Jump to content
Awoo.

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


KHCast

Recommended Posts

I’m sorry but I couldn’t help but laugh throughout  this. I like that the games getting a lot of promotion in different ways, but I seriously cringed watching this lol

speaking of promotion 

 

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Aw, come on, that was adorable!

Okay, so—hot take: what if Gilgamesh was a secret boss, but—he were to be voiced by Jim Cummings.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/11/2019 at 7:53 PM, Jingilator said:

Aw, come on, that was adorable!

Okay, so—hot take: what if Gilgamesh was a secret boss, but—he were to be voiced by Jim Cummings.

Better yet, why not bring back DiMaggio? He doesn't seem to be doing much after the ends of both Futurama and Adventure Time, so why not? He was in KH2 as some of Barbossa's crew.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Speaking ofFF, I’m still a little surprised Bahamut wasn’t finally used as a summon considering he was attempted way back in KH1. Ah well, at least he shows up in toy box 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You know I noticed something about selfie mode. When you use the camera in Arendelle, Corona, or the Caribbean the characters there will appropriately ask what your phone is since their movies take place in eras before photography. However if you aim the camera at Hercules or Eugene, they’ll actually strike a pose and smile, implying that they know that what you using is meant for taking pictures.

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 minutes ago, Johnny Boy said:

You know I noticed something about selfie mode. When you use the camera in Arendelle, Corona, or the Caribbean the characters there will appropriately ask what your phone is since their movies take place in eras before photography. However if you aim the camera at Hercules or Eugene, they’ll actually strike a pose and smile, implying that they know that what you using is meant for taking pictures.

Is there a glitch so you can't take a good picture of Eugene, so his nose is never right? If not then the photo mode is a failure. 😛

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So what’re all your guys thoughts on Dunkey’s review? Seems to be sparking up a lot of buzz.  (I mean we have guys like Erika doing react videos to it) Lotta comments supporting his stance saying the games dog shit, and a lotta people on the opposite side saying dunkeys biased towards these styles of games so shouldn’t be taken as some mediator review.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not sure how serious I should take Dunkey as a reviewer, but he brought up some good points. KH3 isn't a bad game, but it is also not perfect. It is basically more a movie than a video game and we can all agree that the story in KH is the biggest part of all the KH games after the first one.

Sometimes I think KH would work better as a TV show or a movie series rather than a video game.  

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Personally I didn’t find the cutscene volume anymore abundant than past games like 3D, and given it was the climax of a saga and thus needed to answer a lot of questions and close up Xehanort’s arc, expected a lot of cutscenes. That said, even by jrpg standards, I’d say 3 needed a bit more meat and depth to it gameplay wise to counter the cutscenes. Especially for people that didn’t care or enjoy kh’s story in any fashion, or play every past installment. But personally, this wasn’t a game breaker or huge problem.

Dunkey also seems to stoke fire on this idea this was expected to be the last kh game which simply isn’t true and has never been true. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Based solely on the score, I think it’s total bull. To give a fair idea of what his score is comparing Kingdom Hearts 3 to in terms of quality, the other games to get a similar score was Metal Gear Survive, and Mass Effect Andromeda. The former being a soulless money grubbing insult of a husk, whilst the latter is a broken, rushed mess that destroys the reputation of a good RPG series.

Kingdom Hearts 3 has its flaws, but 1/5?? Even with the few valid points he makes, I legit think it’s totally ludicrous to compare this game to such things, that isn’t helped by the fact from what I’ve read, Dunkey is very heavily biased against JPRGs in the first place.

  • Fist Bump 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kingdom Hearts 3 isn't at all similar to the other jrpgs he played  and hated so I'm not sure why that keeps getting brought up. He hates the game largely for things unique to it. 

Anyway I think the review brought up good points so it's whatever. I'm not sure why people are bothered when these are problems with the game that have been pointed out since launch. I kept this to myself but I honestly found myself kinda annoyed at the 9/10 reviews from mainstream outlets because it felt like they were handling the game with kids gloves so the fans wouldn't get angry.

The only thing I take issue with out of that whole situation was Dunkey retweeting angry Kingdom Hearts fans so his fans would dunk on them but he stopped pretty quickly when he realized how nasty that would get. 

