(no subject)

[tammaiya]

In Which There Are Hystrionics, Somewhat Related To KHII

I'm like, yes! To Olympus! There is totally a new episode going down! I thought maybe the Coliseum had been rebuilt, but no, still in ruins. Herc is still angsting. Etcetera. So you go back down into the Underworld, and hey, presto! What's that building across the water? (On a sidenote, I wonder if that's the River Styx.) Auron shows up RIGHT FREAKING NEXT TO YOU with no warning to say that it's the Underworld Coliseum which had been sealed by Zeus, but the seal has been broken. Jesus, don't DO that, man. And then, he disappears again. It's creepy the way you do that.

Now Pain and Panic are hanging around, ready to give you an explanation. You talk to Panic about entering the tournaments; there's one available at this stage, the Pain & Panic Cup.

I knew they wouldn't make me go a whole game without a fighting tournament.

Anyway, I breeze through the first seven rounds... and then my disc freezes. WHAT. Well, it's done that before, so I try various things, none of which work, until I give up and reset.

The disc won't load.

AAAH I'VE BROKEN MY PSII! I screamed, but KHI still worked.

AAAH I'VE BROEN MY MODCHIP!

Then there are several hours of stormy crying and screaming at reticent technology and despair, and also burning of new discs and wasting several dvds in the process because my burner wasn't cooperating, but no one wants to hear about all that. The important thing is that it works NOW. Yay!

So, back to the Pain & Panic Cup. There are 10 rounds. Leon and Yuffie are in it at some point. Do I want to know why and how they are here? Perhaps not. But anyway, it wasn't that hard. I cleared it-- and got the clear bonus for a score of over 2000 (yeah, there's scores this time)-- and that's that for the Coliseum for now. Well! Onwards, through one of the new gates, to... Atlantica! Yay the Little Mermaid! (Again)

OW MY EARS THEY BURN

I have discovered a very, very good reason to play KHII in English instead of Japanese:

Have you ever heard Part of Your World, the Japanese version?

Yeah, well. Take my advice; DON'T. XD We open with Ariel rescuing Prince Eric from the sinking ship and singing to him on the beach, flitting off when he wakes up to leave him confused and longing for the mystery rescuer with the beautiful voice. I squeed embarrassingly through this cutscene. Kind of like I did with Mulan and Shang, and Belle and Beast. This is a worrying and rather embarrassing trend. I hadn't noticed before because it's not like I watch Disney movies back to back, but it seems as though perhaps I ought to join Disney Het OTP Shippers Anonymous. Oh dear. I suspect this may possibly be repeated in almost every single Disney world except Port Royal. (And speaking of which, I'd never actually noticed how much romance there is in Disney. I mean, uh, you'd think it'd be obvious, but... yeah.)

Now, you show up, and you're all like awesome! I kind of missed this whole sea jazz! Well, maybe you personally are not, but Sora is. Ariel and Flounder and Sebastion sing up, you have reunion hijinks, and Sebastion browbeats you into joining his musical, muttering to you on the sly that there's something up with Ariel lately and maybe this'll cheer her up. So you get a fun mini game where you dance to a moderately awful song that is not from the movie but still sounds like it was originally English (even though logic dictates it wasn't). You just press the circle button at various intervals, matching a timing gauge.

After that, King Triton comes along to see what's going on, and you say hi, he asks if you're here for something keyblade related, you say no, it appears to be very peaceful and heartless-free at the mo, we're just joining in the musical. Well, carry on, he tells you, maybe it'll cheer up my daughter.

Flounder has a brilliant idea involving the ship that sank and a statue from it (is it of Prince Eric? haha, unintentionally TERRIBLE plan), but you don't have a form of magic that you need to lift it yet so on to Port Royal!

The Scenic Route

I took the gummi ship through to Port Royal, and got the cutscene with lots of people screaming in the town (Maybe it's the XIII! Maybe it's the Heartless! Maybe it's Nobodies! Let's go help!) and went, eh, can't be sodded. Let's go play that musical mini-game again!

