I did a good amount of the post-game in today's sessions. The Cave of Remembrance is a really interesting post-game area to explore. Getting through it requires you to level up all of your drive forms for all of the abilities that come with them, which is good to prepare you for what's to come. What's interesting is that this is the furthest the game goes with proper level design, and even then it isn't much. The biggest hurdle to overcome was the three nobody fights before the end, those were INSANELY tough. I tried a few of the Data Org fights out, and I had a good time overall, but they did show me that I was getting a bit tired of the game after a week and a half straight of playing the game. Especially with bosses I've all fought before, though it is pretty cool that they mix up their patterns somewhat. I also took a few stabs at Lingering Will and MAN this fight is good. By far the hardest challenge in the game, but also really fun to learn. I think a few things that are keeping me from wanting to continue no-lifeing this game any further are feeling like I'm pretty under-leveled (which means grinding, so boo) and wanting to get other stuff in my backlog down. I've been neglecting every other game I have available because of this game, and I think it's time I give them their turn. I'll keep going after Lingering Will, but I think that's good enough for this marathon.

I'm finished with the main story! I cleared through The World That Never Was and put a stop to Organization XIII! This is absolutely one of my favorite final stretches of any game, all of the final pushes were immensely satisfying, even if I was personally a bit shocked by how much damage I was doing due to critical mode multipliers. However, reaching the end of the game does not mean my journey with binging this game is over. There's still one big piece of armor in the room that'll take a LOT of setup for me to get ready for. I already tried fighting him once just to see his intro, and it's fantastic, especially knowing his context as a character. It's so chilling to see the subtitles just show up while he doesn't speak. Anyways I got demolished, so I'm planning on taking care of a lot of things postgame things in order to get ready. I'm more excited than ever for this last bout.

I'm incredibly close to the endgame, so I decided to go all-out and fight with Sephiroth. He's a really fun fight, though he's not quite the hardest out there. His patterns are pretty easy to get down. The main source of difficulty is that it's easy to just die if you fail. I streamed through the fight with someone in a discord VC and it was pretty exciting to finish him off. My next session will take me to The World That Never Was, I'm excited to get ever closer to the end of this journey.

I went incredibly deep into today since I had a lot of free time. I cleared every Disney world revisit except for Tron. I've been noticing a sort of thematic throughline in most of the Disney worlds with how the characters struggle with their own identities in different ways, which ties into the main story with Roxas really well. I didn't really notice it before. I also finished the remaining Absent Silhouettes. Vexen was pretty good, though I had an easier time with him than any of the others. He was still fairly interesting, all of these fights are. I fought Marluxia earlier and man that was a good fight, tied with Larxene for my favorite boss so far. KH2 has one of the strongest boss lineups in any game ever made, I love this game so fucking much.

Made another good chunk of progress, albeit smaller than my other sessions. I beat Lexaeus, who was far easier than the other silhouettes I fought. I then completed the first visit to the Tron world and ended up progressing to the Hollow Bastion fights. Seeing all the FF characters fighting against the enemies brought a smile to my face. The fight with Demyx is funny to me as a major boss since he's a total joke compared to the other Organization members I fought. I only died once against him and that was due to Anti Form screwing me over. The following segment with what happens to Goofy and the fights afterward are the biggest combination of being insanely ridiculous and insanely raw. I can't think of a series that accomplishes that feeling nearly as well as Kingdom Hearts does.

Also I had to hear Sora and Mickey say "impostor".

Did more Lexaeus on this day, not much else.

Took down silhouette Larxene and did my first attempts at Lexaeus. Larxene is probably my favorite boss I've fought at this point. She's far more overwhelming with lightning fast attacks than any other opponent in the game so far. I had to really change up the way I approached fighting in order to stand a chance against her. The fight also made me far more annoyed with Anti Form as a mechanic, but I mostly got it in runs that were already going poorly. Gonna update again when I beat Lexaeus.

Finally beat Zexion and MAN that felt good. I love the pattern of learning all of their tricks and figuring out ways to counter them. This game especially is really satisfying when it comes to that. I went through Port Royal, which has aesthetics that clash with the main cast even by KH standards in a way that never fails to make me giggle. When I got to the split after Port Royal, I decided to go with Halloween Town first for a change. It was another pretty fun world, though it does express my one gripe with the game, which is having the opposite problem with KH1 in not having enough interesting platforming. It's why I still see KH3's world design as the best of both worlds. I plan to do as much as I can in this playthrough, maybe even go for completion if I'm feeling up to it. I ended today's sessions with going to the Lion King world and looking back, I think the only Disney worlds in the game that had no ties back to the first game are Port Royal and Space Paranoids. Not necessarily a bad thing, I think that's actually a bit interesting.

Spent the last two days replaying this game for the first time in two years as a way to get some distance from Yakuza 3 and I got a firm reminder of why this is one of my favorite games ever made. The combat of this game feels absolutely incredible, I really love the kind of movement you have. I've been playing on Critical Mode for this playthrough and it's a really well balanced ultimate difficulty for the game. I was worried that it'd be too easy for me, but the Zexion fight quickly snapped me back to reality. Super enthusiastic to play more of this, I'll try to do as much as I can in this playthrough.