 

  • Thumbs Up 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Wraith said:

I'm not sure why people are bothered

Calling it a 1/5 on par with Mass Effect Andromeda will usually do that. I mean idk this doesn’t at all feel like outright shit. My main beef is how he seems to dig at this game incredibly hard compared to his other reviews. Like, this ain’t a F. At worst like a C-, at best a solid B

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Kingdom Hearts 3 isn't at all similar to the other jrpgs he played  and hated so I'm not sure why that keeps getting brought up. He hates the game largely for things unique to it. 

Anyway I think the review brought up good points so it's whatever. I'm not sure why people are bothered when these are problems with the game that have been pointed out since launch. I kept this to myself but I honestly found myself kinda annoyed at the 9/10 reviews from mainstream outlets because it felt like they were handling the game with kids gloves so the fans wouldn't get angry.

The only thing I take issue with out of that whole situation was Dunkey retweeting angry Kingdom Hearts fans so his fans would dunk on them but he stopped pretty quickly when he realized how nasty that would get. 

 

Except it isn’t a case of people being bothered with the problems related to the game, A lot of people who still enjoy 3, myself included have a bucket list of problems wrong with the game that shouldn’t be present, and are, but as KHCast said above, comparing it to some of the low effort, broken, buggy and money grubbing messes that have come out in recent years, and making the bold claim that something clearly a lot of time, effort, money, and passion is on that level is absolutely ludicrous and is probably what pisses so many people off.

Kingdom Hearts 3 might have issues and might not be 9/10 material, but the same way you disagree with that score and the reviewers giving those scores, 1/5 is insanely low, especially when you get an idea of the other games he considers on that scale, and a pretty valid reason to disagree and call out his scoring of it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, KHCast said:

Calling it a 1/5 on par with Mass Effect Andromeda will usually do that. 

I still can't comprehend being being bothered by that though. Yall are saying 'It can't be as bad as mass effect andromeda' based on shit you heard about that game vs someone who played every game in the discussion. Like do you know how ridiculous that sounds? Lol

At the end of the day it's just one person's opinion too. The game is a critical darling and already made its money back. There's more shit exactly like this coming. It's really hard for me to see why this is significant aside from affecting online discourse about the game that I avoid taking part in anyway. Hell if it gets more people talking about this games problems it might be a good thing. 

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, Wraith said:

I still can't comprehend being being bothered by that though. Yall are saying 'It can't be as bad as mass effect andromeda' based on shit you heard about that game vs someone who played every game in the discussion. Like do you know how ridiculous that sounds? Lol

At the end of the day it's just one person's opinion too. The game is a critical darling and already made its money back. There's more shit exactly like this coming. It's really hard for me to see why this is significant aside from affecting online discourse about the game that I avoid taking part in anyway. Hell if it gets more people talking about this games problems it might be a good thing. 

It’s one persons review sure, but I just don’t think his complaints warrant a flat out 1 whether we compare it or not to games of that caliber he’s reviewed. It’s like what Ryan said, much like how you don’t like that critics are rating so high, people should be able to feel the same for this. Doesn’t help how inconsistent he is with his reviews. I just after watching it don’t get why his hate boner for 3 is so big compared to other games he’s deemed as bad. Like his complaints amount to “bad story + easy and flashy” both valid, but that bad? I mean I guess if you had your expectations set since the games announcement.

Sure discussion on problems are good, but this is fucking Dunkey. You really think his fanbase or content encourages that usually? Cause most of what I’ve seen in support of Dunkey typically amounts to “yeah this is dogshit, avoid it like the plague it’s so cringe lol” there usually isn’t much room for discrouse and reasonable rebuttals or discussions of its flaws provided by him. Guys a troll a lot of times that prank calls and messes with people, and stokes fires(said retweets he was doing being a perfect example.). 

  • Thumbs Up 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I ultimately don't feel all that strongly about this so there's no point in me getting into a debate about it. All I can say is that the score is way less important than what he's actually saying, as Nast pointed out.

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Then in that case, simply looking at his complaints I can agree to a degree. I don’t think it warrants “this is a terribly bad game and not worth your time” as there’s a lot going for the game, but I’ve also said how the super high score reviews and praise going on to say it’s some successor to and evolution of KH2 are kinda ignoring a lot of the games issues.  It’s a fun game, great even at points, but that’s usually when you /aren’t/ comparing it to 2 or even 1. As a kh game, it feels average and nothing terribly special. Honestly if I was the deciding factor for a friend on them getting it, I’d probably say wait for the final mix version which will probably fix a lot of the complaints regarding the gameplay.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, with a few weeks having passed since the game released, and about a week or two since I finished it, I thought I'd pop in to give my general opinions on Kingdom Hearts 3, which I know have taken awhile to do so. Partly because I knew I was gonna be in the honeymoon phase of the game and loving every aspect of it, which would've been pretty biased, and partly because I hoped to 100% it before doing this (I didn't do that yet).

