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We kinda fooled around in disney worlds in 2, with our only real excuse being "Find all our friends".. obviously, for this series, that's a good goal in of itself.

But we basically would slip into china or africa and go "OH, guess we're here to help out now"

KH1 probably did it best and made it feel all relevant, though,obviously.

Actually yeah LOL

Since we had the.. council o evil.

^

That was dope

There is also the organization, who acts as a force of mistery

So.. just like KH3, with the seekers of darkness?

Except in KH3 they tell their plans right away

Right.. because we new that since DDD

Like, as soon as Marluxia meets Sora he spills the beans

"We want to make sure the princesses are safe"

"Oh, ok"

Well in a way we kinda figured what the org was up to in KH2 XDDD

Not that KH2 is a masterpiece of story telling anyway

Well, a thing to note here... it's weird how,speciically, it was only Marluxia and Larxene doing that, honestly.

KH2 is also rough in its plot

A lot of filler and scenes that go nowhere

Ellie you bring up a good point :0 about marly and larxene

Yeah kh2 def has those

But differently from KH3, the key point is that it's not aimless

"Finding my friends" is a more concrete goal than "let's try getting this power I don't even know how to obtain"

There's a clear emotional connection that carries on from previous games and directly ties to the main plot because for the first half of KH2 it is the main plot

Meanwhile in KH3 you have this weird stale mate where the org can't really do anything to Sora and the princesses because their goal is to make sure they are safe

So their roles in the plot have basically no stakes

It's basically them setting up for the B-plan that never becomes necessary

Another thing to account for is escalation

As KH2's plot progress we discover more and more details about the organization's plan, and new developments in the story happen

We discover who the leader of the organization is, we find out what exactly the King is up to, and we find out the plot twist of Xehanort

Meanwhile KH3 has no information escalation, the amount of knowledge we have at the beginning is the same we have at the end

Alright, yeah. That makes sense.. But there were stakes here in KH3 with Xehanort reforming it all with KH3. and KH3 was set up for escalation in part due to BbS and DDD, if you keep thoe in mind. As for the power of waking, sure.. Sora dind't have much to go on, but I think Yen sid's point on sending Sora out was to basically spark some kind of connection in Sora in regards to it.. Olympus did this best with it's messsage of wanting to protect/save someone with all your heart/will.

Yeah, the problem is that themes can't really carry the narrative

They did for 1 and Re:com, didn't they?

The message is nice but it never becomes relevant to the story

Not at all

I would think otherwise, honestly, or else the endings sequences of those two probably wouldn't feel as memorable as they did

Kingdom Hearts had strong themes and that's a benefit, but those themes had a well written story on its base

Themes can definitely enhance a story, no one will dispute that

That's the catch with objective analysis, actually

Kh2's themes, while i'm not entirely sure on it, feel like it's about being distant and scattered(going off of the boxart and ow everyone is looking off in multiple directions)

It doesn't exactly brush up on themes because themes resonate differently with people

But that's what I love about KH1

It's a well written story with strong themes and emotional set ups and resolutions that complement it extremely well

That's why it has my favorite story

So why can't we do that for Kh3, when all these side narratives have served to build it up in this way to begin with? that seems odd to not even account for the fact, and continuing isolate the narratives into their one little game

I would say KH2 is probably enhanced if you knew what had happened in Re:COM,considering Axel is major there and it tells the events of why Namine's name is in the journal, and amongst other things