Current Events > Did they fire the guy who made the Kingdom Hearts 2 bosses? *spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

I think KH2 bosses were reasonably well designed. With the exception of Xaldin, who can go fuck himself, I felt like all of the bosses were fair. When I'd beaten them once, it wasn't too tough to go back and beat them again because there was a strategy and you just had to master it.

But I've been playing through the series and it's been utter garbage since then. The removal of revenge values in Birth By Sleep meant the boss just randomly counterattacks with no indication of when they're going to do so. You fight Braig twice and both times is just a tedious five minutes of blocking because he zooms around too much to attack normally. Vanitas is probably the worst boss I've ever faced in a video game.

Dream Drop Distance has been alright, but I just finished the boss rush in that tiny fuckin' postage stamp of an arena. One of the bosses takes up about a quarter of the room on his own and then he fires big-ass AoE bombs. The strategy which worked in the first go around - dodge until he uses his spin attack which leaves him stunned - doesn't seem to work, probably because the arena isn't big enough to do anything. The arena is full of poles which activate Flowmotion which disables your lock-on, so you're flying around at high speed with the camera pointed away from the boss.

My hope is that these are just bad because they're mobile game ports and KH3 is a bit better, but I ain't holding out too much hope.
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KH1 and KH2 were made by the "Tokyo Team". But after KH2, that team was mostly assigned to work on FFVsXIII back when it was still a thing, so their secondary team -- the Osaka Team -- was assigned to work on the non-Nintendo handhelds (BbS and DDD) and Birth by Sleep 0.2.

But since Vs13 turned into FF15, and with them remaking FF7, the Osaka Team ended up becoming the primary team for the KH series, and they're who also made KH3.

The most I can say for KH3 is that the Osaka Team...learned a bit from their past games. It's the best game they've made, I suppose -- and revenge values are back -- but it's still not as balanced as KH1 and KH2 were. And the gameplay and bosses are all over the place.

If you're a FF fan, though, the KH2 battle director actually is the guy working on the FF7 Remake. So that might be a good thing?
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I guess it being better than BBS and DDD is something, at least.
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The main reason I say it's better is simply because they don't use the Command Deck like BbS and DDD do. They go back to the menus KH1 and KH2 had.

But they still do the typical Osaka stuff, like making physical attacks useless compared to commands and limits, focusing more on flashy attacks for a spectacle rather than balancing things, and over fluffing the gameplay with as many mechanics as possible.

It's fun, but it's mindless fun, I guess you can say. Even on Critical Mode, I'd say the challenge is more artificial than genuine. Like things are hard due to oversight. (And Critical is the only level there actually *is* a challenge)
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