Well I guess part of it is that they both come from Kairi memories, who is a PoH and therefore has no darkness in her heart. I think this might affect their natures.
Only they're both confirmed to have separate personalities from Kairi, and both, by origin, link back to Sora a lot more than to Kairi. Also, it's the Kairi Sora remembers, not "proper" Kairi, so I can't see that as playing a factor.
I'd sooner blame Roxas on Ven or whatever, at least until I play BBS, and keep blaming Xion and Namine on an unholy mix of Sora and a touch of Kairi.
But then again, too much of it seemed to me like they were bending the role Roxas' character played to fit whatever situation they wanted instead of making his own firmly established character drive the plot... which is also bad writing.
that I agree with. He reminded me a lot of KH2 Sora, in the sense that he was the so called protagonist who was, basically, plot-dead-weight. He wasn't even a proper plot device and only chased other people. Now it was a bit better since Roxas did get some sort of semblance of insight, but they created him as such a passive, self-abusive character that I can't help but go wtf is up with that.
That's where we split ways though and I say that's WHY they brought Xion in, whereas you blame it on her. But I still think that had they wanted Roxas to play more of an active role, they could've, regardless of Xion having her own story. They just... didn't.
Lol, to me that scene kind of felt like, 'okay, let's get the Akuroku fanservice scene we teased with in the trailers out of the way early, and move onto Xion~'
'How early?'
'Uh... first scene of the game okay?'
And later people are surprised people treat Xion as a yaoi shield.
"Oh look there's AkuRoku- AND NOW Roxas is worried about Xion AND NOW Axel is disgruntled by the whole thing~"
Hm. I wonder why. Kind of reminds me a bit of Sora about Kairi in KH1 but he at least grew out of it, didn't give Riku the cold shoulder treatment ALL the time, and I can always blame Kairi's Heart being inside him for most of the game, so lol.
Also, SRK were presented first and foremost as a trio, as dysfunctional and underdeveloped as some of us might find them to be. Presentation wise in the intro movie, something Days lacked. It was oooh, sparkly Org members~ and wait wtf who's "she"?
KH1 showed us all members of SRK (even if even then they were broken into pieces, never once all three together) in the opening sequence, and then the first scene after Sora's Destati, you get to see them all interacting.
The thing is Nomura failed in balancing it out for the new and the old players. He wanted to confuse and interest us but only made up a mess by forcing in something too bluntly. I would've much rathered had the AkuRoku scene ended before the mention of Xion, and we'd have gotten to see that later on when we reached that scene on the actual timeline, instead of then, especially with Roxas's inner monologue after that which was LOL from the end of the game after he took off. What the hell.
so yeah, tl;dr as much as I love Xion, I don't like how they introduced her in such a forceful manner.
Not that the game should have had fan service. I was looking for a story about growing friendship, really... I mean, how did they get to be so close, despite not having hearts? Days/the novels explain that Axel just randomly decided to be a nice guy and bring Roxas up to the clocktower on his first day of life, and turned into his mentor from there. There was no real gradual shift. Or character-driven conflict. Like in the short story in Another Report! All that angst about what friendship means to a Nobody and trust issues *A*
They did have that, but ironically, in the secret reports XD;
I think this is apparently the problem a lot of people have with KH2, as well
Which is why I made the comparison earlier. To me, Days is KH2, but it differs mostly in the level of dialogue. Instead of crud Disney humor and "Sora, Donald and Goofy", we get ice cream scenes. For all their possible/likely pointlessness, they were a lot more enjoyable than...
that.
(I think this is because Xion's appeal stems from her being very important, and without that importance her role would fail).
I think they lost the balance. Take KH1 for instance. You had Sora going through his story and slowly learning how the universe worked, while at the same time you saw also gradual changes in Riku and how his interaction with Sora was pushing him more and more towards the Darkness, and all his talks with the Disney villains. You can't say either of them is unimportant, but you can't take away the interaction, either.
In Days, they lost it. They had Roxas there for the eventual plot "punchline" but forgot or couldn't come up with anything to give him to do while Xion was going through her own story. It's not like they weren't aware of this, either, it was fully intentional, if Roxas's self loathing at the end to the point he pulled his hood up to cover his tears is any indication. Which is another element that makes me believe part of why Xion's constructed the way she is is a result of Roxas's character and not necesarilly the other way around. But again, difference of opinions and a well known one.
And yet they still focus on what Roxas is doing for the most part, and so we miss all the backstage things.
It would've been alright to still focus on Roxas had he been doing anything but being the Org's pet Heart collector. But as he's been collecting Emblems while Axel was conspiring with Saix and Xion and Riku were sexing it up on the beach, well... pointless.
Which in effect leaves us with a story about Roxas worrying about and/or chasing Xion all over the place for a year, which I don't think is interesting at all.
I didn't even notice Roxas for most of the game. It was like "hello, children, here's Xion's wild story with a fantastic love triangle between her, Axel and Riku! Oh, and to give you a break from time to time, here's some Roxas gameplay!"
I didn't mind it so much seeing what I wanted to see in Days and not giving a damn about most of the Org. But not all people share my interests.
The fact is, if they hadn't decided to go with the Xion-plot, they could have had so much more time and space to flesh out everything else. Then again, perhaps they would have screwed it up.
That option isn't only in existence but also seems very likely to me. And again, I'm of the opinion that them screwing up on the Org to begin with made them bring Xion in. If from the get go Nomura came up with the concept that a girl made Roxas leave the Org and not the Org itself, and so many of us see Luxord and Demyx, a third of the active Org members in Days, as filler characters, the bad writing and fail began long before Xion was ever conjured as a concept.
I think perhaps the problems stem from the fact that the woman who conceptualised and made most of the decisions regarding Xion and her story only had experience in hardcore yaoi game scenario writing before this game, where contrived and repetitive plots are the norm orz
The problem is that Nomura approved of that, but didn't try to do too much beyond it.
I mean, that exact same thing is part of Days' charm, imo - the attention given to the characters and relationships, even if the plot didn't have much to do with it. It's something we didn't get to see in any other KH game and it's something that was lacking. Part of why I love writing KH fanfiction so much is that I venture into the unexplored realm of insight and interaction development underneath the epicness. No more SRK falling to Darkness and having to save each other to show us they're friends, but a friendship that grew out of wasting time with other people, talking about nonsense and laughing together at the risk of falling off the ledge. That later on made it reasonable for me when the sh*t hit the fan and they broke apart over each other, even if how they broke apart is something I disagree with. But that's where handing out the tasks broke, me thinks, and there wasn't proper guidance and separation between plot and waff moments.