Real life sucks but Digimon is great

I just dislike Agrabah as a world in KH1 and CoM because of the annoying Heartless (and Cave of Wonders in 1 always annoyed me).

KHII fixed things by making the town less... rigid?, making the Cave of Wonders much more fun, and of course, adding one of my top ten Heartless, the Luna Bandit (I love you so).

I'm STILL so angry that we didn't go there in KHIII. It was the perfect setup! We played through the first movie in KH! We played through Return of Jafar in KHII! KHIII we could've played through The King of Thieves and finished the trilogy and it would've been AWESOME! They blew their chance to have the game trilogy match the film trilogy! How rare is it that a movie has two sequels that are not only good, they're AMAZING? Come oooooooonnnn!

...

Anyway, while Sora is shopping at the fruit stalls, why don't we have a little poll?

Yes, I know, there are tons of other classic Disney animated series worth mentioning. I didn't forget them! But these are the two I think of the most when I play through Chain of Memories. For obvious reasons...

I only ever caught random episodes of these growing up, when I visited cousins who had satellite waaaaayyyyyy before the rest of us did. But what I did see, I LOVED! I always wanted to watch them when I stayed over. This was like two decades before you could pause TV and all that, y'know. If you wanted to catch something you had to CATCH IT.

Spent ALL my Moogle Points after clearing Agrabah (it was mostly worth it)

Onward to Halloween Town, where I'll be traipsing back and forth for a long, long time. Gaining 10 levels + stocking up on more Moogle Points + starting my Pumpkinhead collection + playing min/maxer with my Map Cards.

Okay...

I've played Time Stranger for 3 and a half hours.

Let's talk about it.

(spoilers, obviously) (not that many spoilers, it turns out. Still, if you haven't played a few hours, maybe consider...)

Pros:

I can CHANGE MY GENDER??? ANY TIME I FEEL LIKE IT??? Bandai, you've done it. You've found your way to my non-binary heart. I want to see this in EVERY DIGIMON GAME going forward!

The costume changes are REAL COSTUME CHANGES! Look, I know I've complained a lot about Cyber Sleuth in the past (it's just bad, I'm sorry, I'm sorry you all love a sub-par Digimon game so much), but one of the things that infuriated me the most was, yeah, you can buy clothes! But it's all just SHIRTS. If I do a "costume change", I'm just wearing a different shirt over my ugly thigh socks and ass-revealers -- or whatever you wanna call 'em - stupid shit they put on girl leads in Digimon games these days, where if you're just a few steps down from me you can, without effort, clearly see my ass and panties. Something I would NEVER WEAR - and no self-respecting person should. Yet for the past decade, it's what they've been putting on the girl main character options, while the boys get to wear normal clothes. Which is especially gross when you remember these are all CHILDREN. I started the game as a guy so I wouldn't have to look at that bullshit for yet another game, but when it told me I can change my gender WHENEVER I WANT (still so happy about that btw), I decided to try the girl costume changes - AND LO! Not ALL of them have ass-revealers! Right now I'm in a stylish secret agent-type black suit, and I look SPIFFY!

The Digimon look GREAT! My gosh! So vivid, so FULL, so beautiful! I can't stop looking at my PicoDevimon (who I've decided to name Moonlight. Yeah, I know, I'm so original)!!! They're SO CUTE! And their features just pop so much! POP! POP! POP! I just wanna hug them so badly!

Cons:

Ass-revealers. I know I praised the game for having SOME girl costumes without them, but that's not good enough. Especially when the DEFAULT costume has it. Get rid of them altogether, Bandai. Cut that shit out. And while we're on the topic, why does the default look so....... stupid? I have to admit, other than revealing ass, it's mostly the little hat. I just wanna smack it off. It just looks SO STUPID.

I do not like the Digivice being a phone. Phones turning INTO Digivices? Love it, it works. But this is... just a phone. Boring.

The tiny text and symbols. And some of them fly by way too fast. I can't... WHO decided this was a good idea? I see this in so many games these days and I'm sick of it. I want to be able to SEE, to READ, I'm not some brain-dead CoD addict who thinks text is a suggestion to be ignored. There's no option to make them bigger, either. Or to slow down the end-battle messages so I can actually SEE what I got. Massive fail.

