You are probably thinking to yourself "Dimitri how did you upload a relevant video for once" the answer is simple, I have optained the darkest power. I am now half Nomura.
The Nomura grindsets means you will have to wait 13 yrs for the next video but I will put out side projects in the meantime to explain my clothing choices in previous videos.
A major thing modern kingdom hearts titles lack is low level damage scaling. In kh2fm, if you play the game at level 1, the game will recognize your stats are low and will accommodate it by slightly buffing your damage output. It's mainly determined by the "battle level" a world has. This decision works perfectly because your fight against a level 99 enemy won't take an hour, but you'll still be heavily punished for making mistakes.
The exact mechanic is having a cap for both minimum and maximum damage you dealt. This is also applied if you are on lv 99 and the reason why people told you to stop raising stats after 80-ish because endgame bosses will have same treat to receive damage cap... You can actually raise more but since low level stuff will be easily cleared (even paradox cup) there will be no incentive to max your stats... That is also the reason why Decisive Pumpkin is the best Keyblade because its damage bonus surpass maximum damage dealt after your damage is capped, both level 1/minimum stats and maximum stats... Once you get enough stat for damage cap every keyblade from Sweet Memories to Ultima Weapon will deal same damage and what matters are abilities tied to each Keyblade...
@@veeshadow decisive pumpkin is the best MOST of the time. It honestly depends on the fight and your playstyle. Bizkit did a really good video on this subject!
You enter the boss room. >Dire Mater, Vile Tow of Radiator Springs You summon two helpers. >GoofKnight and THE Shield Donald You ready your basic key blade +8 and pop a mana oil pot. 🎩 🐍no step on Snek! 🇺🇸🇭🇰
I honestly think KH does a great job at scaling difficulty in line with the narrative. A random end-world heartless? Some disney villain that has little bearing on the plot? Not too hard. But all the hard story fights I can think of have massive weight to them, having crushing difficulty to match the tone. Roxas and Sora’s tragic and climactic clash, the oppressive aura of Xehanort in Birth By Sleep, Sora and Riki’s long awaited 1 on 1 at Hollow Bastion, the final battle with Xemnas that has every world hanging in the balance, The struggle to break Young Xehanort’s control of Sora, etc. If the characters are going through a supreme mental ordeal, most of the time it’s reflected in the game as an ordeal for the player.
I think it's really understated sometimes that the reason why critical mode works so well in KH2 is because it is already an incredibly well designed game and KH1 as well in some respects. While I like KH3, I always felt like the enemy design was very weak and the jump from proud to critical really didn't do anything to mask it. One thing that i've gradually noticed as I play through these games again is that Nobodies were only done well in KH2 and it's either because they've lost the thing they were built for (to show off the reaction command system) or because osaka team (and H.A.N.D) really didn't know what to do with them to set them apart from regular heartless. It's often criticized for being a mash triangle to win fest but KH2's reaction commands were a really good way of setting different encounters apart in KH2, some enemies' reactions could be used as counters to a move they did, some could be used to help deal with other enemies and some could be used for evasion. This is also the reason why i've grown to not really mind the lack of a dodge roll in the original game since the game gave you all of the tools to compensate for this that dynamically shifted depending on the encounter. I think in the pursuit of expanding the player toolkit with KH3, they sort of lost the balancing game that made KH2's encounters so fun since they were sort of like a puzzle you had to put together.
Even then, you don't need a physical "roll out of the way" animation for a dodge. You get Wisdom Form (and by extension, Quick Run) a couple worlds into the game, which is still a dodge. Just not a roll. Even then, like you said, the early game is built around that lack of a dodge. You still have Guard, which gives you a second or so of invincibility after pulling it off correctly.
This is good timing to me because I was telling people recently who were talking about Elden Ring's bosses and their complexity that they should try getting into the Kingdom Hearts games because playing on Critical Mode really feels similar to playing Elden Ring in ways no other games have really managed for me.
