Jeshua's Life

Well, after putting in long hours yesterday I finally beat Kingdom Hearts today. There were some major flaws in the game mechanics (these may have been fixed in the US version or the Japanese Final Mix), but despite that it was a fun game. I haven't quite finished everything though. I'm the sort of person who wants to "complete" a game rather than just beating it. To me this means finding every secret, doing all the optional side quests, fighting all the optional bosses, getting the best equipment, opening every treasure chest, etc.

I've done most of that, but there are a few things I have yet to do. They are:
1. Beat the Hades cup in Time Trial mode
2. Fight the optional boss in Agrabah
3. Fight the next 2 cups in the Colosseum

I haven't attempted #1 yet, as I've heard the time limit is 20 minutes and when I fought it in the normal mode it took me about an hour. I haven't done #2 yet because I can't for the life of me figure out how to get to him. I've looked through many walkthroughs, and all of them simply say something to the effect of: "Go to place X any time after you've done task Y and talk to Z and Z will take you to the battle." I've completed task Y and have gone to place X many times with different configurations of party members, and have never seen Z. At this point there are several reasons I can think of: (1) I defeated him already and just don't remember doing so (somewhat unlikely, although I have been playing the game on and off for about a year), (2) There's another condition that needs to be satisfied that I haven't but people assume I have (unlikely), (3) This boss wasn't in the original Japanese version, which is the one I'm playing (my best guess).

Some thoughts about the game:
- It was fairly easy.
- It would have been easier if I had used items. The *only* time I used items in the entire game was when I was fighting Phantom, because he requires you to use a lot of magic. (Disclaimer: I may have used items when I was on the island at the very beginning of the game. That was so long ago that I don't remember it very well).
- It might have been easier if I had used summons. I didn't realize what they were for until after beating the game, so I never used them.
- It would have been easier if I'd known that you could press triangle to have your teammates come help you kill something.
- It would have been easier if I'd known how to use combos. I had thought that when you enabled them they would automatically happen if you hit the attack button at the right time, and I didn't want to waste my magic like that so I never enabled them.
- It would have been much easier to pass the time trial modes if I'd used combos. My guess is that you have to have mastered the efficient uses of combos to be able to do beat the Hades Cup time trial mode. I certainly don't expect to be able to shave 40 minutes off my time without using combos.
- Weapons basically turn into into accessories when you get high leveled. Accessories don't matter much when you are high leveled. Weapons and accessories seemed to have a negligible effect on my fighting ability. I was trying to figure out the button timing for combos (I was mistaken in thinking that it was based on button timing), but I was having a hard time because every enemy was dying after 1 hit. So I took off all my accessories and changed to the weakest keyblade I had, and I was still getting 1 hit kills on almost everything. This is despite *not* having ever used any of the stat boosting items that I'd collected.
- Money is fairly worthless after the first few hours of the game. I've been sitting at the max value for a long time, and have absolutely nothing to buy. I've never had a need to buy items, and I'm I've collected as many gummies as I'm allowed to carry just by flying around. The only things worth buying are the weapons at the weapon shop and the gummi ship upgrades you can't collect yourself.
- The bosses are too easy. Excluding Phantom (who was still fairly easy), I beat all the bosses without using summons, combos, items (my partners sometimes used items if they had them), and rarely using magic except the occasional healing spell. I beat the Hades Cup on my first try. I beat the Hades Cup in Solo mode on my first try, without using items, and finished the final battle with full health and full magic! I beat the final boss (ie. everything after the final save point) on my first try without using items or combos or summons.
- The hardest part in this game was getting good enough scores in the Hundred Acre Woods minigames to get Owl's prize (the Cheer ability for Sora). Even so, it was usually just a matter of figuring out what the trick to getting a good score was and then building my hand-eye coordination to do the trick well.
- By far the worst part of the game was the camera. I've heard they improved it in the US and Final Mix versions.
- By far the most pointless part of the game was the gummi ship. I've heard that they US and Final Mix versions have gummi ship missions, but in my version it's basically just a simple Lego-type "game" completely separate from the real game.
- It's really annoying to discover that you can't open about half of the treasure chests later in the game because they contain gummi ship parts and you're already carrying the maximum of that type of part. This is in addition to the parts being fairly worthless anyway.

Much as I'd like to complete this game, unless someone tells me what I need to do for #2 from the list above I think I'll put this game aside and work on one of the many others that I've started (Dark Cloud, FFVII, Tales of Phantasia, .hack, possibly some others).