Dream Drop Distance Characters that got better/worse in KH3D

I agree with you on so many levels. Especially about Sora. I really don't see the difference between KH1 Riku and the current Riku in my opinion. And Lea is a complete person, Axel isn't, so they are two different people. But He's still our lovable cocky pyro!!! Got it memorized? XD

 

So....you're saying Naminé is to blame for Sora's dumbing down? Naminé!!!

 

Probably not. Blame the Organization for forcing Namine to mess with Sora's memories.

 

Organization XIII!! Lol

 

Whoops! My bad. Just forget what I had mentioned and blame a certain pink-haired, scythe wielding, feminine looking man. (We ALL know who that is. LOL)

 

LOL

 

I agree about previous Justifications about how other characters have not grown for the worst except for one character: Sora. Not that I think he is horrible now, but there is some things that are not really ok with me. First off yes he can be is good old self and be naive but recently he really has been acting kinda stupid. Of course they did kinda rewind his age in the dream realm, which means of course he could act that way a little since he has grown as a person and thus would respond differently to the situation then he originally would have. All the same they made him a little to unintelligent and cocky. I think he will probably improve in the next game though. Also I think he will brood a bit but not because he Failed the exam. I think he will be extremely focused on thwarting master xehanorts plans Master or no. It's kinda difficult to explain exactly but I guess you can ask if you wanna know cause my computer is slowing down and I have to go to bed in like ten minutes. I'll continue this tomorrow after school.

UPDATE: I have returned with a faster computer and a clearer mind!

So what I was trying to say before was that Sora has become stupid; again out of player aid- which I think is a ridiculous reason. That's what the journals are for after all. The original Sora would have been able to figure out what neku had done at the beginning of DDD, but would given him another chance anyway. It would have been kinda like: "Okay, so he tricked me; but why? He musta had a good reason." Of course his story progressed, which is great but means little if they take away the best things about the character in the process until he isn't a character. (No personality)
So my natural response to sora's current lack of intelligence is to hope it is only because of the aforementioned excuse and that his character will be developing alongside his story in the next game. Because Sora is my FAVORITE KH character and I really hate to see him degraded to a stereotypical anime male hero with low IQ and no sense of responsibility outside of saving the world. I may not have said it the way I meant it, I'm not sure; I've been told i'm a deep thinker but i never seem to be able to express thoughts that way when I ACTUALLY mean to. But I hope you understand what I'm trying to point out.

...If some part of my opinion is unclear, just ask; I know i'm leaving something out but cannot put my finger on it...

Thank you :)

 

Just because Goofy isn't all there and donald's Magic isn't always helpful doesn't mean they're worthless; they have potiental that King Mickey can't seem to bring out of them.

 

The secret ending basically says outright that they've become useless

 

I think this improved my opinion of Sora slightly. I feel like I got to know him a little better in the game, and his attacks I actually really enjoyed. Not enough to be like "oh my god he's an awesome character" but yeah, bit better. I loved playing as Riku a lot more though, his fighting style and story beat Sora's fairly easily imo.

 

I liked Riku's Disney world bits better, but anytime a character Sora recognized appeared he just killed it. When he has to fight Rinzler, when he expresses his sympathy for Roxas, when he rebuts Xemnas's little speech and reaffirms his faith in his friends... The only thing that can really top any of that is the revelation that Riku was inside Sora's dream. Sora was still growing in that game, Riku was really just taking an exam.

 

MX became Aizen-on-steroids.
TAV are now officially failures as heroes.

 

The only one that really stuck out to me as an improvement was Riku. Hope he stays this way in future instalments, because nothing could be worse than KHII Riku.

 

Unrelated to the context of what you're saying, other than it being about Donald and Goofy, I feel like one reason that Sora seems dumber in Kingdom Hearts II is the fact that Goofy has become the only one out of the trio who has any sense at all. Once the idiot character becomes the smart one out of nowhere, a character who is named Goofy just by the way, then it really, really shows the intelligence drop in Sora and Donald.

 

I completely agree with you about Axel/Lea's voice acting. Now Quinton Flynn is a good voice actor, but it kinda seems like he forgot about what he'd decided to do with the characters voice between games. Like CoM it definitely sounds like he's trying to go for an evil posh English accent (albeit not a very convincing one) to KH2 where it sounds more like a carefree natural American one (which is the one I prefer tbh). Then in 3D it kinda goes all over the place, and that like you said 'looks like you forgot to write the sequel' is a good example. Maybe it was bad lines or bad voice direction but I just wish he was consistent more than anything.

 

I agree that Riku has seen one of the biggest improvements because he's become less succumb to his own shortcomings and is finally embracing himself. Sora learned a lot and actually failed at the end which I liked, he's not perfect and he's not even the best (hey, the keyblade didn't even choose him) but he didn't care in the end, he was happy for Riku- that was the biggest thing: before I felt he sort of resented Riku for being better at him at stuff but now he's reveling in it. Compared to KH1 they have grown up and matured a lot. I didn't really notice much change in the other characters but I don't really tend to look too closely at that.

I say that's a better change on their part but I can't recall much about other characters.

