KH1 is unironically a better designed and more well-thought-out ARPG than most other games today. Discuss

The early worlds are designed in a way that you have to just randomly run through the previously visited places and hoping a script is going to fire. The pacing is really wonky, the platforming is considerably below even ps1 platformers. The game takes too long to give you meaningful combat options, you are stuck with a basic combo for like half of it.

KH gets too much shit nowadays from Nomuradrones, but this game is jank in many ways.

On what ways is it better designed and well thought out than say, Nier Automata, for example?

>The game takes too long to give you meaningful combat options, you are stuck with a basic combo for like half of it.
user, you are aware that you can adjust the EXP curve in the beginning, right?

KH1 came out right before wind waker so I compared the two then and decided KH sucks

>On what ways is it better designed and well thought out than say, Nier Automata
KH1 has way more enemy variety with more unique mechanics to them. Take Invisibles, Angel Stars, Large Bodies, Wizards, and Wyverns for examples.
Invisibles come in large groups, can fire dark energy at you, slash at you with their blades, and even disappear to summon a ring of fire around you that will explode and deal large amounts of damage to you if you don’t evade it effectively.
Angel Stars can shoot long-range homing attacks, become invulnerable to attacks in attacked in the front, glows in three different colors that signify that it will
A. Glow pink to summon a tornado that follows Sora and deals heavy damage
B. Glow blue up a to summon a ball of light that erupts into a pillar when it hits the ground and may create a new Angel Star.
C. Glow white to summon three rapid-fire balls of lightning at you, which you can reflect back onto them to stun them if your reflexes are good enough.
Large Bodies can only be attacked from behind since its deflect your attacks from the front, can charge into you, which grants you the chance to guard and stun it, and can even perform a jumping attack in the air.
Wizards can use different kinds of magic, such as Fire, Blizzard, Thunder, and Gravity, can’t harmed by magic since they’re immune to it and will instead absorb it and go into a casting frenzy. The only to defeat it is to bash it in but it will teleport away from you if you try to do so and will even become temporarily invulnerable once it casts Thunder.
Wyverns are heavily based for air combat and can reach heights that not even Sora can get to, and unleash corkscrew and dive attacks that shave off huge chunks of HP. You’ll also mostly encounter them in high altitude areas like Hollow Bastion so unless you want to get all the way back up again, you’re gonna have to use magic such as Thunder and Gravity to take them down.
And these are just some of the enemies.

On top of this, your magic had a variety of uses as well.
Fire/Blizzard become exponentially cost effective as you get more MP. Thunder is an AoE nuke that hits from anywhere. The Aero line is a defensive Spiral Swords: Aero halves the damage you take, Aerora adds contact damage and heavy stun (nice damage boost), and Aeroga automatically deflects some attacks. All these benefits stack on each other. Sora's default ground physical attacks are hard to connect with (slow, short ranged, no tracking, vertical slash can miss things right next to you) but new abilities help fix this and the air strikes are fast and mobile.
Gravity and couple other attacks deal damage based on the enemies current HP (which can be boosted above 100% *instant kills abound*). Stop freezes enemy in a radius for a long time, locks their HP in place until for the duration (great synergy with fractional damage attacks), and once it ends the enemy suffers the stuns from everything that's hit them during the spell. While heavily resisted, Gravity and Stop affect most bosses, and are very useful when they do (Stop being the best normal offensive magic while Gravity shreds the first few health bars).
Not only that but they were also effective for environmental interactions and exploration as well, such as using Blizzard to freeze the bubbles in Hollow Bastion to get to a new item.

To add even more to this, you also had the tech point system, which rewarded you for taking risks, parrying certain attacks back at enemies, taking advantage of an enemy’s weak point through either select magic or physical combos, etc, for more EXP.

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Automata’s combat fucking sucks, my man.

BASED

It had level design. It was awkward level design, but it had verticality and maps and backtracking and actual exploration, unlike literally every other game in its own franchise.

