crap ton of times.
Hahah Funny OP. So I'm assuming the games good? Haven't touched the PSP in a while, hope this will make me pick it up again since I looooove KH.
Edit: Jesus Duckroll, I haven't seen you enjoy a game or participate in a thread this much in a while. Hmm pretty good endorsement I guess. And why isn't there a release date yet for this game? They usually are pretty good about FF and KH games about US release dates being close to Japan ones.
Edit: Jesus Duckroll, I haven't seen you enjoy a game or participate in a thread this much in a while. Hmm pretty good endorsement I guess. And why isn't there a release date yet for this game? They usually are pretty good about FF and KH games about US release dates being close to Japan ones.
badcrumble
Member
Duckroll, what's Aqua like besides her higher Magic stat? I know basically nothing about her individual abilities.
Pureauthor
Member
I just listened to the 'reversed' boss music.
Sounds awesome.
Sounds awesome.
badcrumble
Member
Are there any attacks that make use of her secondary sex characteristics?duckroll said:
Pureauthor
Member
badcrumble said:
She, uh, she cartwheels.
SecretBonusPoint
Banned
badcrumble said:
Aquanetta?
Oh man, Aqua is SO AWESOME. I've put about 5 hours into her story so far, and most of that has honestly just been relatively mindless "grinding" because I just equip a bunch of spells and skills, run into mobs and totally wipe them, watch REALLY pretty effects, and then she goes into her AWESOME style changes and by the end of a run through an area, I've leveled a bunch of skills and stuff so I can make EVEN BETTER ONES.
Aqua has two unique Command Styles which totally decimate shit. The first is the one she starts with, build the Command Bar with spells and stuff, and she goes into Magic Wish, which is really good because the end of combo string attack is actually a projectile. It gives her tons of range when clearing a crowd, and homes pretty well, until Vent's shitty Speed Rave. The finishing move for Magic Wish has her spinning like a ballerina and balancing all enemies who get sucked up by the wave on top of her keyblade. It does a ton of damage and is pretty much AOE + movement. Insane.
BUT, I got BLADE CHARGE later, and it's a second tier Command Style. So from Magic Wish (or any other style), if you build it with elemental spells, you change into this. It is ZOMG. Her entire right arm turns into this long BEAM OF LIGHT sword, and it just slashes everything with insane range. The finisher has her raising it up and then doing a spin slash with it before doing a jump thrust vertical slash on the ground. It's cool but.... I usually never get there now because they all die before it builds to a finish. :lol
It should be noted though, that Aqua's story is definitely designed and written as the "last" story out of the 3. So while Terra and Aqua don't matter as much in terms of order, I don't really think it would be great for anyone to play Aqua's story first. It would make a lot less sense, and be like watching the last chapter of each of your DVDs in your collection, without watching the rest. Lolz.
Aqua has two unique Command Styles which totally decimate shit. The first is the one she starts with, build the Command Bar with spells and stuff, and she goes into Magic Wish, which is really good because the end of combo string attack is actually a projectile. It gives her tons of range when clearing a crowd, and homes pretty well, until Vent's shitty Speed Rave. The finishing move for Magic Wish has her spinning like a ballerina and balancing all enemies who get sucked up by the wave on top of her keyblade. It does a ton of damage and is pretty much AOE + movement. Insane.
BUT, I got BLADE CHARGE later, and it's a second tier Command Style. So from Magic Wish (or any other style), if you build it with elemental spells, you change into this. It is ZOMG. Her entire right arm turns into this long BEAM OF LIGHT sword, and it just slashes everything with insane range. The finisher has her raising it up and then doing a spin slash with it before doing a jump thrust vertical slash on the ground. It's cool but.... I usually never get there now because they all die before it builds to a finish. :lol
It should be noted though, that Aqua's story is definitely designed and written as the "last" story out of the 3. So while Terra and Aqua don't matter as much in terms of order, I don't really think it would be great for anyone to play Aqua's story first. It would make a lot less sense, and be like watching the last chapter of each of your DVDs in your collection, without watching the rest. Lolz.
badcrumble
Member
Awesome, sounds like a lot of fun. I was honestly worried that Aqua would be less fun simply because casting magic offensively isn't terrifically effective or fun compared to physical attacks in KH1/2... very glad to see that I was wrong and she's apparently great to play with.
badcrumble said:
Magic is the best offensive play style in BbS. I played with almost a full magic deck through half of Vent's campaign, so Aqua's campaign now is a lot like how I played Vent, but even BETTER because she's specialized in that aspect.
