Kingdom Hearts AI (Was PSO/U AI)

[RemiusTA]

Im 20 years old....It really doesn't matter, i was playing games for 16+ year olds when i was in the 5th grade.


They could work on "strong" AI, but you really have to wonder about what that even means. What would you call a "strong" AI?

If you mean an AI that you cant simply cheese to death, then that's not really a strong AI but a solid battle system and a versatile AI. But even the most solid battle engines can have moves in them that make fights extremely simple. (Kingdom Hearts II was programmed pretty damn well. It was easy as shit.)


I think they have 2 paths to take -- they can make each enemy be able to adapt to different situations (which can backfire if done wrong), or they can do what PSO did, and have varied enemies that are good at attacking one type of playstyle, but vulnerable to another.

For instance, an enemy that can close distance fast and easy is a problem for a Ranger, whereas an enemy that has no problem making distance is an issue for a hunter. Any enemy that is dangerous at both close range, with a powerful attack for long range situations (Dark Beldra, Chaos Bringer, Delbiter) is an all-around very powerful enemy, because you are FORCED to acknowledge its existence from anywhere in the room. If you're undoubtedly drawing attention no matter where you are in the room, but you're still vulnerable up close, then you're probably a Force character / Magic Monster.

If you were to throw a bunch of varied-type enemies in a room, you're forced to adapt to many situations at once, to put yourself in a position where you can safely fight. It also encourages good teamwork.

So, it's not a matter of "strong AI" or "no reskins". It's just a matter of good game design.

[NoiseHERO]

Im 20 years old....It really doesn't matter, i was playing games for 16+ year olds when i was in the 5th grade.


They could work on "strong" AI, but you really have to wonder about what that even means. What would you call a "strong" AI?

If you mean an AI that you cant simply cheese to death, then that's not really a strong AI but a solid battle system and a versatile AI. But even the most solid battle engines can have moves in them that make fights extremely simple. (Kingdom Hearts II was programmed pretty damn well. It was easy as shit.)


I think they have 2 paths to take -- they can make each enemy be able to adapt to different situations (which can backfire if done wrong), or they can do what PSO did, and have varied enemies that are good at attacking one type of playstyle, but vulnerable to another.

For instance, an enemy that can close distance fast and easy is a problem for a Ranger, whereas an enemy that has no problem making distance is an issue for a hunter. Any enemy that is dangerous at both close range, with a powerful attack for long range situations (Dark Beldra, Chaos Bringer, Delbiter) is an all-around very powerful enemy, because you are FORCED to acknowledge its existence from anywhere in the room. If you're undoubtedly drawing attention no matter where you are in the room, but you're still vulnerable up close, then you're probably a Force character / Magic Monster.

If you were to throw a bunch of varied-type enemies in a room, you're forced to adapt to many situations at once, to put yourself in a position where you can safely fight. It also encourages good teamwork.

So, it's not a matter of "strong AI" or "no reskins". It's just a matter of good game design.

The thing I like about KH's AI and Battle systems is that it feels like you're immersed in these crazy battles, without it feeling like you're only pressing one button an watching. Especially during the fast paced boss battles.

You can just mash one button and see how far you get, till the enemy slips right passed you and 2 hit kills you. Or you can actually dodge, block, counter, and look for certain spells that are useful for different enemies and be able to say you've won with strategy and timing.

It's like it's easy, but if you take don't pay attention you will get punished. Well for sure for all the recent games at least on the hardest difficulty... On KH2 I just remember mashing X. Ane of course this is the only other hack n slash/action RPG I play so ehn.


PsP2 felt like it was building up some kind of good battle system, with chains and blocking and dodging becoming necessary. But eventually it had that same "You don't have to try and you can use the same attacks to kill everything" feeling after a while as well. :\

[RemiusTA]

KH2 was a super fun game. I think KH1 had a much better battle system for skill (Ice Titan was super fun, Sephiroth was about 20x harder, and Kurt Zisa was a bitch), but KH2 still had its moments. The only issue was i was barely ever afraid of being killed.

The only thing that made KH2 like that though was the way the Guard+Counterattack worked and that damn Reflectaga spell, which you could literally spam and defeat every boss in the game with.

Well, that, and Sora was just fucking jesus in that game. Seriously, he was a god damn beast -- Valor Form was my favorite in the game, but when i randomly unlocked Final Form, i was just like "man you bitches can just bend over now"

Aside from that, KH2 was a great game. The battle engine felt really good.


Birth By Sleep was alot less floaty-based, and had an old KH1 feeling to the technical skill of the fights...but some of the endgame bosses were SO fucking difficult at times that you had to literally abuse the Dodge Roll mechanic and like 1 or 2 safe specials to kill them.