I think the grade system in the Tales of series is also a really great way that difficulty is implemented. You earn grade from battles and the better you do the more grade you earn. Then once you've finished the game and NG+ is unlocked you'll not only get a new difficulty but you'll also get to use the grade shop which will allow you to spend grade to get different boosts or nerfs for your next play through such as carrying over skills or equipment, doing 2x or half damage, enemies doing 2x or half damage etc. There's even a minimum damage skill every character can unlock so you can practice crazy combos. What I really like about this is that it gives you a crazy amount of customisability for both ultra hard and ultra easy runs. Having to earn grade also means that people who try to master the combat will be rewarded with NG+ whereas people who only care about the narrative won't have their experience compromised as they'll probably not even bother with NG+.
The fascinating thing about KH2's Critical difficulty is that it's actually easier than Proud at the start, as your starting HP, MP, and damage received are the same, but you deal more damage and have more starting abilities. It's only later in the game, when you start to fall behind in HP, MP, and levels (since you get less exp in Critical than the other difficulties) when Critical starts to get more punishing than Proud, building up from taking double damage compared to Standard all the way up to essentially quad damage. It's not really a curve you see in most other games, but I'm all for it.
It isn't just double damage. Your HP is cut by half. At the same level in my Standard Mode playthrough all my characters have double the health of their critical mode counterparts.
It's truly bizarre that a 2007 game got difficulty right, and 15 years later I have never once seen another game that actively rewards the player in some form for willingly choosing the hardest difficulty. Perhaps I'm not looking hard enough, but KH2FM really is a unique experience that will never get old for me. The most interesting part of it all is that the game was released in 2005 under its regular form where Critical Mode didn't exist, but 2007 is when Final Mix and this new difficulty showed up. And yet, somehow, the majority of the game all feels like it actually was created with Critical Mode in mind. There are only a few things I can point to in the game and even call genuinely unfair on LV1. I can't say that about any other game in the series.
KH2's just a really well designed game at the end of the day even without critical. I think it's honestly the reason why I can't enjoy many modern arpg releases these days even though there are some gems here and there.
Holding out hope for a dev to make a Story Mode Difficultly where you experience things as the devs as intended. Like if you fight Big Sword McDeathman you are fighting the best lore to gameplay conversion of his difficulty. And inversely if you fight Pathethic McImmaDead, you can kill him in one hit. Gotta make those reviews be like: 8/10 feels like I'm actually fighting a dragon, in terror and fear.
I think that Ghost of Tsushima's lethal mode is also a good example, where you do much more damage (for example you're able to kill archers in 1 swing) but you also die way faster, usually in one or two hits. The only issue there is that some of the bosses are still very spongy and can kill you in 1 hit.
Can't wait to skip the rest of the games and get straight to the kino Master of Masters. I'm sure I'll understand everything since journalists have skipped games and complained about it for every part of the series
I always appreciate when a game's difficulty settings aren't just tweaking a few numbers and calling it a day. I remember when I played Dawn of Sorrow and noticed that the Hard Mode actually adds in more enemies and tweaks enemies' abilities, and it got me to actually play through Hard Mode. Or when Gunstar Super Heroes actually changed the entire story depending on what difficulty you're playing as.
Agree with you mostly but personally KH3 Lvl 1 Crit all Pro Codes Data Org fights/Yozora was the most fun I've had in an action RPG game. I return to that more often than playing KH2
Recently going back to S Rank every difficulty in Metal Gear Rising made me appreciate how the challenge is scaled in that game. In Revengeance difficulty in particular there are a lot of enemy encounters replaced with more numerous and much tougher enemies, but they also make it so pulling off a perfect parry can do a ridiculous amount of damage compared to lower difficulties, even on some bosses. Recklessness will have you dead in seconds, but mastering perfect parries makes you feel like a god.
I liked this and I would say that the data battles and secret episode of the kh3 dlc makes the entirety of kh2 critical seem much less challenging by comparison. I was so happy when Osaka finally got it and not just got it but absolutely knocked out of the park .
