The Kingdom Hearts Series: KINGDOM HEARTS 4 ANNOUNCED! STAR WARS POTENTIALLY TEASED (page 175)

[KHCast]

Alright, so time to talk KH3. My thoughts

 

the story: Well, regarding the original stuff, it was alright. They had a lot of questions they needed to answer, and looks like Nomura for the most part did that. The ways in which things were done certainly come off either expected, or just conveniently done with little to answer as to why. (Like lingering will showing up and disappearing) the ending has me curious, but can’t say I’m super wtf about it. Both the epilogue and secret ending were enjoyable nonetheless. Basically, it didn’t break any new ground, but it does it’s job fairly well at keeping me invested. Side mention: Vanitas’s personality was fucking amazing here. Love how he’s basically gone insane

There's like no final Fantasy characters whatsoever, which is a fucking shame and considering Nomura DID say they’d show up in a special way, them not being in the story at all kinda hurt.

The Disney stuff is hit or miss. I generally liked going through the worlds, but the original plots were what shined the most due to not having to crunch down on pre existing material. Love San Fransokyo and how fucked up it starts getting towards the end regarding the dark baymax. And the monsters inc world captured the essence of the film perfectly all the while having its own story to tell after the events of the first film. 

Which brings me to the unoriginal stories which...are meh. Tangled is missing a bunch of context for the player for example. Like we see that rapunzel left the crown at the tower, which mother Gathal finds, and then later, with no context explaining how, she gives the bag and crown back to Flynn. Also considering the twins aren’t at all in the story, the context as to why he had to leave once he got the crown is lost. Flynn finding out rapunzel has magic hair is also lost in the story. 

for frozen, Hans is only in the story for 2 seconds, so Anna’s relationship with him was never dived into. It was better than tangled, but still annoyed me.

Then there’s the Caribbean...*sigh* now I like the world, and the original story moments added. Don’t get me wrong. But the main story in it? Based on at worlds end. Oh my god I don’t like it. First of all, we’re missing like 80% of the events going on. The movie basically is happening behind the scenes while Sora is off pirating. Wills goals to save his father are left out, and his whole betrayal for that matter is, calypso being brought back,  Elizabeth being the one to essentially send jack to the grave, fucking hell Davy Jones being a threat(he only shows up really at the very end.), etc. there’s so much that was never fledged out, and it distracts. 

OH and 100 acre wood is like a 10 minute thing. Wut.

Just, I get why they had to cut down on the stories, but man if this is what they had in mind, I’d have rather just original stories 

The gameplay is top notch imo, feels like a middle ground between 2 and 0.2. Only real complaint is that keyblade swapping doesn’t feel as smooth as I was hoping cause I sometimes have to hit the directional pad multiple times. I’m having a lot of fun with the varied gameplays going on in this game. Feels amazing though stringing combos and swapping when it works

Super disappointed that mysterious tower wasn’t playable as well as most of the original worlds, with twilight town only really having 2 sections. 

the visuals are fucking gorgeous, especially when it’s running at 60fps, and the music is top notch. The Caribbean and Monstropolis containing my favorites.

All in all, it lived up to most of my expectations, but when it disappointed, it really did, as there’s just so much potential here. 

Also they better not dlc the final fantasy stuff.

7 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Monsteropolis spoilers:

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Can we please talk about how Sully just totally fucking destroyed Vanitas in probably the best scene in this series

 

 

THIS. Got major avengers hulk/Loki vibes from this lol

[8ther]

 

Let's not forget Jack defeating Luxord by literally "breathing" on him, Then there's the scene with the Twilight Town trio getting the jump on Ansem SoD

As comical as this all is, it's hard to take ORG. XIII seriously in this game.

 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Just now, Kiggy Queen said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Let's not forget Jack defeating Luxord by literally "breathing" on him, Then there's the scene with the Twilight Town trio getting the jump on Ansem SoD

 

As comical as this all is, it's  hard to take ORG. XIII seriously in this game.

 

Nothing will top 

Spoiler

Woody roasting the fuck out of Young Xehanort by saying no one ever loved him.

 

[KHCast]

24 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Nothing will top 

  Hide contents

Woody roasting the fuck out of Young Xehanort by saying no one ever loved him.

 

Endgame spoilers

more fucked up when you realize the only one that did, eraqus, he killed.

[JosepHenry]

17 minutes ago, KHCast said:

Endgame spoilers

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more fucked up when you realize the only one that did, eraqus, he killed.

 

Spoiler

at least he had a happy ending even so (holy hell they look so good together is insane i ship the hell of this)

 

[Wraith]

I cried when this game was announced, but during the lead up I got less and less excited. It didn't hit me that I'd finally be playing it until a few hours before it happened. I got excited THEN, but it was also long apparent that I was a completely different person when this game was announced. This wasn't a Breath of the Wild case either where the game seemed to go exactly where I would wanted to go and be what I needed when it released. 

It was more like the opposite. I was wary of Kingdom Hearts 3 during the lead up. It became more and more apparent that it was far from what I thought a Kingdom Hearts 3 should look like. 

