Anticipation is a dangerous concept. In a small or short dose, it can lead to excitement. Say for example the new Avengers: EndGame coming out. I only started noticing trailers for it when it was about a month from release. It's not a long wait and it's leaving me excited for what is to come. But when you anticipate something too long, you start to have expectations. Expectations can be difficult to meet. Sometimes it grows to the point where you expect too much, see for example the ill fated Duke Nukem Forever. Almost a decade went by without its release, and by the time we got it was so utterly pedestrian it was doomed to flop.
So that's kind of where we find ourselves here. Sure, this franchise has had a number of spin off installments with canon storyline throughout the years, but the second numbered installment of this game came out in 2005, which makes it OVER 10 years since we finally got our next numbered edition of this game. It's a long time to wait, and naturally people are expecting a lot. It's a whole lot of weight and pressure to deliver now. Is it even possible? I speak of course, of......
KINGDOM HEARTS III (PS4)
Look, I am not equipped with the necessary 4 doctorates to give you the full rundown the of the Kingdom Hearts lore because it's so impossibly convoluted. If you want a good rundown, watch Barry Kramer's 30 minute "Good Enough Summary of Kingdom Hearts." It's hilarious and pretty much covers what you need to know going into this one.
We start off picking up from the events of Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance. A battle with Organization XIII is on the horizon and the forces of light need to gather their 7 warriors. Sora is depowered so he is on Olympus with Donald and Goofy to gain his strength back and visit more Disney worlds to regain "the power of waking" which is key to becoming a true keyblade master.
Riku and Micky are off searching the realm of darkness to try to find Aqua, the keyblade master trapped and lost there after the events of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. Kairi and Lea are off training to learn how to use their new keyblades so they can help in the coming battles. All of these stories look to converge in one final battle between light and darkness for the control of the χ-blade and Kingdom Hearts.
That is about as succinct as I can possibly make of the Kingdom Hearts storyline going into this game. Like I said, its story is incredibly convoluted and complex for no reason. Half of the reason is because literally all of the villains in this game talk in riddles instead of just providing answers. I am probably going to be pretty spoiler heavy in this review so I apologize in advance, but I am getting ahead of myself here.
So Kingdom Hearts III is a curiously mixed hack-n-slash action adventure with RPG elements and flight sim rail shooting. There are a mutlitude of different game features that appear in the game, but I'm going to try to stick to the core ones. It uses the same action oriented menu system you might remember from the older titles, specifically Kingdom Hearts I & II (or maybe you don't remember, it's been a decade). You have a core set of abilities to use, mainly Attack, Magic, Item, and Link with the occasionally prompting for situational abilities.
The menu requires a bit of practice to do fluidly, but they do provide the ability to quickly turn the face buttons into a hotkeys for specific abilities, so I couldn't add my heal to that X button fast enough. The rest selected were core elements that specific enemies would be weak to. The Link system is more or less your ability to summon various helpers to remove Donald and Goofy from the fray to bring in more merchandising opportunities (characters).
To the game's credit: when the combat starts to click for you it's a dream to fly around and lay waste to enemies
The core thing to remember about this combat system is three things: One, know where the attack and jump buttons are. Two, you are able to lock on to enemies. And three, Press triangle when it tells you to. There is a bit more nuance to the games system than this, but if you are able to do these three things then ultimately the game should be a breeze to play.
It's actually somewhat hard to really describe all the mechanics that take place in this game, because it uses a lot of elements from the various game engines that are used throughout this franchises history. Almost to a pretty clever design really, because it actually plays into the lore. These certain characters trained to fight a certain way, so they have their specific mechanics to use when you use those characters. I do appreciate that blending of mechanics and lore. That being said, to a new player? This will probably feel very overwhelming.
I will say that the various number of keyblades you get do offer a bit of freedom of combat style.
Now, up until about a half a year before its release I had only played Kingdom Hearts I & II and maybe a few hours of Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 days. I knew if I just tried to dive into 3 was going to feel left behind, so I powered through the entirety of both PS4 collections prior to the release. Honestly I think this impaired my review because by the time I was ready to play 3 I was pretty KH'd out. I had a play a few other games to wash the palette.
It sticks to the pretty core Kingdom Hearts formula: Soda, Dobald, and Goomby drop into a new Disney world where they meet the primary character of that franchise, the Heartless/ Unversed/Hollows show up and you fight them off, wander the world, listen to a bad guy speak in riddles to an idiot who barely understands what is happening, fight a boss, and unlock/restore that world, move to next world to repeat. This is pretty much exactly how every world in this game plays out.
I honestly didn't even know Ariel was in the game. You have so many attacks to use.
In the original Kingdom Hearts this was interesting because with each world you went to, you met various Disney and Final Fantasy characters, but they were dressing to the world Kingdom Hearts was creating. They were part of the story, and reacted accordingly to the events happening around them. This is how good crossover is done (See: Dragon Quest: Heroes). In Kingdom Hearts II however, despite having more lore to work with the borrowed characters became less integral to the story and basically recanted what famous scenes were popular in the movie they came from. This I didn't like so much because I've already seen these movies. I wanted them to be involved in Kingdom Hearts story, not watch the movie I already watched again with them occasionally mentioning something KH related..