I mean you got to realize Kh3 was Osaka teams first AAA console game. They had only done handheld games before that and a demo in the form of 2.8, so of course combat isn't going to be fantastic on your first real step up from portable consoles. And it really shows how capable of a team they are with how much they were able to improve after just a few months of review and feedback from the public. From a combat perspective, fans should be more excited for Kh4 than they should have been for Kh3, cause now the team has one solid game and DLC under their belt, and they we're able to already make the combat a pure delight in the DLC.
I always liked how RE4 handles difficulty where it scales with how good you’re doing. It helps encourage replay ability since each playthrough you’ll notice yourself getting better not only thanks to faster playtime, but visually with you fighting deadlier/more enemies each time.
A game focused on combat or gameplay thats easy is usually not that fun. Pokemon is a good example. The last couple of generations have been absurdly easy compared to the earlier generations. And that took out most of the enjoyment of the game for me since a big part of the game is battling. It makes absolutely no sense to not challenge yourself and improve your skills. the only people who want games to be easier are either people who dont play them and want to virtue signal on twitter or people who are insufferably bad at video games or both.
"Last couple of generations have been absurdly easy compared to earlier generations" Absolute horse shit if I've ever heard it. Go back and play the older games and I guarantee you'll shit stomp everything with the proper knowledge of the game. They're NOT hard unless you don't know what you're doing.
For me Proud Mode is a better choice. Mostly because I'm not that insane for seeking that level of challenge in JRPGs (could do it in platformers since I've played Jak II with almost no problems). Even then I can see how KH2 Critical Mode is balanced since the game as you said, gives you a lot of tools right from the get go because the enemies will kick your butt. That's also why I felt KH3 was still disappointing for me because my run on Proud was a total cakewalk since the game gave you too many options compared to the challenge the enemies presented. As of right now I'm kinda off the series and I'll probably not coming back soon, too bust playing other stuff that satisfy me more for my current mood. Great job with this video ^_^
On the subject of games with well designed difficulty modes, bayonetta 1 and Wonderful 101 come to mind. Both of these games have a gimmick with a Crutch that the player can use to make exploiting that gimmick easier. For Bayonetta 1 the gimmick is dodge offset with the crutch of witch time, and wonderful 101 the gimmick is the drawing to select a weapon with the crutch of wonderliner slowdown. On the difficulty modes you start with 3, casual mode, easy, and normal. On completing normal you get hard which remixes the enemy placement to having late game enemies throughout the game as you now have the tools/knowledge to fight them. Then upon completing that you get the "true challenge" with is hard, but without the crutch the player has relied on, a true test. Even if you never play the other modes, it provides a skill ceiling that pushes the player to play better, and understand more. Not every game needs complex difficulties, but it is enjoyable when a developer takes the time to curate multiple playthroughs with difficulty modes.
I still like KH3s critical mode after remind got released. The new abilities and balance changes made the game much more fluid and fun like Kh2FM felt (though I am a bit disappointed that most of the balance changes were made to the dlc and not much to the main base game), while giving us some of the best designed bosses in the whole series, and yes, that's the big win it has over Kh2FM being the data fights are better designed and not as annoying as some of them. Obviously KH2FM is better in most ways, but KH3 Remind shows that even Osaka team can make a great combat system like tokyo team can, and their improvements show this too.
Still sucks how the base game is effectively a 10 hour long glorified tutorial for the Super Bosses. That flaw started with KH2, being nowhere near as bad there, was mostly missing with every subsequent side game, but became the most glaring thing to me with KH3. KH1 was devoid of this feeling, that was the game that felt the most like a traditional RPG in terms of the sense of adventure, the super bosses there never felt like they were the "actual game".
I personally think that STALKER's difficulty system is a perfect example of having a difficulty setting that doesn't compromise on the atmosphere since the difficulty is more of an indicator for how much damage everthing does, including the player. It makes it so that the game is still an absolute hell to traverse and survive, regardless of difficulty.
