I was expecting some sort of epic battle as well. The trailer shows a horde of Heartless with two Behemoths in the mix. What do we get when the final product releases? A bunch of wussy Heartless who attack in waves. There's 1,000 of 'em, but really, you're only fighting a dozen at a time. No Behemoths, no challenge, no fun. Definitely disappointing.Prince Vegeta said:
I heard that. Man, when I first went into the 1000 Heartless Battle, I was expecting it to be indescribably epic. And, to be fair, the cut scene before the battle was pretty epic in and of itself. The actual fight, though, was a horrible disappointment. Seriously, I don't care if they want to omit the Behemoths, but a little variety beyond basic foot soldiers and little electric lantern things would've been nice. Really, in good KH2 fashion, it was just another bout of mashing X and occasionally Triangle. If Sora couldn't wipe out about a dozen Heartless with a single combo, then fifty more with a Reaction Command, and the Heartless could do more than walk around and occasionally swing their swords, maybe it would've been a bit more exciting. The battle system is partially to blame, really.
To be fair, I don't think those fights were supposed to be incredibly epic. Now, this is just my personal interpretation, but I believe that the Final Fantasy Ally fights were supposed to be building up to something epic (the 1000 Heartless Battle). Really, they did that quite nicely. It was probably just meant to give you a sense of the scope of the battle you were involved in. There was a literal army of Heartless swarming Hallow Bastion, and it was a big enough deal that pretty much everyone capable of fighting was forced to do their part if the group wanted any chance of victory. I will, however, say this; those fights could've been very epic if they were done correctly. They, too, were done all wrong. Sora was teaming up with veterans of Final Fantasy games to fight...a bunch of low-level Heartless and the occasional Morning Star.
Yes, it's true that KH1 had vastly superior Heartless to KH2, and, if those Heartless were included in the 1000 Heartless Battle, it easily would've been the most exciting fight in the game. The real problem with the Heartless in KH2, though, is that most of them are just too...cartoon-y. In KH1, the Heartless- even the lowly minions- were designed in a way that made them look like a genuine threat. Some of them were even a bit intimidating. They were part of what gave the game its amazing atmosphere, which was probably the original Kingdom Hearts' strongest point. They just...looked exactly the way I'd expect creatures composed entirely of darkness to look; sinister and ruthless in an almost artistic way. The Invisibles, Wyverns, and Defenders were probably the best examples of this. They don't necessarily inspire fear, more like a sense of twisted wonder. You could look at any Heartless and say "This is a creature of the darkness."The variety of heartless in the game itself was disappointing as well. KH1 had some amazing heartless that were actually somewhat challenging to fight, like the Defender:
and the Invisible (real tough in groups):
and the Angle Star (could get hard to handle in the coliseum fights):
and the Wyvern (who actually was easy, but it did look cool)
Now if you'd fought a giant thousand-strong group of THOSE heartless, and maybe had a Behemoth tossed in for good measure, that would have been something to shit brix about. But button mashing against two weak types of heartless who barely even attacked you was sleep-inducing.