But hey, who gives a shit what a KH2 fanboy with issues seeing past that game? They're making Kingdom Hearts 3 now whether I like it or not, and I'm not the only person who ever liked this games. It's been 10 years. Things change. There's a whole new generation of fans to think about. It's time to judge this thing on it's own merits like it deserves. So Kingdom Hearts 3 isn't the KH2 follow up I wanted, but how good is it at being KH3? Have they created an action RPG that stands alongside the first 2 games as a third pillar?

 

Spoiler

I find it hard to judge individual aspects of this game because it's pretty much inconsistent in like every single thing it does. Story, voice acting, writing, combat, world design. There are parts that really hit it home in all of these categories imo. Enough to say that the game is worth playing and I liked it.

 

But god damn this game is a trashfire sometimes. I mean that with all sincerity. That's why it's hard to know where to begin. 

I do have to give the designers of this game one thing: This is probably THE most beautiful game I've ever played or close to it. SO MUCH work went into this thing on the art side of things and it really, REALLY delivers. The Disney characters look perfectly in tune with the films and even carry a lot of the same small mannerism and quirks. Woody and Buzz trot along as awkwardly as they did in their films. Jack keeps his odd drunken sway and facial twitches and tells. The Let It Go sequence looks 1:1 with the film.The sheer amount of weapons you can wield come with as variety of their own animations and they're a joy to watch in action. There's so many little touches like the way Sora reacts when he bumps into his party members during combat, letting them past him as if to say "whoops, sorry buddy!" This game is an artistic send up to Disney the likes of which I've never seen before. It feels like they prioritized doing right by them over their own shit sometimes which I appreciate.

One thing that sticks out to me though is the world design since that's the thing everyone's praising in this game. It's head over heels above KH2, for sure. The worlds felt lively and populated with interesting stuff to find all over. If I put in the game again it'll be to give those another pass because I've already heard about stuff I missed and I remember things that I haven't seen mentioned on the internet at all(Did nobody else find the treasure in The Carribean?) It had nice moments with...most of the characters too. The disney stuff feels less obligatory here and more made by people who are passionate about these films, and as someone who loves Disney movies that's great! This is the greatest part of this game to me, especially the Monster's Inc world which felt straight up like a scrapped sequence from the film or something. It just kept throwing new stuff at you and had so many gimmicks and moments to call it's own. I've seen the Tangled world get flack online for cutting the movie plot out for the most part, and I agree that's a shame but the seamless run through the forest to the castle town was a joy for me, seeing Rapunzel interact with nature for the first time in small ways and getting to contribute to that was nice. The world falls apart after that but the dancing minigame is fun. 

Toybox was the big setpiece world but I feel like we saw most of the good stuff in footage. I thought it was neat and creative but I didn't like how tanky the enemies were to try to force you onto the mechs. It just didn't have the same punch when I finally played it, but it's fun. 

The pirates world is mostly just minigames and gimmicks which I didn't like, and the Big Hero 6 world betrays the tighter design of the previous worlds for something that spreads itself too thin. Crossing it felt more like a chore . The most I liked it was the VR minigame. Arendelle felt unfinished with how little the Frozen cast was actually used but I enjoyed a world that cooled it with the cutscenes and just let me do my thing. 

The world list is kind of short and the last worlds are comprised of KH2 style battlefields so there's not much to say there other than "fucking lame" This game needed a Hollow Bastion or a World That Never Was that felt like a climactic romp.

One last thing that bugged me about the world design that was kind of subjective was that in making Sora so easy to move around they kind of made it boring to explore. The wall running thing just meant you had to point Sora at most things and he'd get to it. I'm always a fan of the platforming in KH1 but the simple challenge that provided was enough to make getting places interesting. Sora has all these new movement options but there's almost nowhere for the game to flex you in terms of how good you are at using them. KH2 had a much worse problem with this though so there's improvement at least. 

The combat is next. I gave up on this combat system being anything like 2's and I was right to. It's going for a completely different thing that's honestly kind of smart and fun sometimes. I embraced the floaty combat and instead tried to see how high into the air I could juggle enemies chaining together Sora's movement options and had some fun with it. The Keyblade transformations shake things up in a very good way along with the ability to pick 3 Keyblades and swap between them. No longer did a Keyblade feel useless as soon as I was done with the world. The one  I had the most time on for once was the basic Kingdom Key because Second Form is godly. I liked the Mirage staff a ton too. It was nice having access to projectiles outside of the magic system. 

Fighting enemies comes with a lot of problems though. The camera is pulled too close to Sora and this combined with the generally laggy as fuck attack animations means you're going to be hit off screen a lot. It'll rarely ever result in a death but I find it annoying losing health over something that's not my fault. The mobs in this game are too chaotic for the camera to handle and the lock on still doesn't make switching targets easy. I suspect that since it's really hard to actually die in this game most people won't have a problem but I was really kind of annoyed a lot of the time. This would be so much easier if you could cancel the animations on Sora's move sooner. There were plenty of times where I saw something in time to react to it but Sora was still finishing up an attack. 

