Kingdom Hearts 1 vs 2 vs 3: A Newcomer's Perspective

funding for shaperelist is provided by squarespace the sponsor of today's video from websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business hey gamers uh funny story this is kind of a lost episode of schaeferless since i wrote the vast majority of the script in late 2019 and then forgot to record it and make it into a video whoops however recently i've replayed all three games that i talk about in this video and my thoughts on them are basically the same despite all the new kingdom hearts knowledge i've accrued in the interim so this is still an accurate video to my current thoughts and feelings and let's jump into it kingdom hearts is a franchise that i was really interested in as a kid but not when i ever played i'm a nintendo boy what did you expect i didn't own a playstation of any kind till i was 20. as a result i have no real nostalgic connection to these games as games it was more so reading about them in gaming magazines watching a couple cutscenes on youtube and also this masterpiece of a youtube poop hey herc hi sora hi sora but then i got a ps4 and what do you know every kingdom hearts game ever is on this thing so i bought the all-in-one package that included three and i figured since it was brand new i'd just jump in there and ignore the overarching plot so i could take selfies with rapunzel and whatnot it was a bad idea i did not enjoy my time with three even taking the plot out of the equation the combat just wasn't clicking with me and the disney worlds felt kind of lifeless i thought geez people call this franchise one of the best hack and slashers out there really then i had the brilliant idea of actually going back and playing the series from the beginning i know what a crazy idea but as i was playing and spoilers for the video you're currently watching really enjoying the first game i thought hey wouldn't it be neat to analyze these two games from the perspective of a non-fan someone who has fresh eyes and no nostalgic connection to kingdom hearts whatsoever so i decided that's what i would do but then this video took a backseat to other ones and i ended up playing two in between so that's where we're at now full disclosure i have only played kingdom hearts 1.5 final mix 2.5 final mix and 3. with that said i watched all the cutscenes for chain of memories and i have a pretty good understanding of what happens in every game plot-wise and how they all connect it's really not that complicated to piece together so with that said i'm not going to fault three for having confusing cutscenes since any confusion is probably on me instead i'm going to look at how these games compare in terms of how they tell their stories how they handle gameplay how well they implement the disney worlds etc the stuff i care about i'm not here for the anime zipper boys i'm just a newbie who wants to see how well this trilogy holds up as individual games so with all that said let's jump into kingdom hearts 1 is really good it's really quaint in comparison to the rest of the series given how straightforward the plot and the villains are i mean the setup for the plot is basically just wind waker you live on an island with your family and friends but then a young girl who's close to you gets kidnapped and you gotta save her plus find riku in this case it's a tale as old as time pun intended even though this game doesn't have a beauty in the beast world but this game does a great job of really making you care sora riku and kyrie are likeable you feel for their connection but you also really want to help sora beat riku why is he so good at this stupid race but things really heat up when you go to traverse town and meet the beloved character final fantasy oh also donald and goofy so i'm in an interesting boat here hey get off my dinghy i love disney movies and characters but i have never played a final fantasy i don't know who these peeps are i mean i know cloud he was in super bash sisters i know aerith she gets stabby stabbed by silver roth yeah that's about it still knowing these guys are iconic characters to a ton of gamers and that they're interacting with disney peeps is just so cool even i couldn't help but marvel at the mere image of hades lord of the underworld cutting a deal with cloud strife that's such a cool implementation the final fantasy cameos don't feel forced every one of those characters has an organic role in the story i really like that and yeah the story is really good too it feels like we're actually fighting back against an evil council of disney villains because well we literally are maleficent is basically the main villain for most of the story and i like how we have to try and stop riku from turning to the dark side that's really interesting and so is the idea of the seven princesses of heart being needed for the bad guys ritual the worlds themselves are really fun to explore sometimes they feel a little box-like and claustrophobic looking at you wonderland but they're never not enjoyable i don't have any affinity for peter pan tarzan or pinocchio but i had fun in those worlds for what they were except this stupid vine swinging part in the tarzan world that needs to go die right now my personal favorites were halloweentown and olympus coliseum home of the games i loved fighting on that iconic curly hill and let's be honest the characters in hercules are some of the best in the disney pantheon i mean come on another great aspect of these worlds is that many of them don't just retell the stories from their original movies they all feel like brand new adventures you get to go on with your favorite disney characters plus they often tie into the overarching narrative clayton rides on a giant chameleon demon when you fight him king triton actually knows about your keyhole ceiling quest and ursula has a different plan that actually involves the keyhole and heartless the peter pan and pinocchio worlds include the original characters and further develop their stories everything just feels so cohesive in this game like the disney