Scsigs

To respond to that post, first, because there's no easy way to say it, the only grammar issues I have with that post is that apostrophes are only used either when something's possessive, or you fuse a word with another one for a contraction, like "is," "not," or something like that. It is not used when something's plural. Also, it's "then," not "than." As in, "This happened, then this happened," or "I'd much rather this happened than this other thing." And to the rest of what you said... Yes, Nomura had absolutely no idea with where he wanted to take the series when they started. That's as obvious as the first game, since they leave some things rather vague to fill in the pieces later. However, you can tell that Nomura overthought a lot of this stuff. The worst thing that came out of this is DDD, where it answered questions absolutely no one was asking. Chain of Memories definitely made sense to exist, but I hate the storytelling & length of it. It was on the GBA too, so it didn't make too much sense to be as bloated as it is. I don't know what you were talking about with him not sleeping would've made the Roxas part look weaker. Realistically, the writers could've easily had Riku or someone knock Sora, Donald, & Goofy out, then put them in the pods and erase those last few moments from their memories with Namine so that Roxas could reassimilate into Sora like he needed to. Maybe they could do something more creative with that idea, but that's what professional writers who do multiple drafts of scripts before making them into stuff do with ideas. The main point of the game was to get the trio, & Jiminy, into the pods so they can wake up in Twilight Town to start their adventure. It also introduced the concepts of the Organization XIII & Namine & set Riku on his path to redemption, which are good things to do, but the storytelling is utter shit, to be honest. That's exactly what I said about Coded. You can redo the entire point of the game (the reveal to Mickey about Terra, Aqua, & Ventus) into an ending cutscene in BBS & you would lose NOTHING. The whole point of Xion was for the Organization to have a backup plan for Roxas to harness Sora's power in case he betrayed them. Not a bad plan. A bit premature on their parts, but not bad. I don't even think it was a retcon for them to forget about her. She was a retcon in the first place, but that doesn't mean they've totally forgotten about her. I mean, look at Sora. In KHII, it's stated through Kairi's dialogue that everyone forgot about Sora when he was in the pod for that entire year. Why? I have no idea. Why was Xion forgotten about when she died? No idea. In fact, nothing about those makes sense even in this world, but it's what happened & for Xion, there was precedence for it. Considering Roxas & Riku partially remembered her in their fight, it's entirely possible that they still have the memories of her, they're just locked away. I'm wondering if it's Namine's work that makes that possible, considering the Organization XIII members & Riku remembered Roxas after he reassimilated into Sora. Also, she did make sense to exist in KHII, but she wasn'tt IN KHII, which is why they wrote her as they did in 358. As for 0.2, no. It really shouldn't have been in BBS. 0.2 feels more like it's a small few hour scene from KHIII that was chopped off & completed separately for 2.8, since it plays more like the opening for KHII to get people back into the swing of things by having combat elements from both KHII & BBS. KHIII is already showing those as well as some slight combat elements from DDD. The fact that it ends with Sora & Co going to Olympus Coliseum after Aqua's scenes & it feels like a glorified demo of KHIII, that seems like the more likely thing about it. Now, it DID play it a bit too close to the chest with its ending that completely changed what happened in BBS' secret ending. It does what BBS avoided & do what prequels shouldn't do & made Aqua's importance to the KH universe more than it should've been & made Mickey look like a total asshat for not saving her after the whole ordeal, since he knows where she is. DDD, I've already given my peace on, since it answers questions no one was asking & feels like Nomura really wanted one of these handheld games to finally really matter worth a damn & overshot it. Again, BBS avoided this, but DDD really didn't do a lot of people many favors in its attempt to be really relevant tot he series, since 358/2 & Coded really weren't & BBS didn't involve any of the principle cast from the past games outside of cameos. And since this really bothers me, I'm gonna correct your response. Sorry.

