So, a long and goofy (GET IT) path led me to deciding that before I try playing Kingdom Hearts 3 again, I should 100% complete every game in the HD ReMix collections. This is a thing that started many months ago, and I have just returned to. So in the interest of saving my hands, I am not going to copy/paste every entry from the previous threads I did on Twitter, and instead I'm just going to link to them.
358/2 Days and RE: Chain of Memories thread.
KH 1.5 up to Wonderlands Round 1 thread

For those who don't want to read those the tl;dr is - I initially didn't plan to do 1.5 at all, so I started with RE: Chain of Memories, but then I remembered that there are bonuses in the ReMix version if you've watched all the 358/2 Days cutscenes, so I did that first. Partway through RE: Chain of Memories I felt the itch to go for 100%, and then after I beat all the stories I grinded the shit out of it for the last few things I needed, after which I was like "ah yes, the logical thing to do now is repeat this for every single game in this series on PS4" and then jumped almost immediately into Kingdom Hearts 1.5, and didn't get very far before I got distracted by other shit and lack of access to my PS4 (long story).

so yeah. KINGDOM HEARTS
one of my completion goals for 2023.
pray for me

Alright so at some point in the past I forgot my own plan for this and my 100% completion of this game, and my apparently ONLY?? save file is locked out of one of the missable trophies for 1.5, so yeah, fuck. I'm only like 8 hours deep in that save though, so reboot time!

tl;dr the only "missable" trophies are difficulty related, Speedster (which has a bug that makes it not missable, technically, as its first 15 hours but the in-game timer "resets" after 100 hours so you can get it at 0-15 hours, 100-115 hours, 200-215 hours, etc.), and the two that you can fuck up mid-run; Unchanging Armor and Undefeated, which are complete the game without changing any of you or your parties' equipment and without using the Continue function after dying, respectively.

Now obviously that second one is just a minor annoyance more than anything else, just make sure you save regularly and instead of jumping right back into a boss fight you gotta run to the area it starts every time, not a big deal honestly. The first one though, that stings, especially for a 100% run... Or at least, it does until you look more closely at it; "Complete the Game" is the key phrase, so once we whoop the final boss we're free and clear, which means we're shotgunning proud mode to start! Then, once we've got those trophies, we can change our equipment and use the continue for all the super hard and 100% completion stuff.

I have finished Traverse Town - Second Visit with its moderately cool boss, and now I have access to the motherfucking WARP GUMMI which means I don't need to redo gummi ship sections every single fucking time I need to go somewhere.

I just did the wormhole for Agrabah before I take a break, as a gift to my future self because LORDS ABOVE AND BELOW the KH1 Gummi Ship is the worst. Its just uninteresting and tedious and bleh and I hate it so I'm parking on Agrabah and taking a break.

Maybe I'll watch some stuff, or play a different game, or maybe I'll just go to bed. Who knows, the night is young.

Fuck Agrabah, I'm taking a break.

Gonna pop over to Olympus Coliseum and fuck around in one of the cups there to grind some levels and maybe a few goodies if I can complete anything.

Aka time to hang with Winnie the Pooh and then hang with my mom and her dogs while we get fast food.

(I'm really glad I don't have to do high scores for the minigames in this one, cause that was a ROUGH TIME in RE:CoM)

After full-tilt sprinting through Monstro I have a handy list of Pros & Cons for folks curious on my thoughts.

Cons:

• Every room looks like this and 90% of them are just called "Chamber #" so it's confusing as hell to navigate.
• Lots of not-great platforming required to get all the goodies.
• Pinocchio.
• Boring-ass boss that design wise is almost identical to a Final Fantasy IX boss.

Pros:

• You get high jump after you do the first part of it.

That's it. That's the only pro. Fuck Monstro.

Anyways, next Stop? SPOOKY SCARY SKELLINGTON!!!
air horn noises

We're in the Endgame now.

So yeah, Halloween Town and Neverland got knocked out without anything of note happening really, and without much issue (fuck you, Antisora, you punk-ass teleport auto-tracking attacking bitch) so now we're on to Hollow Bastion!

Up next: big dramatic story moments, one really shitty novelty gameplay sequence, and some fairly tough but fairly cool bosses.

How absolutely BUSTED GOOD Tinker Bell is in this game.

Other Summons:

• Limited time use.
• Makes both of you party members disappear while active.
• Situationally useful.

Tinker Bell:

• Can last the entire encounter.
• Let's you keep both party members.
• Universally useful (HP Regen effect every few seconds)
• Can BRING YOU BACK FROM THE DEAD ONCE.

So despite my previous back and forth thoughts I ended up deciding that doing both Speedster and Unchanging Armor at the same time was a Fool's Errand, and I have since been jumping between all the previously done worlds for upgrades and items and such.

I did all the Jungle Slider mini game in Deep Jungle (Which feels terrible to do AND it's tedious, but it gives several stat boost items so I'm only mildly grumbly) and did a quick run through for chests/Trinity Marks in Wonderland and Traverse Town (a few more easy to get stat items) and now I'm going to do some of the Olympus Coliseum tournaments and maybe their challenges depending on how over or under powered I feel.

OKAY SO
I kinda did a whole bunch of playing and screenshotting today and last night cause I was well enough to play games but didn't feel up to doing these posts yet, so now we're gonna do a kind of awkward burst of these posts that are what I was thinking at the time but are in fact posted afterwards. Feels awkward but there's a lot of stuff in these endgame areas I wanted to show off so yeah, here we goooooooo

I went, I beat everyone up, I left.
Please observe the only thing of value from this world: these underwater designs

So next up on the list: All the Synthesis stuff.