 It doesn't help that I really can't name a single boss that I'd call good. A lot of them are giant, teleport around the screen, or do both of those things. The staggering problem from Birth By Sleep isn't completely gone either and it all adds up to make them kind of a pain to fight despite how much care you can see on the artist's side. The Keyblade Graveyard segment was fun for the sheer fanservice of it all, though. It was really cool to see basically the entire organization back with most of their attacks intact. That must have been a nightmare to deliver but I'm glad they did it. 

The final boss was pretty bad though. He had a few hard to react to attacks that he spammed over and over and he moved too fast for the camera to track properly. It felt very cheap despite the visuals. I much prefer what we got in the previous games when it comes to boss fights. I was pretty bummed about there not being a real secret boss like the PS2 games but I'm pretty convince I'd hate what they came up with now.

I'm really tired so I'll try to keep the story stuff short. I think the dialogue is a lot punchier in this game and the cutscenes in general are just more fun to watch due to the stronger animation. Sora's very expressive and excitable in a way that can't help but bring out the child in me. It's how I would react getting to hang out with these awesome characters. The only real problem I have here is that while the original stories they came up with are fun it just makes the stories that are gutted adaptions of the films that much worse. They didn't try at all with the Frozen characters which was surprising. Captain Jack was a lot of fun but they end up cutting most of At Worlds End for time which kind of defeats the point of adapting it, doesn't it?

 Whenever the game focuses on the original characters and the Kingdom Hearts extended universe the game loses a lot of it's spark for me.. That side of the game was better than I expected though: they tried to integrate it more with the Disney stuff and some of it was clever(the Unversed in the Monsters Inc world especially).The climax is kind of a mess that just starts out of nowhere and limps toward the finsh line but it had it's moments: Roxas returning to save his friends stuck out to me even if it kind of makes no sense. Sora's fever dream in The Final World was genuinely interesting to me. There are a lot of scenes that come off as weak or lacking punch or just not making a lot of sense. I can get into more of that in the morning, though.

This is ticking out to me right now so I'll say trying to spin Xehanort was a tragic figure after everything was a mistake, though. That took me out of whatever emotional impact putting him down would have had. You can't honestly say that he's been trying to rid the world of darkness when he's the main figure responsible for it's spread to begin with. He's not a particularly great character, but he worked as an entertaining one until they tried that. 

The ending is bullshit but it's the kind of bullshit I should expect from Kingdom Hearts so I don't really know what to say about it. I'm honestly shocked that they took the game that was supposed to be closure to a lot of people and pulled that one, but like..I shouldn't be, right? It's Kingdom Hearts. They live for this. 

Overall I don't regret playing Kingdom Hearts 3 but I feel like it comes up short in a lot of ways. I imagine they're planning on fixing it in some add on content like the last 3 times, but I don't want to move over to anticipating that just yet. I'm taking this game as it is right now, and it reads as just okay to me. It doesn't have the refined action gameplay or insane content of KH2 or the atmosphere and novelty of KH1. It has some things over the other two games but it feels like the series neglected to evolve in the ways that really matter to me. There's potential here, but it won't be seen through until whatever the next project is. I..don't really want to think about that right now, lmao. I'm burned out.
 

 

[KHCast]

37 minutes ago, Wraith said:

 

This

 is ticking out to me right now so I'll say trying to spin Xehanort was a tragic figure after everything was a mistake, though. That took me out of whatever emotional impact putting him down would have had. You can't honestly say that he's been trying to rid the world of darkness when he's the main figure responsible for it's spread to begin with. He's not a particularly great character, but he worked as an entertaining one until they tried that. 

Best part was

 

when they tried spinning xemnas and ansem as characters to sympathize with. Like...what?

i mean I could understand it with Vanitas, dude wasn’t exactly giving a shit about Xehanorts plot. He just wanted to be whole since he didn’t like just being darkness. And that drove him to insanity. So I felt for him as I felt he was written much better here than in past games. 

But xemnas and ansem? They fucking killed people with no reason aside from “I’m evil harhar”. Vanitas at least had something to go off of to make him come off somewhat interesting.

 

but yeah, not often I do this regarding KH with you, but I’ll agree on much of what you’ve said. It certainly doesn’t live up totally to what I was expecting or even wanting, but as a game and what it offers by itself without comparing, it certainky is fun and has its shining moments. Certainly not a bad game, and I’d say it deserves the positive reception it’s getting, but it’s not OMG PERFECT AMAZING BEATS EVERY GAME(tho I enjoy it more than kh1.)

 

Probably my favorite worlds ended up being BH6 and Monsters. The former because I like the mini sandbox style and story for it, and the latter for its music, story, and world design. The carribean would have been up there, had the story not annoyed me to no end with how phoned in it came off(though that ending cgi scene was amazing. And seeing Sora get fucking pissed at Davy Jones I liked.) I liked the ship gameplay, and large world of isles to explore, even the swimming sections.(also why tf can Sora talk under water?)

