(no subject)

[tammaiya]

I am Beast! Hear me roar!

So I wondered how they were going to do this, being that the state of events at the end of KHI made it a little difficult to revert to the situation with Beast and Belle in the Beauty & The Beast movie. So, you enter the castle. You hear a roar. Sora is all, Dude, that sounds like Beast! You wander into one of the side rooms, and his rose is there in the glass case. You start to walk towards it and get lynched by heartless. You're starting to get overrun when Beast appears and thumps the SHIT outta them. Sora is happy and says "Hey, Beast! Long time no see!"

He backhands you all out of the way, grabs the rose, and stomps off.

Okay, maybe he's pissed that we didn't write for a whole year.

Seriously, though, he doesn't remember us, and this is how I thought Square might do it. We exit the room, and Donald says he thinks he sees a girl on the second floor. By logical deduction, we realise: Belle! So we go up there to talk to her, and she almost squeezes the life out of Donald when she hugs him. She DOES remember us, and is happy to see us because something odd has happened to Beast. Uh, yeah, we noticed. But it seems he's locked all the talking furniture up in a secret room. High ho, on to find the room!

There's a wardrobe in front of it. Okay, we'll give it a shove-- and it wakes up, briefly, to whack us in the face, shuffle back into place, and fall asleep.

Um.

So you have to shove the wardrobe out of the way, but do it in careful increments so it doesn't wake up and whack you, etc. When you've finally pushed it out of the way of the door, it wakes up and apologises to you, asking who you are. You explain you're friends of Belle, and she asked you to help. Wardrobe is then very grateful and tells you to go save all the others. It also apologises for scaring you with its appearance, and explains it used to be human, but it has been cursed by a witch.

Cursed?

Yes, at the same time the prince was turned into a beast.

Donald: The prince was turned into a beast?!
Goofy: Beast is a prince?!

So, it starts to tell you the story about how the prince was spoiled, and his heart grew cold, but then one dark, frosty night-- Oh, you'd better hurry up and rescue the others, they'll tell you the rest.

All: *deflate*

But the wardrobe insists: Now, right NOW, because the room they're locked in is very cold and that's not good for clocks.

Donald: ... what's that got to do with anything?

Oh, you'll see.

So, you go and beat up a door monster, and lo and behold: Lumiere! Cogsworth! Chip! What was the teapot's name? Anyway, her! (It IS Mrs Pott. I thought I was remembering wrong) and Donald proceeds to poke and shake a very irritated Cogsworth a lot while they finish the story, which is the usual B&B story about the witch being refused a place to stay, etc. They say there's a way to break the spell, but not with the way Beast is now-- and it involves heartless. Well, obviously it's a job for Sora.

You take this secret back path through the castle to get to Beast's room, where he's talking to one of the XIII. Number 3; Zarudin. Beast attacks you, Cogsworth is involved in the fight somehow in a way that I wasn't really paying attention to because I was screwing around with Drive and my Brave Form (Brave Form-- it's the red-clothing form, where Goofy becomes a part of you and you have two keyblades. it's the first and at this stage only Drive you have) and then Beast comes back to himself and is all like, omg! Cogsworth! Beast realises that Zarudin whipped up all his pain and loneliness and suffering etc into blind hatred. Ooh, that rat bastard. And then he angsts about being horrible to Belle. Very sensibly, you tell him to at least try apologising.

So off you all run, now with Beast on your team (you get a fairly awesome duo attack called Twin Shout, by the way), to go find Belle. Alas! We find out from the wardrobe that Belle has been spirited away with! So we run after her, and she calls out that she's in the ballroom, so we go in there and fight the boss, which is not, for the record, Zarudin. It's just a big nasty Heartless. That done, the assorted pieces of furniture finally tell you about Beast's love and be loved condition on the curse, Sora seals the keyhole (which was the rose), Beast angsts some more about how no one could ever love him, and Goofy comments on him and Belle, which embarrasses Beast and makes Belle laugh. Your role in this game seems to be teasing Disney characters about their love lives. I can't say I'm complaining. *g*

Anyway, Beast doesn't get to turn back into a prince, because then he wouldn't be able to join your party when you go visiting the castle again. While it's sad he doesn't get his climatic love scene... you still get Beast on your party if you go to Beast's Castle. The trade-off kind of works.

Onwards! ... Backwards?