The problem is that not all of the games are worth playing, either for bad gameplay (COM, R:C, 358), or bad storytelling (COM, R:C, DDD), so it's not like, especially since they were on handhelds first. Also, the HD remasters, you're forgetting, are what have become the definitive ways to play the games, due to them containing the previously Japan-exclusive Final Mix versions of KHI, KHII, & KHBBS, which contain exclusive content that were not in the vanilla releases which were never released overseas because Nomura didn't wanna release them everywhere else for some stupid reason, all remastered in HD & widescreen. On top of a new generation of gamers getting into the series through these sets because they haven't had a straight console release of these games since the PS2, people who're still fans of this franchise that wanna relive the games through these, as well as catch up on the other games, that's why they're selling incredibly well (which is why I still don't get why they haven't released Xbox ports of the collections already due to the good word of mouth & hype that's been generated in the last year alone & the fact that the PS4 ports have made well over their budgets back by now). The HD remasters also trim a lot of the fat of Re:Coded & 358 by only having the cutscenes, so you can't really say that, with the likes of KHI, KHII, & BBS on the discs, all of which WAY better games, that people are getting the games for the cinematic versions of the other games, or Re:COM. I personally got the collections because I hadn't gotten any of the games in the series before &, since they're now the go-to definitive way of experiencing the stories of the games. Union X is a different thing to these altogether, since it's a free mobile game that uses microtransactions rather than a full console or handheld game that's $40-$60. Free mobile games are designed to encourage pay-to-win formats, where full console games are meant to have the full experiences on them already. Not only that, but making Union X a free mobile game made it instantly more accessible than the console games, due to everyone having a smartphone at least, even if they don't own a console. I can't speak to the quality of Union X because I haven't played it, but it's increasingly easy to get compared to the console games.

I mean, if they wanted to build upon things established in the first 2 main games, I have nothing against that. There's a reason I actually like 358/2 Days' story after all, but if the games are too long for their own good, or are just set up for the next games, what's the point? I mean, unless it's a game that can do both setup & tell its own story, rather than the setup being the entire reason for the game. That's where I feel the side games shine when they do. Like, just think. Chain of Memories tries to tell it's own story, which I think it does decently, but the storytelling's off when they made Sora an unlikable asshole. It also goes on 5-10 hours too long, especially when it was on the GBA. Not only that, but it gets repetitive, which gets boring. Re:Coded, it establishes the characters from Birth By Sleep. The thing about this is that it's not the real Sora who finds out about this. He supposedly finds this stuff out through the letter he got at the end of KHII. This game didn't need to exist. Here's also the thing, this game's reveal could've also been at the end of KHII in a post credits scene, which I think it was. Just add Mickey's narration to that scene talking about it & it'd be fine, or tack it on to the end of BBS in a similar manner. That game didn't need to exist. Then we have Dream Drop Distance, which turns what should've been Sora & Riku going through their Mark of Mastery exams into more setup by including Xehanort in many different incarnations. Why? What Xehanort did in this game didn't need to happen & his involvement in the plot of 3 could've easily been established in a post credits scene. I mean, the point of a side game or spin-off is to do something that you're not gonna do in the main ones & I know Nomura loves setting up later games early, so that would be a nice setup for them without needing to play these games. What's the point of all of these games needing to be so interconnected & badly told as they an get? There really is none.

Maybe. Then again, it's not like he really tore into those movies, so I don't know. So, I'm assuming Doug & Rob didn't quit CA, considering that Starship Troopers is more of the same NC we've been getting for the last 2 years. I don't hate it, but I do hate that it's under the CA banner. Also, they released another Top 5 video on Monday, so I'm assuming they're trying to quietly sidestep the issue because their "response" was something they thought was sufficient. I mean, I'm glad they're not making things worse, but this issue isn't gonna go away.

Well, initially, it was because they used his name to market the film, since the Genie was the breakout character of the movie & was getting a lot of attention, from what I understand. Williams & Disney actually had a written agreement that he'd be in the film as long as they didn't use him in the film's advertising. Disney went back on that agreement, so Williams didn't wanna come back for anything they produced in the future. Enter Dan Castellaneta. When King of Thieves was in production, amends had been made & so Williams actually rerecorded the dialogue Castellaneta recorded already for the movie. After that, something else happened that I don't know about apparently, so he didn't come back to the role at any point for the remainder of his life. Either that, or the wounds were only bandaged long enough to get him to record for the movie & nothing else. Either way, backstabbing for money is why.

They're saying that because of how far in advance the episodes are recorded. Personally, I thought that that was only a week, but if the gap between filming dates & release dates increased, ok, but I don't know. That would explain why the last few episodes have been very minimally done, as if they had to shorten them to just the bare minimum of what people expect from the Critic. No sketches, no real anything, just Doug in character summing up the movies & making wisecracks. This could be him harkening back to the early days of the series, but even most of those had good gags in them. These feel like someone who's just getting into online video reviewing. It's weird, especially how Doug went into such a diatribe about his newest style of reviewing being better now than back then in the review of Christmas With the Cranks, so you'd expect him to throw in a few sketches minimum per review with another actor. I wonder why this is. We'll probably find out soon.