 

edit: Oh and that Aqua segment. Yeah that was just 0.2 gameplay, so nothing too special to write home about. Also was hoping we’d see some closure/discussion about the events of chain of memories before the transformation, but guess not?  Again, I’m with you on how hit or miss this plot is. There’s just so much I feel could have been further elaborated instead of feeling like they were going down a checklist quickly if things to explain and show

 

[Big Panda]

The adapting of the Tangled world is pretty shoddy. I even noticed a bit of movie-lifted dialogue in the scene where Rapunzel and Gothal reunite that doesn’t work with the changes the game made

 

In the movie, the twins show up to chase Rapunzel, and Gothal appears, knocking them both out. In the game, Marluxia sends his nobodies after her instead, and Gothel comes in and does away with them. Despite this change, Gothal still says afterward “let’s go before they come to”.

Really? They couldn’t have changed it to “let’s go before they come back” or “before more show up”?

[Rowl]

@Wraith Those are very fair criticisms of the game. But I'm not surprised that so many of you can be disappointed with KH3. It is a game with very, very high expectations. After all, so many of you have been waiting for this game for over 10 years. That is a long time to get your hopes and dreams up. 

I personally kinda lost interest in the KH games after KH2. And KH2 isn't even really that fun for me to be honest. The story kinda is a complete mess, and after seeing the ending it isn't really that satisfying for me. Turning all those horrible people into tragic figures, that have destroyed whole worlds, ruined the lives of so many people? It doesn't make any sense. 

[Big Panda]

15 hours ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

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Voice Actors are heavily more respected in Japan, to the point sometimes roles will be retired as opposed to recasted to honour the original actor, so it's possible they simply didn't recast Phil out of respect for the original actor.

 

Really? Because I’ve seen a number of examples in Japanese media that imply the contrary is true.

[Nix]

10 hours ago, KHCast said:

Best part was

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when they tried spinning xemnas and ansem as characters to sympathize with. Like...what?

i mean I could understand it with Vanitas, dude wasn’t exactly giving a shit about Xehanorts plot. He just wanted to be whole since he didn’t like just being darkness. And that drove him to insanity. So I felt for him as I felt he was written much better here than in past games. 

But xemnas and ansem? They fucking killed people with no reason aside from “I’m evil harhar”. Vanitas at least had something to go off of to make him come off somewhat interesting.

 

Spoiler

The funny thing is, I actually found Xemnas and the original Origination XIII a tad sympathetic in their quest to get back their hearts and actually feel something again.  What they're doing is wrong, but I could certainly understand why they're doing what they're doing.  It's a bit more tragic how off the mark they were when Axel found a heart by making a connection to Roxas.  I appreciated what Kingdom Hearts 2 (and CoM for that matter) did to expand upon the world and establish some more nuance in its themes of light vs dark and good vs evil, in how the darkness might not be inherently evil and stuff.

Then DDD came by and threw a lot of it out the window.

But for real though, adding some sympathy those guys is like, small time compared to what they try to pull with Xehanort himself though lmao.  

bruh, the reason there's so much darkness in the world is because you were murdering people and entire worlds to find Kingdom Hearts/make 2 more Kingdom Hearts what the hell are you on about 

 

[Radiant Hero Ike]

So uh, without spoiling anything (I'm on San Fransokyo), how do you unlock the secret ending?

[Big Panda]

20 minutes ago, Radiant Hero Ike said:

So uh, without spoiling anything (I'm on San Fransokyo), how do you unlock the secret ending?

I think all you have to do is find all of the lucky emblems.

[Nix]

32 minutes ago, Ernest the Panda said:

I think all you have to do is find all of the lucky emblems.

The amount of emblems you need to find depends on which difficulty you're playing.  On Beginner you have to find 90, Standard 60, and on Proud you need to find 30.

 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

15 hours ago, Kiggy Queen said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Let's not forget Jack defeating Luxord by literally "breathing" on him, Then there's the scene with the Twilight Town trio getting the jump on Ansem SoD

As comical as this all is, it's hard to take ORG. XIII seriously in this game.

 

Being a

Spoiler

POTC and Jack Sparrow

fan, that was precious in so many ways. But yeah, the threat does feel a bit mitigated here and there.

I'll admit, in some ways, KH3 does feel like it's stuck with the standards of the early 2000s for better or for worse.

[Radiant Hero Ike]

9 minutes ago, Nix said:

The amount of emblems you need to find depends on which difficulty you're playing.  On Beginner you have to find 90, Standard 60, and on Proud you need to find 30.

 

Oh thank God I'm on Proud Mode. Whew.

Speaking of which this is the easiest KH game I've played so far. I've used two Moogle Coins and I lost a race, but aside from that I haven't gotten a game over yet. I died a lot in the other Kingdom Hearts games on the hard difficulties, even in my recent replays.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I'm quite honestly perfectly fine with how OXIII was portrayed in the scenes of this game:

Spoiler

Literally so many of the games have the OXIII characters not once getting to interact with the Disney worlds or characters, constantly dicking around with dark portals, appearing only to give Sora some dumb lecture about this or that. I actually like the fact they're being at least *some* what more realistic on how some of these characters would react to these emo kids running around in black hoods.

Vanitas - in all honesty - could've wiped the total floor with Sully, but Sully and Mike worked together to get him off guard while he was too busy prattling on and trying to force Ven out of Sora that Sully effectively managed to crush him long enough to throw him through multiple doors. If Vanitas managed to open a dark portal back, and attacked full on without surprise being a factor, I fully believe he would've at least put up a much bigger fight.

