Now, I don't hate the game, it's beautiful and easy to get into and has the least painful hardest difficulty(I actually got the Critical Mode trophy for beating every story on that insane difficulty) because skills and traits like Once More and Second Chance can be broken to appear early so your characters don't die from the insane power of the Critical mode enemies... buuuuuut, facts:
- The game has three characters you play as.
- Each character has their own story.
- How equally divided are the Critical mode speedruns of these characters?
Time's up! The answer?
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| Aqua: The St. Joan de Arc of Female Protagonists in Gaming ;) |
Yep, while KH1 and KH2 have insane difficulty Level 1 Runs, BBS is a whole 'nother mess of worms considering that the ONLY female protagonist is the ONLY run which would be close to sub one hour. And that's because the programmers completely DESTROYED their own Critical Mode difficulty thanks to that very mechanic that makes it possible to have a character never gain EXP for the entire game. Let me explain:
In the Kingdom Hearts games, you equip passive skills like equipment. These abilities have a variety of beneficial effects like allowing you to pick up items from farther away, boost your combo count, and so forth. HOWEVER, there is one passive skill that you get for free if you play on the most painful difficulty of the Final Mix games(this ability does not exist in the original versions of those games)... EXP Zero, short of Experience Zero.
It does what it says on the tin: Once you equip it, you stop gaining any battle experience. That means, if you can equip it as soon as you gain your first access to the menu, Sora and his two Disney goons(or in BBS, one of the trio) remain at their initial level for the entire game. Needless to say, this was done to give a challenge. When you are stuck at Level 1 for your entire adventure, your stats become pointless once you reach a certain point since the enemies have defense that you cannot break and damage that pierces your puny defenses.
Of course, this was a problem that the developers realized needed to be fixed. After all, nobody would use this ability if they couldn't even beat the first boss at Level 1! Thus, when the first EXP Zero, for the original Kingdom Hearts, was created, the programmers added in some passive buffs to make it so you weren't playing Dark Souls: Kingdom Hearts edition:
- When equipped with EXP Zero and your character has gained no experience beforehand, as in the very beginning of the game, Sora gains the Second Chance ability(Once More did not exist in the first game).
- Damage storage
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| No credit for this comic book panel of a Farfetch'd attacking an Onix |
You see, since your attack power never improves when trapped at Level 1 forever, you would expect that you'd only be doing one damage(or doing no damage at all) even against normal enemies once you reach a certain point in the game. And you'd be right: That 12 points of damage might down a Shadow, but it wouldn't nick an Invisible at the End of the World, if you survived by some miracle to get that far. Therefore, if equipped with EXP Zero, Sora's summon spells would be counted as a finisher and do triple their damage.
This sort of thing makes Simba, Genie and Mushu very powerful and key strats in speedruns like the ones by the famous Bizkits(Bl00dyBizkit and Bizkit417) who have become KH Speedster experts and gained minor celebrity status. ;)
HOWEVER, forget Sora, what about Aqua? Why is she so frikkin' powerful?
Well, there are no summons in Birth by Sleep, but there are D-Links(which give summon-like commands by replacing your commands with a set list and give you finishers) and Command Styles which have finishers as well.
Peter Pan was amazingly broken as a summon in KH2 due to EXP Zero Damage Storage and his D-Link is just as bad... his Swordbill finisher shaves off three bars of health in EXP Zero Damage Storage mode, which is why it's the mandatory strategy against Braig in the Aqua Level 1 run. The boys could use damage storage Swordbill*, but since Peter Pan D-Link is only available when the only bosses left to use it on are the final bosses, few people think to use it against Xehanort or Vanitas due to their unpredictable RNG. Braig, however, is very easy to predict.)
* D-Links have two switchable forms; Swordbill only appears if Peter Pan is in the initial form, shown by his face. If Tinkerbell's face is in the circle, you're in the advanced form which has a completely different(and one hit only) finisher and the trick won't work.
However... Aqua also has a command style... the VERY FIRST ONE SHE GETS, Spellweaver, and its effect is simple...
Take Chun-Li's Lightning Kick and turn it into a magical tornado! Yep, it stun-locks the enemy for ten hits, which means... EXP Zero Damage Storage + Spellweaver finisher...
Ten bars of health decimated. No boss can survive that, not even the final Venitas!
Can the boys do that?
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| Not my picture either. I wish I could draw as good as this. :( |
NOPE.
All of Ventus's and Terra's command styles usually do one hit. Only Terra's opening up to the darkness command style with its finisher(that looks like Vanitas's desperation move) could come closer and its easy to escape that attack. It's almost impossible for a boss to escape Spellweaver!
To be honest and fair, the reason Aqua is so OP as a Level 1 scrub is due to the programmers and developers not planning out EXP Zero's buffs well enough for all of the games. Aqua is not Sora - she doesn't have to rely on Summons(except for maybe the Peter Pan D-Link for Braig) and therefore not bound to the same rules as Sora. If they had balanced out Spellweaver in the Final Mix(making it and Swordbill only hit five times) or EXP Zero Damage Storage(to scale with the enemies so you'd be doing the same damage to any enemy regardless of your level), then things might have been a bit more interesting and Ventus and Terra wouldn't be shunned so badly.
Before you start going on and being a "well, you shouldn't watch the speedrun if you hate it!" counter-rant, let me just say this: I love Aqua, she is my favorite character before I even started watching speedruns of Birth By Sleep, because I adore female characters. I am a guy but have long ago desensitized myself to sexual arousal, or I keep my hormones in control. I don't like Aqua because she's sexy(to be fair, if she had been fat or a little ugly, I wouldn't have minded, but you know Japanese female characters - super-sexy or sex change them!) but because I want more females to be represented in fiction as heroes.
Maybe all of my past lives have been as women, I dunno. But all in all, I like Aqua as a character - I'm just a little upset that in the speedrun community on this game, only one character gets any respect in the Critical Mode category; if I surveyed the community, they'd say "Ventus and Terra can only be spedrun in Beginner mode!" (Well, I did see a non-commentary Crit mode Ventus run which spammed Mini, so there is hope.)
Why not do a speedrun of my own, you ask? Because... I don't want to speedrun. That's the sad truth - I am so lazy I refuse to rush through a game, even if I have played through a game's story once. The only game I have ever sped through is Persona 4 Golden because it has a skip function. (I do skip cutscenes in games if I've seen them before but I don't rush through every part of a game.)
With that rant out of the way, expect more interesting updates: I've already gotten to 1/3 of the two Ratchet and Clank games I am playing for the Summer Backlog event and thus their first milestone. Ciao for now, everyone! ^_^
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