Unique Abilities, Limited v.s. Stock Abilities, Unlimited

See, the thing is, it's not that those RPG elements aren't there, it's an action RPG after all.
But being in an action game completely changes the dynamic.
Here's an example. Final Fantasy XIII has a kind of awkward not quite action based system where characters constantly rapid fire attacks and spells. Because of this, the chance of actually being afflicted BY a status effect is a fair bit lower than in previous games, because enemies would often get hit by the same spell five or so times in rapid succession.
An action game is, by it's nature, faster than a turn based one. In a classic turn based game, reducing damage by 10 percent really isn't that great, because you have lots of characters, and generally won't be fit by the same thing twice in rapid succession. With an action game, the hits come faster, and that buff starts stacking. If something reduces fire damage by 50% and you get hit five times every minute, that's a worthwhile investment. If you get hit 100 times per minute and it reduces damage by 50%, it becomes overpowered.
Of course, then there are other factors in action games. The ability to doge generally means the damage increases, because properly intelligent AI would make standard enemies too much of a threat. Block is generally saved for especially skilled or talented players, and it generally pays off for them by way of extra damage or a stagger.
KH has always prided itself on having a large cast of distinctly designed enemies, it's not so much a case of more enemies = more challenge, but rather a mean of having more variety, and that variety, in turn, renders elemental bonuses largely moot
Now you bring up Ursula, but that's a boss, a very separate bees nest. I'd still say a major problem with KH is that there's rarely any indication fo what kind of enemy you'll actually be fighting in the end.
One point I'll have to concede is that KH1 DID definitely come pretty close to having these classic RPG elements... and that's largely due to its slower pace and smaller cast of enemies.

 

Not getting the logic there. If you're saying the enemy has less of a chance of being afflicted, that's really confusing, because didn't you just say it's getting hit by those spells even faster? By all rights it should stand a greater chance of catching the ailment. And if you're referring to the player character's chances, the game is boringly easy if the enemy never gets a chance to hit back, and that's when it's going to dole that out. In fact, if an enemy is focused on dealing a status ailment, in that environment it should fire back with its own combos. If FFXIII status ailments don't work as often, either the game's way too easy or the calculations are different.

But none of that affects the argument that these things should still be taken into consideration. You have to use different numbers, proportions, and calculations in an action game, yes, but that is very different from just not using them altogether. Elements might as well not exist in Kingdom Hearts for how often they affect the gameplay, and that should be fixed.

Again, not getting your logic. In fact now you've got me all spun around and I'm not even sure what you're saying.

Ok, but that can be factored in. All of this can be factored in. No matter how hard the work turns out to be, if Squeenix is leaving something to be desired, they're gonna get nitpicked. And it's a prevailing issue with Kingdom Hearts that being a full-on caster pretty much isn't a thing, and that most enemies cower before the might of your Keyblade regardless of what abilities you have on. (Except for the ones that autowin unless you're a SC/OMbag, of course.) The game has balance issues, and the only way the format plays a part is in explaining why they're having issues balancing it, not in rationalizing the exclusion or ignoring of certain mechanics.

If they're distinctly designed but they all turn tail when I bonk them over the head with my 5-foot door opener, I'm not going to notice or care while I'm playing. They will all look pretty but die the same, and that's not variety. That's sameness.

The only thing I will say about them is that they all move uniquely, and that's something an action game has that an RPG doesn't; but unless masterfully utilized, it is not enough to keep a single game from going stale, much less an entire series. That mechanic needs backup. And the elemental attacks are already there, so why not flesh them out more?

I pointedly brought up a whole world as an example as well, and it's an equally valid one: Three steps into Agrabah, you know what you'll be facing for the rest of the world, up to and including the final boss of the world, and it makes a difference if you choose to prepare with the appropriate elemental resistances. It still manages to throw you some curveballs, like the dark bulbs the Cave of Wonders shoots out, or... whatever the Hel the Pot Centipede does when it runs out of body parts. And I agree, KH needs to rely less on trial and error, but if it were to fix that, it would only better fit the RPG mold, so that's not really helping your point.