Luxord works IMO because of it tying into the story. Earlier on, he'd been abusing Pirate Laws in order to completely trick Jack into revealing the location of what they were looking for and then proceeded to sick heartless and nobodies against his allies so he could get a distraction to steal the box, only for Jack to trick him later to get him off the ship.

Young Xehanort - I mean I joke about it, but I think it's perfectly good how he was handled. He fucked around with Woody and Co's heads, trying to destroy their connections, and then forcefully take over them to use as puppets. Having Woody of all characters - the guy who's most known for being loyal to his friends and for his love of Andy stand up to destroy Xehanort's believes and literally stamp out the darkness surrounding them.

I think the reason these work so well isn't some idea of "lol these powerful characters getting wiped out so easily by disney characters", but rather it's the fact that all of the Disney characters were considered as Organisation pawns for so long, and totally underestimated. Luxord didn't immediately try to fight Jack because he believed that he could still abuse the pirate laws, and on top of that, he outsmarted him earlier. He likely thought he'd get away with the same tactic once again. Also keep in mind what Luxord told Sora and co after he tricked Jack. "No, I outsmarted him". What does Jack do later? Literally outsmarts Luxord by playing on how underestimated he is, getting him in place, and then knocking him off the ship.

Vanitas hasn't even fought any of the Disney characters before, but you see him forcefully separate Sully and Mike from Sora and crew, because he knows Sora and co can be a problem, whilst he probably didn't think any less of these random monsters helping them, and then it came back to bite him in the ass when it turns out "Oh wait, Sully's a giant strong monster capable of literally crushing me". It also helps that he likely didn't expect that someone of Sully's size would be capable of trying a counter-attack without him immediately seeing and countering it. Keep in mind, Mike had to literally direct Sully to use Scary Feet to sneak up on him.

Young Xehanort is pretty self-explanatory from what I said above and is forced into a retreat more than actually being beaten so I'll leave that there.

The point I'm making is - we seem to forget - especially because of how much the Disney worlds sucked in previous games that these characters are pretty fucking strong, or smart, or what have you. They're very capable of fighting the heartless and nobodies along with Sora in-game, and then they're just pushed out of the story yet again by the next OXIII cutscene, with exception to Beast. I actually like that they're showing this time around that under the right circumstances - the Disney cast are actually pretty capable in their own right and able to help Sora as much as he helps them, and the key factor I keep seeing throughout the game for this is OXIII being too knowing of the previous titles in the series and trying to completely undercut and ignore the actual Disney cast to focus on Sora, or their own goals, only for it to backfire because this time, the Disney cast are actually smart enough to employ tactics to outsmart them.

 

[Wraith]

9 hours ago, Wraith said:

I cried when this game was announced, but during the lead up I got less and less excited. It didn't hit me that I'd finally be playing it until a few hours before it happened. I got excited THEN, but it was also long apparent that I was a completely different person when this game was announced. This wasn't a Breath of the Wild case either where the game seemed to go exactly where I would wanted to go and be what I needed when it released. 

It was more like the opposite. I was wary of Kingdom Hearts 3 during the lead up. It became more and more apparent that it was far from what I thought a Kingdom Hearts 3 should look like. 

But hey, who gives a shit what a KH2 fanboy with issues seeing? They're making Kingdom Hearts 3 now whether I like it or not, and I'm not the only person who ever liked this games. It's been 10 years. Things change. There's a whole new generation of fans to think about. It's time to judge this thing on it's own merits like it deserves. So Kingdom Hearts 3 isn't the KH2 follow up I wanted, but how good is it at being KH3? Have they created an action RPG that stands alongside the first 2 games as a third pillar?

 

  Reveal hidden contents

nah

I find it hard to judge individual aspects of this game because it's pretty much inconsistent in like every single thing it does. Story, voice acting, writing, combat, world design. There are parts that really hit it home in all of these categories imo. Enough to say that the game is worth playing and I liked it.

 

But god damn this game is a trashfire sometimes. I mean that with all sincerity. That's why it's hard to know where to begin. 

I do have to give the designers of this game one thing: This is probably THE most beautiful game I've ever played or close to it. SO MUCH work went into this thing on the art side of things and it really, REALLY delivers. The Disney characters look perfectly in tune with the films and even carry a lot of the same small mannerism and quirks. Woody and Buzz trot along as awkwardly as they did in their films. Jack keeps his odd drunken sway and facial twitches and tells. The Let It Go sequence looks 1:1 with the film.The sheer amount of weapons you can wield come with as variety of their own animations and they're a joy to watch in action. There's so many little touches like the way WSora reacts when he bumps into his party memebers during combat, letting them past him as if to say "whoops, sorry buddy!" This game is an artistic send up to Disney the likes of which I've never seen before. It feels like they prioritized doing right by them over their own shit sometimes which I appreciate.