I'll see y'all in like. Sunday. Hopefully.

So I honestly really enjoy this kind of grinding, it was a nice mostly relaxing background activity the past day.

But now that I have completed the Synthesis and Gummi Ship stuff we're back to (theoretically) challenging stuff!

That's right, all that's left is coliseum and secret bosses!!! Really excited to see if I just breeze through them or if they're still tough when you're nearing the level cap and proper equipped out, I'll keep you posted...

I figured it was the best choice cause it doesn't add speedruning stress to my life and instead forces me to take a break!

So today I spent most of my time on tweaking the setup for a couple games which will get threads in the (hopefully) near(ish) future: Persona 5 Royal and Yakuza 0. I also played a bunch of my current rotation of roguelikes, primarily The Binding of Isaac, but also a little of some others. It was a nice day!

But yeah, as of the start of typing this post; I'm at ~68 hours on Kingdom Hearts. I turn it on when I get settled at my computer and turn it off a bit before bed, so it's running approximately as much as my heavy playtime days, which means it shouldn't put any undue stress on the system. I'm anxious about leaving it running while I'm asleep, so that's why I'm not, despite how much quicker (relatively) that would get the file to crossing the 99:99:99 threshold.

So obviously I don't want to just keep posting hours updates, so next time y'all see this thread I'll be showing off that fancy KH1.5 Platinum trophy and then jumping right in to Kingdom Hearts 2.5 ReMix!

A relaxing few days of other stuff and waiting followed by a very easy run through the final boss lineup, and we are well and truly done with Kingdom Hearts 1.5

Gonna eat my sandwich for dinner and then straight into Kingdom Hearts 2.5 we go!

(Technically the screenshot on that Trophy Unlocked screen is a spoiler, but given that the Trophy popped during the "Battle Finished" blur effect during a particularly VFX heavy moment you can't tell a damn thing, so I'm leaving it without a notice.)

Alright, so we're gonna start with some background info on my past with Kingdom Hearts is gonna add the context that will allow you to understand my current excitement:

I have barely touched Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix.

After so much Kingdom Hearts 1 it feels like coming home to get back to 2. The movement feels so much better, and the reaction commands system is so good.

Story wise not much is happening. There's a mystery in Twilight Town! Roxas and his plucky friends get in a fight with a bunch of teenage Final Fantasy characters trying to solve it! Weird new enemies that are primarily white/silver! Roxas suddenly gets a keyblade with a wacky digital summoning effect!

Yeah so while weird story stuff is happening for me in these long-ass cutscenes, (oh my god, who is that watching Sora? What're these glitchy versions KH1 cutscenes, wait why does Leon sound different??, Why is Roxas dreaming all this??) let me talk to y'all about this games starter choices!

If you finish the Mail Delivery job in under 20 seconds you get paid 50 Munny.
You can easily get it consistently in ~9-10 seconds. Do that 40 times and you hit the max amount you're allowed to earn in this section, 2000 Munny, resulting in auto progression to the next part and a slightly different version of the following dialogues and cutscenes (as well as the aforementioned higher AP bonus.).

So yeah that's what I'm doing with my left hand as I type this with my right. Then after this I'm going to bed cause blehhhhh this part takes so long and I'm just not up for it tonight.

SO GLAD MY PHONE WAS LIKE BAH, FUCK YOUR POST DO IT LIVE

Anyways, I'm currently eating some blueberry Jell-O and starting up the next day of the prologue, hence the title; I'm eating snacks and meeting all these characters and also it's hell I'm in hell I'm trapped here waiting for the game to begin.

Hey, remember when I mentioned I've barely touched KH2FM... turns out one of my gaps in information is the bonus Abilities for Critical Mode.

Y'all They just give you a fistful of very good skills and 50 AP. You normally start with 2 AP

So I'm at the end of Roxas' dive to the heart, and he gets a scene nearly identical to Sora's with Darkside! Except his is with a giant Nobody. And yeah, I'm dropping their name early but I really want to talk about this! Cause here is where you can really feel the upgrades from 1 to 2 with the combat as we now have Aerial Recovery (so we can do a little flippy while when we're knocked back instead of awkwardly having to wait till we land) and our first proper experience with Reaction Commands.

And I fucking love Reaction Commands

Sora is a little taller so his clothes don't quite fit right, and his equally-aged voice actor sounds older, but it's still the boy! The real game has begun 🥳

So now we get to meet Pete, the Disney character, who is looking to turn somebody powerful into a heartless for Maleficent to repay his debt to her.

This post is one I'm actually excited to write because I adore Pete as a minion in this game.

Yeah, that's how they explain you forgetting your magic. Memory napped too hard. Classic mistake.

Oh also we're back at Hollow Bastion and all the KH1 Final Fantasy gang is here (cause it's their original home remember?) And they're fixing the town and stuff. I was way too excited about getting magic back to listen honestly.

So I mentioned Drive Forms briefly when we got the new clothes, but as I was fuckin' about levelling up Valor and getting some items in Hollow Bastion for the past bit, I wanted to put some of my thoughts on them down here.

Sora, Donald, and Goofy knowing the summons from KH1 and it being an important plot point is hilarious every time. Like, this opening with Mushu when you land in The Land of Dragons, and they're all acting like old friends? Literally will never stop being funny to me.

