What if KH got "The Answer"-ed?

So I was browsing good ol' GameFAQs and I came across this neato little topic that was asking how people would rank the gameplay of Kingdom Hearts games. IE which has the best, to worst, gameplay. Then I was like, hey, I frequent a board for KH, I should ask the same!

No, you dumbass! called another part of my brain. That's fucking dumb and unoriginal, you should do something weird and awesome and creative with it all at once!

I agree, self, I said to myself. But how?

And then it hit me.

Imagine the series this board came to be by got "The Answer"-ed. For you blissful ignoramuses out there, you fucking delightfully happy individuals, let me explain. The other "half" of this board, Persona, has a game called Persona 3, which had a mode on it that served as an epilogue that tried to be another 90 hours like the main game but fucking failed because there are godly masochists on YouTube who beat that shit. The Answer sapped all the fun and interesting parts out of Persona, and limited the series back to not just Shin Megami Tensei, no, it went to EARLY Shin Megami Tensei, where, TL;DR, Persona 3 has bonus exp and side story stuff and tolerable grinding. The Answer sapped away all of this and made it all about struggling to grind. 

Fuckin', at least SMT games had sacrifice fusion for a while. Nope! Not here, shitlords! Fucking...

Anywho.

Imagine KH got this same treatment, which would be as follows:

KH 1: Pretty much the same, except that Sora is more weakened and relies on Goofy and Donald more, but Goofy and Donald are about the same, and the best helper is Beast, who instead is too wounded after the first time through Hollow Bastion to help the second time.

KH CoM and Re: CoM: Increasing costs for better cards, the summons are gone, and no premium cards. Additionally, you have to unlock each and every sleight by grinding or paying a Moogle for a "sleight pass".

KH 2: No Drive forms, mobility abilities max out at level 2 each, summons are the same but last 2/3 as long, and all reaction commands require actual timing. Yes, even Delete, necessary for MCP. No Reflect.

KH Days: All item and spell panels work on a Monster Hunter type basis. You can go and make a bunch, but once you use them, you use them, and quitting to go back will cost you, and if you can't pay, then there's some other restriction that gets placed on you; however, you are usually given a few items that will be of use to you that you return if you don't use them. Half the Gears are gone. The good ones. Pandora's Gear is still available but costs 2x in everything needed to make it. And it's not Pandora's Gear + either. The actual one that makes you lose health if you miss. Zero Gear needs 100% Mission completion to obtain.

KH BBS and KH Re: Coded: Item melding sucks shit. You need materials to synth the commands, then to grind the commands, and then that's what you have. You want better commands? Get better materials. You have to grind up the commands, and then they give you materials (think Materia in FFVII but instead of a new Materia they give you synth items), and then you have to synth the new items. Makes 2nd tier magic way more useful by conservation of time and Mega Flare so much less broken and harder to obtain.

KH BBS: Specifically in this game, you are limited to the character-specific Command Styles that you get, no Shotlocks, and D-Links are harder to upgrade.

KH DDD: You get a set of DE's for Sora and Riku who only get up to Rank C or B by levelling up, based on their own level, and they level a lot slower than Sora and Riku. Flowmotion is weakened, and Reality Shift causes statuses but not damage.

All exploration stays the same, except is adjusted accordingly for certain areas that need things like Glide MAX in KH2 FM or whatever. Items are about 2/3 as effective, and ethers and other magic restoring items are the rarest damned things ever. The story is also gone, it's just the missions/combat/exploration.

In this scenario, I'd go something like

KH2 (still one of the fastest, I can live with no Reflect or Drives.)
KH DDD (I'm a sucker for Flowmotion and haven't beaten the game yet, it seems like fun, and the combat is the actual fastest and most fluid, if hard.)
KH Days (Making this one here because even if it's slow the mutliple gears make things interesting enough and I would love to make Roxas go out into the field and collect shit to make into more things. Fuckin' monster hunter tho. The system is so fun, and it's small rewards very often.)
KH: Coded. (I put this over KH 1 because if KH 1 had no story and a weaker Sora where I depend on that old archaic bullshit Donald and Goofy AI? Nnnnnope. Also, Coded had some awesome segments in each of the worlds, but it still would not be anywhere as fun as the rest.)
KH: BBS (I also put this over KH 1 because the multiple playstyles would make things interesting and the story was really short anyway. Additionally, the exploration was also really short and the combat was engaging enough that I didn't mind as much.)
KH 1 (This game has some charm to me but again, if there's no story, the exploration is what hold this up, and then the combat feels a bit clunky and weird for how the series turned out [can I get an amen from the Church of Character Action games?] and then on top of that I would have to rely on balancing my party to support me or do damage instead of me, and if the AI was competent then I'd go for it but as-is that's a huge no.)
KH CoM: yeah, this one would suck a lot more than what it currently does to me, and it's one of the weakest as far as gameplay goes in the series considering the hoops you have to jump through to be competent and oftentimes I don't ever look at the action and that gets me killed because I'm so fucking focused on my cards. Shiet.
KH Re:CoM: One reason. FUCK YOU ZEXIOOOOOOOOOOOOOO--

So! What would you guys rank as your "favorites" if this is what the series was like? That darned silly and confusing story sure is gone, and it caters to a more hardcore audience, sure does!