First things first, my battle report (which is inaccurate since it was from when I finished the game, it's pretty different now as I grinded to level 99, got Ultima and such)

Difficulty: Proud Mode

Enemies Defeated: 3035

Most Used Keyblade: Happy Gear (8:20:27)

Distance Travelled: 75.8 km, 47.1 mi

Most Used Situation Command: Riskcharge 115x

Gummi Ship Completion: 33% 

Lucky Emblems: 90/90

Most Consumed Cuisine: Chocolate Mouse X2

Clear Time: 41:10:56

So, starting off on a positive note - the graphics. The worlds this time around are just downright stunning, and closest IMO to actually feeling like you're playing through a living and breathing Disney world. One of the sad facts about the previous games in the series is they were hindered by their engines/consoles at the time, and whilst the original console KH games are the ones that have aged the best in terms of PS2 era games, I'd still say the worlds in of themselves felt pretty lifeless. This is the first real time the game itself just feels alive. There's NPCs everywhere, the voice lines are all voiced with no more text boxes, the environments are far more varied and feel a lot more fun to explore, feeling far more like an open world sandbox, as opposed to a room comprised of blocks and poles.

Veering into that, the performance is frankly draw-dropping. I'd say this is one of the most lush and beautiful looking next-gen titles to date, all aided by Unreal Engine 4, and it was completely surprising how it ran. 0.2 set an example that we'd be forced to give up a full 60fps for a stunning set of graphics, with 0.2 even dropping frames at points, like in the Phantom Aqua fight. But then KH3 releases and not only does it look even better than 0.2, but it's running at a consistently good 50-60fps? That was insane, and showed how much effort went into optimising the game's performance to be the best as it possibly could. 

I was so happy to see this change added, because Kingdom Hearts 1, and 2 both released originally locked at 30fps, and then the collections had been slowly trying to build all the games up again with 60fps, and Kingdom Hearts 2 is just a totally different ballpark when playing that in 60, compared to 30. 0.2 showed a disappointing, but what we thought - was necessary concession for better graphics at lower framerate, but seeing KH3 pull off a perfect compromised balance was great IMO.

Moving into the story and characters, I think really the main thing I'd like to say firstly - is that the dialogue and humour is just fifty times better all around. You'll still get awkward and chringy moments, as you will from any other Kingdom Hearts game, but I'd say that this time around, this is where they really nailed the dialogue and interactions of the characters. 

I was really surprised at how much I came out liking Sora, Donald and Goofy as a trio this time around. It was clear to me that a main focus of this game was reinstating how important this trio is, how this trio is practically at the centre of the entire series, especially after Donald and Goofy got downplayed in the rest of the series, especially Birth by Sleep, and Dream Drop Distance.

I love how Sora and Donald constantly seem to love getting jabs in at each other, playing on each other's flaws in a playful manner, while Goofy is either too egotistical, too oblivious, or both to realise he isn't as above things as he thinks. Moments like Goofy thinking he was beyond suspicion in the Toy Story world, whilst criticising Sora and Donald at the same time really had me laughing. But there's also a very definite concern between the three. Donald and Goofy despite all their jabs at Sora's personality, clearly care about him, and clearly would fight to keep him safe as much as possible.

Spoiler

The key moments especially being when they stood forth to protect Sora twice when OXIII tried to screw with him directly, even if they failed slightly. I love how they even play around with Sora's silliness, especially when Donald and Goofy introduced Sora in the BH6 world, before realising how stupid their team name was.

I'd still say the strongest theme in this game in general - is their bond, and how far they've come from the first game. It's constantly empathised how the trio would keep fighting for each other, and deem themselves only as strong as their friends. The message that is always brought up is "Pint and a Half", because they're three half-pints together, which I felt was a really good call-back to previous titles, as well as a good set of arc words for their journey's conclusion. This is the conclusion of the adventure they started all the way back in Kingdom Hearts 1, and to see them grow, and truly work as a team this time around was great.

