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Originally recorded: June 8, 2025
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Well, I didn't get quite as far as I had hoped this time. But at the very least, I've got nothing but cutscenes and boss fights left. That's got to count for something, especially with how long the thirteenth floor ended up being in the first place. I guess I should've anticipated that Castle Oblivion itself was going to be huge... if only because Twilight Town and Destiny Islands were both fairly short. On the plus side, I also got a bunch of level ups out of it. So, I can't really complain about that.

The rematch with Axel was a serious pain in the ass, though. Granted, I guess it makes sense that his pattern would've changed completely for the second fight. He was the second boss in the game -- going from that to the fourth-to-last boss fight would've been a bit underwhelming. I just kinda wish that he didn't have so many sleights that were a total pain in the ass. It was a lot like the Vexen fight in many regards. But considering what else I've seen, that probably should've been a hint that the Larxene and Riku fights were little more than a final respite before the sheer abuse of enemy sleights causes my blood pressure to skyrocket into the stratosphere.

That's why I ended up calling it a night after so many failures against Marluxia's first fight. Likewise, I'm actually researching the best ways I can handle the final slate of boss battles before coming back fresh on Tuesday to hopefully wrap up the game. Quite simply, I've reached the point where charging in blind is no longer viable -- especially considering that his second and third forms are essentially a two-phase battle... and even losing at the latter sends you back to the former. It really doesn't help that all of the text guides on the subject essentially give the same exact worthless advice: "good luck with that!" Cheesing the final boss may seem like an anti-climactic finish, but let's face it. The card battle experiment has reached its conclusion.

With that in mind, KI also made a suggestion about how to proceed after finishing Sora's story: they suggested dumping the Riku campaign into "Play Extend!". This is probably how I'm going to handle things, if only because despite reports of "how much shorter Riku's campaign is", it's still got a substantial amount of the same content. Cutting out most of the game's cutscenes may save me a significant amount of time by comparison, but that's still probably going to be at least six more sessions. As such, this will probably end up taking up the #3 spot on that particular backlog, coming behind Yakuza 2 and Blasphemous... right before Hollow Knight. Honestly, that works out for me. Considering how KH2 is pretty much a lock for next year and Riku's ending is apparently crucial to understanding anything that goes on there, that should motivate me to knock out those three games before then.