Vanitas' Remnant is the WORST secret boss in KH history. Literally a reskin of Ventus' secret boss with a ridiculous stat buff... and that's it. It's so lazy, it's such bad design. With the benefit of hindsight, so is the Mysterious Figure. Because it's pretty clear that MF is just a buffed version of the second half of the Young Xehanort fight from DDD. A good secret boss? Both Sephiroth fights. Yeah lots of people complain about it being too easy, but the thing is, Sephiroth isn't a SLOG. His attacks are powerful, have huge range, and little lag or start up time... but there are ways to DEAL with these attacks. You don't just sit around waiting for him to stop attacking and hit him with a thunder dash. Sephiroth also introduces new attacks as the battle goes on, and becomes increasingly aggressive as the battle goes on, leading to a good progression. Unfortunately, it looks like KH final bosses are leaning more towards dodgefests with overly specific weaknesses.
Vanitas is a fantastic example of how a boss fight should work in KH It's a highly reactive boss with a huge variety of attacks and weaknesses. Vanitas can be approached in a tonne of ways. You could attack when you get the chance, you could slap him with status effects if you caught him off guard. You could goad him into using specific attacks and exploit weaknesses that way. You could abuse his weakness to wind spells, specifically Tornado. Or you could use the cheapest method, shotlocks. The great thing about Vanitas is that he exists on almost equal terms with the player. His moves look and function like commands, he can use cure, he can use shotlocks. I think expanding on this concept and applying it to more bosses would lead to AMAZING results in future KH games. Rather than simply making stuff like poison or zero gravity or whatever completely useless, make the boss react and try to those moves, but if you catch them off guard, then you CAN use it. Basically, make more strategies viable. Thoughts?
Wall-E is a weird one, I'm really not sure how they can do that... do they put Sora awkwardly between Wall-E and Eve? Does Sora just try to understand their basic communications? "What's that Eve? Little Wall-E's stuck in a well?!"
I don't think Toy Story lends itself to non-combat like the Little Mermaid of Winnie the Pooh The plot of Toy Story always involves adventure, conflict and danger. Hell, they even have a pretty good setup for a boss fight in Zerg. It seems like it would be far easier to fit Sora into a sort of protector role where he helps the relatively helpless toys, as opposed to a mini game world or something
Aw man, now I'm imagining Caslte Oblivion as a sort of hub world with hidden areas that take you to different parts of Sora's past for either remastered cutscenes or reimagined boss fights... it could be like that feature from Dream Drop Distance, but way more fleshed out and interactive Maybe you could even unlock special abilities for Sora by doing this? Or it could be a way of upgrading Sora's abilities... and there could be classic keyblades... aw man I want this
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I'm going to move this into a more "this is what KH needs" direction because I think we're reaching the point where both of us understand each other and have less to add to the argument. Honestly , elemental damage in an action game is kind of a bad idea unless you're fighting VERY exaggerated and thematic enemies. If you ask me, the main use for blizzard should be freezing and slowing down enemies, fire should be used for gradual damage, lightning should be AOE etc. Those are far more visible advantages, and balanced properly, offers more than nebulously dealing more damage in a system that uses ambiguous green bars to display health. Early in KH1, you'll encounter all three magic types. You are rewarded for using the opposite magic on them. However, their actual attacks are weak and by and large more predictable than foot soldiers. Early on the damage a non boss enemy does is so negligible that strategy is moot, as it should be since the game is easing you in. By the time you get to the end though, this strategy is rendered moot in a completely different way, by giving you options and powers that render this obsolete, while simultaneously making most enemies multi element or non elemental. The only way I could see KH getting around this would be by making world themes far stricter. make the bulk of the enemies in each world a distinct theme with a SPECIFIC weakness... but that's just another variation of routine It should be combated and I'd say KH has been TRYING to do this... though I'd say the franchise is worse for it. The closest they've come to your vision is the Dream Eaters, easily the worst enemy type in the entire franchise. I think what KH needs is some simple, intuitive actions, maybe kinda like a less lame flowmotion, which you can use to counter specific types of moves. Enemy encounters in KH are usually pretty short, so add too much and the enemy becomes a chore, smash through too many and they lose their impact... maybe a good, simple method of making the battles more impactful would be to give enemies a proper sense of weight, but I can't really think of a good way to make the enemies more challenging without getting cheap... actually, that made me think of something for later in this post... You know, KH already DOES