Man, you won't let that go, will you? For one, it is not impossible to strategize on the fly; it just means making snap decisions and having a fast, efficient interface available. And for two, I disagree! The later KH games don't feel faster to me at all. All they have is artificial speed. The characters move at a quicker pace, their weapon swings are faster, so on and so forth, but animations on the whole are lengthier and the games swell to bursting with in-fight cinematics, which means input is expected from the player far less often. And no, I'm not just talking about Reaction Commands; I'm talking about every basic action. In KHI, compared to KHII, BbS, and 3D, a fireball comes out faster, a Keyblade swing comes out faster, a dodge roll comes out faster, and they all have less cooldown frames so you can immediately perform another action.

 

Agh, the problem here is that I'm equal parts agreeing with you, arguing against you, an explaining game design. I'm going to try to organize my thoughts better.

What I'm saying is that each hit has a much lower chance of inflicting a status effect, to balance the fact that things are getting hit more often. If they had kept the same percentage from classic FF, you would pretty much be guaranteed to apply the status every time, and even moves like instant death would be relatively easy to apply.
And that's the thing. The longer something lasts, the more it is allowed to MATTER. In Final Fantasy X, battles are turn based, you take a huge percentage of your health in damage for each attack the poisoned character pulls off. As such, an enemy susceptible to poison in FFX is very vulnerable. But in XIII, if you took 1/4 of your health in damage after every attack, you;d be dead by the end of your combo, as such poison loses a lot of its oomph.
These same percentages apply to elemental damage. Fire damage dealt once per turn, reduced by 25% gives you an advantage, but when multiple enemies can attack simultaneously and repeatedly, taking 25% less damage becomes drastically more powerful of an ability.
It's basically supply and demand, the less frequently something occurs, the more special it can be. Elemental attacks are trivialized by the fact that they are common

The thing is, they're taken into consideration, but promptly ignored because it can only be a major factor during boss battles. The most prominent regular enemy in KH to use elemental magic are the flying ones, the music themed ones from KH1 and 2, and the food themed ones from BBS. These enemies are almost invariably found in groups, rendering an elemental advantage more or less moot. And that's just the thing, the way KH is set up, you're very rarely going to encounter an area that lack variety. It's very unlikely you'll ever be in a situation when a single element will be dominant. Most enemies don't have elemental traits in the first place. But there are three major reasons for this:
1- The worlds are small and short. This means that you'll probably have moved on to the next world right around the time you've seen every enemy the world has to offer. A world only lasts about 20 minutes, after all.
2- There are a tonne of enemy types. So each world's small space will be filled with many formations and variations
3- It's not long before the enemies are swapped out. In a KH game, it's not long before you stop seeing so many nocturnes, and more wizards. Eventually, you'll be facing an enemy group who is largely based on nonelemental damage, or who has access to all elements
This is pretty common, you can see it in a lot of RPGs. The intent is generally to eliminate the 'advantage' elemental stuff gives you, but KH as we've established, doesn't give you much of one.

Look at an old game, like chess. When you put that game in the hands of AI, the most common result is either a game that is nearly impossible to win, or far too easy. The problem with AI s that in runs on the inner workings of a game, while we work off visual stimuli (and sometimes other stuff but I digress) enemies also don't need to press buttons. Programming AI is a largely predictive process, you need to either program things loosely enough to accommodate the player, or predict their actions. Good AI ultimately boils down to programming a firm level of understanding of the rules into the target, and in a test of skill, this can be great, that's why a boss battle tends to be more complex than a normal enemy, but when you start applying this to generic enemies in the field, problems arise.
Maybe not at first. After all, swarms of intelligent enemies sounds great on paper, but in practice, it almost invariably leads to frustration or boredom. At first, it may be cool or intense to find the right way to break a Neo Shadow's guard while it deftly dodges all your attacks, but over time this becomes routine, and leads to two other problems, namely the player searching for and finding AI exploits, and drastically reducing the available move pool as clearly 'best' options emerge.

