The optimal option is usually shield or staff depending on the game and type of run (level 1 and/or critical, speedrun, normal), but the real choice is and has always been sword.
Where are my fellow Shield Chads at? >Early Lucky Strike, meaning synthesis is easy >Early Jackpot means you can get rich quick >earliest possible Critical Plus >earliest possible Second Chance >get Slapshot right out the gate >more accessory slots and items slots earlier >literally never have to equip defense boosting accessories because your defense increases passively, meaning you can buff Strength or Magic way past the damage cap
You don’t start feeling the benefits of the Staff until the late game. That’s the downside of the Staff. Also, the early game and Riku-Ansem are rough on a magic build.
I could swear that they do affect stat growth(i.e picking Shield and sacrificing Sword for example means that you get More Defense boosts at earlier levels, while the majority of your Strength boosts get saved for later levels.).
I recently finished a +Sword -Shield playthrough, and I noticed that I started getting more Defense boosts past level 50 or so.
Nope. The only difference in leveling is the order you get skills.
This link has a chart that shows which levels give what
https://30somethinggaming.com/abilities-guide-kingdom-hearts-final-mix/
Staff, gives you a boost in mp at the beginning of the game that can't be made up later in the game if you didnt choose it. You can boost your attack and defense with items but not magic. No huge benefit in giving up sword vs shield or vice versa
+staff/-sword is objectively the best choice. you get 1 MP slot you cannot get elsewhere and all you lose is it takes longer to get certain skills, who cares
On one hand, the fact that KH1 starts you with a ground combo, air combo and potions and literally nothing else is a pretty bold choice and makes every new upgrade and ability you get feel really meaningful -- going from having to time attacks to parry to having a dedicated block button is transformative. On the other hand, it's pretty obnoxious feeling like the first couple of worlds are just tutorials, I can see why they didn't repeat it later on. Still, games like BBS did overcorrect on that front.
It's all about spectacle, and I don't mean that in a terrible way either. KH2 had bigger clusters of more complex enemies, so you really couldn't throw someone in there without Guard and expect them to do exceedingly well, ESPECIALLY since they nixed the I-Frame Roll in Base 2 and still for quite a while (Twilight 2, at the earliest) in FM.
I get where they were coming from, but I do miss the more transformative tree of KH1 where your choices really changed how you played the game due to such essential abilities being locked behind them. Early Guard, Early Combo Mods, or Early Magic Power (i.e. nothing without any spells) all make the game feel much different as early as Traverse Town. There's no other game that comes close to replicating that in the franchise, which sucks.
Yeah, I know most of the games from 2 onwards are less RPGs and more action games with slowly unlocking abilities and increasing stats on a linear progression path, and I love them all the same. Having a lot of different options also rather limits design because you have to account for the different approaches the players may take (look at, for example, Elden Ring). And it's very likely KH4 will continue the streamlined action path of the series (though I really hope they learned from Re:Mind and tone down some of the Osaka-isms like every non-core combat option being a variation of "fill gauge to unleash big flashy AoE damage"), but I hope we can eventually get some spinoff or side game that puts a bit of emphasis on the different approaches and builds, kinda like Days.
> tone down some of the Osaka-isms
that aint happening
2 years ago
Anonymous
I dunno, I think it might. Note how all the Limit Cut fights had no room for Team Attacks or Attraction Flow and the Links, which trivialize every base game boss, are mostly just useful for surviving DMs. And what's left, while still having a fair bit of options in air and ground combos, blocking, dodging, counters, formchanges, items, magic, grand magic and shotlocks, actually makes for fantastic action gaming when the fights are explicitly designed for that subset. I don't expect every boss in KH4 to be a Limit Cut-tier humanoid (nor would I want them to be), and I don't expect them to go back to KH2 battle room simulator either, but hopefully they've figured out how to integrate the actual fun parts of the combat system into the main loop instead of focusing on empty spectacle over all. Granted, it might be wishful thinking since they still haven't done many great mob fights, but I'd rather be optimistic. The return of RCs is a good sign, at any rate.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>The return of RCs is a good sign, at any rate
It feels kind of funny how much shit RCs used to get, only for everyone to miss them when KH3 didn't include it
2 years ago
Anonymous
I think a lot of that has to do with the reivindication of KH2 after the II.5 compilation made 2FM available in the West. Before that, only dedicated autists who got the JP version could play 2FM and even though they told everyone how great it was, 2's reputation as the "press triangle and X to win" game was firmly entrenched. Remember, vanilla 2 has no Critical, no Limit Form (and consequently Dodge Roll), no data fights or Cavern of Remembrance, no Lingering Will. It only got as renowned as it is now years after its original release.