We had been part of the Imperial Army for like 15 seconds before we started a fucking brawl, 🤣

Anyways a lot of this world is random MMO style missions (go here, kill number of things, etc.) sooooo this one might not get many posts because it's mostly a bunch of medium-interesting combats.

So this is something that Kingdom Hearts 2 does that 1 only really tried in one area, and it didn't work all that well; hordes and hordes of enemies!

The Land of Dragons, visit number one: done.

Instead of me recapping any of it, just go watch Mulan again.

Just got to Beauty and The Beast world and... Y'all, fucking Beast just straight up backhanding Sora to grab the rose in its glass case is another reunion that is comedy gold.

As if we didn't murder scores of Heartless together at the end of the last game. Just "fuck outta here" toss and zero words.
Lol.
Lmao.

So I believe every world in this game, or at the least most of them, have unique chest designs. And the stained glass design for Beast's Castle is just so fucking good.

Actually, a broad general statement here; stained glass designs are usually really fucking good. Love that shit.

Flimsy Story Logic
More Memory Fuckery
This Doesn't Matter
See You Later

GET UP ON THE HYDRA'S BACK
GET UP ON THE HYDRA'S BACK
GET UP ON THE HYDRA'S BACK

Alright, Olympus over.

I'm okay.

Alright, two quick story cutscenes foreshadowing Maleficent getting ready to start shit now that she's back, and Minnie Mouse having some issues at Disney Castle and hoping Donald and Goofy come back soon.

I'm just gonna go do some optional stuff and mentally recover before we go to the next section.

Nothing of value happened to our squad for a while today We just went to Port Royal for a weak retelling of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie and some odd censorship, especially in the recreations of iconic scenes (Will can't point a gun at himself, Jack can't get stabbed in the chest, etc.) because they didn't want to fuck up their ESRB rating.

And then I was also doing the Atlantic and 100 Acre Wood stuff as they unlock, but they also have nothing of value happening aside from slightly better mini-games than KH1 so, yeah, fuck it, one medium post for the three of these.

AKA Agrabah, First Visit.

Starting this world with Simba having a traumatic nightmare about his dad dying... He isn't the only one who got trauma from that shit! Fuck you!

So Sora turns into a lion cub, Donald into... Kinda like a peacock? Can those fly? And Goofy is a turtle again. Could've been some kind of dog but nooooope, I think Goofy just likes being a turtle.

This one's just a straight retelling of the second half of The Lion King, but also Pete and Heartless are there and Scar gets filled with darkness during his fight with Simba during the climactic finale. So, yeah, nothing of value for the KH story happens really. Another filler world visit!

Oh, but fun game dev history fact: this world was originally planned for KH1 but was scrapped due to time constraints and the complexity of coding Sora's lion form and it's unique combat (which was a problem they were already partially dealing with for Atlantica)

So we're back, baby! Starting the day right with my favorite world in this game: Space Paranoids, a version of the original Tron's program/world modified by Ansem the Wise after he illegally copied it from ENCOM.

The designs are so fucking good and I love this aesthetic and I'm just so happy to be here!!!

We're back, y'all! We took a nice break after all that plot, and now we're ready for more!

You can fucking fight me if you disagree

So, a long and goofy (GET IT) path led me to deciding that before I try playing Kingdom Hearts 3 again, I should 100% complete every game in the HD ReMix collections. This is a thing that started many months ago, and I have just returned to. So in the interest of saving my hands, I am not going to copy/paste every entry from the previous threads I did on Twitter, and instead I'm just going to link to them.
358/2 Days and RE: Chain of Memories thread.
KH 1.5 up to Wonderlands Round 1 thread

For those who don't want to read those the tl;dr is - I initially didn't plan to do 1.5 at all, so I started with RE: Chain of Memories, but then I remembered that there are bonuses in the ReMix version if you've watched all the 358/2 Days cutscenes, so I did that first. Partway through RE: Chain of Memories I felt the itch to go for 100%, and then after I beat all the stories I grinded the shit out of it for the last few things I needed, after which I was like "ah yes, the logical thing to do now is repeat this for every single game in this series on PS4" and then jumped almost immediately into Kingdom Hearts 1.5, and didn't get very far before I got distracted by other shit and lack of access to my PS4 (long story).

so yeah. KINGDOM HEARTS
one of my completion goals for 2023.
pray for me

Alright so at some point in the past I forgot my own plan for this and my 100% completion of this game, and my apparently ONLY?? save file is locked out of one of the missable trophies for 1.5, so yeah, fuck. I'm only like 8 hours deep in that save though, so reboot time!

tl;dr the only "missable" trophies are difficulty related, Speedster (which has a bug that makes it not missable, technically, as its first 15 hours but the in-game timer "resets" after 100 hours so you can get it at 0-15 hours, 100-115 hours, 200-215 hours, etc.), and the two that you can fuck up mid-run; Unchanging Armor and Undefeated, which are complete the game without changing any of you or your parties' equipment and without using the Continue function after dying, respectively.

Now obviously that second one is just a minor annoyance more than anything else, just make sure you save regularly and instead of jumping right back into a boss fight you gotta run to the area it starts every time, not a big deal honestly. The first one though, that stings, especially for a 100% run... Or at least, it does until you look more closely at it; "Complete the Game" is the key phrase, so once we whoop the final boss we're free and clear, which means we're shotgunning proud mode to start! Then, once we've got those trophies, we can change our equipment and use the continue for all the super hard and 100% completion stuff.