Which I did. Then I went to Hollow Bastion to play through the torn page I picked up in Disney Castle (have I mentioned how much I like the journal telling me how much treasure there is in each world? very useful). It's the blustery day bit from the books! Only, Pooh still doesn't remember anyone. Piglet gets blown into the scene and Pooh says, essentially, "Hello for the first time!" which sounds less odd in Japanese and upsets Piglet greatly. Aaaaaw. Pooh still calls Sora "Somebody-From-Somewhere-san". Then Piglet gets blown into the air again, and you play a mini-game where you bash honey pots and hives and trees in the air for honey and try to rescue Piglet. At the end, Pooh remembers Piglet, but he still doesn't remember you.

So, with that done... I STILL don't go to Port Royal. Instead...

Okay, so I take it all back.

Square makes me eat my words, because I VOLUNTARILY go play through the first Gummi sequence. Multiple times. What. I'm too competitive for my own good. It has become strangely alluring. I'm sure there's an excuse for this. Afjkld;afjk;dsf now I will NEVER get my life back, because every single part of KHII gnaws on my spicy brains. Ngaaaah.

Since when are gummi ships fun?

I give up all faith in the universe. It has been inverted and I am disgusted. I quit reality!

Also, extra bonus, you can get new ships without building the rotters. You can still edit them, but who in their right mind WOULD? Che, yeah right. 

The moral of all this is that Square cleaned up one of the major problems with KHI. See, they do learn. Good doggie! Have a biscuit! *pat*

Sometimes, I just wanna smack Will inna mouth.

Because it's been a while since I've watched PotC, and I'd forgotten what a prat he can at points be. *rolls eyes* First thing, you run into Barbossa and-- guess who?-- Pete. AGAIN. We can't escape that stupid head, aaaaaagh. Anyway, he stupidly lets slip that you can fight the skeletal pirates if you use magic on them first, and then Barbossa and his minions zip off to do their looting and pillaging and whatever it is zombie pirates enjoy doing. You meet up with Will just as Elizabeth is being made off with by ye olde zombie pirates (hehe, zombie pirates. saying that never gets old.) and run to the wharf, where Black Pearl is a speck on the horizon and Jack is lounging around on the Intercept telling you ain't no one gonna catch that baby. He oughta know. So get a new girlfriend, kiddo.

But Will is adamant that he will have no new girlfriend, and Sora backs him up, so Jack is like yeah, yeah, whatever, get on the damn ship. He shows the requisite "say what?" surprise at Will's surname.

And I will take this moment to comment on this whole set up. PotC in Japanese is WEIRD AS. Also, so is it being in pixel form with Sora, Donald and Goofy hanging around. They all look pretty good, though, except for Elizabeth. Her hair isn't quite right. Jack is of course AWESOME, though not Johnny Depp awesome, what with being pixels versus Johnny Depp. His Japanese is fun; I still prefer his English speech (Johnny DEPP, come on. Also because it's the original you can't quite catch his speech patterns in Jap), but you still get the same sort of sense from the language and tone he uses.

So anyway. You go to the Island of Death, skipping out all that unnecessary stuff in the middle with getting a crew, and also the bonding-- uh, "bonding"-- between Will and Jack, which saddens me, because this is the Disney movie where I find it hard to ship the canon het and Jack/Will is amusing. While on the boat, you get the cutscene with Elizabeth and Barbossa, which is pretty much the same as the movie but shorter, with him explaining about the curse and the coins and the way to break it, and her running out onto the deck, and him drinking wine in the moonlight so you can see it splashing through his ribcage. Lovely.

Back to us. We reach the Island of Death and Jack and Will go into the caves, Jack telling you to stay here and look after the ship. After a while, they're not back and you get worried and go to find them; Will and Elizabeth are fending off pirates, so you take over and tell them to run to the boat. You just have to fight the pirates until the time clocks down. I deeply distrust time limits, so instead of being like "Whoo I survived!" when it ran out I was like "AGH NO I DIDN'T KILL THEM ALL YET! *cringe*" XD It's an ingrained instinct, as time limits are most frequently BAD things in video games.

Back on the ship, you ask what happened to Jack. Will tells you about what happened in the cave (we'd previously had a cutscene of Barbossa trying to use Elizabeth's blood to break the curse) and how Jack said to wait, to trust him, and then Will clocked him over the back of the head.

BAD WILL. NO BISCUIT. *smacks his nose*

Also, they nicked off with the coin medallion from Will's father.