KH is definitely imbalanced. Blocking most attacks was more trouble than it was worth in early games, became completely overpowered in BBS and the DS games, and then sank right back into its earlier mold. Blocking was never included in the original KH balancing act because the average player pretty much wouldn't use it. The risk vs reward was always off.
The magic system is completely separate can of worms I'm not sure I want to open right now.

KH is a design focused game. It's helmed by a character artist. But the enemies are far from the same. They all have unique attack scripts and tactics, they're just laregly lost in the crowd. I have a hard time believing you can't remember specifics though. No getting sniped by Mandrakes? No getting trampled by a Berserker Sword thing? Fat bandit punches you with an explosion and sends you across the map? The game is definitely more focused on what the main character can do versus the generic mooks, but I'd have to say it's still pretty impressive how varied they are

But there's not much flesh to add to these mechanics. What KH needs to do, if anything, it make the elements more distinct. Give a visual cue so players know they ARE taking less damage from elemental attacks and such. And since I know someone's going to think it, yeah, fire attacks and such are pretty obvious, but what about shadow? What counts as shadow damage? Do Shadows deal shadow damage? If something punches me and its fist is on fire, does it deal fire damage?
If you add visual representation of elemental damage that is quick and easy to understand, then throw in some NPCs that give you advice, I'm willing to bet more players would equip themselves accordingly.

The thing is, the bulk of the enemies you'll find in Agrabah don't match the fire element of the boss you fight at the end, and no boss prior uses that. If you equip yourself with fire protection you'll be helping yourself against two attacks: the Red Nocturne's fire, and the Fat Bandit's flame thrower. Meanwhile you'll still have shadows, soldiers, blue rhapsodies, yellow operas, large bodies, wyverns, bandits and pot monsters to deal with
And then, to my knowledge, Jafar's only fire based attack is his flaming boulder. But that's jsut the thing. With KH, it's not always clear what element something is. Is the laser he fires a fire elementl attack? Lasers are usually non elemental in final fantasy, and if I didn't know that I still wouldn't assume anything because it doesn't have anythign that really says 'fire' about it.

Your version of strategizing involves being able to change all your equipment quickly and intuitively mid battle, at KH pace no less. That's really impractical. Snap decisions in an action game, at least one like KH, can at best be "oh **** that guy is moving, better block!" or "That thing is blue, I should set it on fire"
Artificial speed is still speed. Sora recovers from a single swing FAR faster than in KH1. There is significant lag after most of Sora's moves, magic cannot be comboed at all, Sora moves fairly slowly, and has limited movement options, and a zoomed in camera. This is all based around a slower means of play. It doesn't matter if an attack is longer because it racks u[ several hits and Sora recovers very quickly, or if he has a longer recover time, the ability will knock his enemies away. I'm fairly certain Sora's slowest recovering move is Explosion from KH2, and I'd estimate that its recovery animation is roughly as long as Sora's basic recovery animation in KH1.
I don't know the specifics anymore, but a few years back I did some pretty in depth comparisons between each game so I could animate them more accurately for a KH fan game I was working on.

I REALLY hoping this was easier to understand, please say so if it isn't :/

 

I'm starting to see where you're coming from. But I think that just means the calculations should be more complicated. Different enemies should hit for more elemental damage than others. And that's probably true already, it's just a matter of fine-tuning it. But I'm against not messing with it at all, for reasons I've explained, and cutting it out would just neuter the already frivolous magic mechanic. Elements are common, and if you ask me, that means they deserve some blood and sweat to make sure they're an airtight and engaging aspect of gameplay.

