I'm pretty glad I ended up not streaming this, if only because my time spent wandering around Atlantica in desperate need of progress was entirely spent singing along with the background music: a looping instrumental of Under The Sea. I'm a child of the early nineties; I have no reverence for the film (or the cartoon series I impatiently watched while waiting for SatAM to start), but I had to do it regardless

Halloween Town's instrumental of "This Is Halloween" is marginally better, since it -at least- doesn't contain the exact melody for the lyrics

But as it stands, this is like if the Agrabah level had "Arabian Nights" constantly in the background while you wandered its cramped, empty market streets

Or if there was a Duck Tales level and the exploration music was just the theme from the TV show

Darling, it's better
Down where it's wetter
Take it from me

Update: Housemates played this earlier tonight and pushed past their designated stop time just to get on the other side of the Atlantica section. I've never felt more valid in my life

Got past Hollow Bastion; it felt like a concentrated dose of what people seem to like about these. The dungeon is linear and gives you a clear goal, the environment looks lovely, and the story takes a genuinely impressive turn (at least for a few minutes). It was slightly put off by the immediate need to repeat this content, but this is still going to be one of the game's most memorable parts for me.

The Hades Cup is up next, and I genuinely look forward to it.

Every interstitial voiced cutscene so far involving the three heroes has them walking into an austere white hallway, either Sora or Donald asking "I wonder how many more of our collected experiences we've lost?", and Goofy responding with "Shucks, it's not worth worrying about!"

It then fades in to some version of this arrangement of onscreen elements, which makes it feel like a grim ritual is about to occur

Housemates have confirmed that they'll be giving this a shot tonight, which means I'm going to have to hone my understanding of its systems enough to make it something they don't immediately bounce off of. My own playthrough just hit floor 10 and, while the interstitial story stuff is very interesting to me, the jury's still out on whether that's enough to make up for the lack of respect the game has for the time invested by its players

My current strategy: I have a deck overloaded with sleights, which means I can overcome just about any battle by maneuvering Sora near enemies and mashing Triangle. I'm also probably grossly overleveled; random encounters are optional, but I'm still compelled to clear out every single room as I explore and strike random objects in search of environmental Moogle Points. (So, the aforementioned "lack of respect" might be a flaw on my end.)

It was nice of the SCP Foundation to lend Square-Enix a copy of bzzip.exe for the Disney stories in this, also. (KH1 stories are three or four iterations deep, CoM's are one iteration more compressed than that. Link is CW'd for violence/disturbing imagery in test4.log. http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-3045 )

Main story complete; -of course- I'm doing Reverse/Rebirth mode next. In fact, I'm empowered by how beating this seems to unlock Theater Mode for each campaign.

I've decided I enjoy the stories in these, even though the script frequently turns ordinary terms into buzzwords in their relentless overuse. (Off the top of my head, Re:CoM's forbidden words include "Heart", "Light", "Darkness", "Friends", "Memories", "Promise")

I went through Riku's first level, and was worried that the story wouldn't be able to get its hooks in me without the opportunity to hear Donald speak ponderous full sentences in every between-floors cutscene, but then King Mickey showed up to educate Riku on the concept of light held deep within darkness, and all my fears immediately vanished

レバース campaign progress: just started B5F. Map cards in use are Strong Initiative, Sleeping Heartless, and the occasional Moment's Reprieve. It's definitely a snappier form of combat, but I also very much look forward to KH2, where I can clear out trash mobs without worrying about the value of each keyblade strike.

What's that? The story? Oh, so far it's just some XIII members standing in a dark room and scheming about something or another

Actually, a few neat things happened: the discovery that the main story's Riku replica is separate from the Riku you're playing as; that XIII wiped the replica's consciousness against its will; that Naminé is Kairi's "shadow" (which, AFAIK, is a term that hasn't been defined yet in this context). One scene hinted that later events will take place after the story's final cutscene, which is especially interesting to me.

I maintain that the stories for these (so far, at least) aren't nearly as convoluted as people say, but they're written in ways that (whether intentionally or not) either put up roadblocks against people trying to understand in earnest, or cryptically tease more information that doesn't particularly seem necessary.

I ABSOLUTELY reserve the right to change this opinion as I progress through this series, though. Just in case/just FYI.

Reverse/Rebirth complete, thanks to abusing Sleeping Heartless cards; I'm slightly disappointed that all I had to do was duel the last couple of bosses and mash X until victory, but I'll take it nonetheless. The story ended up being a satisfying look at one character, though as side content in a side game, obviously not as substantial as what you'd find in a main installment.