Spoiler

I think my favourite moment that encapsulates this is the fact it's Donald and Goofy that fights alongside Sora in the final battle, and don't get handicapped this time. They aren't kidnapped and in need of rescue like in KH1, they're with you til the very end, and all three of them fight equally as one. I honestly think one of the strongest moments of this entire series was seeing Sora, Donald and Goofy using trinity of all things to overwhelm and defeat Xehanort.

Furthermore, adding on this - I'd say the writing for the rest is pretty strong. There's a lot of strong interactions with the original characters that I don't really wish to go into specifics with as they are serious spoiler material, but still. The biggest surprise to me was the Disney cast, who are all written pretty much in character. The banter especially with duos like Woody and Buzz, or Mike and Sully, or even the Big Hero 6 crew felt near identically from something I'd expect from their retrospective movies. Even characters like Jack Sparrow get really good material this time around, especially Jack since he gets tons of optional dialogue as you travel through the Pirates world. The only set of dialogue I felt was pretty weak was Frozen which...yeah, I'll explain later.

On that note, I feel like the story in of itself is a really big mixed bag. There's a lot of moments in it I love, there's even conclusions to arcs that happened near identically to how I wanted them to end. But then there's stuff I just really dislike as well.

Spoiler

First off, in terms of things I liked - 

Roxas. Just put simply, perfect resolution to what I wanted for the character. He's been constantly and consistently fucked over and screwed by this series time and again. His story in general has been one of the most depressing in the entire series because it's completely about how he's forced to give up every connection that he ever made, and even his own individuality to allow Sora to save the worlds. To see him not only finally make a comeback, and making a really tearful reunion with Axel and Xion, to finally getting his Twilight Town friends back, it made me really happy.

Speaking of which - small detail - I was really happy how they handled the Twilight Crew. I had a worry that they would somehow transfer the digital memories to themselves or something and that would explain away all that, but instead, it's just referenced as just kind of a small feeling of recognition upon seeing evidence of Roxas' existence in the digital Twilight Town and then deciding they'd like to be friends with him for real. That was a really nice detail in my opinion and avoided the usual convolution of KH's story-telling.

The smaller grey area is Xion. I am so happy to see her back. I'm happy to see her at long last get a happy ending because her ending is even more depressing than Roxas' original ending, but they really should've explained her better. We know that Xion was still inside Sora's body, because it was referenced earlier that Sora held three different hearts - Ven, Roxas, and Xion.

It's implied a lot throughout the game that OXIII wanted to create replicas from data in order to use as back-ups for their plans, we can only assume is the case with Xion - that in the graveyard, she was a replica using data from the original Xion. We then see Roxas escape Sora's heart when his own replica arrives, something else that could imply that the replicas originally used data (Roxas' replica was already stated to be intending to use data from the Digital Twilight Town to restore him, so we could assume that was how Roxas got to the final battle, before his actual heart entered the body and truly became Roxas again).

My point being is none of this is well-explained. They could have easily just explained that the replicas beforehand were just sock puppets, basically being operated with fake data pretending to be the real deal, and then when their bodies was nearby, Xion and Roxas escaped from Sora and inhabited their bodies truly, but they don't say that, leaving it overly confused. 

That said, Xion's conclusion, as well as that general trio was easily my favourite. The one moment where we get to see Lea, Xion and Roxas, along with the Twilight Crew and Isa all decked out in casual wear was just the perfect end moment for me.

The reunion with the Wayfinder crew was equally as good. Seeing these three people full of heartbreak and loss for ten years finally getting to be together, and better yet - honouring their late mentor's memory was just brilliant. 

That said...Kairi should've got more development, Kairi shouldn't have died, and this game shouldn't have ended the way it did.

This is the one thing, the one thing that angers me most about this game's plot, the ending. For the game that should've finally concluded everything once and for all, Nomura just couldn't fucking help himself but to put in yet another cliffhanger that leaves the game on a bittersweet and somber note. If this was the ending to the lead-up to KH3, that'd be fine. But the literal ending to this entire saga? Fuck right off.

What they should've done was not kill Sora off. You can have the rest of the games with him as the protagonist, that's fine, but doing a literal forceful sequel bait, at the expense of Kairi's already flimsy character development was just downright idiotic. The one thing I wanted most out of Kingdom Hearts 3 was a conclusion to this saga. I wanted a clean slate for the next line of games now that all these arcs were tied up, and instead we have Sora having died or something or other, being placed into the Reaper's Game in the fucking World Ends with You of all things which is now only designed to tie this game into the inevitable more sequels on the horizon. It just makes KH3 feel like another part of a larger puzzle we still don't have the pieces to instead of the actual conclusion it should've been, better yet- the conclusion that Kingdom Hearts 2 had already expertly given us with Sora's story.