One thing that sticks out to me though is the world design since that's the thing everyone's praising in this game. It's head over heels above KH2, for sure. The worlds felt lively and populated with interesting stuff to find all over. If I put in the game again it'll be to give those another pass because I've already heard about stuff I missed and I remember things that I haven't seen mentioned on the internet at all(Did nobody else find the treasure in The Carribean?) It had nice moments with...most of the characters too. The disney stuff feels less obligatory here and more made by people who are passionate about these films, and as someone who loves Disney movies that's great! This is the greatest part of this game to me, especially the Monster's Inc world which felt straight up like a scrapped sequence from the film or something. It just kept throwing new stuff at you and had so many gimmicks and moments to call it's own. I've seen the Tangled world get flack online for cutting the movie plot out for the most part, and I agree that's a shame but the seamless run through the forest to the castle town was a joy for me, seeing Rapunzel interact with nature for the first time in small ways and getting to contribute to that was nice. The world falls apart after that but the dancing minigame is fun. 

Toybox was the big setpiece world but I feel like we saw most of the good stuff in footage. I thought it was neat and creative but I didn't like how tanky the enemies were to try to force you onto the mechs. It just didn't have the same punch when I finally played it, but it's fun. 

The pirates world is mostly just minigames and gimmicks which I didn't like, and the Big Hero 6 world betrays the tighter design of the previous worlds for something that spreads itself too thin. Crossing it felt more like a chore . The most I liked it was the VR minigame. Arrendale felt unfinished with how little the Frozen cast was actually used but I enjoyed a world that cooled it with the cutscenes and just let me do my thing. 

The world list is kind of short and the last worlds are comprised of KH2 style battlefields so there's not much to say there other than "fucking lame" This game needed a Hollow Bastion or a World That Never Was that felt like a climactic romp.

One last thing that bugged me about the world design that was kind of subjective was that in making Sora so easy to move around they kind of made it boring to explore. The wall running thing just meant you had to point Sora at most things and he'd get to it. I'm always a fan of the platforming in KH1 but the simple challenge that provided was enough to make getting places interesting. Sora has all these new movement options but there's almost nowhere for the game to flex you in terms of how good you are at using them. KH2 had a much worse problem with this though so there's improvement at least. 

The combat is next. I gave up on this combat system being anything like 2's and I was right to. It's going for a completely different thing that's honestly kind of smart and fun sometimes. I embraced the floatyness and instead tried to see how high into the air I could juggle enemies chaining together Sora's movement options and had some fun with it. The Keyblade transformations shake things up in a very good way along with the ability to pick 3 Keyblades and swap between them. No longer did a Keyblade feel useless as soon as I was done with the world. The one  I had the most time on for once was the basic Kingdom Key because Second Form is godly. I liked the Mirage staff a ton too. It was nice having access to projectiles outside of the magic system. 

Fighting enemies comes with a lot of problems though. The camera is pulled too close to Sora and this combined with the generally laggy as fuck attack animations means you're going to be hit off screen a lot. It'll rarely ever result in a death but I find it annoying losing health over something that's not my fault. The mobs in this game are too chaotic for the camera to handle and the lock on still doesn't make switching targets easy. I suspect that since it's really hard to actually die in this game most people won't have a problem but I was really kind of annoyed a lot of the time. This would be so much easier if you could cancel the animations on Sora's move sooner. There were plenty of times where I saw something in time to react to it but Sora was still finishing up an attack. 

 It doesn't help that I really can't name a single boss that I'd call good. A lot of them are giant, teleport around the screen, or do both of those things. The staggering problem from Birth By Sleep isn't completely gone either and it all adds up to make them kind of a pain to fight despite how much care you can see on the artist's side. The Keyblade Graveyard segment was fun for the sheer fanservice of it all, though. It was really cool to see basically the entire organization back with most of their attacks intact. That must have been a nightmare to deliver but I'm glad they did it. 

The final boss was pretty bad though. He had a few hard to react to attacks that he spammed over and over and he moved too fast for the camera to track properly. It felt very cheap despite the visuals. I much prefer what we got in the previous games when it comes to boss fights. I was pretty bummed about there not being a real secret boss like the PS2 games but I'm pretty convince I'd hate what they came up with now.

I'm really tired so I'll try to keep the story stuff short. I think the dialogue is a lot punchier in this game and the cutscenes in general are just more fun to watch due to the stronger animation. Sora's very expressive and excitable in a way that can't help but bring out the child in me. It's how I would react getting to hang out with these awesome characters. The only real problem I have here is that while the original stories they came up with are fun it just makes the stories that are gutted adaptions of the films that much worse. They didn't try at all with the Frozen characters which was surprising. Captain Jack was a lot of fun but they end up cutting most of At Worlds End for time which kind of defeats the point of adapting it, doesn't it?

 Whenever the game focuses on the original characters and the Kingdom Hearts extended universe the game loses a lot of it's spark for me.. That side of the game was better than I expected though: they tried to integrate it more with the Disney stuff and some of it was clever(the Unversed in the Monsters Inc world especially).The climax is kind of a mess that just starts out of nowhere and limps toward the finsh line but it had it's moments: Roxas returning to save his friends stuck out to me even if it kind of makes no sense. Sora's fever dream in The Final World was genuinely interesting to me. There are a lot of scenes that come off as weak or lacking punch or just not making a lot of sense. I can get into more of that in the morning, though.