worlds and your grand overall quest actually connect combat is also a blast it feels great to slash baddies with your keysword and use all sorts of spells on them the boss fights against classic disney villains are so satisfying mechanically and simply because you're beating up ursula jafar and oogie boogie i'm sorry but if you don't see how that's awesome i'm not convinced you have a heart hollow bastion is also such a great final level it feels like a really good zelda dungeon and navigating it with beast seems weirdly fitting for some reason there are some great story beats that i won't spoil here and it all builds up to an insane final boss battle that's honestly one of the best i've ever faced in a video game it felt so gratifying to defeat him and the ending was so bittersweet and powerful the game isn't perfect some of the worlds could have been better and less cryptic some more variety in terms of combat objectives would have been nice and i low-key kind of wish you could take the disney characters in your party to different worlds know the characters were told not to meddle but they take summons with them just fine i don't know you could have written that out and built up a party of disney icons many rpgs have a large cast of party members and seeing aladdin meet ariel meet jack skellington would have been oh so nice but overall this is exactly the kind of game i wish i grew up with it feels nostalgic and magical with gameplay that still holds up to this day if you avoided kingdom hearts for years because it seemed too confusing i highly recommend picking the first game up it's straightforward and filled to the brim with disney magic oh and the music's top notch almost forgot to mention eight out of ten go play it okay for some reason my audio got really different sounding during this part so i don't know why that is so just just bear with it sorry [Music] kingdom hearts 2 had me really worried for a second there and by a second i mean 4 hours what is with the obnoxiously long intro it kind of reminded me of majora's mask with its first cycle being designed to disorient you and introduce you to the dark story the game had in store except the first cycle of majora's mask had a time limit so it'll only take each player like an hour before they can dive into the meat of the game kingdom hearts 2 takes forever to get started and having to know what happened in chain of memories to understand any of this is asking a bit much i wouldn't mind the disorienting intro if it was 3 days instead of 6. that'd be nice oh well the good news is once the annoying opening is finally behind you kingdom hearts 2 is a masterpiece of a video game everything that worked about the first game is stepped up to the next level well i mean except the plot there's too many variables and weird elements for that to be super compelling but it's not really bad just a lot to take in but who cares this game is magnificent all the worlds based on disney properties i didn't care about are gone the worlds in this game are all killer no filler i can't think of one i disliked oh wait no tron i i don't care about tron i mean i also don't care about pirates but that world slap so i don't even know what my point was bottom line these are the all-star disney levels exploring the beast's castle and fighting heartless in the iconic ballroom was incredible riding the magic carpet through the desert instead of just doing that in a cutscene was incredible running across the pride lands finally getting to explore christmas land seeing the incredibly gorgeous timeless river for the first time playing a rhythm game to the tune of under the sea getting up on the hydra's back this movie nails the disney fan service the worlds and characters are on point even more so than the first game i loved pete as a recurring villain he seemed like such a good fit for the game i liked fighting organization 13 as well the characters have enjoyable personalities usually and they made for some intense unique boss fights not every boss is a winner jafar was really lame and the mcp is maybe the worst boss i've ever faced in a video game quite possibly thank god he's optional also i had to grind seven levels just to beat hoodmeister over here why was he so insanely hard and required not a good mix even though the fight itself was pretty great combat wise this game blows the first one out of the water it's lightning fast and immensely satisfying in a way i can't even fully describe the limit forms and different abilities are put to great use and i had to readjust my strategies for different bosses so often combat also has varied objectives this time which is amazing stuff lock shock and barrel inside presence make sure all the cursed pirates gold is in the chest or else you can't damage this guy protect the gate from sean u get up on the hydra's back it feels like every world has two or three unique combat objectives which really helps the already incredible hack and slash gameplay feel even more fresh one of my fondest memories with this game was beating zaldin on my 15th attempt at like two in the morning and after finally catching my breath from that intense battle unwinding in the winnie the pooh level before i went to bed i love how varied this game can be in terms of tone and intensity there's a world to visit for every mood and i love the winnie the pooh level so much man i sing the lyrics to the song every time i'm there it's charm overload the story while not as good as one overall as i mentioned before has some great climactic moments holy crap the battle against the thousand heartless will go down in history as one of the most jaw-dropping moments i've ever experienced in a video game how do you even and i'll give the story credit i got a little emotional towards the end during some reunions sora and kyrie was nice but the other soraa and other kairi reunion is what really gave me the feels wink wink overall the final battle felt incredibly climactic the final boss was truly an experience to behold though i do like the first game's final boss a