So you hop in the gummi ship, and... it takes you to Hollow Bastion without asking. Well, that was very impolite of it. Turns out Merlin called you because he found the Winnie The Pooh book-- I can't remember if this was before or during being attacked by Heartless (before, I think) but you go in to check how things are, and while you're saying hi to Pooh, who says hi back, suddenly everything freezes and you get booted the hell out of the book to land on your butt. OW. I don't think it likes us. <<

But then the Heartless try to nick off with the book again and you beat them up to get it back. However, the pages, zey are gone! ... AGAIN. God damn, with all the pages this book is getting torn out of it it's a wonder it can still be repaired. You go back in and only the first page is still there, the one you were in when you got booted out. Only now, Pooh is like "Who are you? You're interrupting my exercise time." He doesn't remember Piglet either.

So you go back and grovel apologetically to Merlin, who tells you to get the pages back. He gives you a baseball pendant. You can now summon Chicken Little.

Uh. Lucky you?

I can't say I've tried it yet. XD Well, whatever, let's go to the next world!

Groovin' on down in the land of the dead

Yes, it's the Olympus Coliseum again, only THIS time you actually get plot there. You land yourself in the Underworld instead of the Coliseum (whoops) and run into Hercules' friend Meg just when Heartless are attacking her. She's there because she wants to go see Hades to ask if he can let Hercules have a break from fighting monsters in the Coliseum. You are understandably very upset about this whole Hades business, what with your last experience with him and all. Anyway, you guys get your chivalrous on, and offer to go see Hades instead of Meg because you're worried about her and you're friends of Hercules too. She agrees.

You proceed through the cave, with rocks periodically dropping on your head-- unable to use your Brave Form for some reason-- and catch sight of one of the XIII lurking around. A bit further down into dead land, he runs past you screaming "RUN AWAY!"

Sora: ... What was that.
Me: Good question. O... kay... O.o;

Sounded like a young-ish guy. Didn't sound like Axel. Briefly wondered if it was Riku. Rather hope not as I'm sure Riku is happier NOT being evil, as he was at the end of Chain of Memories.

Now we flip to Hades and Pete. Uuuuurgh. Pete is just... headdesk inducingly silly. Anyway, he's whinging to Hades about doing something about Hercules already, and Hades decides to call up one of his underworld minions to do the job. His new victim, since Cloud deserted his ranks in KHI, is Auron. However, Auron is not terribly impressed by this. He LIKES his freedom, god damn. So he attacks Hades, who is terribly miffed, and Auron is about to receive a pounding when Sora and co run in. Sora yells at Auron to stand up, and then Sora, Donald and Goofy rush into a fight with Hades.

You can't land a single hit on him. Hades is all NYER! Power of the underworld! Turns a hero to a zero! and Auron gets up to stand in front of you and yells something at you. It sounds like the same thing the XIII Kikan was yelling, so I think I might have misheard. It SOUNDED like taikyoku da, but... evidently not, because Sora's reaction (I have to ask him something!) suggests Auron told them to run.

Hades: *blocks ears* I can't he~ar yo~u!

So now? You get Auron on your team. Omfg, YES. This marks the first Final Fantasy character to actually be playable in Kingdom Hearts, and Auron just whoops arse with his overdrive attack. You run through the Underworld to get back to the Coliseum, fighting Hades' monsters and dodging his fireballs on the way. You reach the door-- it's locked, and Cerberus is coming to get you. Sora unlocks the door (which is HUGE by the way) with the keyblade, Donald and Goofy shove it open, and you move to run through it-- but Auron is holding back Cerberus, and you can't with good conscience leave him there, so Sora runs back. Boss fight, just Sora and Auron. Hard, but not too hard. Then you escape through just as Cerberus is being revived, and Auron is mysteriously not there.

How odd. (My theory is that Auron is dead. Being described as an Underworld Soldier does give this impression.)

But Sora's not worried, because Auron is strong and can take care of himself, so onwards! To the Coliseum!

You greet Hercules, lots of long time no see, etc. Meg's there too. You ask Hercules about the curse that zaps your strength in le Underworld (must be why you can't use Drive). Hercules tells you you need a stone, a charm used by the gods of Olympus-- the Olympus Stone. He'll get it for you, but he can't go with because he can't leave the Coliseum, and he tells you to go train with Phil. Two mini games involving bashing pots and time limits later, Hercules comes back and tell you it's been stolen by someone clad in a black hooded robe.

Wow, that doesn't sound at all familiar, does it?