A very simple system I've enjoyed is how the original Quake handled it. Increasing difficulty doesn't bloat up enemy health bars, remove flinching/reacting, or anything like that. All it does is add more enemies to the map. It might not sound like much, but considering that the enemies in Quake are, by default, incredibly vicious and slightly tanky, it really makes you more mindful or your ammo usage and movement. And thankfully, the new enemy placements always feel very deliberate, not as though they were just dumped in haphazardly to arbitrarily make maps harder (cough SCHOLAR OF THE FIRST SIN cough). The recent remaster did also add a 50% health decrease for Nightmare mode, but it's effects are honestly pretty negligible.
Great video. Even though i suck at proud and critical difficulty modes in KH, i appreciate them being there. And i like that they reward you with better endings for completing them. At least in the early games.
A really good video. If I may be so bold I genuinely think it's of your best. A nuanced take on difficulty modes is something I rarely see. They always inventiably fall back into the "is x game too hard?" discourse the soulsborne series started which WAS a interesting conversation... nearly a decade ago. I don't think a lot of people consider the time it takes to make and balance proper difficulty modes, as if devs tweaking the numbers is the only thing they have to do. Or if giving the player a suite of tweakable sliders solves the issue unilaterally. These are design problems and solution have to be, shocking, designed! Not implimented in an after thought for the sake of accessibility or to offering a more hardcore experience. You'll fail at both of these things if your difficulty options are not intellgently thought out and take into account the goal of your game. Seeing the Neir Replicant gameplay viscerally reminded me of this. I felt terrible when I eventually turned the difficulty down but it simply wasn't fun at max.
I can't tell you how enjoyable my first playthrough of Kh2 on the hd remix was. After playing for years of the base international version with no final mix, then suddenly having Critical mode, and a lvl1 run to boost. I instantly went straight for no experience, and proceeded to get my butt slapped silly, especially on all the new extra boss content that I had never seen before. At the same time though, it made me seriously hone my skill set, observation ability, patience, and reaction timing. The number of skills I once thought to be useless and trash, suddenly turning into pure lifesaving gold was unreal. Like a build I found when facing the nobodies in the cave of remembrance where normal enemies have the highest levels in the game that basically let you infinitely summon peter pan. Peter Pan lets you chew through a large portion of enemies with a safety net, as peter pan has a revive ability should you die once and gives auto-regen. Furthermore attacks drop Mp-orbs allowing for constant high damage magic casting while he's summoned, while his limit drops Hp-orbs while invincible, allowing for an even bigger safety net. With the correct gear and ability set up, you could make it so your combo would boost the drive gauge more than it drained, allowing you to maintain constant healing/damage boosts, and convenient invincibility.
Good video. I actually think Ghost of Tsushima's version of Critical does this the best (besides the boss battles). Frankly, that mode is the only only way the gameplay matches the story imo. The Metro games are another great example I think.
If you like the difficulty options of kh2 and kh3 you're going to love re:coded. Although re:coded doesn't have enough content to explore it's tools too much the tools are so in depth and fun to play with
3:13 thanks. 😉 Okay but really though. I started God of War and thought to myself. “I played the old games on Hard, I play Doom on Ultra-Violence. I can probably click ‘give me god of war’” Mistake. That shit sucked. The camera is ass, the enemy AI is fucking garbage. Fuck that difficulty mode man.
ReCoded has a really good example of difficulty settings, for one you can change difficulty on the fly in case things get too hard, and the higher difficulties make enemies act faster, do more damage and inflict status effects more often (Guaranteed on Crit) but they don't limit what you can do, and the game seemingly has some form of one shot protection when you're at full HP. But is that not good enough? Level ups are equipable panels on a grid based skill tree, but they aren't the only panels you get, not to mention that your DPS isn't even that bad on level 1, the biggest downside is that you wont have as many abilities and you're made of paper like in KH2. And if that's somehow not enough? There's the unlockable cheats so if you're a real masochist you could just play the game on level 1 with 1 HP.