Could be, but until they stop uploading Nostalgia Critic episodes, I'm not gonna completely believe it. I DO hope they get the NC's IP back, either through suing CA or Mike Michaud, or they work out a deal so they can buy it back legally, as well as the side shows the others have been doing, like Tamara doing reviews on films she's just seeing for the first time. I imagine that they've saved up enough money to do that. Then they can change the CA YouTube account to the Nostalgia Critic or they can simply start up a new YouTube channel & re-edit the videos to take out the CA logos. Given that they haven't uploaded anything but NC videos in the last few weeks, I thought that it was because of the restructuring at the company & them working on some of the problems they said they'd work on. Personally, I think they should fire Mike Michaud & get someone who can actually be a good CEO of the company would be a good step forward, but if Doug & Rob wanna go their own way with the NC, then fine, but they'll need to start on a long road to gaining people's trust back if they do. There's an amount of people who just enjoy watching the NC, so they have an audience still, but they need to look better going forward, whether they're with CA or not.

I added an additional thought to the first post if anyone wants to entertain the thought.

Wasn't gonna happen, considering his strained relationship with Disney at the time.

I wouldn't say that the game's unplayable, but it gets boring really quickly. The story, on the other hand, is almost unforgivable. At least in how it's told. I have a thing that I said in my own thread about the side games in this series. Most of them feel like they were written without Tetsuya Nomura's input because of how inconsequential or lacking they are. In fact, Chain of Memories was only written by one writer of the first game; Daisuke Watanabe, with only 1 of the other writers, Kazushige Nojima, was a supervisor on the script for the game. This lead to some bad things like character inconsistencies or other writing inconsistencies, but it's also in-line with the first game. Nojima went on to write KHII, with Watanabe & newcomer Harunori Sakemi helping him. He'd also be credited as a writer for FFXV years later. Watanabe would also write or be a supervisor for later games, but hasn't been involved with the franchise since 2010. We'll see if he's involved with KHIII, but that's months away. Anyways, Nomura only most likely had not a lot of involvement with the game. He just laid out what he wanted in the game, like the main story & gameplay, then let his writer & programmers have at it while he mostly focused on KHII's development. This resulted in the game being half-assed with both the writing & combat. All of the other games seem to follow this trend except Birth By Sleep & Dream Drop Distance, where BBS is at least able to tell a story close to the level of the other games, since it's a prequel with not a lot of direct ties with the earlier games, while DDD is overly cooked in an attempt to finally have the side games feel like the main installments, as well as match the quality of BBS, if not outdo it. Yeah, I think there's problems with these games, but "unplayable" isn't one of them. "Boring," "confusing," "don't need to exist," "half-assed" is what I'd say before unplayable.

Considering Disney was only a distributor of the Ghibli films & don't own Ghibli, yet at the very least, I don't know if Ghibli would go for that on their own.

Yeah,, that's what I thought, since I believe they have a Vimeo account where they post the episodes to for archive purposes & they get a commission for people subbing or whatever their version of that is, over there. It's either Vimeo, or another service. I forget. They also let people watch the episodes a week early over there, so it's at least a week in advance.

Yeah. We'll find out tomorrow if Doug & Rob did resign if there's no new Nostalgia Critic (though there could be other reasons as well), but I feel there'll be one.

I mean, I can imagine it out of cutscenes when you talk to NPCs, but in cutscenes, I don't think so. I don't even get why the majority of them were in the games to begin with.

