Kingdom Hearts 1.7: Are You Confused Yet?

Kingdom Hearts: Sora and friends are playing on their island (Destiny Islands), and that night a storm blows in. Sora goes to check out their island, and can't find Kairi or Riku, his best (and only?) friends. The storm was actually the Darkness, which had come to destory their world, just as it had being doing to other worlds. Riku disappears with the darkness, and Sora is whisked away to another world. Somehow Sora then wields a keyblade, and while joining up with other Disney cast members, saves the other worlds from the Darkness. He does this by defeating the Heartless (believed to be created by the Darkness, in this game), and sealing up the keyholes in each world which had been letting the Heartless in. He finds Riku in the last world, Hallow Bastion, a re-creating of Beast's Castle (though for some reason they changed this after the first game). Riku says he should be the keyblade master (siding with darkness), and after winning a dual with Sora, takes the keyblade. Sora catches up to Riku, fights him again, and this time wins the keyblade back. Doesn't matter, Riku shows his "true" form, Ansem, who had been controlling him the whole time. Ansem transforms Sora into a Heartless, who almost gets mistakenly killed by his Disney teammates. After escaping, he meets up with Kairi, who had somehow escaped/found her way to Hallow Bastion. Somehow she recognizes Sora, hugs him, shows him love with her heart, and transforms him back into his normal self. Sora goes back, fights Ansem, and explains that the door he was opening wasn't darkness itself, but light!...but darkness was taking over inside. So King Mickey and Sora stay behind, inside the darkness consuming the light, to fight the darkness. Darkness vanishes, Kairi returns to the Destiny Islands, and Sora and friends once again get whisked away to the middle of nowhere. Basic KH story retold.

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories: So here's where it gets interesting. The devs never planned on making a sequel, and so KH could have been a stand-alone game. They are quoted in interviews as saying this, it's a fact, and is very important, considering how convoluted this story becomes. While making a sequel, they concluded that some things just could not be explained well, so it was decided that a half sequel to KH was in order. The events of this 1.5 game are as follows. After walking aimlessly for hours, Sora and friends (Disney friends, not Kairi and Riku, I'll get to them later) come across a castle, later discovered to be Castle Oblivion. I'll say this now: I have no idea how they managed to get there, and I'll explain why I'm confused in a different game. Turns out this castle is run by a group called Organization XIII. Each floor of the Castle that Sora and friends pass through is a different world from their memories of the original KH plot. The only reason they're moving through the Castle is because they believed they saw Riku. The only problem is that they don't realize that these are just memories, and all the characters they run into while exploring these worlds don't recognize them. As they traverse up the Castle floors, the four of them (Sora, Donald, Goofy and their recorder Jiminy Cricket) begin to lose their memories. Their notebook from KH is blank, which is quite odd. Each floor they pass, they fight a different Organization XIII member. Nothing really gets explained about this Organization XIII, except that on the top floor they're keeping a young girl captive, named Namine. She's a witch, and they're forcing her to erase Sora and friends' memories, thought I honestly cannot remember why. They finally reach the top, and after fighting through almost all XIII members, they fight Riku again (oh by the way they fought him once halfway through, though he didn't remember them), who still doesn't remember them. Turns out that he's just an empty body, with no recollection of Riku's past, or why he was created (as in, he's not Riku). He lets Sora and friends pass, who go on to fight the boss (well, this is just the guy who was running Castle Oblivion...this hopefully gets explained by me later), Marluxia, one of the XIII. After defeating him, and by now having lost almost all of his memories, even of his friends next to him, he meets up with Namine. Namine feels bad for what she's done, and puts the three of them (and Jiminy) into pods for deep sleeping, to restore their memories. Game Fin...or is it?
The whole time Sora and Disney friends had been running up each Castle floor starting with floor 1, the real Riku had already arrived some time earlier. Starting from floor 1 as well, he took stairs downwards, always one floor (opposite) ahead of Sora and co. Playing as Riku is a sort of New Game+, the plot revolves around Organization XIII urging Riku to embrace his dark powers, which Ansem had given to him when he took over his body. King Mickey is alongside him, trying to get Riku to hold back. Unfortunately, the XIII members are much more powerful in the basement floors than they were fighting Sora, so Riku has no choice and must use his dark powers. Which are really, really strong. But the more Riku uses his dark powers, the more the darkness is consuming him. By the time he reaches the final basement floor, darkness has all but taken him. Since this is all by memory, I don't remember Riku's ending...sorry. But that's what the next game is for!