 

The thing about KH in general is that I think the character development doesn't go in a predictable cookie-cutter way.

Riku for example, is constantly feeling shame. He never really comes to terms with his relationship with Sora and Kairi until the ending of KHII---when he finally confesses that he was jealous of Sora. And they finally mend that hurt that began in KH.

Very much like real life, recovery isn't always going up. You will fall down. Which I think is the case with Riku.

I think this was the next natural step for his resolution. Even more affirmation that he is worthy of what he's worked so hard for.

 

Even though I liked playing with Riku again (as it is not always that we have the option), I felt that his arc/problems were already solved in the reverse/rebirth , and touched again in KH II (even if he gives himself to the darkness he never loses his heart). Sure there was that whole "he was Sora's dream eater thing", but that only happened because he gone through the problem of doing his make up quest before. I'll be bothered if Riku focus in all the games will be "you are darkness, you can't be a hero", it seems poor written like they don't know what to do with him.

----edit--
Even though by the end of Reverse/Rebirth he is a full fledged dark warrior and probably Keyblade wielder, in the beginning of this fight he already accepts his darkness:

"Follow the darkness, it will show the way to your friends"
(Is this Disney?)

Riku overcame Sora by the end of the game by not taking the easy way out using Naminé's power to suppress the darkness, like Sora did to recover his memories, in a way it was a anti-climax ending, as the whole game was about Sora don't caring about the "fake or real memories", but the chain of hearts, he could remake his friendships, could have been told the "truth " by Goofy and Donald, and what is forgotten is not lost so he could have all the memories without forfeiting Naminé, but even though that was the "wrong choice" it was Ok, because Sora is human and is prone to making mistakes. All this catarsis makes DDD even more unnecessary.
(But it was great for their friendship, as others noticed)

 

Riku honestly got better, in my opinion. He started in KH1 as the stereotypical whiny anime rival character who gave in to darkness. Then, as time went on, he became easily one of the most interesting characters in the story as he struggled to keep the darkness within him in check.
Dream Drop Distance completes his character arc by having him staring down the darkness with confidence that he has risen above it, and puts him in the same role Sora was in during KH1--the hero who has to save his friend from the darkness.

Sora, naturally, got worse. He is a Gary Stu character who always takes the cheap way out of his problems; it was bound to happen.
But hey, perhaps nearly succumbing to the darkness will have made him a little wiser. Some heroes need to fall before they can rise higher.

 

Given how little development any character gets in the series it's hard to rank them in my opinion.

Yes Sora is mostly the same since KH1. At most, in recent years they seem to be over selling his simple nature which is causing him to seem and border on sheer stupidity since KH2. KHDDD was worse than others in that regard but I think it's more of the writers themselves being lazy than it a step backwards. They're over emphasizing one aspect of Sora when Kh1 had him more normal I guess.

Riku definitely felt full circle in DDD. However by this point his whole mopey attitude had honestly worn thin somehow. I did like his arc getting some resolution though. To me, Riku has been practically the only character to get a growth arc over the entire series so naturally I was glad to see it continue since he's my only exposure to such development.

(this is me not counting single game growths such as Replica Riku's entire CoM arc)

Lea/Axel....ehhhhhhh I'm sorry but his entire existence past CoM or the start of KH2 has felt fanserviced. I especially was irk'd by his keyblade. It was just too forced.
(however it isn't as bad as Kairi being a freakin accident) (apparently they're too lazy to even give excuses for her shoehorned keyblade)

By far, if I had to pick one, the worst character that came out of KHDDD's events was Xehanort. I...I just can't put into words how bad it was to me. BBS already did a really stupid writing choice by making the heroes overly stupid just for the sake of making Xehanort seem brilliant or so that his plans would fall into place. KHDDD took this and continued to RUN with it which I absolutely did not like to see.
His manipulations, while horribly written, were still somewhat believable in BBS. KHDDD however threw him into a Sosuke Aizen level of BS for me. He claimed everything as "his doing" and then proceeded to preach about destiny or how everything leading up to that moment he returned in KHDDD as planned.

That is a horrible way to write a villain. It's a fantasy series of disney magic and final fantasy hair styles and I'm sitting here and can't even consider the main villains plans believable, even within this universes rules, or compelling. It also greatly devalued Ansem and Xemnas as their own personalities or the games of KH1&2 as a whole.
First nobodies came back as people then Xehanort says everything up till now was a facade. That's spitting in the face of things I loved in my early teenage years for me. It's cheapening the events of the past to build up the current plot and villain even though the villain has somehow been the same the entire time.

I just did not like this. I didn't care for him before but with DDD my view of Xehanort shifted to very negative. He's not an interesting villain, he's not even "meh", he's just horribly contrived for me and it's ruined what little hope I had left for the story to be honest. Right now I'm just waiting for KH3 to see how a 15yr aspect of my life resolves.

And no, I dont say this because it was the "old Xehanort". Regardless of which version came back, if this was the route they took, I'd still be as dissatisfied with the result. Xehanort devalued himself and things of the series I still somewhat liked at the end of DDD.