Well, here's the problem with that. Doug & Rob are committed to the Nostalgia Critic, as everything else they've tried to do in terms of web shows either wasn't as popular, fell by the wayside eventually, or ended in an abysmal failure. If they tried to cut ties, they'd be leaving the Nostalgia Critic IP in the hands of Michaud, as it's owned by Channel Awesome Inc. & Michaud, on top of being CEO of the company, is also the majority shareholder of it, which means he holds the most control over the IP. If they tried to cut ties, they'd be back to square 1 with trying to produce anything else, on top of their damaged images. The NC is also still a big draw for the company's revenue earning. Looking at the Jack & Jill review, it's only been not even 3 days since it went up & it still has almost as many average views as most past episodes of the series. Clearly people still like to watch the show, even if the parent company that owns & distributes it is in hot water with others. Their sub count has taken a hit, but their viewer numbers are still about the same. I imagine that it'll continue like this until all of the people who are going to unsub from them have done so, leaving the people who either don't care about the situation, or the people who like watching the Nostalgia Critic. We'll see, though. There is a small minority who either don't believe the other creators' stories, or write them off as drama whores as well however, so those people are going to stick around. I mean, personally, I hope that Mike's forced to go on a leave of absence to get help while they hire a PR team to help smoothen things out & rebuild trust with disgruntled ex-fans, but I don't think that's what's going to happen, at least for the most part. They did say in their response that they're enforcing company-wide mandatory sensitivity training & are working to better their company in other ways, which is evident from the fact that they were late uploading last week's NC to YouTube & haven't uploaded anything else since a week ago, which is odd because they usually keep to tight schedules on their shows, but unless Mike Michaud sees what he's done as bad & offers a sincere apology, or just straight-up leaves the company, I doubt a lot of people will be so forgiving. There's also the fact that Doug, Rob, Tamara, Malcolm, & other people who either run or work directly for the company haven't experienced any bad things in their years working for them, which makes sense since they're not the content creators who simply signed up with the company to get enough views to live on for their content. I mean, Tamara retweeted the tweet from CA's twitter account with the link to the response, then when someone tried to tell her it was a bad response, her response to that person was "Read," meaning that either she didn't read the Google Document, believes the company over the other creators, or doesn't care. On top of that, some of the newer content creators, & some of the older ones, said they didn't have any bad interactions with the site management (which explains why Brad Jones & Guru Larry are still listed as creators on the site, on top of loyalty to friends in Brad's case), but quit after they read what the others went through. Then there's Doug basically loving being able to run a comedy webseries free from financial weight, since he obviously makes a decent living off his content. I can't imagine, especially after the disaster that was Demo Real, that he'd be willing to give it up. I imagine what they plan on doing at CA is doing the stuff they said they would, but keep business as usual until the whole thing blows over. They'll hold out until they eventually bounce back. Other people have bounced back from backlash like this, like Keemstar & Ricegum (though CA's content is more watchable & respectable than either of those guys' outputs), after a while, at which point they'll start gaining new subs & views rather than losing them again. If they do pick up any new content creators again in the future, it'll most likely be smaller creators who'd be happy to get the extra views through their word of mouth. I can't imagine that happening for a while, but we'll see. This is a situation where I don't think we'll get what we want, like the CA people actually learning from this experience, or any wounds to be healed. I can only see either CA trying to stay quiet on this, or them possibly running it into the ground with more awful responses. In the meantime, they'll still keep getting YouTube views & revenue from ads, which is what really sucks. I hope Michaud grows up & owns up to his mistakes like he should (as well as Doug, since he's partially responsible for some of the things), but as far as I can see, Michaud has nowhere near the right level self-awareness or patience to do any of that, or the other things I've mentioned. He's a stubborn man who can't admit to his faults & he's surrounded by people who don't care if he does or not, so he has no incentive to do so, unfortunately. It's sad, but that's the situation here. I hope for the best, but I expect the worst in this situation, unfortunately. Doug'll keep running the NC into the ground & Mike will keep running CA into the ground. Sad.

Yep. No truth, vitriolic, & full of misinformation. Just like Donald Trump's Twitter account.

Trust me, their second response is just bad. Only 1 thing in it is something that you can say that they actually refuted,...but did it poorly. That was who owns the Nostalgia Critic IP, which is divided amongst 4, soon to be 5, people, whom we can assume 3 of which are Michaud & the Walker brothers, but Mike still owns the majority share of CA & is still their CEO, so he owns the majority of the IP. Everything else was just poorly done.

Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WZFkR__B3Mk9EYQglvislMUx9HWvWhOaBP820UBa4dA/preview# I admit that there are some things that do seem petty, but I don't think the majority of things in the doc are lies from the people who wrote them. Then there's the response: http://channelawesome.com/our-response/, which seemingly confirms things in it, given there's not a lot of proof, even though they tried to disprove some of the things. There are some things that they tried to disprove, but only a few things get any evidence on their part. The rest of it seems rather petty & harsh. I'm not sure who exactly to believe, but I don't think that people would be joining together to hate on CA if they didn't have good enough reasons. I mean, what would they have to gain by lying?