Weren't the Water line of spells basically magnet?
You're thinking of Aero, and they're still a bit of a mismatch because the Aero spells don't lass that long, make enemies move around a lot within them and put you into Flowmotion, which makes using them for crowd control and gathering enemies for air combos like Magnet in KH2 difficult. Can make for some pretty cool setups using it as a springboard, though. Water is the pseudo-Reflect, again in a scuffed way because you can't chain the iframes as well as you could with Reflect and it just shoots a projectile instead of returning the damage. You can still use it to iframe some unblockables when used judiciously.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Honestly, I feel as though 2FM only puts a bandaid over vanilla 2’s problems. The entire mid-game is still a slog and the level design is still trash outside of CoR.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I'd say that rather than fixing its problems, it sharpens its strengths. 2FM is far from a perfect game (despite what purists would have you believe) and its successors improved the formula in many ways, but in terms of combat it's unmatched.
Another thing I'd like to see make a return from KH1 is the metroidvania-esque tendency of having inaccessible areas in certain worlds that you could only reach with nee movement abilities. KH2's Drive levelling mechanic and DDD and 3's flowmotion make that incompatible, but it wouldn't be hard to bring it back.
The only thing I want from KH4 is Air Combos and Ground Combos to be different again. Oh, and supportive/disruptive magic that isn't Cure. No Reflect/Gravity/Stop/Aero/etc. is such a fricking waste when those are the most fun magicks to play around with. Stop/Gravity combos in KH1, Magnet/Reflect combos in KH2. There's nothing like that in 3, it's a shame.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Weren't the Water line of spells basically magnet?
2 years ago
Anonymous
Aero had some light Magnet properties via gathering enemies, Water had some I-Frames on start-up. It's not like there were NONE, they were just very muffled and seemed more like an afterthought, than anything. Though I could be wrong with that, I'll admit.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Stop/Gravity combos in KH1
I love Stop so much. I actually was autistic enough to do a play through where I got Stop as early as possible and then just used stop with high MP to permanently freeze every boss in the game and kill them before they even had a chance to react. I learned that every boss in the game is vulnerable to Stop minus the following exceptions: >Guard Armour >Opposite Armour >Stealth Sneak >Ursula 1 (NOT Giant Ursula though) >Oogie Boogie >all Riku fights >Behemoth >all Ansem fights
2 years ago
Anonymous
Even Xemnas?
2 years ago
Anonymous
Forgot Xemnas too. Xemnas is however weak to Gravity and can be stunlocked with it with the right timing.
Also, if you want to annihilate bosses with Stop, set Donald and Goofy to toss Ethers and MP Gifts constantly, have a high MP gauge and also set Goofy to spam Tornado for extra damage. Fights like Giant Ursula and Maleficent were over in under a minute. I even managed to kill Chernabog before he threw a single attack
You lose item slots.
Not that you'd ever need more than 6 elixirs, but sword gets 7 and shield has 8.
+1 max MP is still a very good trade since max MP also determines how effective your magic is.
shield because more item slots is better than a little better stats
I took staff and dropped shield on coming back to critical after years and it sucked to discover I didn't get any of the abilities that saved you from being one shot or combo'd to death until very high level
When I was a kid I picked sword and dropped staff because the sword looked the coolest. When I played through as an adult preparing for KH3, I chose shield and sacrificed sword.
I'm thinking of doing my 3rd run of KH1. Haven't done any of the more challenging stuff though. Is it more fun to play Proud Mode or is lvl 1 on a lower difficulty more fun (was thinking lvl 1 Expert)?
lvl1 is proud mode exclusive. It also isn't fun.
