They just announced Final Fantasy XIII-2, even though the game was universally hated.
Have they? How'd I miss that (knew about the Dissidia sequel). And I personally enjoyed FFXIII, though it suffered from the same problem FFXII did: the lack of a real villain, and a confused storyline. They've also become obsessed with religion since FFX. But, hey, most people didn't like FFXII either, but I loved it (even if it took
forever).
Anyway, I had a similar experience as you,
pap64. KH was really the first game I ever played, and I got it because of the commercials they had for it (which were awesome--Utada Hikaru <3). I played the game over and over a million times--it’s really what got me into the Final Fantasy’s (I had tried FFX previously, but, for a first game, it was just too complicated to me at the time). I analyzed the plot to death, and felt I knew everything about the games. The first forums I was on were KH-related (long before UD), and I’m still a general moderator at KHU (
the KH website, imo) even though I don’t do much of anything anymore because I fell out of the fandom (I’ve recently been doing some things for them to make up for all that time I disappeared).
Watching all the release stuff for KH2 had me *really* excited. The only thing I’ve been that excited as much for since was HP&tDH. I thought the story would be awesome, what with the pictures of Beast with the Unkown, etc.. The Unkowns (later to become the Organization) looked to be really good, and I loved Larxene, Axel, Vexen, etc. from CoM. For that reason, I was sure I’d love KH2. I ended up disappointed because the series seemed to lose interest in its Disney side. The Disney worlds seemed completely irrelevant to the main story (vs. the first game, where every world meant
something, except maybe Halloween Town which was fan service), and all the rules from the first game seemed to get thrown out the window. The Heartless came back for no reason, everyone started wielding Keyblades, people could travel even with the walls still in place, etc. And, yes, the script was bad--scenes seemed to drag on and on and on. The environments were linear and required no thought/platforming at all (all the treasure chests clearly laid out), few of the battles felt challenging, Maleficent was made into a complete joke, Hollow Bastion was just out and out ruined, and even the intro to the game was over-long (it took me 3 to 6 hours to get through with the
intro). To be honest, the only thing KH2 managed to do better was adding the Drives and making the Gummi Ship missions more fun. Overall though, I think most of the spin-offs have been made to fix the mess KH2 caused.
So, personally, I don't think the increasingly convoluted storyline was a problem (for me, at least). I just don't like how they handled the Disney side of things. Bringing many of the worlds back, they had a lot of potential (I was really hoping to fight Vanessa in Atlantica...too bad now everyone thinks that world is a joke), but it seemed as if they didn't do anything new with them and just set them on repeat. And all the new worlds seemed like shot-for-shot, word-for-word recaps of the movies.
Thankfully, with BbS, they seem to have got back that balance. Although it could still use a little work to reach the level of the first game, it's heads above KH2. That's why I'm looking forward to any new games, spin-off or no.