Dude, there's more general complaints than just about Doug's directing style & misunderstandings, which are, really, only small parts of it. In the Google Doc, there's legit complaint described about the management of the company & website by Mike Michaud, Rob Walker, & Doug. By the way, it's more of a sexist attitude from Michaud that some of them complained about than sexual harassment, which you can actually see in the "Response" posted on the Channel Awesome website from how it's written. For example, Mike & Doug wanted to talk to Obscurus Lupa about something one day back in 2015 when she was still on the site. Now, she wanted to put off the conversation because she was flustered & angry about a situation that happened involving them prior to the call, which she told them about. They decided to call her anyway on Skype. Now, she was filming a video of hers at the time & was away from her computer when they called her, leaving them on hold for 15 minutes. When she finally got to her computer & answered, they just decided she was off the site because Michaud had to wait on Skype for 15 minutes. Really petty. Another one, which might be referenced in the document, but the man himself didn't contribute to it. Phelous was contracted to do the special effects work for To Boldly Flee. They greatly overestimated what he was able to do at the time, but when he told them what he could do for them, they kept him on & got other animators to do what else they needed, not a big problem, but what is the problem is what happened after he started. He sent some of the work to Doug for him to review. Doug told him he liked the work, but after, he contacted another person affiliated with CA in Canada to go & make sure Phelous wasn't half-assing the work. He didn't even have enough confidence in Phelous to deliver good work on a low budget indie film he was personally involved in & rather than tell him he thought he could do better, or replace him, he lied to his face & then went behind his back & had someone try to spy on him. Yeah, really mature, Doug. I get that he's the director of the film, but a director is supposed to lead the development of a movie they're involved with to the best of their ability, not suspect their special effects artists are purposefully not doing work to the best of their abilities. Seriously, actually read the Google Doc. Your generalization of it is far from what's on there in its entirety.

Yeah, that's a problem I have too. It's why I'm not sore that they just remastered the cutscenes only of the DS games. Birth By Sleep at least adds versatility to your arsenal at the cost of the MP meter; a trade-off I don't care for, tbh, but it is what it is. Dream Drop, though, kinda feels like a watered down version of BBS in terms of the combat, with the flowmotion meant to make up for not having shotlocks & melding, but I don't think that's a good trade-off. 358, after I saw SomecallmeJohnny's review of the game, informed me that I wasn't missing out on anything there with the gameplay & the same with Re:Coded. Chain of Memories at least had an interesting setup with the card system, but I don't find that system too fun after a while & the storytelling's, honestly, the worst in the series with Sora's character being just awful for no reason. That's another thing I hate about the side games. It's as if the scripts for the dialogue are written by someone other than Nomura because Sora keeps getting flanderized into a different person than who he actually is; a kid with attitude, but also a good heart. A multi-dimensional one with a good amount of depth. He keeps getting turned into an idiot hero who's overtly good nature gets in the way of common sense. His characterization in these games is comparable to Goku. When written properly, Goku's a character who's a combat pragmatist who cares for his family & friends, likes to train, likes to eat, & is always looking for a good fight. In Super, the writers of the anime have only 1 trait for Goku; idiot manchild who likes to fight. There's a certain nuance to Goku that the anime writers are missing. It's similar with Sora. When not written properly, Sora turns more into Monkey D. Luffy. I mean, I like Luffy, but the way he's written is very one-note most of the time. He rarely expresses any other emotion than happy-go-lucky or gets any depth other than that. Sora's like that at his most flanderized. Even Data Sora's like that in Coded. There's a distinct difference between his characterizations in the main games & the side games in that he's actually capable of thinking through things more thoroughly & react accordingly, as well as having emotional depth. You can even see this in some of the KH3 trailers that his character's been rerailed from DDD. Not surprisingly, this goes with my words of the side games being half-hearted most of the time in their writing. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they handed off the script-writing duties to someone who usually doesn't write the games who only kind of understand the series, rather than someone who understands it fully.