If you've ever played the STALKER series of shooters, the highest difficulty (Master) actually works in a similar way to critical. Whereas hard boosts enemy's damage and lowers yours for guns, Master makes any non helmet headshot an instant kill against you and the enemies. Similarly, high powered rifle rounds and even intermediate rifle rounds will kill in just a few body shots (for snipers just 1 unless an exo suit is worn), and same to you, often forcing you to rely more on the wacky artifacts that massively alter certain stats like running speed more than on just heavy exo suit armor, and the late game is balanced more by having enemies more often have exo suits (that will block a couple shots) and sniper rifles / gauss rifles / explosive weapons.
12:05 I know this video's old but this likely wasn't intentional for BBS's Critical Mode. Your damage output isn't nerfed for BBS's higher difficulties, but what is nerfed in crit is your EXP gain, which is a problem because while KH2 has a reasonable damage floor, BBS has a damage floor of 1, and that's only applied at the end of the damage calculations, and since almost everything in BBS is a multiplier, if at any point the enemy's defense matches or exceeds your attacking stats you will do 1 damage with everything. That's what makes BBS Zero EXP so OP, it implements an actual damage floor of 8 for most attacks. The bad difficulty probably wasn't intentional, but just poorly playtested.
Crit/remind/pro codes are fun but it doesn't have the best balancing in some areas IMO (Sledding section, first TT fight). Like I enjoy it, I just think overall KH2 is still the peak in this area. I have high hopes for 4 since it hopefully will not be in dev heII.
@@DimitriMonroe First Twilight Town fight is good. What is the problem there? You can dispatch the snipers quickly and than go for the dusk nobodies. If you don’t mind, you can abuse wall running and dive attack if you want to safely kill everything. Sliding in Arendelle is a fair criticism though, I’ll give you that, but it’s a mini-game so that’s to be expected. KH2’s Light Cycle on critical is also trash.
@@roiitzkovich4545 I wasnt insta killed on the light cycle, the snipers are a problem specfically because they can one shot you while being off screen. You don't have reaction commands or anything to innately counter it, you just simply get unlucky or don't. Similar thing with the sled actually. I think there's a lot more examples but it overall comes down to it not being fine tuned to the same extent in the main campaign which I'd argue is a general problem with 3 even after remind. Again, I enjoy 3 enough on critical, it's not a travesty like prior entries but it's very clearly not the same level of polish.
@@DimitriMonroe The fight starts with 5 dusks. After you kill 3, more dusks appear, as well as 2 snipers. The snipers appear on top of a building so airstep to them to kill them early. Check out this video to see how to do this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-rReMzbNVJ5g.html In general, this guy proved that almost every fight (forced mobs/bosses) in KH3 crit LV1, even with all PRO Codes, is consistently beatable. The only exception might be the enemy army at the beginning of Keyblade Graveyard, but that’s that good kind of mess TBH. Trust me, one day will come and people will realise KH3 is on par (if not better) than KH2. And that comes from a KH2 nostalgic boy.
@@roiitzkovich4545 There are people who can beat dark souls while crippled due to prep and for knowlege, the fact that these are doable means nothing when speaking of how fine tuned the design is. That was never part of the equation, you can flow chart your way through most bad design with enough forknwoeldge but you're just circumventing. You need to consider these things for the average player not only those that have studied the game regiously.
i love to challenge myself, so i always try to do the first run in the hardest difficulty available, but when enemies become spoonges or it does make me feel overwelmed, i lower the difficulty, but with these options, i feel like i don't need to lower, cuz i can beat it the way i want to. i mean, i can do a no exp run and then i get overwelmed, turn it off and when i'm better at the game, i come back to a no exp run. it feels freeing
Any hope of you possibly doing more KH videos in the future? Maybe trying to understand why Journalists feel the need to lie about key aspects of the series? Or maybe dispelling some of the more prevalent misconceptions about the story/gameplay? Or heck, maybe just a video about YOUR appreciation of it, sometime before KH4 gets dropped on us.