utilize this In the Olympus Colosseum. Where you can't actively change equipment. But you know... OC is where I got the most mileage out of my equipment in the series. When you're fighting an enemy called the Ice Titan, it tends to be a good move to equip something to defend you from that... same deal with Hades Ergh, I herped a little writing this, first of all, when I said early KH I was meaning to imply the first half of the franchise, mostly thinking of KH2, and I completely forgot to mention that KH1 has the closest to what I'd call a 'balanced' block. And another thing, something I really hate about all the KH game is their reliance on a specific counter move. KH1's is really slow and weird, KH2's is awkward... the DS ones I have no strong opinions about. BBS is was overpowered, but also annoyingly paralyzing. I hated how if an enemy, like, say, the Iron Imprisoner, was attacking me, my only availabe action after a successful block was to lunge right into them, almost guaranteeing I take a hit. In DDD it was kinda weird, Sora's embodied the bad risk vs reward of earlier games, while Riku's was took a page from the newer games by being way too good On the topic of enemies dancing around you... that's why I feel like things like reflect guards are a necessary evil. It's rather obnoxious when you successfully guard someone from the front, but the attack is SO HUGE is just goes around and hits you anyways. I think that they need to do is loosen up the guard a bit. this will allow them to let enemies attack more frequently, and then give you further options on what you can do after a successful block (maybe take the Dissidia route and revert your character to their default stance and allow them to use any move they want while their enemy recovers?) The problem with magic is that they're afraid it will overshadow the melee combat, so even in games like BBS where magic is pretty freely usable, you run itno the problem where it's basically just a weaker, ranged, severely limited normal attack. Now, if ranged combat was an issue, this might still be valid, but pretty much the only game where an enemy can legitimately be out of your reach is KH1... I think magic should be focused on using wildly varying effects, rather than more or less straight damage dealers, and should be more freely interchangeable, and maybe even comboable with regular attacks. Like you use a stand hit to throw an enemy off balance, throw in a quick blizzard spell to freeze them then deal shatter damage in the enxt physical hit... But that's the thing, I can very clearly remember specific uniqe things about enemies. The ridiculously high priority of the dancer's obnoxious grab move, the Invisible's intangibilitysword... aura... thing. Sure, smaller enemies are more generic, but they serve more as a swarm type, the bigger enemies still tend to have unique means and strategies. The obvious elements are obvious. But those are also rare. What I want to know is when a laser is just a laser, and when it's a darkness laser, and when it's a fire laser. You CAN buff every element, but that'll never give you as good of a buff as specific equipment. And I don't know the calculations, but I'd say 20% less damage is generally more than 8 defense points, simply based on the fact that you get a LOT of defense points. But they ARE part of the equation, because of another part of this we have yet to mention: elemental equipment almost always gives less general defense than a non elemental variant. If only two of the attacks you might encounter out of ALL the enemies are fire based, surely just physical defense is a better investment (Or shadow, becase that's a far more common element) Well wait. What about a paradigm type thing where you can switch modes on the fly? Maybe a D Link type thing, like when you switch to Maleficent you get more fire damage adn more fire defense. Now the player can deal better with ice enemies OR fire enemies with an ability they can use on the fly. KH2 Sora's advanced COMBOS FINISHERS are way slower. His regular attacks move WAY faster. His first strike has far less wind up and he reverts to his basic stance much quicker. His long range thrust in kh1 had shorter range and ended by gradually slowing down, kh2 has it end with a second slash before quickly reverting to his normal stance. The standard combo finisher is the most similar, but there is far less down time after finishing the attack in KH2. Combo magic was the only reason I actually used magic in KH2. It made it a far more viable option, especially later in the game when you get a larger MP gauge. Combine with with drive forms and it's a FAR better option for most generic mob fights. It does matter because more hits in rapid succession = faster. And that's the point, you're pulling off more attacks. It's kind of pointless to compare the damage the actual attacks because they both operate on different damage metrics. And you're telling me you kill FASTER without Explosion? I find THAT very hard to believe, too. I think that about covers it... maybe? Idunno, getting tired, will have to continue this tomorrow
Why would I care about the post count
What if she's Sora's wife. This changes the playing field for shippers everywhere
link My friend brought up something quite a while, and this reminded me of it. I guess it IS kinda presumptuous to assume that the voice we heard in KH1 was Sora's mom...