Phil racks off for a walk. Hades shows up to jeer at you and tell you that he's got Meg. Hercules calls Pegasus, but Hades threatens to do something horrible to Meg if Herc leaves the Coliseum. You tell him to leave both Meg and the stone to you, he sends Pegasus off to find Meg, and it's back to the Underworld again.

Phil is in the entrance hall of the Underworld, knocked out. He ran into a black hooded guy-- the thief, one of the XIII, and you're all "! WHERE DID THEY GO." He's like alas, need two heroes, so Herc can fight and someone else can take care of all this! You say leave it to us, he asks if you know someone, you're like, duh, US, and he groans. What inspiring confidence.

So! After the thief!

You run into him pretty quickly-- from the voice, it's the one you ran into before.

Number 9 (Demix): Hey, it's you!
Sora: Bwuh?
Demix: *pulls back hood-- he's blond, short-haired, kind of adorable* Rocksas! It's really you!
Sora: What are you going on about?
Demix: ... So it's useless then. Well, if it's useless, my mission is... let's see... to fight you!

So he flicks out what is presumably the Olympus Stone (since Donald calls him a thief), and his weapon materialises. It's a guitar. (Having checked the character info in Jiminy's journal, it seems to be a sitar, actually. Even better!) I love this guy already. XD You don't fight him; you fight the water monsters he creates and controls by playing the guitar. It's easy, they die with only a hit or two, but there are heaps of them and you have a time limit.

After you're done--

Demix: Rocksas, come back already! *disappears*
Me: WAH, ROCKSAS.
This: *is a running theme*

Sora scowls and mutters that someone is saying that again, but then you see the Olympus Stone and all identity crisis angst is put on hold. Yay! We have our power back! So you run forth, save, and use the keyblade to turn a statue of Meg into a portal. Slippy slide down, and Meg is there in chains. Behind you? Pete. With an army of Heartless. So you fight him, trying to protect Meg at the same time. You get fed up and cut Meg's chains, and then Hercules runs in to help, Pegasus flying in just after. He sweeps Meg up in his arms to put her on Pegasus, which is the sweetest thing ever, and sends Pegasus off. He says he can handle it, but Meg is worried because he's tired. You say it's okay, you'll go back and lend a hand. So you do.

It's like the earlier fight with Leon-- you're fighting the same enemies at the same time, but he's not actually in your party. So there's four people on your side, and... countless many on the other. Pete runs off, the dweeb, and Hades shows up to mock you and tell Herc he might want to get his arse back to the Coliseum.

Well that doesn't sound good.

You run back up, and the Hydra has completely trashed the place. Hercules is too exhausted to fight, so it's up to you (and Pegasus, at one point in the fight you get to jump on Pegasus and mount an aerial attack). You beat the Hydra, and Hercules angsts about how he's a failure as a hero because he can't even protect Olympus or the Coliseum. Meg comforts him, and says he'll be okay because she'll look after him. Aaaaw.

Meanwhile, I am a bad person because I'm thinking, "Noooooo! My trophies! Also, this totally means no tournaments this time." It also occurred to me belatedly there was no way to find Auron and therefore he's permanently off your team. Bugger.

But, for finishing Coliseum, you get Thunder magic. Um. I forgot to mention, but you got Fire magic for beating Mulan and Cure magic for beating Beast's Castle. Also, my Brave Form Drive levelled up to two when I was in Beast's Castle. I'm not quite sure how to level up Drive forms or why this happened, but I think it gives you more abilities in Drive form. Also, I got an ability in my normal form to automatically go Brave Form if I get into critical health. Heh, cool.

Now you get cutscenes of Maleficent and Pete-- he's complaining about the keyblade kid, ie Sora, and she's annoyed about the interference of the XIII.

(On that note, interlude-- Nobodies are what are born if someone with a strong heart is turned into a heartless. The XIII rule the Nobodies. You already knew this, but I forgot to say, and now is as good a time as any.)

Then you get-- wait, aren't Chip and Dale with ME? Why are they at Disney Castle? Well, you get Chip and Dale spazzing out-- it's an emergency! Minnie-Ouhi! And the Queen is like, when are you coming back, Ou-sama? Donald, Goofy, where are you...

Yeah, guess where we're going next?

Someone really likes gardening, here.

Given we couldn't even GO to Disney Castle for over a year you'd think Goofy and Donald would be a little more excited, but apparently not. One can perhaps accept that they are too busy being worried about the whole "castle overrun by Heartless" thing, but anyway.

