I can still believe or think something without prior experience tied to it.
Did you miss what I said? I said you can do research. You won't go through childbirth, but you can do research on the process to understand generally what happens so you can understand it. And just as similarly, you can research gameplay without playing it which is exactly what I said.
I didn't find the Demyx fight intense, just annoying at best. If the amount of mechanics don't matter to and how the game expects you to react, than my point still stands. Again, RvA is very light for difficulty but handles bosses like the rest of the game. The boss has a main mechanic that you have to work around in order to achieve victory. For RvA it was the flaming floor that continually damages you and Demyx had an instant kill minigame essentially. Handle both mechanics affectively and you win. Maybe we have a different definition for "Intensity" for ourselves.
I can't tell if you're actually reading and putting together anything I said.
vs Axel as a gameplay fight is very simple cause you generally don't have much to block or dodge or worry all to much about how he retaliates because you can easily avoid it. You lock him down super easily and don't need to do anything special aside form just pressing attack. That's why's boring and straightforward. The fireground is kind of neat but ultimately pointless since you generally aren't even going to take damage anyways with how simple he is. (Data Axel is a bit different and requires more thought, but still is probably one of the most simple Data Org fights)
vs Demyx, not even talking about him summoning the water clones, he actually has attacks that are much harder to dodge and avoid in general so right off the bat he's more engaging and demands more from the player. Most importantly, his retaliation attack is a lot harder to deal with and is super easy to trigger so you can never simply wail on him mindlessly or he'll break out of the combo and kill you. You CAN still lock him down in a loop, but it requires using thought and timing so you really need to plan it out. There are more mechanics
for the player to play with by that point, which is true, but before you even have to think about drives or summons or magic, Demyx still has a basic gameplan that requires more thought and effort than Axel if you try the straightforward approach.
Note that this isn't comparing the amount of mechanics that the bosses throw at the player or what the player has access to. KH2 doesn't throw much into Axel that makes him threatening or engaging as an early boss. But look at Clayton or Trickmaster from KH1, who each are more tough AND early bosses because they throw challenging things at the player and make you think.
I love this the KH series for gameplay just as much but I just hold a higher appreciation and respect for how this game makes me feel story and gameplay wise since most games now, I don't really feel much about the characters or the story in a lot of games today. I personally don't care about Terra and find him as interesting as wet cardboard, just as you don't care highly for Axel and that's perfectly ok.
Man, there is so much wrong in this bit :/
If you care "for the gameplay just as much" (presumably for the story, or as much as I care about gameplay, can't tell but it works either way), then you probably wouldn't rate the Axel fight as high as you did for the reasons that I am saying! AKA, while the story is good and all around the fight, the fight itself is boring compared to the rest of the game.
You just like or prefer the story (from your own words said here). That's ok! But don't conflate the gameplay with the story and then try to argue about the gameplay, which is what you've been doing with trying to do with trying to defend the simplicity of the Axel fight. Or at least be honest and say "Yeah the Axel fight doesn't have much gameplay wise, but the story aspect is what is important to me".
Axel is an ok character, I don't have much against him storywise. I dunno where you got that from.
Terra is an ok character. But I wasn't talking about that w/r/t his fight in KH2FM, or bringing up anything at all related to his story in BBS.
I was just bringing up the feeling of mystery and unexplained-sadness that surrounds the Terra fight and why I liked that atmospheric setpiece more than normal fights or the usual story fights in the game. It's much different than anything else which is why it stands out to me.
Oh, and here's another thing that I missed that I wanted to point out
Roxas fought Sora to test him or something while Axel fought Roxas because he had to but didn't want to.
This is wrong. Try looking up "Roxas why did he pick you" and search around what people said about that subject.