Well, that's certainly something. In this case, I'd have to rank it something like...

KH2 - I really only ever used Drive Forms as a last resort, and I never have my stuff together enough to even use Reflect. Lack of mobility Abilities would be disappointing, but not crippling. And having actual timing on reaction commands would, to my mind, be an improvement (less button-mashy).

KH3D - I hardly ever change my Dream Eaters anyway, and very rarely do I use Sora's combos with them. And Flowmotion for me is basically a method of "Get stuff the less tedious way" more so than actual combat.

KHBBS - Still doesn't seem too different. The Ability system really encourages you to max out your Commands anyway, so if you're getting a bunch of Abilities, you're getting a bunch of synth stuff. Really, it only serves to make the shops less...meaningless. And besides, once you have all the Command Styles, the character-specific ones are the only ones you use anyway. Shotlocks are broken and I try to avoid them (personal thing, I know). The D-Links already kinda suck sometimes, though...

KHCoded - Same as BBS, only the interface is just a bit weirder (L-button scrolling.) Also the graphics being a little blockier, but that's so secondary it lacks a word.

KH1 - I don't mind fighting as a weak character if I can still have my support abilities, but Donald and Goofy have some weird AI in this one. Thing is, there's only like two genuinely difficult fights in this game, I think (Riku rematch and Maleficent Dragon, maybe Ansem depending). So...yeah. I can actually see "weak Sora mode" as an alternate mode, if that was the kind of thing Nomura would do.

KHRe:CoM - Not a fan of CoM's gameplay anyway. It's not terrible or anything, but holy hell, forcing me to grind up money (which is a random drop from only stage items) would be absolutely awful. I already never use Moogle Shops because I never have the money to get anything good, and removing the Summons gimps your Sleight options quite a bit. Granted I already don't like Premium cards because they don't reload, but this...this would be an absolute shitfest.

Honestly, I'm so fucking green in KH it's not even funny. I played the originial CoM and it absolutely turned me off. I didn't know it was possible to grind out. Sora is still stuck in a room in Hercules' coliseum waiting for the right keycards to move forward with the story. I did understand the plot points being made as, and Admin can vouch for this, my older sister is a well rounded KH player who gave me the basics on what was going on and made it a point to help guide me, but not play for me. Upon being locked in whatever room I will forever be stuck in, I realized that the game pretty much killed any interest I had in diving deeper into this series. Just my spiel on this topic.

Yeah, CoM is definitely the bottom of the gameplay list for KH...and technically it's not entirely possible to grind out like you're describing, since enemies respawn when you leave a floor, it's just tedious as all hell if you happen to run out of cards. In fact, that's probably the reason the Teeming Darkness card exists.

Now, that said, I'm not trying to push you into the series or anything, but I just felt the need to mention that that specific game is probably the weakest for gameplay.

Yeah. Oh, but there is a decent way to grind Munny: go to Agrabah and use Aladdin. When he lands hits, it generates Munny to pick up. Of course, in this The Answer version Edgar proposes, that's not possible, unless Friend Cards are still allowed.

Honestly I could not change CoM and I'd still keep it where it was. Friend cards don't break the game enough until you get Trinity and that's so far in it's basically like "fuck just here's the rest of the game if you manage to have enough of those green cards that spawn friend cards". Additionally, if you can somehow get a Re: CoM game that has the theater mode unlocked, just watch that after playing KH 1. If you still feel like it's worth playing (do it on Beginner, I've beaten all the games on Proud thus far [haven't beaten DDD yet, and I'm going in on Standard first because dammit I said so] and I will never blame you for taking the easy way out on that game), then go for it. Otherwise, skip to better games. Like as much as people may have hated Days at least Days has enough going for it that CoM is always infinitely more reviled.

Also Blue Cards just fucking stop spawning after a certain point.

Also, Haar is completely correct. The first room of any floor will always start spawning fresh heartless if you don't mess with the room itself by entering a new room and then modifying it. In this manner, so long as you don't legit fuck yourself out of beating Traverse Town as Sora then you can beat the game by floor hopping. Not sure if it resets if you just leave and enter again. I feel like there's something there to prevent getting locked out like that. There literally has to be. Then again for some reason on PS3 versions you can't beat the tutorial because reasons.
Which I did research on and is apparently some weird fuckup with the emulation of the game on backwards compatible consoles.

I don't know. I couldn't get the cards I needed when I went back? I remember trying to deal with the spider barrels and that was about it. Again, I do understand that it's the weakest, it just killed the series for me. Suppose I should try and check it all out again as they're doing all these re-releases for KH, though.