1.5 Final Mix ejected/2.5 Final Mix inserted. Salty popsicles ahoy

Played this for 30 minutes or so last night; the fact that both paths of Chain of Memories are referenced in the CG intro has entirely validated my path through this series so far. Also, Twilight Town's version of Seifer was already the most early-'00s cool-guy character design I've ever seen in my entire life, even before the words "we totally owned you lamers" left his mouth

Earlier tonight I showed the housemates the cutscenes from Re:CoM's second campaign; I think they appreciated it for what it was (a feature-length journey through a pretty questionable script), though they also responded perhaps a bit negatively to the word "darkness" appearing every other spoken sentence. The game deserves to be heckled, but (some of) the details they were missing are there (if you look for them)!

"I'm you."
"No, I'M me."
"'I'm me', he says."

I've also been playing this off-and-on; eight hours in, I'm so very glad the game found at least one way (so far) to one-up the "you fight the entrance to the Cave of Wonders" sequence from Agrabah in KH1

Donald's "Well, you put everyone down there in that dungeon!" in Beast's Castle and his "...and remember to be good!" in Port Royal both make me think the voiceactor portraying him both absolutely recognizes and is actively leaning into how ridiculous the character sounds saying anything, anything at all

It might just be my unshakeable '90s-kid nostalgia for hearing Jim Cummings read anything, also, but KH2's use of Pete as a counterpart to the heroes is a welcome surprise, and I hope he shows up with just as big a role in KH3

Atlantica cons: REAL bad move on the game's part to immediately move from a cutscene featuring Part Of Your World, a painstakingly-crafted theme meant to drive the emotional core of a feature film, into an original "it's fun to swim and pop bubbles" song composed for an action-RPG's rhythm minigame

Atlantica pros: At least we haven't heard a third rendition of Under The Sea yet

It's been a while, but I've been playing this every week -- I'm currently at The World That Never Was.

Apparently for the 2.5 fight They added a fight against Roxas when you enter; I hadn't experienced it, but a housemate spent 20 minutes or so being helplessly stunlocked and dying against it during the last group session. I fired it up on my own afterward and wrecked it first try, GG easy

The first two thirds of the game feels like it fulfills a basic obligation to the audience (here's the Disney IP you're expecting, reheated and resold to you in a different format). I appreciate that most of the second half consists of original stories where the antagonists step aside in favor of justifying battles against large and impressive Heartless or members of Organization XIII, even if the stories themselves aren't particularly inspired

I have to say, I'm pleasantly surprised that OXIII members appear to both die and stay dead. The amount of time they spent establishing Larxene's character in Re:CoM made me think she was going to be a major player in this, but nope -- and I nearly jumped when I saw Vexen in a cutscene during the assault on Hollow Bastion, but nope! Bullet dodged! See you losers in the, uh, three prequel stories I've yet to watch in these collections

Anyway, I'm in the area before the final boss; I want to finish all the base-level Gummi Ship missions and assemble all the bonus puzzles before I set this game down, which means I'm now at the Cave of Remembrance in Radiant Garden, improving my mobility by grinding up the three Drive forms I hardly bothered with. (I specced every move in the game toward "what will allow me to most effectively mash X for victory?", which means Valor was my go-to.)

Oh, some other thoughts:

- I thought it was cute how Port Royal is essentially the only part of the map you HAVE to go through twice. We paid for these actors' likenesses, we're getting our money's worth out of them one way or another

- Cam Clarke does an excellent Matthew Broderick. Still no clarification whatsoever on what a Lion King actually does

- I only found out recently that Sebastian is supposed to be a crab. Bye, Atlantica, see you in my nightmares

Deleted a post because it contained a controversial statement I'm not sure I'm capable of backing up. Regardless, I beat KH2 last night and while there were a bunch of good moments, I'm feeling 'eh' about the story, which I see as a fun anime romp that took a few unnecessary twists and lost the throughline near the end. I'm going to have to seek out guidance from someone more clued-into the "what are these things and why do they matter" aspect of this series.

Despite my misgivings about the story here, though, that doesn't mean I'm giving up on the series as a whole! After all, I've still got a game and two films before I'm through with every part of this collection playable on PS3! (And then I need to get Dream Drop Distance, and figure out how best to experience the OTHER 2.8 stuff, and then, -then-, at long last, I will finally be caught up enough to play a game I preordered two years ago when it was $40 on Amazon)