But again, all of this happens in RPGs as well. It depends on what part of the game you're looking at. If you're looking at the early stages of a Kingdom Hearts game, enemies absolutely do appear in chunks, and elemental advantages are important and don't require an overt amount of micro-managing. Towards the end, some catalyst occurs that fills these worlds with a large variety of enemies, but that just means you have to use a wider range of offensive techniques and not rely so much on static resistances. For one, I am talking about isolated segments of gameplay, and for two, I've been talking about defense most of the time; both yours and your enemies'. The equation becomes more complicated when we look at the whole of the game, of course. But it's during these small segments in the beginning that the effectiveness of these strategies matter most; towards the end of even the slowest-crawling RPG, you're throwing so many items, spells and skills that it can be hard to wrangle them all.

Of course. And I'm not saying that sort of strategic entropy doesn't arise. But no matter how inevitable it may seem, it needs to be combatted. Developers should always be looking for that perfect mix of routine and complex, and imo KH has settled too much into the routine. Everything is too predictable, too simple. I know it's a kids' game, but I was a kid when I first played Kingdom Hearts, and I smashed the crap out of it. A game should be able to teach you how to play it without becoming exceptionally easy once you've passed the final lesson.

One technique to combat this entropy, and one which Kingdom Hearts should have no trouble utilizing, is strategically combining enemies. This results in what I call an 'enemy puzzle,' where the goal of a battle is not just to know how to defeat each singular enemy, but how best to defeat them in sequence or as a team. To apply this to our debate: If you meet a group of three mages who all use different elemental spells, and you have no trouble dealing with two of them but the last one nearly kills you, you can equip something that improves your resistance to that enemy's element of choice. Then you'll still be required to exert your skills to defeat the first two, but you'll have an advantage against the last one. As it stands in the Kingdom Hearts series, you could just equip resistances to all three; this would trivialize the attacks of the first two in addition to padding you against the third, effectively leaving you facing one gimped enemy.

Again, I disagree. I think KHI block was mad unstoppable, and the rest of them sucked up until BbS and 3D, where Dark Barrier is mad broke but everything else is pretty fair. I'll explain myself game by game:
KHI - With Guard I can beat Rikunort on Expert, having given up the shield, and take zero damage. 'Nuff said.
KHII - Not only is the Guard animation more sluggish coming and going, but most enemies will hit you clean around it, because it's just too small compared to your hurtbox. Xaldin and Sephiroth are two of the most frustratingly annoying enemies out there, because every time I put up my Guard during their combos, they dance right around it like I'm not doing anything. Xaldin has been attacking me from the front as I'm guarding and HIT ME IN THE BACK. So Guard suffered due to poor design or perhaps intentionally to force you to use Reflect.
BbS and 3D - The same basically holds true, though it is far less pronounced and Guard is somewhat worth the trouble on most of the characters. Barriers are broke as f#&k because, well, they work like Reflect, and Reflect is broke as f&%k.

Yeah but you kinda have to. Elemental attacks are magic, and the fact that magic is mad underpowered is part of the reason the element system needs a facelift. Unless you want to get into some crazy experimental sh#& like I'm writing up for some game ideas, but that most assuredly is a whole other can of worms.

I can remember them. Believe me, if anyone remembers them, it's me. If you name me an enemy, eight times outta ten I can physically demonstrate their attacks for you. The problem is not whether they're memorable; Kingdom Hearts is never gonna drop the ball on that, because as you say, it's helmed by a character artist, and I still love his designs (zipperbelts and all). The problem is that after a while I treat them all the same. When they wind up for an attack, no matter what it is, I have the same response; and when they guard is down I hit them with the same attacks. It's that strategic entropy we were talking about, but again, the issue is not that it happens; it's that it happens too soon, that Squeenix is not fighting it hard enough.