Very wisely, we conclude now is a good time to make a break for it (and get a cutscene of Jack being caught by Barbossa). Elizabeth gives Will back the pendant, and Will figures out that his dad was a pirate and that Barbossa is after him in a spectacular leap of logic and reasonableness he lacked in the movie while I scoff quietly and decide that Jack must have told him all this in a scene we didn't see, because no way would Will come to this conclusion on his own. Pretty, but not so much with the brains. 

The Black Pearl chases after us and catches up. After fighting heaps of zombie pirates, you are all, for the win! And Barbossa is like, dude, no. I have countless zombie hordes. You lose so hard.

Well, fuck.

Will is like, I have ze gun! Don't make me shoot!
Barbossa: .............. IMMORTAL, YO.
Will: Guess what, sucker? I'm your Turner heir! I kill ME! HAH.
Me: *facepalm* I bet he wouldn't actually go through with it. Anyway, carry on.
Barbossa: Name your terms.
Will: Your pirates let Elizabeth and Sora and his friends go free.
Jack: *gestures hopefully*
Barbossa: Is that all?
Jack: *GESTURES WILDLY*
Will: Yes.
Me: BITCHCAKES.
Barbossa: You didn't say ANYTHING about Heartless. >D
Pete: *kidnaps Will, which makes Will look amusingly pansy*
Heartless: *set upon you*

So what joy, you're all tied up together. Jack, however, is cunning. Unlike Will. And cuts his ropes with a dagger. There are explosives set on the ship; you have to go knock them all off before they explode, fighting Heartless at the same time. Right, back to the Island of the Dead to rescue that numbskull Will!

You burst in just when Barbossa's about to slice Will's throat over the coins, and he sends his zombie minions at you. You get to fudge this bit; there's a flash of light, Sora apparently deals with things, and then you cutscene over to Jack and Barbossa fighting. Ooh, SHINY.You then get to see Jack's moment of glory where he gets stabbed and is like "HAH! Skeleton Jack!" ... yeah, I'm sorry. Um, and does his cool coin trick. Then Barbossa yells at Pete to DO SOMETHING DAMMIT, Pete takes a moment to gloat, and you get into a boss battle with Barbossa and occasionally this chameleon heartless thing runs in.

By the way, Jack has been on your party since you met him, except for when WILL LEFT HIM BEHIND, JEEZ. Also, the Wisdom form rocks all. Blue clothing, you subsume Donald and you get to HOVER AROUND shooting MAGIC from your KEYBLADE. Ha hah, YES. Which is great, because it makes it easier to hit Barbossa without worrying about casting magic on him first.

Anyway, you win that fight, and get the awesome scene where Jack tosses the coin away and shoots Barbossa. Barbossa starts laughing, but then you cut to Will, who has the best expression ever as he drops the last two bloodied coins on top of the others. Let's hear it for the team work! The one delightfully slashy moment between those two in KHII! Hurrah! So Barbossa dies, Pete skedaddles-- again-- and you all troop back to the ship, where Elizabeth is waiting. She flings herself into Will's arms, and Donald and Goofy tease Sora that he's blushing and Donald says "Are you thinking of someone?" which is vague enough that I can infer whatever I want, even though I know they mean Kairi. XD

As Jack goes off to be with his beloved Black Pearl, the compass to find the island levitates up, because-- lo and behold!-- it is the keyhole. Sora seals it. Yay, the end.

God I love Jack's eyeliner.

Um. *cough* Moving along. You don't have the magic you need for Atlantica yet. However, two paths open, one to Aladdin and one to Nightmare Before Christmas. W00t!

---

Ugh. I'm going to get zilch all sleep, because I'm leaving at 9.20 in the morning to go to Sydney. *wilt* On the bright side, I was very resourceful and managed to reach the girl I tutor by ringing her father's work number from the phone book, and we've rescheduled for Sunday. Also I set up the parents' CD/tape/radio/tuner/speaker system in the new room for $40. I am amazed that it works, because I was scared of the bit where I had to attach the speakers. I know cords. I don't know anything about wrapping wires around screws. But it worked, and I got paid, which my brother is very bitter about. He is also disgusted that they gave me $100 food/expenses money for going to Sydney. *smirk*

But given I have to be awake in, uh, 6 hours-- SOD-- I'd better go sleep now. I may or may not be on between now and Saturday, but if I am it won't be much. Abby, if I have time to catch up, I'll ping you-- I think I still have your mobile number. Hopefully. *g*

SLEEP BYE.