I have finished Traverse Town - Second Visit with its moderately cool boss, and now I have access to the motherfucking WARP GUMMI which means I don't need to redo gummi ship sections every single fucking time I need to go somewhere.

I just did the wormhole for Agrabah before I take a break, as a gift to my future self because LORDS ABOVE AND BELOW the KH1 Gummi Ship is the worst. Its just uninteresting and tedious and bleh and I hate it so I'm parking on Agrabah and taking a break.

Maybe I'll watch some stuff, or play a different game, or maybe I'll just go to bed. Who knows, the night is young.

Fuck Agrabah, I'm taking a break.

Gonna pop over to Olympus Coliseum and fuck around in one of the cups there to grind some levels and maybe a few goodies if I can complete anything.

Aka time to hang with Winnie the Pooh and then hang with my mom and her dogs while we get fast food.

(I'm really glad I don't have to do high scores for the minigames in this one, cause that was a ROUGH TIME in RE:CoM)

After full-tilt sprinting through Monstro I have a handy list of Pros & Cons for folks curious on my thoughts.

Cons:

• Every room looks like this and 90% of them are just called "Chamber #" so it's confusing as hell to navigate.
• Lots of not-great platforming required to get all the goodies.
• Pinocchio.
• Boring-ass boss that design wise is almost identical to a Final Fantasy IX boss.

Pros:

• You get high jump after you do the first part of it.

That's it. That's the only pro. Fuck Monstro.

Anyways, next Stop? SPOOKY SCARY SKELLINGTON!!!
air horn noises

We're in the Endgame now.

So yeah, Halloween Town and Neverland got knocked out without anything of note happening really, and without much issue (fuck you, Antisora, you punk-ass teleport auto-tracking attacking bitch) so now we're on to Hollow Bastion!

Up next: big dramatic story moments, one really shitty novelty gameplay sequence, and some fairly tough but fairly cool bosses.

How absolutely BUSTED GOOD Tinker Bell is in this game.

Other Summons:

• Limited time use.
• Makes both of you party members disappear while active.
• Situationally useful.

Tinker Bell:

• Can last the entire encounter.
• Let's you keep both party members.
• Universally useful (HP Regen effect every few seconds)
• Can BRING YOU BACK FROM THE DEAD ONCE.

So despite my previous back and forth thoughts I ended up deciding that doing both Speedster and Unchanging Armor at the same time was a Fool's Errand, and I have since been jumping between all the previously done worlds for upgrades and items and such.

I did all the Jungle Slider mini game in Deep Jungle (Which feels terrible to do AND it's tedious, but it gives several stat boost items so I'm only mildly grumbly) and did a quick run through for chests/Trinity Marks in Wonderland and Traverse Town (a few more easy to get stat items) and now I'm going to do some of the Olympus Coliseum tournaments and maybe their challenges depending on how over or under powered I feel.

OKAY SO
I kinda did a whole bunch of playing and screenshotting today and last night cause I was well enough to play games but didn't feel up to doing these posts yet, so now we're gonna do a kind of awkward burst of these posts that are what I was thinking at the time but are in fact posted afterwards. Feels awkward but there's a lot of stuff in these endgame areas I wanted to show off so yeah, here we goooooooo

I went, I beat everyone up, I left.
Please observe the only thing of value from this world: these underwater designs

So next up on the list: All the Synthesis stuff.

I'll see y'all in like. Sunday. Hopefully.

So I honestly really enjoy this kind of grinding, it was a nice mostly relaxing background activity the past day.

But now that I have completed the Synthesis and Gummi Ship stuff we're back to (theoretically) challenging stuff!

That's right, all that's left is coliseum and secret bosses!!! Really excited to see if I just breeze through them or if they're still tough when you're nearing the level cap and proper equipped out, I'll keep you posted...

I figured it was the best choice cause it doesn't add speedruning stress to my life and instead forces me to take a break!

So today I spent most of my time on tweaking the setup for a couple games which will get threads in the (hopefully) near(ish) future: Persona 5 Royal and Yakuza 0. I also played a bunch of my current rotation of roguelikes, primarily The Binding of Isaac, but also a little of some others. It was a nice day!

But yeah, as of the start of typing this post; I'm at ~68 hours on Kingdom Hearts. I turn it on when I get settled at my computer and turn it off a bit before bed, so it's running approximately as much as my heavy playtime days, which means it shouldn't put any undue stress on the system. I'm anxious about leaving it running while I'm asleep, so that's why I'm not, despite how much quicker (relatively) that would get the file to crossing the 99:99:99 threshold.

So obviously I don't want to just keep posting hours updates, so next time y'all see this thread I'll be showing off that fancy KH1.5 Platinum trophy and then jumping right in to Kingdom Hearts 2.5 ReMix!

A relaxing few days of other stuff and waiting followed by a very easy run through the final boss lineup, and we are well and truly done with Kingdom Hearts 1.5

Gonna eat my sandwich for dinner and then straight into Kingdom Hearts 2.5 we go!

(Technically the screenshot on that Trophy Unlocked screen is a spoiler, but given that the Trophy popped during the "Battle Finished" blur effect during a particularly VFX heavy moment you can't tell a damn thing, so I'm leaving it without a notice.)

Alright, so we're gonna start with some background info on my past with Kingdom Hearts is gonna add the context that will allow you to understand my current excitement:

I have barely touched Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix.