This is ticking out to me right now so I'll say trying to spin Xehanort was a tragic figure after everything was a mistake, though. That took me out of whatever emotional impact putting him down would have had. You can't honestly say that he's been trying to rid the world of darkness when he's the main figure responsible for it's spread to begin with. He's not a particularly great character, but he worked as an entertaining one until they tried that. 

The ending is bullshit but it's the kind of bullshit I should expect from Kingdom Hearts so I don't really know what to say about it. I'm honestly shocked that they took the game that was supposed to be closure to a lot of people and pulled that one, but like..I shouldn't be, right? It's Kingdom Hearts. They live for this. 

Overall I don't regret playing Kingdom Hearts 3 but I feel like it comes up short in a lot of ways. I imagine they're planning on fixing it in some add on content like the last 3 times, but I don't want to move over to anticipating that just yet. I'm taking this game as it is right now, and it reads as just okay to me. It doesn't have the refined action gameplay or insane content of KH2 or the atmosphere and novelty of KH1. It has some things over the other two games but it feels like the series neglected to evolve in the ways that really matter to me. There's potential here, but it won't be seen through until whatever the next project is. I..don't really want to think about that right now, lmao. I'm burned out.
 

 

Added a paragraph to this post to give the game some undue credit but I'll say it again: This is one of the most beautiful games I've ever played for how well it runs. I never dreamed this would be 60 FPS on a base PS4 but here we are. 

 

3 hours ago, Nix said:

  Reveal hidden contents

The funny thing is, I actually found Xemnas and the original Origination XIII a tad sympathetic in their quest to get back their hearts and actually feel something again.  What they're doing is wrong, but I could certainly understand why they're doing what they're doing.  It's a bit more tragic how off the mark they where when Axel found a heart by making a connection to Roxas.  I appreciated what Kingdom Hearts 2 (and CoM for that matter) did to expand upon the world and establish some more nuance in its themes of light vs dark and good vs evil, in how the darkness might not be inherently evil and stuff.

Then DDD came by and threw a lot of it out the window.

But for real though, adding some sympathy those guys is like, small time compared to what they try to pull with Xehanort himself though lmao.  

bruh, the reason there's so much darkness in the world is because you were murdering people and entire worlds to find Kingdom Hearts/make 2 more Kingdom Hearts what the hell are you on about 

 

I had nearly forgotten about this because of how far along I went with this game on it's bullshit but yeah: Kingdom Hearts 2 essentially works as a complete story so every attempt to open a character arc or plot thread back up is a risk and a lot of it wasn't worth it. Trying to make every Org. member sympathetic when I already thought their motivation was solid the way it was was dumb, but they could have at least come up with something that makes sense.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

3 hours ago, Ernest the Panda said:

Really? Because I’ve seen a number of examples in Japanese media that imply the contrary is true.

Not to my knowledge? From what I've heard, Voice Actors are widely more respected in Japan than around here, which is why a ton of Japanese VAs will tend to remain in their roles for multiple years, and through different projects including games, movies, shows etc. 

This isn't the case for every show. If it's a seriously critical character who's passing would stick out like a sore thumb, then they'll likely get replaced, an example being Bulma from Dragon Ball, since her character in general is so critical to the series. 

Spoiler

However, Phil very obviously isn't such a critical character to the series, only appearing in one world and his only real story value would be the validation of the true heroes line, which you could sort of get away with through Herc anyways, it's likely they opted to just honour the original VA as opposed to replacing him outright.

 

[Meta77]

Wait how does someone ship 2 friends. Not everyone needs a ship. They were just long time friends

that like playing chess a lot

[Wraith]

4 hours ago, Rowl said:

@Wraith Those are very fair criticisms of the game. But I'm not surprised that so many of you can be disappointed with KH3. It is a game with very, very high expectations. After all, so many of you have been waiting for this game for over 10 years. That is a long time to get your hopes and dreams up. 

I personally kinda lost interest in the KH games after KH2. And KH2 isn't even really that fun for me to be honest. The story kinda is a complete mess, and after seeing the ending it isn't really that satisfying for me. Turning all those horrible people into tragic figures, that have destroyed whole worlds, ruined the lives of so many people? It doesn't make any sense. 

I mean disappointed isn't really the word I would use. I think it's pretty solid fun. Just takes some turns and makes some decisions I didn't like. It's about what I expected to be honest.

[KHCast]

One thing I find myself feeling a few times is underwhelmed, not so much disappointed. Like it doesn’t feel truly like Kingdom Hearts THREE, just another KH game that seems to finally Dawn the 3 on it. Like 

where’s the End of the World/TWNTW equivalent? Or coliseum battles of some sort? The original world in general really lacked anything valuable. Or final fantasy characters? Heck outside the portals and secret boss, there’s not really anything substantial. There’s no cavern of remembrance like area to challenge you. Heck, the fact so many areas in the game seem to only be accessible/playable through story segments (like the bridge in San Fransokyo, or the boarded pirate ships) really took the wind out of me a bit. What’s really frustrating is that this is a great fun game most of the time that almost pass 2, so these issues come off all the more glaring/annoying. I can’t with all honesty say this feels entirely  like a follow up to the numbered games. I mean it does a few things better, but when it doesn’t, it’s really apparent.

but that’s all if I’m comparing it to previous games. By itself, I don’t feel that disappointed if at all. It’s a very fun game with a lot to offer and go back to regardless. It, like Wraith said, just does different things, which are hit or miss 

 

[KHCast]

Think I just stumbled across the most bullshit paradox in KH3.

