ignoring resposibilities (KH2)

I started kingdom hearts 2 today. The opening was incredible I loved it but why was the prologue so longgggg. I assumed that the longer prologue meant that it would be a longer game than KH1 but I looked it up and it's about the same length give or take. Plus like idgaf ab Roxas I just don't find him to be very compelling but maybe I'll start to like him more when we start to learn more about the nobodies.

However, one character that I HATEDDD in re:CoM that I actually came to like through the combination of the CoM ending and the events so far in KH2 is Axel. His introduction in CoM really put me off of him because I thought he was just going to be that anime archetype of the really scrawny (and probably gay) guy that's just fucking crazy. Think that redheaded bitch from black butler. But through what I have seen so far with his relationship with Roxas and Namine I'm starting to really like him.

But also there are far too many characters now with weird ass names and they all blend together because at the moment they all just boil down to spooky guys in black robes. What I liked about KH1 was just how simple it was. It never asked you to memorize many names right off the bat, you just had Sora, Riku, and Kairi for a while and if you were familiar with FF and Disney then that was basically all of the names you needed to learn. But istg there's like a million different bad guys that all look exactly the same and all have the same voice like please throw me a bone. I like it when there's just a couple villains not a whole AA meeting's worth of them.

I am about 6 hours into my playthrough (half of that was spent in the Roxas portion) and I have gotten through Hollow Bastion, The Mulan one, and the Beauty and the Beast one. The last thing I want to do right now is do any tournaments at the coliseum so I called it quits after that until I have time again.

Also I do not like that change in combat. In KH1, Sora was really fast I felt like especially when switching between attacking, spellcasting, and dodging. But he is just so slowwww here. In normal combat, it feels like I just end up getting hit before I even have a change to press anything or Sora's slow ass doesn't move fast enough to hit the enemy before they go back to a state where I can no longer hit them and then whoops your morale is out and it's a game over. I particularly hate the morale system that should have been left to rot because that's just going to make me avoid all enemies and go to the next screen which is exactly what you don't want unless it makes sense for story beats.

The only place where I actually appreciate it is in boss fights which I think have been improved here to be a bit more balanced and less reliant on your level. In KH1 it felt like it was basically just a race against the clock to output enough damage fast enough but in KH2 the bosses seem a lot more methodical and you can pretty easily deal with enemies that you are underleveled for. It's like the bosses are harder but easier at the same time since it feels like as long as you focus you'll be able to work out how to deal with the boss plus more bosses have second phases now which I felt KH1 could have done more. It was like most of the bosses lost phases to sacrifice to Ansem's like 50 phases at the end. Also I miss my dodge roll :(.

It's a slow start but hopefully it'll live up to its reputation. I still find it fun at least.