originally posted at https://canmom.tumblr.com/post/162253...
Ansem (…is that even Ansem? maybe not actually) just looks vaguely nonplussed about the giant warship attached to his body exploding behind him.
Also I should mention: that bat-wing double-sword is his main weapon. He literally can’t reach anyone unless they fly into range. It’s like that old warhammer meme but so much worse. And more phallic. (Also: his outfit.)
If that is Ansem, he didn’t die. And he got a chance to get dressed again at some point. Then again, it might not be Ansem, but some other guy with long hair who’s into darkness and sexy gothic warships.
Damn, if you’d mentioned that earlier it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble. Also the party is getting weirdly pixellated. Probably significant.
Anyway, Ansem wants filling with the power of darkness by the Kingdom Hearts. A door opens…
Now, at some point, Mickey Mouse still has to show up. Especially since it’s in the intro to the next game and apparently it’s a fondly regarded moment.
Anyway it turns out Kingdom Hearts is actually light not darkness. Did nobody on Ansem’s side think to check? Awfully big thing to stake a plan of interplanetary invasion on.
Anyway despite the whole light thing, there’s a whole lot of Heartless behind that door. Riku shows up to help Sora close it… from the wrong side. Riku you’re going to get your fingers trapped and also be stuck. Just push like everyone else, you don’t even have good grip there.
Luckily Deus Ex Machina King Mickey Mouse arrives to save everyone from the contrived situation Heartless. I guess to be King you need to be pretty good at murdering people in Mickey’s kingdom? Says a lot…
Oh and he has a keyblade. It’s just a recolour of Sora’s first keyblade. Apparently two keyblades can do the trick.
Also I can’t take his voice seriously. And I’ve been playing with Donald Duck and Goofy all day. I guess I didn’t think of Mickey Mouse having a canonical voice.
Mickey has to be inside to do his side of the Keyblade thing, but Riku also stays? Is that because if he leaves he’ll turn back into Ansem maybe? He tells Sora to ‘take care of her’ because masculinity men maleness man. Somehow, Kairi is also here!
Wow. So that’s Kairi’s role in the plot. Talk about catastrophically failing the Sexy Lamp Test.
OK I think it’s like a… heart meassage. Sora promises he’ll come back to Kairi as all the worlds are restored and Kairi goes back to the island while he’s trapped in the abyss.
We get an FMV credits sequence, mostly Kairi back on the island, then little vignettes on various other characters (mostly heterosexual couples reunited).
At the end, we see Sora, Donald and Mickey run into Pluto, who has a message from Mickey. They run off in some mysterious green hills to begin their search for the ‘door to the light’.
Apparently I don’t get the secret ending because I didn’t track down all the Dalmations (one of three criteria, the others being Hades Cup and locking all keyholes including Hundred Acre Wood). Eh, I’ll just look it up on Youtube.
…OK, that was very confusing. And out of the tone of the rest of the game. Huh.
Anyway.
I’ll admit, I snarked a lot, but I did get an enormous amount of fun out of this game. It just… all came together really nicely. And it held up very well for its age, interface problems notwithstanding.
I want to say, thank you so much to everyone who left comments. I didn’t respond directly because of the fiddliness of replying to replies on Tumblr, but I did read everyone’s comments and I’m so glad that people enjoyed this playthrough. I definitely would have been discouraged if people hadn’t let me know they were enjoying this. I am a total outsider to this fandom, and you’ve all been really really welcoming <3
I’m not at all sure I yet understand how this game - which was a well-made and charming action-RPG that does a lot better with film licenses than games almost ever do - spawned the enormous and very complicated franchise that followed. I guess these things accrue over time, and the setting has enormous scope for connecting up disparate genres and settings which lets them keep things fresh. It does seem like the Disney connection may be less emphasised in the other games? But maybe that’s just misreading the intros.
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