There's nothing ineffective about spamming AOE spells while pulling off combos and destroying an entire mob of enemies, and it's certainly a ton of fun. The biggest difference in BbS is that magic is no longer something you have to fiddle in a menu to use, but instead it's executed the same way as attack skills. So if you build a command deck which is a sequence of magic skills and they complement each other well, it's generally a lot more effective than physical attacks.
Dead Prince
Banned
is it true that JYB is voicing Terra? <3
badcrumble said:
If you'd like, you can watch some videos of her, particularly Fairuzonss fight using her against the
secret boss
A question for ya'll (and by ya'll, I mean the inimitable duckroll). It may have been asked and answered before, but I don't want to read though several pages and get hit with potential spoilers. You can dig!
Anyway, do commands carry over to subsequent characters? I'm just about to finish Terra and I was wondering if it might be advantageous to keep commands with unlearned abilities on them for Vent and Aqua.
Anyway, do commands carry over to subsequent characters? I'm just about to finish Terra and I was wondering if it might be advantageous to keep commands with unlearned abilities on them for Vent and Aqua.
Aokage said:
Nothing carries over because you will have to keep your Terra clear save anyway. DO NOT DELETE OR OVERWRITE IT IF YOU WANT TO COMPLETE HIS COLLECTIONS LATER. To play as another character you have to start a new game. The game keeps track of what characters you have cleared as you clear them, but the story saves are all independent.
xero273 said:
duckroll said:
Whaaaaat
That's how it works? How bizarre! You don't have to play through the prologue to get to the character select screen again, do you?
There is an endgame with all three characters, I assume...? I wonder how that will work. Nah, maybe I don't want to know.
Thx for ProTip!
Finished the game completely. Total time was 43 hours. About 23 on Ventus, then 10 on Terra, 10 on Aqua. It's not that Ventus was longer, it's just that your first run is you learning the ropes and the 2nd/3rd are like if you replayed a game you already beat; aka you destroy it.
Best KH game. Makes me want to get KH Final Mix and replay the games again in order. Nomura pulled an MGS3 and like how MGS3 is one of the best console games ever, this may go down as one of the best portable games ever.
A+
Best KH game. Makes me want to get KH Final Mix and replay the games again in order. Nomura pulled an MGS3 and like how MGS3 is one of the best console games ever, this may go down as one of the best portable games ever.
A+
RadioHeadAche
Member
Bebpo said:
Oh snap. I love MGS3 (it's my favorite Metal Gear), and if BBS is really that good, my hype has increased greatly. I wish we had a demo for this, or that I could read Japanese.
Kagari said:
I'm both surprised and yet not xD I really thought there was nowhere to go but up since KH2, but 358/2's quality surprised me, so I expected even better from the PSP game. Good to see it lives up to hype.
Can't wait to try this out....hurrrrry up localization! I mean the voice acting finished almost 2 months ago c'mooooon
Oh well. I have Demon's Souls in the meantime.
My question is, as far as plot goes, how would you rate it to the rest of the series?
For me Kh2 is at the very bottom, and Chain of Memories is at the very top, with KH1 slightly behind it.
Finished Aqua with a clear time of about 9 hours. For me it was 13:20 hours for Terra, 13:40 hours for Ventus and 9 hours for Aqua. I had to replay the final bosses for Terra and Ventus after that because I missed 1 Xehanort Report in both, so the total clear time plus that is 14/14/9. I have Last Episode unlocked, but I think I'll do it later. The game will probably take 40 hours for most people, which is a really good length for an action RPG. There's enough optional content if you want to collect everything and make every single skill to push the total playtime to 60-80 hours I'll bet.