After so much Kingdom Hearts 1 it feels like coming home to get back to 2. The movement feels so much better, and the reaction commands system is so good.

Story wise not much is happening. There's a mystery in Twilight Town! Roxas and his plucky friends get in a fight with a bunch of teenage Final Fantasy characters trying to solve it! Weird new enemies that are primarily white/silver! Roxas suddenly gets a keyblade with a wacky digital summoning effect!

Yeah so while weird story stuff is happening for me in these long-ass cutscenes, (oh my god, who is that watching Sora? What're these glitchy versions KH1 cutscenes, wait why does Leon sound different??, Why is Roxas dreaming all this??) let me talk to y'all about this games starter choices!

If you finish the Mail Delivery job in under 20 seconds you get paid 50 Munny.
You can easily get it consistently in ~9-10 seconds. Do that 40 times and you hit the max amount you're allowed to earn in this section, 2000 Munny, resulting in auto progression to the next part and a slightly different version of the following dialogues and cutscenes (as well as the aforementioned higher AP bonus.).

So yeah that's what I'm doing with my left hand as I type this with my right. Then after this I'm going to bed cause blehhhhh this part takes so long and I'm just not up for it tonight.

SO GLAD MY PHONE WAS LIKE BAH, FUCK YOUR POST DO IT LIVE

Anyways, I'm currently eating some blueberry Jell-O and starting up the next day of the prologue, hence the title; I'm eating snacks and meeting all these characters and also it's hell I'm in hell I'm trapped here waiting for the game to begin.

Hey, remember when I mentioned I've barely touched KH2FM... turns out one of my gaps in information is the bonus Abilities for Critical Mode.

Y'all They just give you a fistful of very good skills and 50 AP. You normally start with 2 AP

So I'm at the end of Roxas' dive to the heart, and he gets a scene nearly identical to Sora's with Darkside! Except his is with a giant Nobody. And yeah, I'm dropping their name early but I really want to talk about this! Cause here is where you can really feel the upgrades from 1 to 2 with the combat as we now have Aerial Recovery (so we can do a little flippy while when we're knocked back instead of awkwardly having to wait till we land) and our first proper experience with Reaction Commands.

And I fucking love Reaction Commands

Sora is a little taller so his clothes don't quite fit right, and his equally-aged voice actor sounds older, but it's still the boy! The real game has begun 🥳

So now we get to meet Pete, the Disney character, who is looking to turn somebody powerful into a heartless for Maleficent to repay his debt to her.

This post is one I'm actually excited to write because I adore Pete as a minion in this game.

Yeah, that's how they explain you forgetting your magic. Memory napped too hard. Classic mistake.

Oh also we're back at Hollow Bastion and all the KH1 Final Fantasy gang is here (cause it's their original home remember?) And they're fixing the town and stuff. I was way too excited about getting magic back to listen honestly.

So I mentioned Drive Forms briefly when we got the new clothes, but as I was fuckin' about levelling up Valor and getting some items in Hollow Bastion for the past bit, I wanted to put some of my thoughts on them down here.

Sora, Donald, and Goofy knowing the summons from KH1 and it being an important plot point is hilarious every time. Like, this opening with Mushu when you land in The Land of Dragons, and they're all acting like old friends? Literally will never stop being funny to me.

We had been part of the Imperial Army for like 15 seconds before we started a fucking brawl, 🤣

Anyways a lot of this world is random MMO style missions (go here, kill number of things, etc.) sooooo this one might not get many posts because it's mostly a bunch of medium-interesting combats.

So this is something that Kingdom Hearts 2 does that 1 only really tried in one area, and it didn't work all that well; hordes and hordes of enemies!

The Land of Dragons, visit number one: done.

Instead of me recapping any of it, just go watch Mulan again.

Just got to Beauty and The Beast world and... Y'all, fucking Beast just straight up backhanding Sora to grab the rose in its glass case is another reunion that is comedy gold.

As if we didn't murder scores of Heartless together at the end of the last game. Just "fuck outta here" toss and zero words.
Lol.
Lmao.

So I believe every world in this game, or at the least most of them, have unique chest designs. And the stained glass design for Beast's Castle is just so fucking good.

Actually, a broad general statement here; stained glass designs are usually really fucking good. Love that shit.

Flimsy Story Logic
More Memory Fuckery
This Doesn't Matter
See You Later

GET UP ON THE HYDRA'S BACK
GET UP ON THE HYDRA'S BACK
GET UP ON THE HYDRA'S BACK

Alright, Olympus over.

I'm okay.

Alright, two quick story cutscenes foreshadowing Maleficent getting ready to start shit now that she's back, and Minnie Mouse having some issues at Disney Castle and hoping Donald and Goofy come back soon.

I'm just gonna go do some optional stuff and mentally recover before we go to the next section.

Nothing of value happened to our squad for a while today We just went to Port Royal for a weak retelling of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie and some odd censorship, especially in the recreations of iconic scenes (Will can't point a gun at himself, Jack can't get stabbed in the chest, etc.) because they didn't want to fuck up their ESRB rating.

And then I was also doing the Atlantic and 100 Acre Wood stuff as they unlock, but they also have nothing of value happening aside from slightly better mini-games than KH1 so, yeah, fuck it, one medium post for the three of these.

AKA Agrabah, First Visit.

