originally posted at https://canmom.tumblr.com/post/162048...

It’s time for Tarzan. This is obviously full of fucked up colonialism. I admit I’m not actually sure if I’ve seen Tarzan, I was confusing it with the Jungle Book for a moment.

So: Tarzan joins the party, Sora has a falling-out with Donald Duck, there are collectibles and vines you can swing on. There’s an obvious baddie who wants to hunt Tarzan’s gorilla family and Jane is a terrible judge of character. Sora’s attempts to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak much English is to speak English slow and extra loud. Heartless monkeys show up.

I wonder if the Heartless monkeys are evidence that non-sapient creatures can become Heartless, or else they’re just ordinary Heartless adapted to local conditions?

The ‘deep jungle’ setting (yeah…) is just a mash-up of African animals. I’m not sure if hippos, gorillas and jaguars share a range. Let alone chameleons, which only live on Madagascar afaik? I don’t think these monkeys can be matched up either…

Mostly this area is about backtracking. You have to repeatedly run from one end of the level to the other, which takes some fiddly platforming. Eventually, the boss gets a giant chameleon monster and you fight him. It’s much easier than the last couple of bosses, you can basically just spam attack him.

After that, you find Tarzan’s home, which is a waterfall cave with a bunch of tricky platforming to climb. (Tricky mostly because this game’s platforming controls are dreadful!) And at the top… a glowing thingy. Which turns out ot be a bunch of butterlfies and a magic keyhole which produces a ‘gummi’ when keybladed. (Is our spaceship made out of candy? Is that what gummi is?)

I totally failed to get any good screenshots of this area. But eh.

A murky image of two Disney villains. Malificent is facing Jafar across the table, saying 'But the boy is a problem. He found one of the Keyholes.'

So now it’s time to meet the Council of Disney Villains once again. They don’t seem to be commanding the Heartless, but observing them. And they’ve started collecting ‘princesses’, such as Alice. Unfortunately their room is very poorly lit so screenshots are kind of bad.

Back in Traverse Town, we now have the ability ot headbut our way into Squall’s room. Squall tells us to go to Sid instead. Thanks, Squall. We do learn the keyholes are used by the Heartless to destroy worlds, and instructed to block more of them.

Sid says he’ll put the new navigation brick into our spaceship, but we need to deliver some post for him to the wizard first. I guess this is a way to make sure you’ve discovered the wizard house.

Then… the bell on top of the gizmo shop rings! I wonder if the stuff I’ve done in there already affects that. In any case, time to go and see what’s up there.

But first I go the wrong way and end up in the alley Sora first landed in, and find I can smash a hole in some crates. Behind it… more dalmations.

I should probably talk about the dalmations. 99 of the famous 101 dalmations have gone missing, and our job is to find them. They are generally speaking in chests in groups of three. Who has been wandering the world finding out-of-the-way places to stuff three puppies into a box?

I make my way back to the gizmo shop and ring the bell. The result turns out to be rotating a large cubic mural on the other side of the square. Three rotations and… the keyhole is there! I’d say ‘how convenient’ but the amount of palava it’s taken to get to this point would make that a false misleading lie.

On the way there I get into a fight with like five of the big round Heartless ogres and actually die and have to use a continue. Embarassing.

Just before I can lock the keyhole though… it’s time to fight the second boss again? OK whatever.

This time, however, there’s a second phase to the fight where the suit of armour changes to a new configuration! That figures.

A dark nightime shot of Sora and Donald facing a large purple metal Heartless, with floating arms and legs.

The boss goes down fairly easily all the same, and I lock up the hole and get another Navigation block. I guess I’ll pass that to Cid when I get back. Now, time to see a wizard!

So the book is another collection quest (as if this game didn’t have too many of htose already). And I also get a magic stone for summoning Simba. I guess they decided not to adapt The Lion King, which I guess means Scar won’t be appearing in this game, alas.

The book, meanwhile, is a portal into the world of Winnie the Pooh of all things. Can’t wait for that Heffalump and Woozle boss fight!

Winnie is facing starvation and also abandonment issues. The rest of the residents of the 0.4km2 Wood have gone, presumably as a result of the damage to the book.

So, I head back to Sid. When, suddenly…

Sora's friend Riku, a boy with grey spiky hair (it's a theme) and a yellow waistcaot with some unlikely belts. His arms are bare except for bracers.

hey it’s that guy

Well, that’s half of my quest done. For someone who’s embraced the darkness or whatever, Riku doesn’t look much the worse for wear! I hope he doesn’t mind that I renamed our spaceship back to Potemkin.

He does not join the party, possibly because Donald Duck doesn’t like him, but more likely something is Afoot.

I go to find Squall and let him know I sealed the keyhole but he isn’t there anymore. So I head on back to Cid’s shop.

But shock! Cid’s not there! A generic shopkeeper reminds me that Cid said he’d meet me in his Third District house. And oh, hey, Squall and Aerith and the other Final Fantasy character are there.

Maleficent is here too! She’s trying to turn Riku against me. Rude. What’s worth is that this transparent manipulation will almost certainly work and I’ll have to fight Riku again at some point.

I make a few tweaks to my ship. Then, apparently there’s something on at the Coliseum, so I’ll do that quickly before checking out later areas. (It wasn’t very exciting, but I did get a new spell!)

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