Anyway, it's definitely the best KH game released yet.
Anyway, it's definitely the best KH game released yet.
badcrumble
Member
Do you feel like it simplified the story and answered more questions than it raised, or the other way around? (I don't even know why I'm asking this because it's a KH game and it's pretty obvious which one it'll be).
badcrumble
Member
I'm pretty sure that's the case, yes.squall211 said:
rockman zx
Member
squall211 said:
Yes, only Zack.
I beat the game with Terra and Ven already and playing with Aqua right now, she is awesome but very weak.
The game is fucking awesome, the combat system and character growth is not only the best in any KH game but one of the best in recent years when it comes to action rpg.
rockman zx said:
You know, Bebpo told me this too. He said with Aqua he felt she started out really weak and only got very powerful when her magic stat goes up later on and when you have better spells. But when I played it, Aqua was really strong right from the start. It's really weird because I felt out of all the 3 characters, Ventus starts off the weakest. I Hated his lack of range, and his combos didn't really have much reach. His Speed Rave command style also kinda blows compared to Fatal Mode and Magic Wish...
With Aqua I was decimating everything within the first two worlds, and after I fused a few new spells she was totally unstoppable... ^^;
badcrumble
Member
If Aqua's the last you should play in story order, it stands to reason that she's also the one that is the most rewarding to folks that have mastered the Command Board system, one would think.duckroll said:
Pureauthor
Member
Hey, duckroll, did you pay any attention to the story? How was the execution? I heard that the various Disney worlds are integrated into the story a lot better than before.
Pureauthor said:
Story-wise:
BbS=KH > Re:CoM/CoM >>>>>>>>>>>>>> KH2
I'm sorry fans of <insert character I hate>, but I hate Roxas, I hate Xemnas, I hate OrgXIII, and I hate DiZ, I hate all the garbage that was in KH2 and then bled into 358 Days. I'm not rating Days because I could not stomach playing through it, the gameplay is garbage, the camera is garbage, the graphics are pretty bad and it's a total recyclethon without having an interesting battle system. The panel system is great, but it's meaningless when everything sucks. Also, Roxas sucks.
Birth by Sleep returns to the more traditional and logical form of storytelling that KH had. It introduces characters, sets up the quest, foreshadows events, explains motivations and twists without going AHA LOL LOOK HOW SMART I AM, etc. Like how KH1 was about a bunch of Nomura Disney kids who go on a big adventure across Disney worlds to save the universe from an evil villain who wants to capture the hearts of all worlds, BbS is about a bunch of Nomura Disney jedi knights who go on a big adventure across Disney worlds in the twilight of the era of light.
The comparison between KH and MGS is actually very fitting, since KH = MGS, KH2 = MGS2 and BbS = MGS3.
The disney worlds are very well done. They are the places where the main characters develop and grow. Then in the original worlds the original plot is forwarded. With the three characters combined and
they cover the entire movie except for Stitch because I guess Lilo portion will be in KH3.
Personally I thought Peter Pan was the best disney world of the game with Sleeping Beauty being 2nd.
In terms of simplifying the main original story...It doesn't feel that way. It feels like they sat down with a good writer and laid out the entire KH universe and spent A LOT of time making a script that pulls everything together and makes it all work, all the while making a new original plot and further hooks for 1-2 new KH games. The script is pretty damn impressive considering how everything fits and outside one or two things doesn't feel forced. If you're a KH fan, a few bits should bring a tear to your eyes.
There's also A LOT of story in this game. Probably 5-6 hours of cutscenes when you combine all the characters. Still the way the series works makes it a little awkward at how much time passes between cutscenes sometimes. The story works great as long as you don't get hung up on the unexplained unimportant bits that happen between. Like "how did they get into Maleficient's castle?" when a world starts with them in the throne world, etc...you just have to assume they were investigating and ended up there and the game just skipped showing you the investigation part.
The only negative thing about the game is when you hit pause to bring up the equip menu there is a 1-2 second load time. The world count is also a lot smaller than KH2. Otherwise everything about the game is as good as it gets for KH.
outtakes
Personally I thought Peter Pan was the best disney world of the game with Sleeping Beauty being 2nd.