Starting this world with Simba having a traumatic nightmare about his dad dying... He isn't the only one who got trauma from that shit! Fuck you!

So Sora turns into a lion cub, Donald into... Kinda like a peacock? Can those fly? And Goofy is a turtle again. Could've been some kind of dog but nooooope, I think Goofy just likes being a turtle.

This one's just a straight retelling of the second half of The Lion King, but also Pete and Heartless are there and Scar gets filled with darkness during his fight with Simba during the climactic finale. So, yeah, nothing of value for the KH story happens really. Another filler world visit!

Oh, but fun game dev history fact: this world was originally planned for KH1 but was scrapped due to time constraints and the complexity of coding Sora's lion form and it's unique combat (which was a problem they were already partially dealing with for Atlantica)

So we're back, baby! Starting the day right with my favorite world in this game: Space Paranoids, a version of the original Tron's program/world modified by Ansem the Wise after he illegally copied it from ENCOM.

The designs are so fucking good and I love this aesthetic and I'm just so happy to be here!!!

We're back, y'all! We took a nice break after all that plot, and now we're ready for more!

You can fucking fight me if you disagree

So, a long and goofy (GET IT) path led me to deciding that before I try playing Kingdom Hearts 3 again, I should 100% complete every game in the HD ReMix collections. This is a thing that started many months ago, and I have just returned to. So in the interest of saving my hands, I am not going to copy/paste every entry from the previous threads I did on Twitter, and instead I'm just going to link to them.
358/2 Days and RE: Chain of Memories thread.
KH 1.5 up to Wonderlands Round 1 thread

For those who don't want to read those the tl;dr is - I initially didn't plan to do 1.5 at all, so I started with RE: Chain of Memories, but then I remembered that there are bonuses in the ReMix version if you've watched all the 358/2 Days cutscenes, so I did that first. Partway through RE: Chain of Memories I felt the itch to go for 100%, and then after I beat all the stories I grinded the shit out of it for the last few things I needed, after which I was like "ah yes, the logical thing to do now is repeat this for every single game in this series on PS4" and then jumped almost immediately into Kingdom Hearts 1.5, and didn't get very far before I got distracted by other shit and lack of access to my PS4 (long story).

so yeah. KINGDOM HEARTS
one of my completion goals for 2023.
pray for me

Alright so at some point in the past I forgot my own plan for this and my 100% completion of this game, and my apparently ONLY?? save file is locked out of one of the missable trophies for 1.5, so yeah, fuck. I'm only like 8 hours deep in that save though, so reboot time!

tl;dr the only "missable" trophies are difficulty related, Speedster (which has a bug that makes it not missable, technically, as its first 15 hours but the in-game timer "resets" after 100 hours so you can get it at 0-15 hours, 100-115 hours, 200-215 hours, etc.), and the two that you can fuck up mid-run; Unchanging Armor and Undefeated, which are complete the game without changing any of you or your parties' equipment and without using the Continue function after dying, respectively.

Now obviously that second one is just a minor annoyance more than anything else, just make sure you save regularly and instead of jumping right back into a boss fight you gotta run to the area it starts every time, not a big deal honestly. The first one though, that stings, especially for a 100% run... Or at least, it does until you look more closely at it; "Complete the Game" is the key phrase, so once we whoop the final boss we're free and clear, which means we're shotgunning proud mode to start! Then, once we've got those trophies, we can change our equipment and use the continue for all the super hard and 100% completion stuff.

I have finished Traverse Town - Second Visit with its moderately cool boss, and now I have access to the motherfucking WARP GUMMI which means I don't need to redo gummi ship sections every single fucking time I need to go somewhere.

I just did the wormhole for Agrabah before I take a break, as a gift to my future self because LORDS ABOVE AND BELOW the KH1 Gummi Ship is the worst. Its just uninteresting and tedious and bleh and I hate it so I'm parking on Agrabah and taking a break.

Maybe I'll watch some stuff, or play a different game, or maybe I'll just go to bed. Who knows, the night is young.

Fuck Agrabah, I'm taking a break.

Gonna pop over to Olympus Coliseum and fuck around in one of the cups there to grind some levels and maybe a few goodies if I can complete anything.

Aka time to hang with Winnie the Pooh and then hang with my mom and her dogs while we get fast food.

(I'm really glad I don't have to do high scores for the minigames in this one, cause that was a ROUGH TIME in RE:CoM)

After full-tilt sprinting through Monstro I have a handy list of Pros & Cons for folks curious on my thoughts.

Cons:

• Every room looks like this and 90% of them are just called "Chamber #" so it's confusing as hell to navigate.
• Lots of not-great platforming required to get all the goodies.
• Pinocchio.
• Boring-ass boss that design wise is almost identical to a Final Fantasy IX boss.

Pros:

• You get high jump after you do the first part of it.

That's it. That's the only pro. Fuck Monstro.

Anyways, next Stop? SPOOKY SCARY SKELLINGTON!!!
air horn noises

We're in the Endgame now.

So yeah, Halloween Town and Neverland got knocked out without anything of note happening really, and without much issue (fuck you, Antisora, you punk-ass teleport auto-tracking attacking bitch) so now we're on to Hollow Bastion!

Up next: big dramatic story moments, one really shitty novelty gameplay sequence, and some fairly tough but fairly cool bosses.

How absolutely BUSTED GOOD Tinker Bell is in this game.

Other Summons:

• Limited time use.
• Makes both of you party members disappear while active.
• Situationally useful.

