Struggle

Struggle is a popular sport played throughout Twilight Town. It consists of two players who battle with foam weapons in order to knock "Struggle Orbs" off of each other. The winner is the player with the most Orbs at the end of three minutes.

Story
Struggle is a popular sport in both Twilight Town and its simulation, and one of the main forms of recreation. The reigning champion is the gambler Setzer, who has become very popular with Twilight Town's women.

When Seifer's gang shows up to pick on Roxas and his friends, they fight through a Struggle battle. Roxas chooses from three different Struggle bats: a normal bat that increases his Strength, a bat with a handguard that increases his Defense, or a wand-shaped bat that increases his Magic.

Later that week, Roxas tries to earn money by doing odd jobs around town, one of them being to put up posters for the Struggle Tournament at the end of the summer.



As the winner of the Struggle Tournament, Roxas gets to take on the champion, Setzer. Setzer asks him to throw the match, but Roxas decides to play seriously, and wins the Champion Belt.

In the real Twilight Town, Seifer apparently won the Struggle tournament and became the new champion. When Sora returns to Twilight Town near the end of his journey, he can challenge Hayner, then Setzer, and finally Seifer in practice Struggle battles. Sora must defeat each opponent ten times to be able to challenge the next one. Some time after Xemnas's defeat, Hayner engages Seifer in a Struggle battle.

Rules
Each player begins with one hundred colored orbs, red or blue. Each time a participant is hit, they drop orbs of their color, which either player can pick up to increase their score. The players have three minutes to collect as many orbs as possible; they can also end the match early by collecting all one hundred orbs. In Sora's matches, he can also temporarily knock out the opponent by depleting their HP gauge.

In the Kingdom Hearts II manga, the the orbs are adhered to velco straps worn by the players.

Strategy
As Roxas does not have access to many abilities, his focus should be on simply acquiring more Struggle orbs than his opponent. Once he has the number advantage, he may continue fighting or simply retreat.

Sora, however, has access to many useful abilities like Draw and Trinity Limit. Trinity Limit can be used to immediately knock out the opponent, at which point they will drop three orbs per hit until they recover. When not dazed, the number of orbs the opponent's drop depends on the strength of the attack used on them, so combo finishers can be useful in emptying their stock.

Struggle