In terms of simplifying the main original story...It doesn't feel that way. It feels like they sat down with a good writer and laid out the entire KH universe and spent A LOT of time making a script that pulls everything together and makes it all work, all the while making a new original plot and further hooks for 1-2 new KH games. The script is pretty damn impressive considering how everything fits and outside one or two things doesn't feel forced. If you're a KH fan, a few bits should bring a tear to your eyes.
There's also A LOT of story in this game. Probably 5-6 hours of cutscenes when you combine all the characters. Still the way the series works makes it a little awkward at how much time passes between cutscenes sometimes. The story works great as long as you don't get hung up on the unexplained unimportant bits that happen between. Like "how did they get into Maleficient's castle?" when a world starts with them in the throne world, etc...you just have to assume they were investigating and ended up there and the game just skipped showing you the investigation part.
The only negative thing about the game is when you hit pause to bring up the equip menu there is a 1-2 second load time. The world count is also a lot smaller than KH2. Otherwise everything about the game is as good as it gets for KH.
Bebpo said:
It's not just the equip menu, it's the entire menu subroutine itself. If you go to a save point and you haven't used the menu in a while, there's the same 1-2 second load to bring up the save menu. But it does stay in memory for a while though, so if you go into the menu, and get out, the next time you go into the menu if it hasn't been too long there's no loading at all. It's really weird. I blame the director of Einhander.
Fimbulvetr
Member
Bebpo said:
There probably won't be any Stitch on earth stuff because in Japanese canon Lilo is a different character. Though, depending how similar their personalities are(which will factor into dialogue) it's possible they could just use a different character model for the western version.
That and 12 years is a long time.:lol
God, you guys are making this sound a bit too good.
I just picked this up a few hours ago. I suppose it doesn't matter at this point, but I've never played any KH games before. Is this a pretty stand alone KH title, or are a lot of things going to go over my head?
Based on the supposed mess that people seem to suggest is the story for this series, I'm not sure I care a great deal, but I'm simply curious is all.
Based on the supposed mess that people seem to suggest is the story for this series, I'm not sure I care a great deal, but I'm simply curious is all.
badcrumble
Member
I'm pretty happy to hear that. I had a LOT of problems with KH2 (the story got much more complex without getting any smarter and wasn't told as well either, the sidequests were generally unrewarding, the platforming/exploration wasn't fun at all), some of which got fixed in the Final Mix, but it sounds like the story is being handled better as well in this one. Not only does it sound like BBS is an extremely solid game, it bodes very well for future installments in the series.duckroll said:Story-wise:
BbS=KH > Re:CoM/CoM >>>>>>>>>>>>>> KH2
I'm sorry fans of <insert character I hate>, but I hate Roxas, I hate Xemnas, I hate OrgXIII, and I hate DiZ, I hate all the garbage that was in KH2 and then bled into 358 Days. I'm not rating Days because I could not stomach playing through it, the gameplay is garbage, the camera is garbage, the graphics are pretty bad and it's a total recyclethon without having an interesting battle system. The panel system is great, but it's meaningless when everything sucks. Also, Roxas sucks.
Birth by Sleep returns to the more traditional and logical form of storytelling that KH had. It introduces characters, sets up the quest, foreshadows events, explains motivations and twists without going AHA LOL LOOK HOW SMART I AM, etc. Like how KH1 was about a bunch of Nomura Disney kids who go on a big adventure across Disney worlds to save the universe from an evil villain who wants to capture the hearts of all worlds, BbS is about a bunch of Nomura Disney jedi knights who go on a big adventure across Disney worlds in the twilight of the era of light.
The comparison between KH and MGS is actually very fitting, since KH = MGS, KH2 = MGS2 and BbS = MGS3.