All the cool abilities are locked behind levels in KH1. So unless you feel like glitching finisher damage onto your magic and summons it's going to take forever and be really frustrating and boring.
Lv1 Crit in 2FM is a genuinely excellent if very challenging experience. Crit KH3 is fun, but Lv1 Crit is... frustrating. In every other game they're just clusterfricks.
Because KH1 and its proud made were made before the team even thought of level 1 challenge runs, and locking away useful skills in bosses, rather than levels
Proud KH1 with normal levels is pretty good. I wouldn't bother with level 1 outside of 2FM and maaaaybe 3 (and BBS if you want a laugh with the janky Exp Zero interactions).
>Sword of Blandness >You will be blessed with ultimate unremarkability and a simple-minded atittutde
>Scepter of Copyright >At the cost of your soul, you may now harbor the powers of capitalism and be able to control manchildren at your will
>Shield of Trademark >Cursed weapon that forces the user to permanently depend of its unholy properties to win any fight. Its corruption will repel all kidness and enforce a ruthless mentality on anybody around it.
The only problem is the cryptic language. The actual levelling system is genius once you understand it and gives the game a ton of replay value.
Yeah, I know most of the games from 2 onwards are less RPGs and more action games with slowly unlocking abilities and increasing stats on a linear progression path, and I love them all the same. Having a lot of different options also rather limits design because you have to account for the different approaches the players may take (look at, for example, Elden Ring). And it's very likely KH4 will continue the streamlined action path of the series (though I really hope they learned from Re:Mind and tone down some of the Osaka-isms like every non-core combat option being a variation of "fill gauge to unleash big flashy AoE damage"), but I hope we can eventually get some spinoff or side game that puts a bit of emphasis on the different approaches and builds, kinda like Days.
Re:Coded had a bigger emphasis on builds and it was a better game for it. Still, nothing matches the progression of KH1, where you start the game as just a literally who kid with a wooden sword and then you end the game being able to pull off anime protagonist level-shit.
It’s also really cool how the abilities you unlock make perfect sense in the context of the narrative. Like, of course you’d learn Glide after Peter Pan teaches you how to fly and the lore behind summon gems is cool and ties into the story— I particularly like how Squall is the one who has Simba’s summon gem (since it makes sense that Squall would have a lion summon).
Agreed on all counts. Man, KH1 was the definition of soul. Remember those random little extras from lighting candles with Fire or making the globe in the encampment in Tarzan's world spin?
The only thing I want from KH4 is Air Combos and Ground Combos to be different again. Oh, and supportive/disruptive magic that isn't Cure. No Reflect/Gravity/Stop/Aero/etc. is such a fricking waste when those are the most fun magicks to play around with. Stop/Gravity combos in KH1, Magnet/Reflect combos in KH2. There's nothing like that in 3, it's a shame.
That too. Extend that to summons as well. Note how in KH2 they were largely about utility (healing, reraise, bonus MP, budget Magnet, interrupting enemies) while in KH3 they're yet another screen-clearing AoE. The real genius of KH2Fm was that you had a *relatively* smaller number of options, but almost every single one had its unique role and place in the combat. I enjoy the precise cut-and-parry of 3Re a lot too, but I'd much rather have a small set of distinct options over a ton of interchangeable nukes that only differ in visuals and damage.
>never getting any good ability throughout the rest of the game
Slapshot, Sliding Dash, Counterattack and Blitz are good abilities though. There is really a bad choice among the 3 options, but what choice you pick does affect the way you play the game.
Everything in every KH game is busted if you know how to apply it properly. Especially in KH1 and 2, I can’t think of a single useless spell outside of KH2 base Fire (base as in no Drive Forms). Even some of the meme commands in BBS and DDD have some utility.
The optimal option is usually shield or staff depending on the game and type of run (level 1 and/or critical, speedrun, normal), but the real choice is and has always been sword.
Staff is the best by far, giving up sword or shield either doesn't matter
Where are my fellow Shield Chads at?
>Early Lucky Strike, meaning synthesis is easy
>Early Jackpot means you can get rich quick
>earliest possible Critical Plus
>earliest possible Second Chance
>get Slapshot right out the gate
>more accessory slots and items slots earlier
>literally never have to equip defense boosting accessories because your defense increases passively, meaning you can buff Strength or Magic way past the damage cap
You don’t start feeling the benefits of the Staff until the late game. That’s the downside of the Staff. Also, the early game and Riku-Ansem are rough on a magic build.