FFXIIIVersus is never coming out in life, but it looks like it's gonna be KH2 on graphical stempacks. If they can get the game to look like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6At_bb1PNU&feature=player_detailpage#t=32s)then it's gonna be the best game to ever leave japan in the last 10 years.

[NoiseHERO]

KH2 was a super fun game. I think KH1 had a much better battle system for skill (Ice Titan was super fun, Sephiroth was about 20x harder, and Kurt Zisa was a bitch), but KH2 still had its moments. The only issue was i was barely ever afraid of being killed.

The only thing that made KH2 like that though was the way the Guard+Counterattack worked and that damn Reflectaga spell, which you could literally spam and defeat every boss in the game with.

Well, that, and Sora was just fucking jesus in that game. Seriously, he was a god damn beast -- Valor Form was my favorite in the game, but when i randomly unlocked Final Form, i was just like "man you bitches can just bend over now"

Aside from that, KH2 was a great game. The battle engine felt really good.


Birth By Sleep was alot less floaty-based, and had an old KH1 feeling to the technical skill of the fights...but some of the endgame bosses were SO fucking difficult at times that you had to literally abuse the Dodge Roll mechanic and like 1 or 2 safe specials to kill them.



FFXIIIVersus is never coming out in life, but it looks like it's gonna be KH2 on graphical stempacks. If they can get the game to look like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6At_bb1PNU&feature=player_detailpage#t=32s)then it's gonna be the best game to ever leave japan in the last 10 years.

Yeah I just beat the BBS on critical, at first the game felt impossible, but if you grind and use the right spells, even the last boss turns into a ragdoll, for ven's story at least so far.

[RemiusTA]

I started BBS on Proud because of how loleasy KH2 was on normal.

Boy, was I in for a surprise...i was amazed that the reason i found out i was losing is because the game actually does not allow you to mash X or specials to win.


I beat the game with Ven (bastard that teleported while getting hit was an asshole), and then went to terra's story only to be screwed because of how slow he was compared to Ven. He felt so damn vulnerable after attacking compared to Ventus and his in-your-asshole fighting speed.

That wheelmaster raped me so many times....but im happy the game had 2 characters that felt very different. And that style drive system (that changed depending on what you used) was a healthy departure from the KH2 one. the BBS battle system was actually pretty damn good.

[NoiseHERO]

I started BBS on Proud because of how loleasy KH2 was on normal.

Boy, was I in for a surprise...

Yeah, I'm playing the other two stories on normal modes now... Choosing critical for a first run, I thought it'd be a breeze since I beat the Re:coded on critical and heard it was harder than BBS... by the time I was getting embarassed left and right by CAPTAIN FUCKING HOOK, I wanted to start over from scratch. Till I discovered fire spells made him a bitch... again.

edit: but yeah making this on topic again, I'd rather there be that one strategy for every enemy that almost makes them entirely useless if done properly, than just being able to spam any PA you want and be nearly 100% efficient just because it does damage in general.

[RemiusTA]

HAHAHAHA Oh fuck man

I remember when Chain of Memories came out, i had the game on GBA emulator before it was translated into english, so i was basically just kind of playing the game to be playing...

Captian hook kicked my ass so bad i just stopped playing the game.

[yoshiblue]

Was I the only one that didn't spam the dodge button? The person who stopped me was the last larxene battle.

[chaos-shadow]

CoM sucked. > A < Talk about tedious. I gave up after I finished Sora's story - "There's MORE!? Riku's story!? Forget this shiz!"

[NoiseHERO]

CoM sucked. > A < Talk about tedious. I gave up after I finished Sora's story - "There's MORE!? Riku's story!? Forget this shiz!"

Yeah at first it was cool because I liked the battle system especially on a GBA game and the graphics as well, but running around in block shaped rooms for hours looking for that one card to open one door, to progress the re-hashed story for the worlds got on my nerves. So I'm like "fuck that I'm selling this game" once they tell you to play as Riku.

But it didn't help that I didn't even like Riku till the end of KH2, But now I hate him again anyway because they never brought back his casual looking clothes.

[chaos-shadow]

My problem was more like - that was the first (and only) KH game I've really played through - so I don't have the rabid fan thing going for me to keep my interest afloat.

And personally I HATE when you leave a room and come back and everything re-spawns. I got so tired of that f-ing castle because I would walk around aimlessly lost and have to go through waves of baddies. UGH.

[NoiseHERO]

My problem was more like - that was the first (and only) KH game I've really played through - so I don't have the rabid fan thing going for me to keep my interest afloat.

And personally I HATE when you leave a room and come back and everything re-spawns. I got so tired of that f-ing castle because I would walk around aimlessly lost and have to go through waves of baddies. UGH.