Yeah, it's very much like MGS3. It stands alone as its own story, with a brand new original cast of leads. It has many nods to the rest of the series, and actually explains a lot of the mysteries of the storyline quite well, but if you don't know what those mysteries are or never played any of the games, you won't be lost because the game doesn't dwell on them or make it a big deal in the game's story itself.
badcrumble
Member
This is getting off-topic a bit, but I'm surprised that more series don't go the prequel route. It seems like a better chance to start some things fresh and come up with new ideas because there's less of an expectation that the gameplay improvements be purely iterative on the previous game in the series. And it's also a much better/more elegant way to explain your way out of convoluted stories (where they occur) than constant flashbacks.
Pureauthor
Member
badcrumble said:
Some stories simply don't set themselves up for prequels well, if they go with 'this is where it all began' route. And sometimes the execution just isn't up to snuff (see: RE0). :/
KH has the advantage in that from day 1 there was a significant amount of unanswered questions about the mythos.
Funnily enough, I think KH2's story is terrible as well, but for pretty much a different reason than duckroll - since I liked the concept of the Organization, their treatment during KH2 was extremely disappointing.
badcrumble
Member
Likewise - I thought they were well done in Chain of Memories since they were constantly backstabbing each other and that was fairly interesting. In KH2 they were just dumb baddies and there was zero intrigue. That improved fairly significantly in 358/2 Days, but the gameplay was so bad/repetitive/ugly that I didn't care.Pureauthor said:
Okay, completed the entire game now. Fuck awesome ending. Even MORE fuck awesome credits. Square Enix and Nomura totally hit this out of out of the park. I watched the secret ending on youtube after that, and WOW. Nomura wasn't kidding. It basically summarizes the KH series in context, and gives very strong clues as to where the next game(s) will be going.
SO GOOD.
I haven't been this satisfied with a RPG for a long, long time. Being a huge Disney fan, and being a fan of the KH series since it started, it's definitely rewarding seeing it pay off so well in a game. It's one of those games where at the end, when the credits get to the end of special thanks and it goes "and to all staff and fans of blahblah" you go "AND THANK YOU TO YOU TOO" aloud. I'm not sure if anyone else does that, but I do sometimes. ^^;
SO GOOD.
I haven't been this satisfied with a RPG for a long, long time. Being a huge Disney fan, and being a fan of the KH series since it started, it's definitely rewarding seeing it pay off so well in a game. It's one of those games where at the end, when the credits get to the end of special thanks and it goes "and to all staff and fans of blahblah" you go "AND THANK YOU TO YOU TOO" aloud. I'm not sure if anyone else does that, but I do sometimes. ^^;
ULTROS!
People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks.
Great impressions!
Looking forward to the MGS3 of Kingdom Hearts. Hopefully by June-September will be the NA release date and when I actually have money.
Looking forward to the MGS3 of Kingdom Hearts. Hopefully by June-September will be the NA release date and when I actually have money.
Maybe KHIII will be the MGS4 of the series, eh
badcrumble said:
Playing KH2 I did feel as though there was almost zero intrigue with the organization, especially considering I failed to play COM beforehand. 358/2 Days certainly made them more interesting and memorable than they did in the second installment and my hate for Roxas pretty much went away completely after completing it.
I was quite disappointed with the second game in most aspects minus the music and found a lot of the game unfortunately forgettable. The final battle with Xemnas being my favorite moment of the game, even if just for the trippy music. Glad Birth By Sleep is getting such positive reviews, and it seems the gameplay moved in the right direction. Can't wait until I can play this.
Yeah, I'm with you guys on Org. XIII. I really like the idea of them, of having this interesting hoody group to integrate into the disney/original story. Plus I think Roxas >>> Sora. Actually in general I think all the nobodys (roxas/namine/org) are more interesting characters than the normal KH crew of sora/kairi/riku. So KH2's story was really disappointing because it made terrible use of them and Roxas barely got any screen time.
I actually really like that Nomura has been pushing Roxas as main post KH2 in 358 & BBS. I hope this means that in the eventual KH3 Roxas will be as important (and get as much screen time) to the story as Sora.
I actually really like that Nomura has been pushing Roxas as main post KH2 in 358 & BBS. I hope this means that in the eventual KH3 Roxas will be as important (and get as much screen time) to the story as Sora.