Everything went wrong after KH2 told Nomura that you could in fact make a game that was 99% set pieces linked by corridors and cutscenes and plebs would lap that shit up.

If the platforming in KH1 had better footing, or if the platforming wasn't as rigid, we wouldn't have had the drastic shift in KH2.

KH2 had great combat, boss, and enemy design but almost worse everything else. I think people just forget how much of a slog a lot of the areas are to get through when you’re replaying the game again and get greeted by obnoxiously empty hallways. It really sucks when the only level that can take advantage of Sora’s improved mobility and air time is the Cavern of Remembrance and that was a postgame area added into 2FM.

Or maybe Nomura should’ve designed actual levels for KH2.

I replayed KH1 and KH2 recently, and that shift in focus was very apparent. In Kh1, I was engaging in those faculties one does with the best RPGs and action games: forming mental maps, checking corners, backtracking to previous areas once I had unlocked new mobility options, etc. With KH2 it was "mash X and Square and occasionally Triangle", and this model pretty much persisted with a possible exception being for KH 358/2 days, though I might want to replay that for a refresher.

In an alternate reality, some new Square Enix hire would whip Nomura and keep him on a leash and we'd get the same mentality to level design as KH1, but refined and better, the same way Super Metroid 3 built on Metroid or how Link to the Past built on Zelda 1 (Or possibly even how BotW built on Zelda 1). But instead every time KH is brought up in front of the world, the world has to scratch its head over how a franchise that only asks you to press one button and hold the stock forward, while spouting incomprehensible plot elements, could possibly make it this far.

I honestly miss tech points a lot.

playing it for the first time and i'm loving it

kh1 is fucking awful though

>Absolutely terrible level design
>Shit story
>Shit characters
>Mediocre music
>Slow, clunky gameplay
>1 (ONE) good boss fight in Riku since Ansem shit the bed once he turned into a fucking boat for some reason

There is pretty much nothing actually good about 1 unless you're a massive disneyfag and even then the disney stuff is too shallow to ever be entertaining. 2 and 3 were pretty good though

shit, i picked the shield and i have to be lv 90 for MP rage? good thing goofy gives his mp

To be fair, KH2 on Critical is one of the finest combat experiences you can get out there when you’re fighting the bosses and enemies. I just think it’s a shame that the game doesn’t take advantage of Sora’s new mobility options.
>But instead every time KH is brought up in front of the world, the world has to scratch its head over how a franchise that only asks you to press one button and hold the stock forward, while spouting incomprehensible plot elements, could possibly make it this far.
A combination of Disney nostalgia, flashy gameplay, and great production values.

1 is better than 2 because it requires at least a minimal amount of thought.
You can get lost and you can be underleveled, in 2 you just follow the linear path and smash triangle untill the end credits roll

>Absolutely terrible level design
>Shit story
>Shit characters
>Mediocre music
>says all of this while praising fucking 3

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I mean yeah. Data fights are the pinnacle of what you can do with an RPG battle system if you want action

>it’s a 3fags try to prop up their shit-fest with actually good games episode
I’m sick of reruns.

>the keyblade should have remained a unique weapon
>nobodies (at the very least Org 13) wasn't needed since the series retroactively states that they would have grown their hearts back anyway
>ansem the Wise should have gone rogue, which would mean Mickey would lose a friend he though he had a bond with
>at the same time, Ansem's students would have followed him, become users of Darkness in their own right
>worlds based on Disney's Animated shows should have been in the series at this point
>no time travel
>Disney Castle serves as a base for the heroes due to its natural immunity to darkness
I know this wouldn't be accepted by all, but I'd like to see how this would have gone if the series went like this.

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>mediocre music
Blow it out your fucking ass
youtu.be/gbeHo6c_a8o
youtu.be/ysppXLG570w
youtu.be/4nlCNVewMjA