Well that was the worse game in the series. ]:

But i you start anywhere... you may as well start with one of the main games. Though if you never played Kingdom Hearts you probably never will. I mostly hate running through all the Disney worlds other than a few, I mostly like it for the main story... But it's getting dry after realizing the story is actually bad. So now it's just how fun the gameplay is and how half the time cool the characters might look, if that suits your tastes-nohomo if that sounds homo.

[Zorafim]

I personally liked Megid better when it didn't do damage, and only existed for the purpose of a status effect.

And I liked it better when it did massive damage to all targets on screen, including taking out half your party's health. Now THAT, is a darkness spell!



You can just mash one button and see how far you get, till the enemy slips right passed you and 2 hit kills you. Or you can actually dodge, block, counter, and look for certain spells that are useful for different enemies and be able to say you've won with strategy and timing.

I did nothing but mash X in KH2. On hard mode. And beat it. Birth by sleep, on the other hand? God, I loved that game's fights. It's a shame the leveling balance wasn't all that great (I was always either over leveled or under leveled, never anywhere in between), and the ability gaining system was so bonkers (I like the option to power up your abilities into stronger ones. I don't like the necesity to randomly link items to said abilities while powering them up to see what ability you get), since the story telling, characters, visuals, and gameplay were amazing. Playing as the macho Terra and the mature Aqua were breaths of fresh air compared to playing as the ditzy Sora for those two games. And Ventus was a nice contrast to the other characters.

By the way, I can assume that all the Kingdom Hearts released on the Nintendo consoles sucked horribly, right? I didn't get past the tutorial of CoM, once I learned that you used randomly drawn cards to fight. And I didn't get past the first few levels of 358/2, because of how incredibly dull the gameplay was (the most fun I had was scanning a level for clues. What does that tell you?). But CoM aparantly has some important story to it (since KH2 didn't make any sense at all), and 358/2 aparantly had a pretty tragic story (as you can probably tell from my sig, I rather like tragedy). And after getting some insight from BBS, story is something I'm gaining more respect for. But I'm not playing if it's as boring as it seemed.

Kingdom Hearts thread highjack commencing

[RemiusTA]

i would have liked Aqua more if her voice actor wasnt so annoying

[NoiseHERO]

And I liked it better when it did massive damage to all targets on screen, including taking out half your party's health. Now THAT, is a darkness spell!




I did nothing but mash X in KH2. On hard mode. And beat it. Birth by sleep, on the other hand? God, I loved that game's fights. It's a shame the leveling balance wasn't all that great (I was always either over leveled or under leveled, never anywhere in between), and the ability gaining system was so bonkers (I like the option to power up your abilities into stronger ones. I don't like the necesity to randomly link items to said abilities while powering them up to see what ability you get), since the story telling, characters, visuals, and gameplay were amazing. Playing as the macho Terra and the mature Aqua were breaths of fresh air compared to playing as the ditzy Sora for those two games. And Ventus was a nice contrast to the other characters.

By the way, I can assume that all the Kingdom Hearts released on the Nintendo consoles sucked horribly, right? I didn't get past the tutorial of CoM, once I learned that you used randomly drawn cards to fight. And I didn't get past the first few levels of 358/2, because of how incredibly dull the gameplay was (the most fun I had was scanning a level for clues. What does that tell you?). But CoM aparantly has some important story to it (since KH2 didn't make any sense at all), and 358/2 aparantly had a pretty tragic story (as you can probably tell from my sig, I rather like tragedy). And after getting some insight from BBS, story is something I'm gaining more respect for. But I'm not playing if it's as boring as it seemed.

Kingdom Hearts thread highjack commencing

358/2 was my favorite JUST for the story. Roxas isn't even a real person, yet he has the most interesting and probably deepest story out of all the characters. And unlike sora, he has emotions other than happy and confused.

As for gameplay the second DS game, it pick ups WAAAY better, and most people say it matches with BBS. I definitely loved the skill and combo building system as well as the challenge. Yet it probably has the worst and least relevant story of all the games. And of course it basically suffers from chain of memories world re-hashing. So if you're like me and hated 90% of KH1's worlds you'll probably have the most fun in the digital world parts.

And of course I can't say the 3DS one will suck looking at it. CoM is better once you get better cards, but I can't disagree with hating the entire game altogether.

[yoshiblue]

I'll be honest and say I loved the KH series but not enough to be jumping in joy and buying every new product that comes out.

[NoiseHERO]

I'll be honest and say I loved the KH series but not enough to be jumping in joy and buying every new product that comes out.

The only ones I ever paid for were (KH2 WHICH FUCKING BROKE STUPID JAPANESE SONY TECHNOLOGY D<) CoM and BBS...

Everything else I pira- or borrowed.