little better personally and the ending was immensely satisfying and conclusive it reminded me of the ending of stranger things 2 which i thought was a great way to potentially end the story for good even though i'd be okay with the story continuing if the creators really wanted to so yeah kingdom hearts 2 is probably one of my top 20 favorite games as someone experiencing it for the first time 13 years after its release it's just a magnificent blend of magic humor cheesiness and surprising dramatic heft i for one can't wait to pay someone to play through the prologue for me and then play the rest of the game myself again it exceeded my expectations and i'm gonna give it a big old 9 out of 10. don't miss out on one of the best hack and slash games ever made even if timon and mushu's new voice actors are hilariously unconvincing would you look how he's grown pumbaa why when i rescued the little guy he was only this big and that puts you three up to your eyeballs in debt to peeing here well guess what kitties it's payback time who are you people my audio is finally back to normal hey why don't we take a break in order to commemorate my audio sounding normal again you could do anything you want with this break like starting a blog where you try and make sense of this franchise's story of course the best way to make that sort of blog is with squarespace today's sponsor squarespace is a fantastic intuitive online website builder that allows you to create beautiful websites for your business or personal hobby present your work using squarespace's professional portfolio designs display projects and customizable galleries and add password protected pages to share private work with clients you can even present your videos from youtube vimeo and animoto on your squarespace site add an image overlay to your video to improve your website's load speed by waiting to embed video players until playback starts every design automatically includes a unique mobile experience that matches the overall style of your website so your content will look great on every device every time and if you don't want that you can always disable the mobile view from website manager buying a domain from squarespace is simple because there are no hidden fees or price hikes each domain comes with an ad free parking page and free wh ois privacy on eligible domains squarespace sells over 200 top level domains so you can find the perfect name for your website choose a url that ends in dot com.net.org or if you're feeling funky you can get a more specific one like dot art if you're ready to share your passions or promote your business with the rest of the world head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com slash j4 list to save 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain well that was a fun break let's talk about three now well kingdom hearts 1 was good much like shrek kingdom hearts 2 was a phenomenal follow-up much like struck 2. oh oh okay that's a bit harsh truth be told kingdom hearts 3 isn't a bad game but it's vastly inferior to the first two in a lot of key areas i didn't mention this in the previous segments but 1 and 2 were so good at doling out story concisely the cutscenes weren't overly long or indulgent it felt like there was a good balance of story and gameplay it does retell the plots of the original films pretty often but it doesn't feel like it's stretching the story out or wasting time it still flows pretty well three treads all over that with ridiculously self-indulgent beat for beat retellings of disney movies i've already seen i like the hercules world of all the kingdom hearts of high disney worlds hercules always felt like one of the most iconic and it makes perfect sense to see it return here the characters are charming and it's a great reintroduction to the series after that everything goes down the drain the toy story level is bizarre conceptually like you're in a toy store that isn't al's toy barn okay okay but you're in a mech suit and you get sucked into a random edgy video game nothing happens plot wise and buzz acts weirdly out of character was he ever this much of an i mean i expect this sort of behavior from woody at one point i really just had to ask myself why am i playing this crappy tie-in licensed game because that's what this world felt like then there's the tangle world visually stunning and it's great interacting with eugene and rapunzel in the overworld but they literally just do the exact same plot of the movie with the exact same dialogue playing out in boring cutscenes and they don't even sing i see the light it's just a different shitty musical score instead i prefer if they just didn't have this scene at all song or no song in the context of the game it's just filler there's also a random dancing mini game thrown in there for no reason like every world seems to have some random mini game or gimmick that they clearly put a lot of time into but why couldn't that time have gone into fixing the combat because hot dog is the combat mediocre in this game what even happened here it feels way slower and floatier than it did in two but after 10 hours or so i got used to it and enjoyed it way more however that didn't fix the random disney world attractions that literally show up randomly to do a ton of damage why can't i use them when i want to exactly the second game had a sense of strategy when it came to picking the best technique for you to use but this game really dropped the ball in that arena exploring the worlds is much more fun at least since sora can run up walls now take pictures of hidden mickeys and generally interact with everyone in fun ways but the story progression through these worlds is what really stinks in the frozen and pirates worlds are annoying movie plot rehashes where sora and his friends feel incredibly disconnected from the narratives the monsters inc world is okay and semi-original but still seems pretty rehashy of the movie's basic premise and the big hero 6 world that was honestly my favorite yeah i'm shocked too but this was the one world that