Shield does not affect your defense scaling beyond that you start the game with more.
Actually none of the choices affect stat growth at all.
I could swear that they do affect stat growth(i.e picking Shield and sacrificing Sword for example means that you get More Defense boosts at earlier levels, while the majority of your Strength boosts get saved for later levels.).
I recently finished a +Sword -Shield playthrough, and I noticed that I started getting more Defense boosts past level 50 or so.
Nope. The only difference in leveling is the order you get skills.
This link has a chart that shows which levels give what
https://30somethinggaming.com/abilities-guide-kingdom-hearts-final-mix/
None, I just punch everything
>do you want a shit ton of mp, which is literally used for everything? or not?
Wow this is a hard choice.
Pick Staff
Drop Sword
Min max Critical Mode
Staff, gives you a boost in mp at the beginning of the game that can't be made up later in the game if you didnt choose it. You can boost your attack and defense with items but not magic. No huge benefit in giving up sword vs shield or vice versa
I pick playing a better fricking game
KH1 is still the best tho
+staff/-sword is objectively the best choice. you get 1 MP slot you cannot get elsewhere and all you lose is it takes longer to get certain skills, who cares
>who cares
me cares
I want to Slide Dash at my enemies before fricking Agrabah.
Early guard>
endgame even easier than it already is
On one hand, the fact that KH1 starts you with a ground combo, air combo and potions and literally nothing else is a pretty bold choice and makes every new upgrade and ability you get feel really meaningful -- going from having to time attacks to parry to having a dedicated block button is transformative. On the other hand, it's pretty obnoxious feeling like the first couple of worlds are just tutorials, I can see why they didn't repeat it later on. Still, games like BBS did overcorrect on that front.
It's all about spectacle, and I don't mean that in a terrible way either. KH2 had bigger clusters of more complex enemies, so you really couldn't throw someone in there without Guard and expect them to do exceedingly well, ESPECIALLY since they nixed the I-Frame Roll in Base 2 and still for quite a while (Twilight 2, at the earliest) in FM.
I get where they were coming from, but I do miss the more transformative tree of KH1 where your choices really changed how you played the game due to such essential abilities being locked behind them. Early Guard, Early Combo Mods, or Early Magic Power (i.e. nothing without any spells) all make the game feel much different as early as Traverse Town. There's no other game that comes close to replicating that in the franchise, which sucks.
Yeah, I know most of the games from 2 onwards are less RPGs and more action games with slowly unlocking abilities and increasing stats on a linear progression path, and I love them all the same. Having a lot of different options also rather limits design because you have to account for the different approaches the players may take (look at, for example, Elden Ring). And it's very likely KH4 will continue the streamlined action path of the series (though I really hope they learned from Re:Mind and tone down some of the Osaka-isms like every non-core combat option being a variation of "fill gauge to unleash big flashy AoE damage"), but I hope we can eventually get some spinoff or side game that puts a bit of emphasis on the different approaches and builds, kinda like Days.
> tone down some of the Osaka-isms
that aint happening
I dunno, I think it might. Note how all the Limit Cut fights had no room for Team Attacks or Attraction Flow and the Links, which trivialize every base game boss, are mostly just useful for surviving DMs. And what's left, while still having a fair bit of options in air and ground combos, blocking, dodging, counters, formchanges, items, magic, grand magic and shotlocks, actually makes for fantastic action gaming when the fights are explicitly designed for that subset. I don't expect every boss in KH4 to be a Limit Cut-tier humanoid (nor would I want them to be), and I don't expect them to go back to KH2 battle room simulator either, but hopefully they've figured out how to integrate the actual fun parts of the combat system into the main loop instead of focusing on empty spectacle over all. Granted, it might be wishful thinking since they still haven't done many great mob fights, but I'd rather be optimistic. The return of RCs is a good sign, at any rate.