Tinker Bell:

• Can last the entire encounter.
• Let's you keep both party members.
• Universally useful (HP Regen effect every few seconds)
• Can BRING YOU BACK FROM THE DEAD ONCE.

So despite my previous back and forth thoughts I ended up deciding that doing both Speedster and Unchanging Armor at the same time was a Fool's Errand, and I have since been jumping between all the previously done worlds for upgrades and items and such.

I did all the Jungle Slider mini game in Deep Jungle (Which feels terrible to do AND it's tedious, but it gives several stat boost items so I'm only mildly grumbly) and did a quick run through for chests/Trinity Marks in Wonderland and Traverse Town (a few more easy to get stat items) and now I'm going to do some of the Olympus Coliseum tournaments and maybe their challenges depending on how over or under powered I feel.

OKAY SO
I kinda did a whole bunch of playing and screenshotting today and last night cause I was well enough to play games but didn't feel up to doing these posts yet, so now we're gonna do a kind of awkward burst of these posts that are what I was thinking at the time but are in fact posted afterwards. Feels awkward but there's a lot of stuff in these endgame areas I wanted to show off so yeah, here we goooooooo

I went, I beat everyone up, I left.
Please observe the only thing of value from this world: these underwater designs

So next up on the list: All the Synthesis stuff.

I'll see y'all in like. Sunday. Hopefully.

So I honestly really enjoy this kind of grinding, it was a nice mostly relaxing background activity the past day.

But now that I have completed the Synthesis and Gummi Ship stuff we're back to (theoretically) challenging stuff!

That's right, all that's left is coliseum and secret bosses!!! Really excited to see if I just breeze through them or if they're still tough when you're nearing the level cap and proper equipped out, I'll keep you posted...

I figured it was the best choice cause it doesn't add speedruning stress to my life and instead forces me to take a break!

So today I spent most of my time on tweaking the setup for a couple games which will get threads in the (hopefully) near(ish) future: Persona 5 Royal and Yakuza 0. I also played a bunch of my current rotation of roguelikes, primarily The Binding of Isaac, but also a little of some others. It was a nice day!

But yeah, as of the start of typing this post; I'm at ~68 hours on Kingdom Hearts. I turn it on when I get settled at my computer and turn it off a bit before bed, so it's running approximately as much as my heavy playtime days, which means it shouldn't put any undue stress on the system. I'm anxious about leaving it running while I'm asleep, so that's why I'm not, despite how much quicker (relatively) that would get the file to crossing the 99:99:99 threshold.

So obviously I don't want to just keep posting hours updates, so next time y'all see this thread I'll be showing off that fancy KH1.5 Platinum trophy and then jumping right in to Kingdom Hearts 2.5 ReMix!

A relaxing few days of other stuff and waiting followed by a very easy run through the final boss lineup, and we are well and truly done with Kingdom Hearts 1.5

Gonna eat my sandwich for dinner and then straight into Kingdom Hearts 2.5 we go!

(Technically the screenshot on that Trophy Unlocked screen is a spoiler, but given that the Trophy popped during the "Battle Finished" blur effect during a particularly VFX heavy moment you can't tell a damn thing, so I'm leaving it without a notice.)

Alright, so we're gonna start with some background info on my past with Kingdom Hearts is gonna add the context that will allow you to understand my current excitement:

I have barely touched Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix.

After so much Kingdom Hearts 1 it feels like coming home to get back to 2. The movement feels so much better, and the reaction commands system is so good.

Story wise not much is happening. There's a mystery in Twilight Town! Roxas and his plucky friends get in a fight with a bunch of teenage Final Fantasy characters trying to solve it! Weird new enemies that are primarily white/silver! Roxas suddenly gets a keyblade with a wacky digital summoning effect!

Yeah so while weird story stuff is happening for me in these long-ass cutscenes, (oh my god, who is that watching Sora? What're these glitchy versions KH1 cutscenes, wait why does Leon sound different??, Why is Roxas dreaming all this??) let me talk to y'all about this games starter choices!

If you finish the Mail Delivery job in under 20 seconds you get paid 50 Munny.
You can easily get it consistently in ~9-10 seconds. Do that 40 times and you hit the max amount you're allowed to earn in this section, 2000 Munny, resulting in auto progression to the next part and a slightly different version of the following dialogues and cutscenes (as well as the aforementioned higher AP bonus.).

So yeah that's what I'm doing with my left hand as I type this with my right. Then after this I'm going to bed cause blehhhhh this part takes so long and I'm just not up for it tonight.

SO GLAD MY PHONE WAS LIKE BAH, FUCK YOUR POST DO IT LIVE

Anyways, I'm currently eating some blueberry Jell-O and starting up the next day of the prologue, hence the title; I'm eating snacks and meeting all these characters and also it's hell I'm in hell I'm trapped here waiting for the game to begin.

Hey, remember when I mentioned I've barely touched KH2FM... turns out one of my gaps in information is the bonus Abilities for Critical Mode.

Y'all They just give you a fistful of very good skills and 50 AP. You normally start with 2 AP

So I'm at the end of Roxas' dive to the heart, and he gets a scene nearly identical to Sora's with Darkside! Except his is with a giant Nobody. And yeah, I'm dropping their name early but I really want to talk about this! Cause here is where you can really feel the upgrades from 1 to 2 with the combat as we now have Aerial Recovery (so we can do a little flippy while when we're knocked back instead of awkwardly having to wait till we land) and our first proper experience with Reaction Commands.