I can't believe I forgot this, but shoving me right into the game without giving me a title screen where I can change my settings? Not appreciated. I had to go through a short portion of the game with English voices before I could switch it. They were doing a good job, but... no. Japanese, please. (Who am I kidding? I'm probably gonna end up turning the voices completely down again.)

Padding. Padding, padding, padding. Most of these maps could be smaller. Or there could be fewer of them. Or we could be doing something else entirely for the first few hours. Y'know, there are options. I've been playing for THREE AND A HALF HOURS and I'm still in the tutorial. And expect I will be still for quite a while. (YMMV. I've been playing video games since the '80s and I follow rule two of RPGs and Adventure games: Talk to everyone and examine everything. So yes, I've been snooping around everywhere like any explorer should. I probably shouldn't do this anymore in modern games because it seems size over substance is the rule with maps now, but there's no taking the treasure hunter out of my blood.) I'm trying to tell myself to just hush and enjoy the ride with my Digimon, and I kind of am, but the rest of me is just yelling "Oh come ONNNNN, do you really need the big intro to your game to be THIS grandiose? I could clear Dive Into the Heart and Destiny Islands in an hour, and I thought THAT was grandiose! Back in my day rawr rawr rawr... 16-bit masterpiece rawr rawr rawr..."

Neutral:

I like having shortcuts to certain Digivice menus to make things easier, but I don't like not being able to customize them to put the things I personally use the most. So, a plus and a minus.

My baby, my sweet child, my beloved, the one and only, the ORIGINAL METALGREYMON IS HERE!!! YAY! But they're the first big bad guy. NOT YAY! Seeing Omegamon swoop down and kill my beloved was not great... I mean, it was very artfully done and amazing to watch, but it made me very Not Happy. It's okay, Magi, you'll have a Virus MetalGrey of your own eventually... (I actually have one in real life, it's sitting on my shelf staring at me right now and it's SO BEAUTIFUL!)

That anime sequence at the start was awesome to watch, but also made zero sense that anyone would have footage of all this top-secret stuff (and the three main characters of this game, specifically). I'm sure they'll MAKE it make sense somewhere down the line, but for now, it remains a plus and a minus.

And if I think of / remember anything else, I'll be back to scream into the void about it some more! Thanks for making it this far! <3

THE PLAN:

1F - Traverse Town because 1F is ALWAYS Traverse Town - reach level 10 before moving on 2F - Olympus to unlock the Cloud summon cards ASAP - reach level 20 before moving on 3F - Monstro to get it over with (and also get Dumbo) because it has the most annoying arrangement of Heartless in the whole game (as far as I remember) - reach level 25 before leaving bc it's not worth grinding 10 full levels 4F - Agrabah to also get it out of the way (and also get Genie) - reach level 30 or 35, depending on how I'm feeling 5F & 6F - Wonderland & Halloween Town saved for last 'cause I love them. Not sure which I'll save for very last, but leaning toward Wonderland right now. Either way, by the time this whole segment of the game is done, I plan to be around level 50. Also: Use a Bounty and a Moogle Room in each world, farm for Moogle Points when they run low, yadda yadda

And then... You all know what comes next... (well, those who've played the game know) *gulp*

*crashes through the roof and flails on the floor*

SO BEAUTIFUL

THE SPIKY-HEADED BOYS ARE BACK TOGETHER

WITH TRULY SPIKY HAIR

LOOK AT THAT SUPER SPIKY HAIR

LOOK AT IT!!!

THAT'S HOW CLOUD SHOULD LOOK

SQUEENIX TAKE NOTES FROM YOUR OLDER WORK

*siiiigh* Yes, this. This is much better.

The "and it seems that you've forgotten that you forgot" line in Re:CoM always makes me cringe for some reason.

I understand that they had to do their best with matching the lip-flaps.

But that... that ain't it.

Exhibit #68599884398 of why I prefer to NOT have voiced lines in games 99% of the time. Make that 100% if it's a remake of a game that had no voiced lines to begin with.

I'm totally fine with voiced action sounds, gasps, laughs, and such. Link can HA, SHEH, HYAH all over the place, I'm down for it. But please let me put the dialogue in my own character voices that I came up with using my own imagination.