>The return of RCs is a good sign, at any rate
It feels kind of funny how much shit RCs used to get, only for everyone to miss them when KH3 didn't include it
I think a lot of that has to do with the reivindication of KH2 after the II.5 compilation made 2FM available in the West. Before that, only dedicated autists who got the JP version could play 2FM and even though they told everyone how great it was, 2's reputation as the "press triangle and X to win" game was firmly entrenched. Remember, vanilla 2 has no Critical, no Limit Form (and consequently Dodge Roll), no data fights or Cavern of Remembrance, no Lingering Will. It only got as renowned as it is now years after its original release.
You're thinking of Aero, and they're still a bit of a mismatch because the Aero spells don't lass that long, make enemies move around a lot within them and put you into Flowmotion, which makes using them for crowd control and gathering enemies for air combos like Magnet in KH2 difficult. Can make for some pretty cool setups using it as a springboard, though. Water is the pseudo-Reflect, again in a scuffed way because you can't chain the iframes as well as you could with Reflect and it just shoots a projectile instead of returning the damage. You can still use it to iframe some unblockables when used judiciously.
Honestly, I feel as though 2FM only puts a bandaid over vanilla 2’s problems. The entire mid-game is still a slog and the level design is still trash outside of CoR.
I'd say that rather than fixing its problems, it sharpens its strengths. 2FM is far from a perfect game (despite what purists would have you believe) and its successors improved the formula in many ways, but in terms of combat it's unmatched.
Another thing I'd like to see make a return from KH1 is the metroidvania-esque tendency of having inaccessible areas in certain worlds that you could only reach with nee movement abilities. KH2's Drive levelling mechanic and DDD and 3's flowmotion make that incompatible, but it wouldn't be hard to bring it back.
The only thing I want from KH4 is Air Combos and Ground Combos to be different again. Oh, and supportive/disruptive magic that isn't Cure. No Reflect/Gravity/Stop/Aero/etc. is such a fricking waste when those are the most fun magicks to play around with. Stop/Gravity combos in KH1, Magnet/Reflect combos in KH2. There's nothing like that in 3, it's a shame.
Weren't the Water line of spells basically magnet?
Aero had some light Magnet properties via gathering enemies, Water had some I-Frames on start-up. It's not like there were NONE, they were just very muffled and seemed more like an afterthought, than anything. Though I could be wrong with that, I'll admit.
Stop/Gravity combos in KH1
I love Stop so much. I actually was autistic enough to do a play through where I got Stop as early as possible and then just used stop with high MP to permanently freeze every boss in the game and kill them before they even had a chance to react. I learned that every boss in the game is vulnerable to Stop minus the following exceptions:
>Guard Armour
>Opposite Armour
>Stealth Sneak
>Ursula 1 (NOT Giant Ursula though)
>Oogie Boogie
>all Riku fights
>Behemoth
>all Ansem fights
Even Xemnas?
Forgot Xemnas too. Xemnas is however weak to Gravity and can be stunlocked with it with the right timing.
Also, if you want to annihilate bosses with Stop, set Donald and Goofy to toss Ethers and MP Gifts constantly, have a high MP gauge and also set Goofy to spam Tornado for extra damage. Fights like Giant Ursula and Maleficent were over in under a minute. I even managed to kill Chernabog before he threw a single attack
You lose item slots.
Not that you'd ever need more than 6 elixirs, but sword gets 7 and shield has 8.
+1 max MP is still a very good trade since max MP also determines how effective your magic is.
shield because more item slots is better than a little better stats
I took staff and dropped shield on coming back to critical after years and it sucked to discover I didn't get any of the abilities that saved you from being one shot or combo'd to death until very high level
sword. you're not donald or goofy.
When I was a kid I picked sword and dropped staff because the sword looked the coolest. When I played through as an adult preparing for KH3, I chose shield and sacrificed sword.
SUBMIT
SUBMIT
SUBMIT
SUBMIT
Magic is for losers, melee fighter class please.
Why did you post a cleric then?
>big mclargehuge thinking he stands a chance against any kind of magic
I've always picked sword and given up the staff.
Hmm let me think.
>Donald duck uses a staff
>Goofy uses a shield
>Sora uses a.....
glove
Key
club
Where's the bow?
