Kingdom Hearts content creator NobodyDaxian spends a lot of time enduring absurd challenges in Square Enix's beloved action-RPG series, but his latest effort might just be the most absurd yet: a multi-hour grind in a Kingdom Hearts 2 minigame repeating the same three-hit combo over and over again to max out the combo counter and earn an utterly meaningless reward.
The minigame in question is Grandstander, an early side activity in Kingdom Hearts 2 that challenges you to juggle a ball. It bounces into the air when you hit it, and you've got to keep it from hitting the ground as long as possible. The minigame grades you based on how many juggles you perform, with a reward of 10 munny - the game's currency - for four juggles, up to a reward of 50 munny if you surpass 20 juggles.
The maximum high score any reasonable person would attempt in this challenge is 100 juggles - the number it takes to grab the achievement required for 100% completion in Kingdom Hearts 2. But the onscreen combo meter tracks your juggles much, much higher than that. You could, in theory, reach a 9999-hit combo for a perfect score in Grandstander.
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I AM THE ULTIMATE BALLER!!! https://t.co/AEHVlvdkzL pic.twitter.com/cZAWOjCSO0November 16, 2024
There are pretty efficient ways to rack up a massive combo as Sora, but how long would the 9999 hits take using Roxas's basic three-hit combo? About two hours and 19 minutes, as NobodyDaxian ably demonstrated during a recent Twitch stream (via Noisy Pixel). You can watch the full thing for yourself at that link if you've the patience to endure it, but the basic gist is that NobodyDaxian sends the ball over to a narrow alley and keeps bouncing it back and forth between two opposing walls. For two hours straight. Always knowing that any momentary lapse in concentration will break the combo and force a total restart.
"This is possibly the most stressful thing I've ever done and I took a public speaking class," NobodyDaxian said at one point during the attempt. The in-game reward for all this effort? Well, again, the game stops giving rewards past the 20-hit combo, so NobodyDaxian just got the standard reward of 50 munny. By my count, that's enough to buy exactly 1.2 basic healing potions.
Kingdom Hearts 4 is coming… someday, and here's hoping it can stand with its predecessors among the best RPGs out there.
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The original Kingdom Hearts was initially "more hardcore" until Square Enix toned it down: "We had some puzzles in there that would make you go, 'what is this, Takeshi's Challenge?'"