My point was more so to say that, outside of BBBS & CoM, none of these games really need to exist, or don't have enough reasons to exist. Like i said, BBS is a prequel, as is 358/2 Days, which I give them leeway, since they're actually worth knowing their stories. Roxas needed his backstory explained & BBS showing Terra, Ventus, & Aqua was fine & it expanded the mythology. That's what a prequel should do. It was also freed from the franchise's curse of the side games both being important, yet unimportant at the same time, since they're allowed to tell full stories that aren't just set up to future ones. These games were actually justified in existing. The thing about Coded is that it doesn't need to exist. Have you actually looked at the plot? You can seriously just redo the entire game into a few minute cutscene at the end of BBS to show Mickey & Jiminy receiving the message from Namine through their computer scanning in the journal into their computer. They would then inform Sora of what they found out. Again, flimsy excuse for existing. There's NOTHING in Coded that couldn't just be done in a cutscene for one of the other games. Thematically, it would work a lot better at the tail end of BBS. Why do you think that they didn't try to convert it to an actual game for consoles rather than just remaster the cutscenes other than time? Seriously, just change how Mickey finds out from Namine about the protags of BBS & the game doesn't need to exist. What actually requires the rest of the game to exist? Not much. Chain of Memories, though it had a decent set up, falls apart really fast. Like I said, the game is FAR too long. It, at max, is a 10-hour plot stretched to 20. And, what does it do? Sets up some things for KHII. On top of that, the combat isn't that good. It's interesting...for the first few hours, but then gets old fast. The story doesn't even really matter in the end because the main characters forget it through the process of restoring their memories. Don't even get me started on Sora's massive jerkassness either. I think this game works better as a prequel than a sequel, but that doesn't help its faults. At the time, it was Kingdom Hearts on the GBA, which makes sense, but that novelty wears thin when you don't play it that way. There is far too much filler in the game & the story bits you get don't justify the rest of the game for me. I know that there are others that agree with this statement. Riku's story in it is short, but good considering he's the most developed character in the franchise, but Sora's is way too long & told badly. I just consider the game a waste of time. Dream Drop Distance, like I said, should've just focused on Riku &/or Sora becoming full Keyblade masters. I expect Sora to either be like Harry Potter & be a keyblade master unofficially like Potter's a full wizard unofficially (since he didn't go back & finish his schooling at Hogwarts), or for him to be dubbed an actual one at the end of III. Like CoM, it's more a game you play for Riku's development, but I still ask, was it worth it? I don't think it was, since Riku ends up on another travel with Mickey anyways, mostly to find Aqua. Whether or not Riku did what he did in this game, I think he still would've went with Mickey to find her when Yen Sid informed them of her being in the Realm of Darkness, considering his characterization. Also, the game didn't do anything we didn't already expect KHIII to do with Xehanort. You don't just show him in BBS & not do anything further with him. I just don't see anything in DDD that we couldn't, & most likely are gonna, get with KHIII, y'know? Also, change some of Mickey's involvement in 0.2 so that unfortunate implications don't come about from him knowing Aqua's trapped in the Realm of Darkness. His entire reason for being there was already there, not much more was needed. It also unnecessarily changed/negated the Blank Points secret ending of BBS by making Aqua's statements weird considering what they're talking about & what transpired slightly before it. It does what prequels shouldn't do & plays too close with the previous continuity so that things don't make as much sense as before you know about it, or makes LESS sense. Nomura didn't write the last bit of it too well. Union X, I don't mind existing, hence why I didn't talk about it much. It changes the Keyblade's prior lore by having it be less special that Sora got one in the first game, but I, honestly, don't mind that it does what it does. Yeah, thinking of it as an anime series makes it more exciting, & I don't mind the series overall, but like some of the greats, some of these games serve as uninteresting filler or setups to later games. I already see Sora & Riku's developments as similar to what Kishimoto would later do with Naruto & Sasuke, but in a more tragic & believable way. However, the storytelling is something more akin to Dragon Ball. Nomura starts off by having these mystical elements about the series & characters we like, but then he tries to have things make sense, or be explained more than they should. For example, a parallel between the 2... Why does Goku have a tail & transform into a giant ape at the full moon? The original explanation was that he's based on Son Wukong from Journey to the West & it's a fantasy series. Later, it's retconned that he's an alien & that's part of his genetic makeup. Why does Sora have a Keyblade? Originally, it was because the Keyblade chose him in a time of need, as well as the series being a sister series to Final Fantasy, so he needed SOME kind of sword-type weapon. Later, it's retconned that his heart's connected to Ventus' &, thus, Sora can summon one like Ventus can. Not bad retcons, but that's what they are; retcons to make things make more sense when it wasn't really needed. Now, we got some good things out of these retcons, but it's just the nature that these ARE retcons. And like Dragon Ball, KH suffers from the same kind of filler problems the original shows of DB & DBZ did at times with the side games, though even SUper suffers from similar problems as well. CoM is a lot like some of DBZ's worst filler-filled arcs, mostly the Frieza saga. You have the setups, you have the characters, but there's a TON of filler, especially towards the end, that's superfluous to the overall story they wanna tell. The main difference, though, is that while the Frieza saga had all new story, CoM rehashed a LOT from the first game, but lazily. Then again, a lot of the Frieza saga's filler is lazy too, so there you go. 358/2 is like Battle of Gods from Super; a plot only mean for a movie stretched too thin over a longer period than it should've. I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Not all of these games needed to exist is my problem, nor to I feel what we got from the ones that didn't was worth it, considering that they could've been told in shorter ways & we wouldn't have been lost. I just feel like not a lot of these games have a lot of justifications for existing, even if they expand on things. You even admit to DDD setting up KHIII, so there's something to what I'm saying here.

