Since I've been ordered to rest with my feet propped up due to swelling and my blood pressure, I've been playing a lot of KH2... probably more than I'd like to admit. I'm doing my best to play the game "correctly" by leveling up (everything) as much as I can in between plot progression. I'm about half way through the game and I'm already at the level I was when I reached the final bosses the first time I played, so I can only hope that means I'm doing it right.  OMG I'm so bored it's killing me. Hopefully that means I'm overdoing it so I won't have as much to level when I reach that final "are you ready to proceed?" marker before the final boss. Always better to overdo it now while I still have plotlines to get through than later when I have NOTHING but leveling to do. That about killed me in CoM. Thank God I learned my lesson when I started to play as Riku in the latter half of the game. Why that lesson didn't carry over into KH2, I don't know. I guess I was too excited about the story, the reaction commands, or the limit breaks. Take your pick. (It wasn't the limit breaks.)

As much as I understand that this game is supposed to be somewhat silly and goofy because well, one of the main characters is Goofy and the game centers around Disney movies, I can't believe HOW silly the developers made this game in comparison to the first two. It's like they had a brainstorming meeting just for ideas how they could make Sora look more ridiculous. Why don't we have him ride a skateboard? Sing Under the Sea? Jam on his keyblade like a guitar Elvis-style? Summon Chicken Little to throw baseballs? Smack blue balls out of people with a nerf bat? Wait, I know! Let's have him do all those things! No wonder there's a huge fangirl following for Riku. Everyone knows Riku wouldn't do any of those things, as that goes against the Emo Creed.

I like silly, I really do, but there's a line. Sora, Donald, and Goofy sticking their tongues out at Hades? Hilarious! Sora playing the ukulele with Stitch (in the middle of a tournament, no less)? Overkill.

This may be a sign that I'm ready to finish Twilight Princess.

It's amazing how much time you'll find for gaming when you quit your job. And as a result, I've quit Baten Kaitos. The morphing cards and the fact that I have no control over the order of my deck frustrated me to the bitter end. Nothing will make you as mad as starting a boss fight and finding out that ALL of your healing cards have changed to poison. It was an interesting twist to the gameplay, but it was a rather annoying one as well. At this point, I'm really not sure I'll even finish playing the game, which is kind of a shame because it has some of the best graphics for the Game Cube I've ever seen.

So what does this mean? Well, it's time to work on my New Year's resolutions to beat KH2 and Twilight Princess this year. I started completely over with KH2 and I'm doing much better on the leveling up as I go this time. I am still frustrated on the amount of leveling up you have to do (Sora, all his forms, his summons, his moogling...) but I guess that's the trade-off for the game not being as difficult as the first one. However, I will say screw Jiminy's journal. I'm not going to beat myself up over not completing a bunch of mini-games that I despise. So I may get the bitch ending I deserve. So be it. Besides, I'm on a bit of a countdown to finish this game. I'd like to finish it before I go into labor, which in reality could be any day now, but I'm hoping it's closer to my due date at the end of this month. How I'm going to play Twilight Princess with a newborn... I'll figure that out when the time comes. I may have to rely heavily on Shawn for that. I'm sure that's exactly what he had in mind for fatherly duties.