I have 3 videos I'd currently like to get out first but I've been flirting with the idea of doing a "retrospective" or "series review" *(whatever people call it now) on of the whole series between other projects. Not positive but I think at the very least KH1/2/3 will one day get the Nier Replicant treatment. I think what's most interesting is KH used to win awards, I remember KH2 specifically winning best story during the game awards of their time but nowadays the same type of events treat any game that's less than ultra serious gritt as a joke.
I don't care about super difficult only games. Power to the Dark Souls and Cuphead communities. But what drives me up the wall are games that only offer child easy modes. Maybe I'm in the wrong but I don't think it goes against authorial intent to insist that easy game should have more difficult modes. For example, I absolutely loved Breath of the Wilds breakable weapon and simple physics mechanics. I loved them so much that it's still one of my favorite games and I HATE Zelda as a franchise. I've hated Zelda my entire life. Forget Hyrule, I just want to break a claymore over somebody's face and get a little more damage. But I don't get to enjoy it because that game is so afraid of having you run out of stuff that it's constantly dumping trucks worth of supplies on you. I see what you're saying about Kingdom Hearts but I don't typically like "items as difficulty" in other games. That's because they're telling me that the only way a game can be harder is if I ignore part of it. I don't like that. I shouldn't have to ignore the four Divine beasts and go straight for Ganon in order to actually have a difficult boss fight. Or Worse get them and then turn the power's off. Breath of the wild would be my perfect game if I was just starving for all the materials. I should be happy when I scraped together enough food in order to make a dish. I shouldn't have to drop a +50 damaged flamesword because I already have five others. I shouldn't have to ignore all my flameswords because the game is over run by one hit enemies trying to erode away all my good weapons. And I shouldn't have to pay $60 more dollars to get DLC that unlock it..
I would note that the items in Kingdom Hearts easy mode aren't really comparable to other games which do this over the course of the game. The items you get from Easy mode are just there so you have the option of not using all of them, and getting a "less-easy easy mode". Kinda like Celeste, in which you can choose which easy modifiers to use. Items as difficulty is a tricky one. I actually think that when items determine the game's difficulty, it makes difficulty options even more important. Turned-based JRPGs often do this really well. If you play on Normal or Easy, you can ignore all the side content and get through the game. If you play on Hard+, that usually means that the game is still quite challenging even if you do all of the side content. I think it wasn't that Breath of the Wild was too easy (although yes the balance after early-game is trash, it's way too easy to have OP food & weapons), rather the way they designed it didn't really give them a way to make it more difficult. With weapons breaking so fast, yet being the sole determiner of your damage output, there needed to be something more in the design to allow them to up the difficulty. It really shows in how the Master mode difficulty is really brutal for the first several hours, and then is basically just the same as the normal difficulty.
@@kitsunin4690 yeah, I was trying to exclude Kingdom Hearts because I don't really know much about them. And I meant it more in the other direction. Like when a game is too easy and the only way you can make it harder is by not using things. I don't have many examples other than breath of the wild because it's the only game I've played in years.
This makes me want to play critical mode properly instead of just cheesing the game. Especially during the lingering will boss fight. I was just happy to get the platinum trophy 😭
Controversial opinion but I actually think Kingdom Hearts 2 (and in some ways 3 specifically after remind) made for a better more balanced hack and slash game than the Devil May Cry games, at least until Devil May Cry 5 came out that is, and even at it's peak DMC V still suffers from a problem that's plagued the entire franchise and Kingdom Hearts had managed to solve since it's first installment, that being it's absolutely horrid lock-on cycling priority.
Kingdom Hearts has been and probably always will be my favorite game series. The gameplay is really tight, the story is stupid as fucking rocks, the characters are memorable in both design and personality (for the most part, we'll ignore most of ORG XIII) and the music by Yoko Shimomura is the literal best in gaming.
Impeccable timing & great vid as a whole Dam shame more games that have difficulty options don't implement it like this or Tales Of Also, I thought Story mode was a meme LOL