I dunno, I think all the elements are pretty distinct as they are. Shadow is usually something black or purple, with either a smoky or viscous texture, and very little else combines those features - or even uses them separately. I can tell when I'm being hit by a Dark attack. I think the real issue is that I can defend against every element at once, and possibly that it doesn't constitute enough of the damage - that is, I can shoulder it just by buffing up my level/Defense as opposed to really thinking about what gear to bring. There's also the fact that, as we appear to agree on, the game could stand to give you some clue as to what you're up against. To use a previous example, maybe Ursula could swing the Trident around and shoot some thunderbolts in a cutscene before the final battle? Just as a hint. Maybe I give the wrong impression, but I'm not necessarily calling for a grand overhaul of the system - just a lot of little tweaks where they're needed. That and a paring down of some aspects, like sheer thoughtless enemy density and the amount of AP one has to spend on resistances.

Most of the enemies you named either don't have an element, which practically excludes them from the debate, or show up after the Hollow Bastion keyhole has been unsealed, which counts as that tactical singularity I mentioned earlier. And honestly I've only ever seen Jafar use the boulder attack during that fight :'D I know he has a laser, but he never ever uses it against me, ever. I mean, it's not the only example. Another area that's surprisingly heavy on fire is Wonderland; the only enemies that have an element of any kind use fire, including the Trickmaster.

That's not what I mean at all. I was referring more to changing gear between each fight. But Hel, what do we have to lose? Let's swap bangles in combat! More excuse to diversify the attacks enemies can bring to bear. And yeah, I realized I was focusing intensely on defensive options, which are more limited. But then again, elemental attacks are pretty pointless too, when I can literally count the number of hits any enemy will take to die from a Keyblade on my fingers.

Did we play the same games? KHII Sora's swings are way slower. And he may be able to combo his magic, but it's so impractical that I never use the function. It actually reduces your DPS, since the combo terminates in a slower-than-average iteration of the animation. The only spell that comes out even remotely fast enough for me is his grounded Thunder. Everything else comes out faster in KHI, and Thunder is a little slower on average, but more consistent.

I can't bring myself to believe that, because what you're telling me is patently untrue. And it doesn't matter that those longer strikes have multiple hits, because the hits do reduced damage. When I take off all of those skills, I kill quicker. I've studied it too.

I'm following. It was the grammar on some parts that threw me off, multiple possible meanings and such.

 

I'm going to move this into a more "this is what KH needs" direction because I think we're reaching the point where both of us understand each other and have less to add to the argument.

Honestly , elemental damage in an action game is kind of a bad idea unless you're fighting VERY exaggerated and thematic enemies. If you ask me, the main use for blizzard should be freezing and slowing down enemies, fire should be used for gradual damage, lightning should be AOE etc. Those are far more visible advantages, and balanced properly, offers more than nebulously dealing more damage in a system that uses ambiguous green bars to display health.

Early in KH1, you'll encounter all three magic types. You are rewarded for using the opposite magic on them. However, their actual attacks are weak and by and large more predictable than foot soldiers. Early on the damage a non boss enemy does is so negligible that strategy is moot, as it should be since the game is easing you in. By the time you get to the end though, this strategy is rendered moot in a completely different way, by giving you options and powers that render this obsolete, while simultaneously making most enemies multi element or non elemental.
The only way I could see KH getting around this would be by making world themes far stricter. make the bulk of the enemies in each world a distinct theme with a SPECIFIC weakness... but that's just another variation of routine

It should be combated and I'd say KH has been TRYING to do this... though I'd say the franchise is worse for it. The closest they've come to your vision is the Dream Eaters, easily the worst enemy type in the entire franchise.
I think what KH needs is some simple, intuitive actions, maybe kinda like a less lame flowmotion, which you can use to counter specific types of moves. Enemy encounters in KH are usually pretty short, so add too much and the enemy becomes a chore, smash through too many and they lose their impact... maybe a good, simple method of making the battles more impactful would be to give enemies a proper sense of weight, but I can't really think of a good way to make the enemies more challenging without getting cheap... actually, that made me think of something for later in this post...