Now, call them what you want; games just as important to the overall narrative to KH, side games, or spin-offs, but there's a stigma attached to every single one of them. The handheld KH games don't do much but set up later games, or answer questions no one was asking. Now, Birth By Sleep at least tells the story of new characters and answers why Roxas looks nothing like Sora, but let me ask, what are the other games' purposes for existing? Set up. Chain of Memories: Set up to KHII by introducing Organization XIII into the mix. Coded: Set up Birth By Sleep. Birth By Sleep: Establishes Terra, Ventus, and Aqua, yes, but also introduces Master Xehanort. Dream Drop Distance: Set up for KHIII by introducing time travel. 0.2: Set up to KHIII. The only side game that is wholly its own is 358/2 Days, since it's a prequel showing the story of Roxas and expands upon him & Axel's characters. The game was fully needed to delve into them, even though it goes on too long in terms of game time. Chain of Memories has the problem of going on too long as well. What should've been a 10-15 hour game gets stretched into 20-25/30 with both of those games. Chain of Memories' plot is so paper thin, which made sense at the time it came out, since it was a handheld game. The problem is that what little story it has was important set up to KHII that people missed out on. Now, sometimes the way they make these games is ok, like Birth By Sleep, which then led to Union X, & introduced us to 3 new tragic characters. Doing a prequel to the entirety of the other games before it was a good idea, since the side games can't be allowed to expand the story too far due to less people playing them. I don't know why they bother, since they tend to treat these games as just as important as the main ones anyways, albeit half-heartedly most of the time, but whatever. The prequels are the better stories of these games, no doubt, but I'll say Birth By Sleep is the only side game thus far that's worth playing rather than just knowing the story, as well as its short sequel, 0.2. Then we get into Dream Drop Distance. This is a side game that truly didn't need to exist story-wise. It's Sora & Riku taking their mark of mastery exams, nevermind that Sora should be awarded that already due to the last 2 main games, but whatever. It's also where we get Master Xehanort coming back and announcing that he's used time travel to gain a new vessel, which I'm trying to think, did he not recombine with his Heartless at some point, still in Terra's body like the other nobodies? Maybe that'll be finally answered in 3. But, yeah, the game answered where some worlds are (not that anyone was wondering that outside of maybe Traverse Town), established why Xehanort was following the plan he's been doing (which, I don't think people needed that answered because you'd assume he found out about the X-Blade at some point, took an interest in it, then did what he did in Birth By Sleep because of that), then had Xehanort gather together himself at different ages to get Sora in the dream world. Why? Shouldn't the game be simple for Sora & Riku finally being dubbed Keyblade Masters? Can't Xehanort being back be established in a post-credits scene at the tail end of the game? Dream Drop Distance is SO convoluted in its story that it makes you question the series as a whole. All in the name of setting up KH3. My point is this, outside of 358/2 Days & Birth By Sleep, none of the other side games really need to exist. Chain of Memories has the main characters be stuck in pods to untangle their memories. Main reason? To depower Sora as a plausible reason to have him at level 1 for the second main game, which is also the reason for DDD, by the way. Coded uses a virtual Sora, and the only justification to it is to establish the protags of Birth By Sleep, which didn't need to happen because that should've been tacked on to the end of that game's story. Seriously, Nomura LOVES to make long games out of short plot threads. Nowhere is this more the case than 0.2, which feels like a title drop scene after a prologue for KH3, just put on 2.8 to both justify its price & entire existence. Anyone else feel this way? I don't mean to sound negative, but that's, honestly, how I've come to see the games in the series since I started playing it last year. Tetsuya Nomura is a good director & designer of RPGs, but I think he's overextended the series to a degree that's detrimental to it overall. It's to the point that he felt the need to introduce time travel into the mix. I have no problem with the franchise's mythology, or its overly complicated ways of telling its stories. They're easy enough to understand as long as you pay attention, but having so many of these side games tell crucial stories wasn't the best idea. I know Nomura loves to have each game matter, but if you want each game to matter, have them actually do, not half-heartedly matter & not matter at the same time. Then again, he also LOVES continuity, which can come in handy for plot elements & writing, but when you have continuity as strict as it's been in KH, it can be daunting to have every game try to be as important as the rest. Update: I have something to add to this. It's a reason I feel the games suffer. The writers of each game. Most of the games are directed by Tetsuya Namura, with some other directors like Tai Yusue, Hajime Tabata, or Tomohiro Hasegawa as co-directors, or, with the first 3 entries, he was by himself. I'm also certain Nomura has ideas that he puts into the games for the writers to develop in a story sense, or helps with the writing in some capacity. I bring this up because a director is only as good as their writers let him be & vice-versa. Kingdom Hearts was written by Jun Akiyama, Daisuke Wantanabe, & Kazushige Nojima. Chain of Memories was written by only Watanabe, with only Nojima returning with him as a script supervisor. It was also apparently co-directed by Yusue from what I've read. Kingdom Hearts II was written by Nojima primarily, judging by the credit, although his personal Wikipedia page also credits Watanabe & newcomer Harunori Sakemi. Nojima's also one of the main writers of Final Fantasy XV & is writing the remake of Final Fantasy VII. 358/2 Days was written by Yukari Ishida & Tomoco Kanemaki. It was also co-directed by Hasegawa. Coded was written by Nomura & Watanabe & is also co-directed by Tabata, who'd go on to direct FFXV. Birth By Sleep was written by Watanabe & newcomer Masaru Oka & co-directed by Yusue. Dream Drop Distance was written by Nomura & Oka & also co-directed by Yusue. 0.2 was written by Oka & co-directed by Yusue. Kingdom Hearts III, we don't know who's written it yet, but I'd put money on either Tabata, Watanabe, &/or Oka. So, yeah, we've only had 2 writers from the first game stick around, which is fine, but the majority of the side games are written by people that were never involved with Kingdom Hearts before those games. In some cases, it was fine, like 358. However, in sme other cases, like Coded & DDD, I don't think it worked too well. Then again, that could always be Nomura's fault, since those are the only games he's written the script for rather than just directed. Looking at these games, the characterization problems I have with Sora in them make sense, since these are people who'd never written one of these games before, nor were they writing with the writers of the first 2 main games. Being co-directed by Yusue, while he's most likely just taking care of things Nomura has him doing, also probably doesn't help. Chain of Memories has some real characterization problems with Sora that he didn't have in the first game, or KHII. Being written primarily only by 1 of the people from the first game's team & co-directed by Yusue most likely didn't help. The next game to have characterization problems for Sora? Coded. Granted, it's a data replica of Sora made from a computer going on what was written in a book, but if it's supposed to be a representation of Sora, the computer did a terrible job. Birth By Sleep has Sora as a kid & he doesn't appear long, so it's fine, but Dream Drop Distance portrays Sora as happy-go-lucky & doesn't have any other emotion or way of thinking than that. I don't know why Nomura seems to only view Sora as an Idiot Hero, but it's clear that's why he's the director & not the writer of his games. Yeah, this is what's lead to the problems in the writing I have. Nomura's experimentation with the combat system didn't help. It's clear that these games are meant to satiate people's wait for the next main entries, but Nomura didn't want the games not to matter in the long-run, which has also lead to the story problems. Again, I only think the few games that needed to exist in the first place story-wise were 358/2 Days, Birth By Sleep, & Dream Drop Distance. Chain of Memories & Coded are worthless as games, Coded especially, since it has such a weak justification for existing. Everything in Chain of Memories could've been done in a prologue to KHII before Roxas' story, or revealed as the game goes along, given the game loves it's overly long cutscenes & revealing plot details the way it does. Chain of Memories also works better as a prequel to KHII than it does a sequel to KHI, honestly, but it's too long for its own good.