felt like it was progressing the story of the original film in a neat way i mean you have to fight the original baymax that was lost in the alternate dimension in the first film he's essentially an empty husk like a nobody that's pretty clever it's overall really fun to work alongside the team and fight heartless throughout the city honestly big hero 6 would make a great ip to make into a full-on action game it works for this medium way better than it worked on film so yeah i didn't expect to enjoy this world at all but i ended up really loving it huh that was my mistake i'll give this game a few more compliments as well first it's one of the most beautiful video games ever made there is not a single scene that doesn't look pretty second it has maybe my favorite implementation of a disney character into the actual gameplay that of course being remy the ratatouille i swear to god you guys i'm breaking character now i i okay so i wrote the script in 2019. that's not a reference to the ratatouille tic-tac musical that is a pure coincidence i literally wrote remy the ratatouille in 2019. that's not where's my royalties ratatouille tiktok musical i i i invented that in my script proof here's a screenshot it last edit october 10. it's proof anyway remy being a chef at scrooge mcduck's restaurant is so cool it's the kind of genius crossover between two disney universes that i wish the series had more of the cookie mini game with him is fantastic i always got excited to serve up a new recipe after i found some ingredients it's probably just because i'm a ratatouille stand but honestly i'm so glad to see one of my favorite pixar films getting some well deserved love and finally the third act of this game is phenomenal i got really attached to the characters lore and story of the series so i was digging all the fanservice thrown in my face but i have the exact same problem as everyone else when it comes to this last act it's super rushed and the first two thirds of the game were just kind of filler nothing happened got me donald once you beat all the disney worlds and rescue aqua the plot shifts into maximum overdrive when the other games had a natural halfway point in between the disney and actually move the plot forward it's just baffling and a lot of this game was just dull also since i neglected to mention it before let me just say for the record the gummy ship is terrible in all three games so just ignore it so yeah it's flawed as hell and kind of a huge disappointment compared to two without spoiling anything the ending is practically perfect except for one fatal flaw that kind of left a bad taste in my mouth and if you've played the game i think you know exactly what i'm talking about just write out the scene where xehanort kills and we could have had a perfect ending to this whole north saga but whatever you know what i'm glad i played it it was well worth getting to the end for i just don't know if i'm gonna pick it up again at least not for a while six out of ten it's okay okay so as it turns out i never wrote an outro in late 2019 so let's rectify that now first of all yes since i replayed three my last statement on not wanting to pick it up again for a while didn't really hold up but never mind all that how did these games compare well the story gets progressively weaker as they go along peaking with the first game simple and clean narrative and falling apart with the overly long boring poorly written cutscenes of the third game even now that i know the overarching story of kingdom hearts the cutscenes in three still didn't invest me combat is by far at its best in two the objectives are varied and the hack and slash gameplay is so fast and fluid that it feels incredible one is a short step behind and three isn't a nose dive but it's a significant step down even though it's still passable but don't worry kingdom hearts 3 fans this game definitely has the advantage in terms of the presentation and exploration even though i got more sucked into the stories and characters of the previous game's worlds the actual worlds themselves in three are not only beautiful but way more expansive it's like going from the flat randomized dungeons of persona 4 to the magnificent elaborate palaces of persona 5. only problem with that analogy is that this game has two okumurous palaces finally the third game has ratatouille content and the first two do not so there at the end of the day kingdom hearts 3 is decent and not nearly as bad as some people say it is but i'm definitely a bigger fan of the first two especially the second i'd highly recommend giving this franchise a try start off with the simple undemanding first game and see if you like it also nomura put phineas and ferb in kingdom hearts 4 it will be amazing good night tri-state area me forever

Channel: Schaffrillas Productions

Views: 264,849

Rating: 4.9097047 out of 5

Keywords: Schaffrillas Productions, Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts 2, Kingdom Hearts 3, Disney, Sora, Donald Duck, Goofy, Riku, Kairi, Mickey Mouse, Roxas, Woody, Remy, Xenanort, Final Fantasy

Id: qaTai1zmSvI

Length: 21min 1sec (1261 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Bobsican]

I'm just going to mention that the combat in KHIII isn't "that" bad, I wonder if he was aware of the ability to be capable to switch Keyblade in the middle of a combo sequence to continue with another move, you can even reset a combo with item canceling (This is more advanced, however), so I would say it's more varied than in KHII as it's the equivalent of being able to switch between Drive Forms without wasting a lot of resources (nor needing as many inputs) in the process, in fact, you can store a Formchange for later by switching Keyblade. Also, the floatiness in KHIII actually benefits aerial combat, as unlike in past games the alternatives while in the air are enought to actually consider fighting on the air without feeling vulnerable. The video below explains further a bit this kind of stuff https://youtu.be/8LAzqI8EuF0

[u/AlKo96]

Oh fuck me, not THIS asshole.