You know, KH already DOES utilize this
In the Olympus Colosseum.
Where you can't actively change equipment.
But you know... OC is where I got the most mileage out of my equipment in the series. When you're fighting an enemy called the Ice Titan, it tends to be a good move to equip something to defend you from that... same deal with Hades

Ergh, I herped a little writing this, first of all, when I said early KH I was meaning to imply the first half of the franchise, mostly thinking of KH2, and I completely forgot to mention that KH1 has the closest to what I'd call a 'balanced' block.
And another thing, something I really hate about all the KH game is their reliance on a specific counter move. KH1's is really slow and weird, KH2's is awkward... the DS ones I have no strong opinions about. BBS is was overpowered, but also annoyingly paralyzing. I hated how if an enemy, like, say, the Iron Imprisoner, was attacking me, my only availabe action after a successful block was to lunge right into them, almost guaranteeing I take a hit. In DDD it was kinda weird, Sora's embodied the bad risk vs reward of earlier games, while Riku's was took a page from the newer games by being way too good
On the topic of enemies dancing around you... that's why I feel like things like reflect guards are a necessary evil. It's rather obnoxious when you successfully guard someone from the front, but the attack is SO HUGE is just goes around and hits you anyways.

I think that they need to do is loosen up the guard a bit. this will allow them to let enemies attack more frequently, and then give you further options on what you can do after a successful block (maybe take the Dissidia route and revert your character to their default stance and allow them to use any move they want while their enemy recovers?)

The problem with magic is that they're afraid it will overshadow the melee combat, so even in games like BBS where magic is pretty freely usable, you run itno the problem where it's basically just a weaker, ranged, severely limited normal attack. Now, if ranged combat was an issue, this might still be valid, but pretty much the only game where an enemy can legitimately be out of your reach is KH1...
I think magic should be focused on using wildly varying effects, rather than more or less straight damage dealers, and should be more freely interchangeable, and maybe even comboable with regular attacks. Like you use a stand hit to throw an enemy off balance, throw in a quick blizzard spell to freeze them then deal shatter damage in the enxt physical hit...

But that's the thing, I can very clearly remember specific uniqe things about enemies. The ridiculously high priority of the dancer's obnoxious grab move, the Invisible's intangibilitysword... aura... thing. Sure, smaller enemies are more generic, but they serve more as a swarm type, the bigger enemies still tend to have unique means and strategies.

The obvious elements are obvious. But those are also rare. What I want to know is when a laser is just a laser, and when it's a darkness laser, and when it's a fire laser.
You CAN buff every element, but that'll never give you as good of a buff as specific equipment. And I don't know the calculations, but I'd say 20% less damage is generally more than 8 defense points, simply based on the fact that you get a LOT of defense points.

But they ARE part of the equation, because of another part of this we have yet to mention: elemental equipment almost always gives less general defense than a non elemental variant. If only two of the attacks you might encounter out of ALL the enemies are fire based, surely just physical defense is a better investment (Or shadow, becase that's a far more common element)

Well wait. What about a paradigm type thing where you can switch modes on the fly? Maybe a D Link type thing, like when you switch to Maleficent you get more fire damage adn more fire defense. Now the player can deal better with ice enemies OR fire enemies with an ability they can use on the fly.

KH2 Sora's advanced COMBOS FINISHERS are way slower. His regular attacks move WAY faster. His first strike has far less wind up and he reverts to his basic stance much quicker. His long range thrust in kh1 had shorter range and ended by gradually slowing down, kh2 has it end with a second slash before quickly reverting to his normal stance. The standard combo finisher is the most similar, but there is far less down time after finishing the attack in KH2. Combo magic was the only reason I actually used magic in KH2. It made it a far more viable option, especially later in the game when you get a larger MP gauge. Combine with with drive forms and it's a FAR better option for most generic mob fights.

It does matter because more hits in rapid succession = faster. And that's the point, you're pulling off more attacks. It's kind of pointless to compare the damage the actual attacks because they both operate on different damage metrics.
And you're telling me you kill FASTER without Explosion? I find THAT very hard to believe, too.
I think that about covers it... maybe? Idunno, getting tired, will have to continue this tomorrow