I'm thinking of doing my 3rd run of KH1. Haven't done any of the more challenging stuff though. Is it more fun to play Proud Mode or is lvl 1 on a lower difficulty more fun (was thinking lvl 1 Expert)?
lvl1 is proud mode exclusive. It also isn't fun.
All the cool abilities are locked behind levels in KH1. So unless you feel like glitching finisher damage onto your magic and summons it's going to take forever and be really frustrating and boring.
Oh that sucks. Why do these challenge modes always have to double up and become unfun? Thanks for the info though I'll just play Proud then
Lv1 Crit in 2FM is a genuinely excellent if very challenging experience. Crit KH3 is fun, but Lv1 Crit is... frustrating. In every other game they're just clusterfricks.
Because KH1 and its proud made were made before the team even thought of level 1 challenge runs, and locking away useful skills in bosses, rather than levels
Proud KH1 with normal levels is pretty good. I wouldn't bother with level 1 outside of 2FM and maaaaybe 3 (and BBS if you want a laugh with the janky Exp Zero interactions).
>Sword of Blandness
>You will be blessed with ultimate unremarkability and a simple-minded atittutde
>Scepter of Copyright
>At the cost of your soul, you may now harbor the powers of capitalism and be able to control manchildren at your will
>Shield of Trademark
>Cursed weapon that forces the user to permanently depend of its unholy properties to win any fight. Its corruption will repel all kidness and enforce a ruthless mentality on anybody around it.
>Sigil of Reddit Spacing
>Your messages will now be easier to read, at the cost of everybody ignoring them
That's not reddit spacing, moron
>reddit spacing
yea, i simply didnt read this. they probably wrote something about social politics in there also which is classic reddit user.
That's not reddit spacing, chucklenuts.
>Reddit spacing
>doesn’t know Reddit spacing is two lines and not one
Tell me you’re a newbie without telling me you’re a newbie.
If it's a Kingdom Farts thread it's already poison
Shield because of Damage>MP conversion. You don't need extra max MP when you can afford to heal yourself after every hit.
i hate when games do this
you dont really know what the choices will do, like will the effect the story
and in the end it just means some of them frick you over stat wise
The only problem is the cryptic language. The actual levelling system is genius once you understand it and gives the game a ton of replay value.
Re:Coded had a bigger emphasis on builds and it was a better game for it. Still, nothing matches the progression of KH1, where you start the game as just a literally who kid with a wooden sword and then you end the game being able to pull off anime protagonist level-shit.
It’s also really cool how the abilities you unlock make perfect sense in the context of the narrative. Like, of course you’d learn Glide after Peter Pan teaches you how to fly and the lore behind summon gems is cool and ties into the story— I particularly like how Squall is the one who has Simba’s summon gem (since it makes sense that Squall would have a lion summon).
Agreed on all counts. Man, KH1 was the definition of soul. Remember those random little extras from lighting candles with Fire or making the globe in the encampment in Tarzan's world spin?
That too. Extend that to summons as well. Note how in KH2 they were largely about utility (healing, reraise, bonus MP, budget Magnet, interrupting enemies) while in KH3 they're yet another screen-clearing AoE. The real genius of KH2Fm was that you had a *relatively* smaller number of options, but almost every single one had its unique role and place in the combat. I enjoy the precise cut-and-parry of 3Re a lot too, but I'd much rather have a small set of distinct options over a ton of interchangeable nukes that only differ in visuals and damage.
>tfw trying to complete Olympus Coliseum as my first world, while also beating Cloud in Proud mode
it hurts...
No matter what: Never pick the sword in KH1.
There is absolutely no reason to do so. The slight attack buff early on isn't worth never getting any good ability throughout the rest of the game.
>never getting any good ability throughout the rest of the game
Slapshot, Sliding Dash, Counterattack and Blitz are good abilities though. There is really a bad choice among the 3 options, but what choice you pick does affect the way you play the game.
Every single extra spell in Kingdom Hearts games always ends up as the completely broken dominant strategies.
Everything in every KH game is busted if you know how to apply it properly. Especially in KH1 and 2, I can’t think of a single useless spell outside of KH2 base Fire (base as in no Drive Forms). Even some of the meme commands in BBS and DDD have some utility.