And I fucking love Reaction Commands

Sora is a little taller so his clothes don't quite fit right, and his equally-aged voice actor sounds older, but it's still the boy! The real game has begun 🥳

So now we get to meet Pete, the Disney character, who is looking to turn somebody powerful into a heartless for Maleficent to repay his debt to her.

This post is one I'm actually excited to write because I adore Pete as a minion in this game.

Yeah, that's how they explain you forgetting your magic. Memory napped too hard. Classic mistake.

Oh also we're back at Hollow Bastion and all the KH1 Final Fantasy gang is here (cause it's their original home remember?) And they're fixing the town and stuff. I was way too excited about getting magic back to listen honestly.

So I mentioned Drive Forms briefly when we got the new clothes, but as I was fuckin' about levelling up Valor and getting some items in Hollow Bastion for the past bit, I wanted to put some of my thoughts on them down here.

Sora, Donald, and Goofy knowing the summons from KH1 and it being an important plot point is hilarious every time. Like, this opening with Mushu when you land in The Land of Dragons, and they're all acting like old friends? Literally will never stop being funny to me.

We had been part of the Imperial Army for like 15 seconds before we started a fucking brawl, 🤣

Anyways a lot of this world is random MMO style missions (go here, kill number of things, etc.) sooooo this one might not get many posts because it's mostly a bunch of medium-interesting combats.

So this is something that Kingdom Hearts 2 does that 1 only really tried in one area, and it didn't work all that well; hordes and hordes of enemies!

The Land of Dragons, visit number one: done.

Instead of me recapping any of it, just go watch Mulan again.

Just got to Beauty and The Beast world and... Y'all, fucking Beast just straight up backhanding Sora to grab the rose in its glass case is another reunion that is comedy gold.

As if we didn't murder scores of Heartless together at the end of the last game. Just "fuck outta here" toss and zero words.
Lol.
Lmao.

So I believe every world in this game, or at the least most of them, have unique chest designs. And the stained glass design for Beast's Castle is just so fucking good.

Actually, a broad general statement here; stained glass designs are usually really fucking good. Love that shit.

Flimsy Story Logic
More Memory Fuckery
This Doesn't Matter
See You Later

GET UP ON THE HYDRA'S BACK
GET UP ON THE HYDRA'S BACK
GET UP ON THE HYDRA'S BACK

Alright, Olympus over.

I'm okay.

Alright, two quick story cutscenes foreshadowing Maleficent getting ready to start shit now that she's back, and Minnie Mouse having some issues at Disney Castle and hoping Donald and Goofy come back soon.

I'm just gonna go do some optional stuff and mentally recover before we go to the next section.

Nothing of value happened to our squad for a while today We just went to Port Royal for a weak retelling of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie and some odd censorship, especially in the recreations of iconic scenes (Will can't point a gun at himself, Jack can't get stabbed in the chest, etc.) because they didn't want to fuck up their ESRB rating.

And then I was also doing the Atlantic and 100 Acre Wood stuff as they unlock, but they also have nothing of value happening aside from slightly better mini-games than KH1 so, yeah, fuck it, one medium post for the three of these.

AKA Agrabah, First Visit.

Starting this world with Simba having a traumatic nightmare about his dad dying... He isn't the only one who got trauma from that shit! Fuck you!

So Sora turns into a lion cub, Donald into... Kinda like a peacock? Can those fly? And Goofy is a turtle again. Could've been some kind of dog but nooooope, I think Goofy just likes being a turtle.

This one's just a straight retelling of the second half of The Lion King, but also Pete and Heartless are there and Scar gets filled with darkness during his fight with Simba during the climactic finale. So, yeah, nothing of value for the KH story happens really. Another filler world visit!

Oh, but fun game dev history fact: this world was originally planned for KH1 but was scrapped due to time constraints and the complexity of coding Sora's lion form and it's unique combat (which was a problem they were already partially dealing with for Atlantica)

So we're back, baby! Starting the day right with my favorite world in this game: Space Paranoids, a version of the original Tron's program/world modified by Ansem the Wise after he illegally copied it from ENCOM.

The designs are so fucking good and I love this aesthetic and I'm just so happy to be here!!!

We're back, y'all! We took a nice break after all that plot, and now we're ready for more!

EDIT: The quoted text boxes were originally part of the first post and moved to this for better feed readability for the thread as a whole.

Aw yeah, I'm bringing it back! CJ Samples, now unbound by text limits and with better spoiler warnings and tagging.

So anyways, just started playing Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and first thing I notice when I can start walking about?

Weird looking masked character called Stranger who said some vague bullshit about answers than walked away and disappeared when they passed behind someone else

And it's like, I love that kind of thing so much. Like, fuck yeah, set that stage baby! Give me that little teaser of things to come! Foreshadow the SHIT out of some ominous overarching plot stuff for later!

So I'm playing a Dhampir Faith Hunter (Inquisitor archetype) because I was told this main campaign is all about demons, so like, first playthrough, let's not get too wacky with the class or anything and let's lean into that demon angle!

But then near the end of character creation I went to pick voices and... I thought the Male - Wise voice sounded like ProZD (SungWon Cho) and even though I couldn't confirm that it stuck in my brain, and since my character is an Inquisitor he has a big hat which caused me to think about the video below...

Anyways, to cut to the chase: my character is named Archibald now and their birthday is the date that video came out because that is the type of person I am.