You emerge from the engine-room like place through... a bush. No, REALLY, you know how you can grow those humongous bushes to be in certain shapes? Well, a door opens out of one of those into a garden full of the things.

Told you! Someone likes gardening a little too much!

So. You make your way through the garden into the castle, where you meet up with Minnie-Ouhi. She and Donald and Goofy have a reunion, Donald clips Sora over the back of the head for not bowing and being respectful etc, but Minnie doesn't seem to mind. She's heard of Sora from Mickey's letters. Mickey, however, is NOT here. But back to the point, that being that the castle is in trouble and Minnie called for your help. You've got to get to a safe place, but what about everyone else in the castle? Sora offers to go, but they'd just be confused because he's a stranger, so Donald and Goofy run off to do that, leaving you alone to guard Minnie and get her where she's going.

She does actually have some fairly funky light magic, but you've still got to be careful to make sure that her damage guage doesn't fill completely or it's game over. She's sealed the door to the throne room, but she unseals it and you go in... only to find it FILLED with this particularly nasty brand of heartless. Ick. So, you've got to get her to the throne without her taking too much damage. Easier said than done. It was a close call; her guage was pretty full by the time I got to the throne. I ended up clearing the entire room of heartless, but that wasn't so much by bravado and design as the simple fact that they kept getting in the way and thumping Minnie. Haha. Never fear though, you reach the throne and the room is suddenly FILLED with the damn things once more.

Great.

But, you don't have to fight them. Minnie fumbles for a button on the side of the throne, under the armrest, and then the throne is sliding away and there's a brilliant flash of light that wipes out ALL of them. Hurrah!

When the light fades away, there's a staircase. Minnie tells you it leads to the inner sanctuary where the cornerstone of light is, and you run down there.

However, something is wrong. The entire room is covered in rose. Or actually, thorny vines, since I certainly didn't see any roses there, but whatev. So okay, what's up with that?

You find out in short order when a hologram of Maleficent pops up and cackles at you about how she's decided to make this HER castle, only she didn't like the decor so she's going to deck it in some nice darkness. Yeah, right. Bitch.

*cough* But. The fact remains that somehow she's infiltrating the castle and the cornerstone of light is not doing its job. Minnie sends you off to Hollow Bastion to see Merlin and get some help. He's all say WHAT?! when you tell him the castle has been breached, and with a click of his fingers, you're back in Disney Castle with Minnie and the cornerstone. He's rather smug about this, actually.

So, what's Merlin's plan? He clicks his fingers again, and voila, eet eez a door! In the middle of nowhere. It leads to another world. A very different world, he stresses. Er... okay? I thought that was par for the course by this point, but hey, I'm cool with that. Through the door we go!

We gonna party like it's 1929! OR, all Peted out. (Yeah, I know. That was bad.)

Okay, so when Merlin said "very different", he meant "black and white". XD We've jumped back into good old 1920s Mickey Mouse, with Goofy and Donald reverting to their old designs, and Sora turning into an imitation of the same style. Donald says there's something strangely nostalgic about this. The cornerstone is sitting on the hill in front of us. My eyes begin to hurt from the intensive monochrome.

Right, so. What are we doing here? Well, on Merlin's orders, we're here to find the culprit and seal the door they're using, which should look the same as the one we came through. While we're hanging around on the hill trying to figure out what's going on, Pete walks past. Actually, 1920s Pete walks past, but Sora etc haven't figured that out, so they go :O! He complains about someone stealing from him and asks if we know who the bad guy is. We point at him. He's like "What? ME?!" and storms off in a huff, very insulted. We chase him down to the pier, where we get into a fight with him. It is SO old cartoon. This whole world is, it's amazing-- complete with silly sound effects and exaggerated humour and everything. Mostly in the fight Pete runs around in circles, and I think the most he hurts you is when you whack him and you get in the way of the whoomph effect. You know, where someone hits the ground with force and there's backlash.

After you've beaten the crap out of The Wrong Pete, he's very sullen (and in pain) and you realise that there's something different about him. And you're like, heh, whoops. Wrong Pete. Maybe he's not the culprit after all.

At this point, an old-style movie window appears. With the curtains, you know what I mean, so Donald tugs the rope to open the curtains and then you get a reel of what happened just before and when you arrived, with a repeat of all the nostalgic and "omg everything is black and white" dialogue. The bit before you arrived shows heartless jumping into windows like the one you're watching at the moment. Back to Cornerstone Hill-- there are now movie windows there. You jump through them one by one. Each of them is like an episode of old Mickey Mouse, with some kind of crisis and Mickey about to get blamed. Basically in each one you have to whack out all the heartless before the crisis gauge fills. I remember the first one we were like King Kong size compared to the city and all the buildings were getting trashed as we fought and I was like "I'm sorry! Oops, there goes another building..."

