Kingdom Hearts II Did you think the Mana bar (MP) was a bad idea?

Honestly, I think a middle ground between the command deck and MP bar would be the best solution. The MP bar made many spells impractical, especially in KH2 where you can combo them. BBS makes more options valid, but compeltely removes comboing. A middle ground where you could cast multiple skills/abilities before entering the recharge phase would be perfect, IMO

 

I didn't really like the mana bar, but I really like the command deck system of the most recent games. Although, it goes between two extremes;

MP Bar - Spellcasting is impractical and a mage character is going to have a difficult time.

Command Deck - Spellcasting becomes too easy and the challenge is gone.


I think a good balance between the two would work best.

 

The mana bar is that ballance. with the deck system, once you have multiple mp hastes, you can pretty much endlessly fire high level magic off. whereas with the mp bar like kh1, once you ran out of mp, it was a headache to get it back up. kh2 had a nice balance.

 

No, the Mana bar in KH1 was fantastic. It was really easy to get it back by simply hitting the enemy with your keyblade and having MP restoring abilities equipped. The KH2 Magic system, however, was a ton of bullshite. Having to use your WHOLE entire MP to cure yourself? I can't tell you how angry that makes me, even now, it makes me want to throw a moogle across the room. It was bad bad bad bad baad, I can't add enough emphasis to how much I despised the KH2 magic system because of that factor.

Although, at the end, being able to cast magnet + thunderga, was a nice thing to max out my level and forms in a very low amount of time. However, that doesn't really make up for the cure. I don't like to use items all that much, I depend on magic to cure myself, and I do not want to have to wait around until my magic bar is filled again (well, at the point my current playthrough is at, that's how I have to go by. I can't remember if I get any later abilities that help with that, and that's pretty much why I stopped. Because it was impractical to cure).

I still have to get around to find a nice setup for the Thunderga in KH1 (I've done it in DDD, and I'm on proud mode, and it's very easy to defeat enemies this way + Sprites with thunder boost).

 

You don't have to rely only on yourself.

You've got Donald with Donald Cure and some of the worlds' allies with healing techniques.

 

Well I do. Because Donald and Goofy never listen to me anyways.

 

I think it was good, even with the cure bias, there is a bright side, even though it spends all your magic, it also means that whatever magic you have will be enough for a fully healing. Even when your MP was gone there was the drive bar that supported us as a backup.. with the posibility of using drives/summon and after that you would regain all your MP so It's preatty difficult to be leaft whithout no condition to heal yourself and your MP. There arent many parts of the game that you're left alone so you can't use drives (in final mix there is always that form that you don't fuse with your friends).
So sure It was great for a Hack 'n slash game, as KH series ever were... the thing is that since Chain of memories, and thus foward the new combat system (that was seen at its best in BBS) made KH more like an "rpg" than purely a Hack 'n slash.. and that was a fine improvement, you could now use a huge number of magics that weren't available in the previous games... In chain you can feel almost goodlike if you make your deck right, and never stop atacking as you use cards, "not magic".

The system that followed it in all the handleds (DS and PSP) , was great also because you could combine magics to creat new ones, and atacks and sleights ! Therefore you can use a huge differente number of playing styles that you couldn't in KH 1 and KH 2, now when I play them I found myself "trapped" with a single style and few magic tricks.. but them again great for hack n' slash.. but nowdays KH is a lot more, more diverse than most games at its genere.

ps.: I liked the hatok idea of linking magic into combos for the next games, but I also would like to have a deck system.