[Macman]

I hope it goes back to that setup, where Light is the high-tier "damage" element, and Dark is the "status" or just plain "youre dead" element.The reason Megid changed from instakill to poison was probably due to the amateur-romhack difficulty instakill projectiles bring, especially en masse. Anyone remember Episode 2 Ultimate, or Phantasmal World 4?

[Zorafim]

Wait, there's a second DS game? After 358?

And~ I kinda hated megid. I dislike luck based abilities, both from the player and from enemies. And it created far too much cheap difficulty. I'm glad it went back to damage, and think that it should be a high cost, high damage ability.
This mission isn't difficult enough. It needs more megid.

[NoiseHERO]

Wait, there's a second DS game? After 358?

And~ I kinda hated megid. I dislike luck based abilities, both from the player and from enemies. And it created far too much cheap difficulty. I'm glad it went back to damage, and think that it should be a high cost, high damage ability.
This mission isn't difficult enough. It needs more megid.

KH:ReCoded If I rate the battle system and stories for both.

My review would be swapping and flipping their scores.

[Anon_Fire]

This has gone way off-topic

[NoiseHERO]

LOL I somehow knew this'd would get ripped into another thread of it's own...

[Split]

I'm not really sure what this thread is about. If the question is, "what is the perfect AI dynamic for a roomful of enemies?" I haven't played Birth By Sleep, if only because I would be buying a PSP specifically for one game (Peace Walker's coming out on consoles, right?), but Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 both have pretty great AI for bosses. I used to just fight Riku for over and over again for hours in the first game, and the duel between him and Sora in Castle Oblivion is probably one of my top 5 favorite one-on-one boss fights of all time (Wind Waker vs. dual-wielding Ganon, DMC3 versus Vergil in the last mission, and the fight against Doku in Ninja Gaiden Black [although that's not one-on-one on harder difficulties than normal]).

Speaking of Ninja Gaiden Black, I think the neutered action/hack and slash games of recent years could really learn a thing or two from this masterpiece in terms of AI. Every enemy in that game is constantly working to do what you least expect, playing with you and causing you to react in certain ways, then reacting to your reactions - and on top of that, they work together. I've never been destroyed by enemies as stylishly and ridiculously as in NGB. I can recall one hilarious death on Master Ninja, right in the first chapter in a roomful of red ninjas: I was around half-health when one of them broke my guard right at the same moment as another tagged me with an incendiary shuriken, at which point I tried to jump away to a wall in order to attack off of it to nullify the damage; and while I was in midair a third ninja came in and hit me with a two hit aerial combo, the second of which sent me flying into the air, at which point the shuriken stabbed into me from earlier exploded and sent me high enough to touch the ceiling of the room, something you can't even do by running up the wall and flipping off of it. I like Kingdom Hearts, but compared to Ninja Gaiden, the Heartless (and nobodies, and unversed or whatever they're called) are one dimensional pattern spammers.

[NoiseHERO]

Yeah the mobs in KH pretty are like that, they come with one ability/strategy, The trick is that the combination of the right monsters will be annoying.

If PSO2 did that instead of PSU's "run away, or run at you, or both and use the attacks that are in proper range" AI. Things would be a lot more interesting and challenging, ASSUMING we have MORE than 5 kinds of monsters with only 5 reskins for each of them, for EVERY setting...

Hell river city ransom on the NES has more challenging AI than PSUs... I dunno about PSO's ai, I do remember monsters actually being hard the first time you fight them though.

[Weeaboolits]

PSO's AI consists of: Walk toward nearest player, attack them, if path to player is obstructed turn around an approach form a different angle. Sometimes that last part didn't work.

[Split]

PSO's AI consists of: Walk toward nearest player, attack them, if path to player is obstructed turn around an approach form a different angle. Sometimes that last part didn't work.And was the saving grace of anyone playing solo, especially on Ultimate. Can't even count how many times I've been under-leveled in the Ult. Caves and thought I was just gonna get wrecked by a Vulmer when suddenly he turns around (sometimes mid-swing!) because another enemy was not even half in front of him.

Sorry to OP if you want to discuss PSO's AI, but PSO doesn't really...have AI. Neither did PSU. Boss attack patterns don't count; De Rol Le is going to fire mines, fire spread orbs, jump onto the platform, jump off after four tentacle strikes, etc. etc. over and over again. It's still not AI if the pattern changes after he gets below a certain exact number of HP either, nor is it AI if in addition his attack patterns, the boss is programmed to walk/run towards you like the Dragon is. I'm not saying it isn't fun, either, I still will play PSO whenever I'm home from school, but you can't really say it has AI in the same way that characters in GTA4 or the relentless enemies in the first F.E.A.R. game do.

[NoiseHERO]

I would still say enemy movement patterns and when they attack changing depending on the players position would still be considered AI...

Just that it's extremely basic. :S