At the end of each heartless battle, Mickey shakes your hand in that enthusiastic, sound effect-y, exaggerated cartoon way that makes Sora look a little scared and bewildered and runs off, and then you get a short clip through the eyes of someone (who is obviously Pete). In one, Maleficent chews him out for failing his last mission and bitching about how she wants a castle, dammit, and taking over the universe is all very well and good but what good will it do without a CASTLE? (presumably the mission she's referring to = in the Underworld). In another, he's moping about how great things were in the good old days, and manages to open a door to the 1920s land. (You click that it connects to the world you're in, and that whoever the POV is from is the culprit.) In the next, Maleficent is interested in the existence of a door that connects to the past.

Donald: But it connects to THIS world!
Goofy: *figures out that this is in fact THE PAST*
Goofy: *is ironically the smart one*

And in the last one, she orders Pete to go deal with the cornerstone, because it's what protects Disney Castle and stops her from getting inside. You finally see Pete in the camera shot. Sora and co jump up and down and go RAR I KNEW IT. But right when you're about to go whale on poor 1920s Pete again, modern Pete rushes past with 20s!Pete in hot pursuit.

Pete is stealing from himself. Now there's an all new low.

So you chase after, and get into a fight (which 20s!Pete is sort of ineffectually involved in, though not in your party). Pete is now not only stealing from himself, but fighting himself. There are too many Petes! Two many, even.

The 20s corn and the potential for bad puns are disintegrating my brain. I am so sorry.

Pete keeps changing the backdrop, cartoon style, through all those episodes you were jumping in and out of earlier. He's got a lot of health, but he's pretty easy to beat. THEN he tries to steal the cornerstone with Pete's boat-- uh, I think, or it happened just before that fight but anyway. You have to bash up the cage he's got the cornerstone in before he escapes. After that, he has a temper tantrum and runs off through his door, which Sora then proceeds to seal.

20s!Pete: Who was that guy?
Sora: What, you didn't notice? He was the fu--
Donald: *slaps hand over Sora's mouth*

So Pete thanks you for looking after him, and you all start sniggering and Donald says something to the essential effect of you have NO idea how much, which baffles Pete, but he brushes it off offers you a ride on his boat. Yay! That's the end of The Timeless River, marking it as the first world you've actually completed! Then you hop back to Disney Castle, where the roses all disappear, and seal the cornerstone, which turns out to be the keyhole. Daisy enters the room and it's all set for a really sweet reunion-- she and Donald look so happy to see each other. (Goofy fills Sora in on the Daisy being Donald's girlfriend thing.)

Then she starts smacking him round and yelling at him for being absent for a year and not writing and not taking her on a date like he promised he would, and he tries to run away, and everyone laughs at his pain, including me. XD

That marks the end of Disney Castle, too, which makes it the second world where I've got all the characters and plot and treasure chests and maps. Hurrah! And now the gummi gates to the Pirates of the Caribbean world and... I'm not sure what the other world is. Atlantis? have appeared. Twilight Town is completely non existant. ALAS. But I figure it has to come back some time, because the characters and story aren't complete in the Jiminy journal. Fwaha, my logic rules all.

But before I go on to either of the new worlds-- there's a new episode at the Coliseum. Yes, it actually says it that way. I really love the gameplay in KHII, eeee. ?

Also, for completing Disney Castle, I got a new Drive-- the Wisdom Form! I think it's blue clothing. *can't wait to check it out*

---

Next time: Coliseum, the new episode!


Next time may be tomorrow, or it may be on Saturday, because I go to Sydney on Wednesday. I'm really worried, actually. I forgot to tell the girl I tutor and I have no way of contacting her to tell her I won't be here. Aaaaaaaaaaagh. Also, I walked into a table and have a nasty lump on my knee. I'm sure I'll be lame tomorrow. Great, I won't be able to walk at the big day out. *sweatdrop*

I swear I will answer my comment backlog tomorrow. Seriously, if I haven't replied, it's not because I hate you, it's because I have over 40 comments I've stupidly let build up, not helped by the fact that I used to be able to reply through my email and now I can't.

But whichever way, it is now 4am. I need to curl up and die now kthx.