Kingdom Hearts 2: Thanks to the CoM 1.5 sequel, the devs didn't have to do as much explaining about Organization XIII. KH2 is more involved information about the XIII. The player starts as Roxas, Sora's Nobody. A Nobody is created when a human loses their heart. When Sora was tranformed into a Heartless (get it?), him losing a heart resulted in the creation of a Nobody - Roxas (yes, rearranging the letters spells Sora, plus an X which almost all XIII members have in their name). Roxas is in Twighlight Town which, honestly, is yet another metaphor in the game. Anyways, the player plays as Roxas for like a week or something, until Sora wakes up with his memories intact. I'm not sure, but I believe that was the day when Roxas discovered the pods in which they were sleeping in. The whole plot of the game revolves mainly around Sora backtracking through all the worlds again, to defeat large heartless which have infiltrated the worlds...again. I'm not complaining yet, I absolutely loved this game and it's fighting mechanics, and even the story, which at this point (including all of KH2 I should add) I still had a firm grip on. After so many years I've forgotten the main plot. The major revelation in the game was the Ansem from KH, was not really Ansem. Ansem is actually a brilliant scientist, and saw all of this coming. The Ansem from KH is Xenohort, the leader and number I of Organization XIII. Xenohort was Ansem's student, while they were doing studies on the Heartless, Nobodies, and more importantly, hearts (not the physical ones, more like souls). Ansem and Xenohort were both good guys, until Xenohort somehow went evil, turned into a nobody by losing his heart, and tried to destory Ansem, who escaped and was in hiding for a long time. I believe (but am not entirely sure) that Ansem is actually DiZ, his disguise, and is helping at this time Sora get his memories back, thanks to Namine. This research eventually lead to Xenohort realizing the true potential of lost hearts: Kingdom Hearts. If enough hearts are released (and collected! very important), Kingdom Hearts is created, which can give hearts to Nobodies. Unfortunately, to create Kingdom Hearts, many people must lose their hearts, creating many Heartless (and possibly Nobodies? this is what I'm still trying to figure out, and hopefully the games answer). Okay, back on topic. During KH2, OrgXIII is setting out to get hearts to create Kingdom Hearts. By the end of the game, they did so. But Riku appears! He had been undercover, between worlds and nowhere (yes, a real place) watching OrgXIII and harnessing his powers: dark and light. He can also wield a keyblade. Where this second keyblade came from, is a mystery. But the two fight together...and Kairi arrives thanks to a bullying XIII member. Kairi can also wield a keyblade...it's a twist! But since there are only two keyblades in existence, the three must share between the two keyblades. They destroy the device which was going to harness Kingdom Hearts (it's a moon...no, I don't understand why Kingdom Hearts is a heart shaped moon). Sora also kills almost every XIII member...again. While Riku promises to save Kairi, Sora goes on to defeat Xenohort. Game Fin...or is it? While the three are relaxing on Destiny Islands, they receive a letter from King Mickey about another mission, most likely Kingdom Hearts 3, which should explain more about OrgXIII and what's going to happen with Kingdom Hearts.

Okay, I know that was a ton of reading, which got quite convoluted (it's actually worse than that, but I can only remember so much, and don't want to overwhelm a reader). While it seems that the devs took the Lost route and kept introducing more and more characters and plot ideas, it actually all makes sense. Unfortunately, one MUST play KH, KH: CoM, and KH2 to even begin to understand the complexities of the plot. One can tell by reading the garbled mess up above how much I can remember years later, after playing all three in decently quick succession. But the title of this post is the title I am currently giving to Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. I have put about 9 hours into the game, and while I enjoy it, the plot is just plain confusing. Here's what I've got so far.
The game takes place while Sora is still in his pod sleeping. There is a two year gap between KH and KH2. The first year took place in Castle Oblivion. The second year was Sora sleeping for a full year in the pod, regaining his memories as Namine was putting them back and in order. So basically as Sora sleeps, Roxas is running around doing his work for Organization XIII. The problem is that at the beginning of this game, they introduce another member, Member XIV, Xion. Yes, that is really her name, and yes, even other Organization XIII characters are wondering about the meaning of her name. But by now they just call themselves the Organization, most likely so they don't have to change their name to XIV. But Xion isn't in KH2, and they refer to themselves as Organization XIII in KH2. So my main reason for playing is to find out what happens to Xion. Also, since Roxas is Sora's Nobody, I'm pretty sure Xion is Kairi's Nobody. They haven't explained much about Xion, except for the fact that she can use a keyblade. Another reason why I think it's Kairi's nobody. I should mention that throughout KH2, Riku wears a coat similar to that of the Org, and has basically infiltrated the Org. So my question is where is Riku's Nobody? If Kairi has one, shouldn't Riku? Or is Riku his own Nobody? I hope to get some answers out of this game.
But the gameplay is tedious. Instead of one giant game, Roxas must play through missions, like just defeating enemies, doing recon missions in new worlds (I enjoy these), or investigating new and giant enemies. But I'm happy that the devs are so far staying close to what events have already occurred in the Disney/KH crossover. Genie has already been set free, and Aladdin and Jasmine are now worried about new sandstorms created by the Heartless, in which they already know what the Heartless are. So I understand how the events of KH1 are leading into KH2. It just gets really confusing when Chain of Memories enters the picture. At one point, half of the Org leaves the castle their stationed in (not Castle Oblivion, this castle isn't between worlds, but a world in of itself, which Sora, Riku and Kairi fight through at the end of KH2) to tend to matters at Castle Oblivion. A few days later it is revealed that they were all defeated somehow. This is referring to Sora travelling up through Castle Oblivion, killing them all...but wait. I thought this game took place while Sora was sleeping? Which is why Roxas randomly sees a two second fuzzy memory of Sora's (this happens randomly on the blank bottom screen during a cutscene on the top screen, which is pretty cool) while Namine is putting them back in order? See, this is why I'm so confused. I understand each of the Org members (besides Xion, but she's new). I understand the plot so far of the game - Roxas is the only keyblade wielder (besides Xion), and since hearts can only be collected by the keyblade wielder, it is his job to go out, kill the heartless, and collect hearts, so Kingdom Hearts can be created. It's basically the transition between KH1 and KH2, with some CoM thrown in for more details. I just don't understand the time frame for all the events between 358/2 and CoM. CoM did a fantastic job of going back and forth between what events were occurring when, while playing a second time as Riku. But 358/2 is purposefully leaving out the exact times of when things are playing out. Is this happening before Sora is sleeping? During his time sleeping? Is there a point at the end of the game where things take place as Sora is waking up? I really hope this is all answered throughout the game, because it seems interesting.

What I really need is a PSP, so I can play Birth by Sleep. I'm much more interested in learning about the keyblade war, and the original keyblade wielders.