keystrike

I get the feeling that the Mark of Mastery will last about as long as TAV's mission to find Master Xehanort in bbs, so in other words not very long, and I doubt that this is when the data will be touched upon. I'd hold speculation on this until we get more news.

My initial impression was pretty bland as I recall: yay a new video game. I must have gotten it as a present, but I knew hardly anything about it before I started the game.

Might I second this?

Kh1 Sephiroth? On proud mode I beat him time after time to level up from 85 to 100. This may be because I was able to fight him so many times, but he is definitely not the hardest. The hardest final boss for me is by far Ansem in the original chain of memories, even at 99 he's infuriating. Of the games I've played which would be all sans the final mixes, MF was the hardest, but he does cheap tricks that can kill you so easily I'd prefer to say VS.

Wow... calm down. Its seeming a bit like a trend of theirs to release games in January, but I highly doubt they would do it just to see how many people would buy it in the first week over getting the maximum profit. Also wouldn't that mean that there is a trend for square to release the games in their country before christmas?

Even if it was a coincidence I see no problem in reading a bit extra stuff into it.

I'm sorry but I had to laugh when you said three idiots stumbling into every problem possible. I don't quite get what you mean by for it to be a good tragedy they need to do all they can, because in my mind they did, kinda like a mental person having to solve a rubrics cube to save their life (ehh... bad example oh well), they will tried their hardest and still fail. Couldn't agree more about Eraqus. Aside from being an idiot in the game, his role in the game feels on par with Maleficent's. When it comes down to it there are a million what if's that would have solved the problem, and a lot of them are Eraqus's. There's a couple things I disagree on with the inconsistencies of the plot such as Mx's plan falling apart had the trio just left the Keyblade graveyard before Xehanort showed up becuase it was Terra dragging them all into it or Terra just being the "stand in for various disney villains" but its enough to say bbs's plot is flawed. This is reminding me of an interesting editorial I read a while back (here:http://www.khinsider...nt/view/1876/1/). Yet another critique of the plot and addresses the flaws in this trio's story.

Marluxia, even if he was just a florist in radiant garden.

I don't quite see the situation as that. The plot was supposed to be tragic, and the trio's flaw of communication among other things lead to their destruction. Every character was doing what they thought was right, Terra assisting the villains not seeing the greater good, Ventus chasing after Terra and disobeying orders to ensure his safety, Aqua being as speculative as possible, but I'm sure you know that. It never came across me that all Aqua did was complain about how horrible he is, but I do agree she could have been a bit more sympathetic and tried to figure out what was going wrong, but hey, its supposed to be tragic.

I think after everything with Roxas and Xion becoming Axel's new friends Saix began to have a sense of betrayal especially by seeing him going out of his way to hang out with what he saw as a doll over him. When Axel failed his mission to bring Roxas back, Saix didn't care what would happen to Axel, or at least not enough to align himself with a traitor. In the end there's really no use in taking over the organization because in his mind when Sora and the others are beaten he will be able to get a heart for himself finally, hence his last words: "Kingdom Hearts... Where is my heart?"

huh, no multiple choice? I guess if I had to pick one to be remastered (or do you mean remade entirely) in HD I would chose bbs.

If I may add some thing to what you just said: its not that we need to look for the answer of who he is, we could speculate weather he is good or bad or a bad guy that turned good, or an anti hero, or a manipulative double crosser etc. Maybe he is being manipulated and that is why there is that almost sad part in the music. There are other things to speculate about him other than who he is.

I'd put my marbles in bbsv2 as it should be one of the "blank points" needing to be told.

It would be nice if they released it on both systems, like final fantasy xiii. We'll just wait and see.

"I think it seems the [main] battle opponent won’t be Heartless or Nobody." Anybody thinking what I'm thinking...

Aside from how much I came to dislike the game (mostly when I had to beat every board for every character in the Mirage Arena) I sorta get the feeling we'll get a new version of it in a future game.

Makes me wonder how far in development bbs was in some of its early trailers. Just throwing some things out there... Lea and Isa, Data Sora and Riku, some final fantasy characters, Ansem sod and Xemnas, Maleficent and Xehanort, some disney characters such as scrooge, some pixar cameos... Sora looking cross? Enigmatic, puzzling... perfect Weren't you able to do that in kh1 to some extent? I really hope this shuts up those kh3 whiners for a while. Interesting.

Isn't this the famitsu with the results with the kh survey?

Yes, their all fun, but some of the levels can be so frustrating.

These were my thoughts exactly (just put into much better words). Are you referring to birth by sleep?

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I don't recall Nomura ever saying MF is some completely new character. So we can speculate what form he is of the entire xehanort mess, but I do agree that most likely we are wrong and in theories like this people are just pulling out facts and calling them evidence.

Its already been stated that the Mark of Mastery will be only part of the game, and seeing how this doesn't advance the plot that much, it would be under a simmilar criticism as coded, and as a main game, it should definitely do more than just that. Also, the mark of mastery is not a "test of strength, but a test of heart;" what you just said would have them be testing strength, and with Sora's strength derived from his friends, don't you think that he should be able to use that strength in the test? As for the sentiments, I don't think their too much more capable than merely carrying on that last *can't find the word for it right now* and Terra's lingering sentiment even mistook Sora for Xehanort. At this point I feel like we just don't have very much to go on.

Sora is also called the Keyblade master in kh. At the time he was not just a keyblade wielder, but THE keyblade master. Now there's Terra, Aqua, Ven Eraqus, Master Xehanort (and all his keyblade wielding incarnations), Riku for sure, Yen Sid and the thousands of wielders in the war not even worth naming. In other words it is simply the result of a not planned out series.

Kingdom Hearts can only go on so far a For the kh series to go any farther than three sagas which if they go anywhere as long as the Xehanort saga will, I think this is where the series will be going. They could also take advantage of the dark realm time traveling faster to squeeze some more games in without Sora aging as much. Anyways I'd like to see the series go on as long as possible with dignity (or at least, not any less than now).