 

k, so we learned that the members of the true organization that were ex-organization became somebody’s again and willingly decided to become nobodies again and got Norted correct? Well apparently that’s not entirely  true, as Roxas here explains how these members (or at least most of them) came from different points in time and were using replicas to exist there with bodies. K couple issues here 

1. Why then don’t they leave replica bodies upon defeat like dark Riku?

2. If Marluxia here for example came from the time of chain of memories, he shouldn’t have any memory of being defeated by Sora, cause this would be pre-defeat, so why is it implied he has a personal vengeance against Sora for whooping him?

3. So plucking these guys from time is cool and all(sarcasm), but does that mean they just don’t exist now within their respective time periods? It’s implied they have to eventually return back right? 3D establishes there’s some time limit. 

4. They needed hearts to travel through time didn’t they? So did Xehanort bring them to the current time without them knowing? Cause I doubt they knew during CoM that they had hearts

[Ryannumber1gamer]

32 minutes ago, KHCast said:

 

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1. Why then don’t they leave replica bodies upon defeat like dark Riku?

Spoiler

Riku was a special case, the actual Riku Replica, who's heart seemed to have been residing within Riku since his voyage into the Realm of Darkness forcefully attacked the replica and dragged the body out. It seemed this was a second replica created by Vexen, and Riku just ripped the Xehanort portion out of the body, leaving it empty for Namine. 

 

Spoiler

2. If Marluxia here for example came from the time of chain of memories, he shouldn’t have any memory of being defeated by Sora, cause this would be pre-defeat, so why is it implied he has a personal vengeance against Sora for whooping him?

 3. So plucking these guys from time is cool and all(sarcasm), but does that mean they just don’t exist now within their respective time periods? It’s implied they have to eventually return back right? 3D establishes there’s some time limit. 

 4. They needed hearts to travel through time didn’t they? So did Xehanort bring them to the current time without them knowing? Cause I doubt they knew during CoM that they had hearts

Spoiler

Bringing these together as they're tied - they aren't from before the Organisation's fall. Axel, and the others who awoke in Hollow Bastion comment on the fact they can't find the other members who should've been recreated there, including Isa and Evan. From this, it's incredibly likely Xigbar and Xehanort had already raided the place for vessels and chose them for whatever reason, with Vexen and Demyx chosen as back-up players, but Vexen in particular being needed for the replicas. If I recall correctly, there's a scene in Dream Drop Distance where Xehanort and Xigbar have found those who were recompleted, and Xigbar tells him to take his pick.

What he didn't count on was this time, the OXIII members have enough of a free will to have their own wants and needs, as shown by Vexen backstabbing Xehanort later. In short, Marluxia remembers as this was post-defeat. The only ones plucked from time seem to be Ansem, Young Xehanort, and Xemnas. Or even possibly Young Xehanort is the only one and Ansem/Xemnas have been recreated somehow, idk. All I know is the OXIII members are definitely after Sora killed them all.

 

[Sean]

I finished the first world in KH3. So far my impressions are that it has by far the best world design I've ever seen in a Kingdom Hearts game. I loved exploring Olympus and checking out every corner of the map. I liked that it doesn't railroad you into one set path and there are multiple ways to get to your goal at the top of the mountain and the realm of the gods. Exploring the city after you complete the world is also great, I wasn't at all expecting it to be changed up to such a degree and it makes it worth exploring a second time.

On the other hand the combat is not good. It's a downgrade from KH2FM's in every way, and there's so many different types of command reactions that the game hands you for doing the most basic shit. Forms, attractions, limits, buffed spells, dream eaters. I'm sure I'm forgetting like a bunch more. There's WAY too much shit and it doesn't feel balanced at all. They give you so many different toys to play with that it feels impossible to lose almost any battle, especially when you can stockpile them and chain them for an immediate win. Hell, I think KH1's combat is a lot better and more refined than KH3's. Movement doesn't feel good either - Sora's handling reminds me a lot of Sonic's from the boost games, almost like a racecar with too high acceleration or something. I knew I was in for a bad time when I replayed 0.2 after 2FM, but I was hoping they would have improved it in some meaningful way and bring it closer to 2FM's feel and depth. I was wrong to get my hopes up; compared to some games that came out 15 years ago it plays disappointingly worse.

Also I'm playing on proud mode, which I've never done for any past KH games (I attempted it on KH1 PS2 and gave up due to its sluggish combat). So why the fuck am I having an easier time with this game than I ever did on standard mode for the past two main games? The difficulty is an absolute fucking joke, and despite being on the hardest setting I feel like I'm on autopilot the entire time.