Kairi, on one hand is mixed. I feel like the hatred on her is overblown, mainly because in terms of the actual kidnapping itself, she was grabbed by Xemnas, who required Sora and Riku both at the top of their A-Game to originally defeat, so I think it's realistic she would be taken by him, but the fact she gets little to no development throughout the rest of the game, and no scenes to even shine as a keyblade welder is absolutely utterly idiotic.

I think my other biggest issue is just the general pacing. I don't understand why we didn't have a central world which focused in on the main plotline. Twilight Town felt like it was going to be that world instead of Hollow Bastion, which coincides with the baffling lack of FF characters this time around, but they don't do much with it after the first visit. Every other time, it just basically feels like filler til the end. I kept questioning why Riku and Mickey didn't go in sooner. We had a playable Riku, and given Aqua is later playable and plays exactly like 0.2, I'm absolutely surprised they didn't just remake the Dark World from 0.2 as a full world where Riku/Mickey has to run through to save Aqua at the mid-point of the game.

Saving the others should've been more spaced out. Say you rescue Aqua after Monsters Inc, but then she needs time to regain her strength, so Sora and co then go to the next world. After that world, Aqua's now regained enough of her strength to save Ven. After saving Ven, have more progress on Roxas and Xion, etc. 

All of this just compiles to make the story, not bad per say, especially with the additional quality of writing, but it makes it a lot weaker than it really should be. It feels like Nomura just traded out convolution and bad dialogue at points for full on confusion and bad pacing. It improves on certain issues only to fail on issues not present before.

In terms of the gameplay, I actually quite enjoyed it. I felt like the tools were present to make the combat particularly involved, and much more experimental compared to the spin-offs between this game and KH2. Having a traditional KH level up and ability system yet again was just nice to have after so many games filled with idiotic and often frustrating gimmicks, especially with how round about it was to get basic quality of life abilities like Second Chance and Leaf Bracer in the likes of DDD and BBS. I loved a lot of keyblade styles, adding new flair and combo potential for Sora, as well as the really cool finishers they had, and I liked how each other them had different combat styles, like shooting projectiles, using blade attacks, using attacks to get closer to enemies etc.

The only real complaints I have with combat this time around that I didn't get used to was firstly - Attraction Flows. They're just too frequent for their own good, and far too intrusive. They're stupidly powerful, reduce damage taken, and are insanely easy to get. They really should've been more difficult, either at the expense of MP, or something else. As is, they're game-breaking and not particularly fun to use.

Secondly, it's the difficulty. I was shocked when I played Proud, something I don't typically do on my first run through of a KH game, but did for this game, to discover that by the end of Olympus, it's basically Standard Mode. This means that about 90% of the game, you don't get to make use of how many tools the combat system offers because you can get away with bare-minimum combat, and using the triangle commands, instead of making full use of the toolset provided by the game. 

And in terms of my other flaws - the other biggest main one to speak of is the total lack of end-game content. Bar the usual grindy nonsense you'd get from a KH game, a lot of it just feels really bare bones. There's barely any secret bosses, the battle portals - while interesting are just enemy gauntlets, the Ultima is really grindy to get, and the minigames will not last you very long. And whilst there's an defence to be made that the previous games didn't get their great end-game material until the Final Mix editions, that problem really shouldn't have been a thing to begin with in a 2019 game.

I think in the end, I don't really know how to feel about Kingdom Hearts 3, I feel mixed about it. On one hand, a lot of the elements could lead to it being my favourite, mainly being just for the fact the Disney worlds are actually fun to run through this time, unlike KH2 where it's critical mode and combat was much more superior, but the Disney worlds in general were far more of a boring slog to run through. But on the other hand, Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix just feels like a fifty times better experience. In all honesty, I still think I need to give it to 2FM because whilst the combat in 3 is strong IMO, and the worlds are better, 2FM just feels like the much more complete experience.

Maybe things will change if a 3FM ever materialises and if so, I'll give it another look. But IMO, I'd say at the least, KH3 is a solid 8/10. It's a great game, but there is serious flaws holding it back still, even ones I'd argue really shouldn't be a thing in this day and age.

  • Thumbs Up 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

You must read and accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy to continue using this website. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.