Nomura has specifically stated that they aren't even planning future DLC yet. They're focusing on the full story of the game & its mechanics. He told them to be ready for any DLC he may want to release in the future, which I hope that it'll simply be cosmetic things like being in Sora's KH2 outfit for the whole game rather than just the first bit of it, or something like that. Maybe he'll do only a few hour things that are expansions on the main game that are just things that add to the already completed story. FFXV was a project that was in development hell for the longest time, so the initial game having things left out wasn't surprising. Then again, every main game in the series has gotten a Final Mix treatment, so I don't know. I don't expect much to be left out of the game, considering Nomura likes to cover his bases on things, even if they don't matter, so who knows?

Yeah, I did it earlier today & it unlocked. Though, I've actually SEEN the secret ending for Birth By Sleep unlock easily without having to defeat the last villain again for Team Four Star, so I don't know how truthful that is, nor do I see how that would be possible for every game. As far as I can tell, it's just for KH2FM rather than every game in the series, especially when you only beat every boss once within the games, including the final ones, as far as I can tell.

Can someone help me out on this... So, someone on Twitter mentioned that, at some point, Square's gonna stream a bit of the game on Twitch. I asked what channel & the guy keeps responding "the official Twitch channel on Twitch," which is SUPER helpful considering it doesn't answer my question whatsoever. He also said that Twitch apparently has a Twitch channel on their own site. I only found "Twitch Plays," which I don't even know if it's owned by the Twitch staff or not. I've followed the Square Twitch channel & Twitch Plays just in case, but can anyone else help me make sense of this?