Well, Kingdom Hearts III continues that tradition to an even worse degree. Now don't get me wrong, none of the actual Disney properties have any actual bearing on the core plot and haven't even in the first one, but at least they tried to make it feel like everyone was included. III is probably the worst example of literally just watching some scenes from the respective movies, and occasionally mention the heartless or kingdom hearts. However, I feel that this is noticeable to the degree you've seen the source material.
I'll give you an example: I have never seen Tangled. I know loosely what it's based on, but know virtually nothing outside of that. These characters were new to me, and I really didn't know how the story shook out, so as I went through the respective scenes with no frame of reference I found it to be enjoyable, engaging and interesting. It might have been my favorite chapter in the game.
There was a chance for interesting story here. It was almost immediately forgotten.
I'll give you an example: I have never seen Tangled. I know loosely what it's based on, but know virtually nothing outside of that. These characters were new to me, and I really didn't know how the story shook out, so as I went through the respective scenes with no frame of reference I found it to be enjoyable, engaging and interesting. It might have been my favorite chapter in the game.
But then we have the Pirates of the Caribbean chapter. Literally the entirety of this story is just fragments of Pirates: At Worlds End. It basically jumps around major scenes of the film with them reacting that they met Sora before in the second game, and you recreate the big whirlpool scene for the last boss segment. It was fun as hell to play, but probably the 2nd weakest chapter of the game.
The worst chapter of the game goes to Frozen which quite literally is scenes from the movie with the Kingdom Hearts cast literally standing off to the side not engaging with the cast. There is an exposition dump over one scene from the movie, and they go through the entirety of "Let it Go" with the occasional reaction shot from the cast. It was completely pointless. MatPat has a theory that the original idea for this chapter was severely cut down, which would explain a lot.
That being said, when the game actually focuses on its own story and characters, that's when Kingdom Hearts III is at its most interesting. There were a lot of loose threads in this series that this game needed to tie up after a near decade of spinoffs, but I have to say that does an admirable job of doing so in a reasonably satisfying manner. This is probably something I wouldn't have been able to appreciate if I haven't powered through the whole series to have context for everything that is happening.
Credit to where it's due on this front, but its soundtrack is exceptional from its original tracks to arrangements to the assorted Disney sources. Yoko Shimomura has composed all of the major installments and contributed to many of the spin-offs and rightfully so. Her work and the vocal tracks from singer-songwriter Hikaru Utada are a major reason these games feel so magical as you play through them. I have always appreciated a solid classical score to my games, and Utada's vocal tracks always give me chills. "Sanctuary" is one of my favorites. The music of this game carries a lot of emotional weight in my opinion.
I appreciate that the character design has been slightly modernized for the current console generation and this works for the storytelling of the games as well. It's been almost a decade since we played Kingdom Hearts II so it seems only right that our cast has aged somewhat accordingly. But I will say that is sort of loses a little bit of its cartoonish charm in doing so. With everyone having a cartoony and anime appearance, having a realistic model included doesn't make people blend in together as well as previous games I thought.
While I can't say if the game has a lot of replay value, I will say that depending on your level of dedication to completion you will certainly get a significant amount of time out of this one. If you were just to power though the main story missions and keep your side questing to a minimal degree, that alone will still take up roughly 30 hours of time to get through. Not bad for a non-RPG. But if you throw in collectibles, hidden fights, the secret boss, and mini game completion this amount of time doubles at least. Take on trying to play it on a harder difficulty (which I should have) and you could invest a serious amount of time to this one.
If the rest of this review wasn't an indication, I obviously have a handful of complaints on this one. First thing I really noticed is that this one felt too easy. I played it on normal but a coworker of mine recommended that I don't. He was correct. Thanks to the inclusion of all the mechanics of the previous games, combat is snap because the game is literally throwing special attacks at you, many of which you are complete invulnerable during. With the exception of some early bosses that literally just fly out of range and make you wait for them come down, practically every fight in the game is trivial if you are using you specials.
Many of these moves are also one of the biggest detriments to the game's visual and sound design. Outside of the returning special moves, the team also has a series of abilities where you basically summon out famous Disney rides like the Teacups, Splash Mountain, the Carousel, etc. The attraction attacks are covered with blinking lights are constantly splashing particle effects and waves of light out. It has its own theme and each attack has their own sound effects and character reactions. It's almost a total sensory overload. By late game I wasn't even using it because I was having more fun comboing with my keyblade, and only used them when I wanted clear out groups quickly.
All of the Final Fantasy characters have been removed in this one. There was an incredibly strong focus on the Pixar sect of Disney represented in this game, the only animated film represented here was Hercules and that's a rehash from another game. So ONCE AGAIN, Robin Hood gets the snub and doesn't appear in Kingdom Hearts. Come on! He actually fights with a bow, and I don't think any of the the Jungle Book characters are represented in any of the series and they were in three different franchises. No TailSpin chapter? You know who I would have liked to team up with? Darkwing Duck. THAT should have been a chapter in this game. SHIT, WHAT ABOUT THE GARGOYLES??? Oh my god, I have to get off this train of thought.
Out of all my complaints about the story, I would have to say that my biggest one is probably that we have to control Sora. Having gone through the whole series now, practically every character to come out of this franchise (with maybe the exception of Kairi) has more depth and is more interesting to follow. Sora is just kind of a dummy who pretty much just relies on his feelings for motivation, but he rarely understands what is happening around him. Aqua is more interesting, Roxas is more interesting, Axel is more interesting. For making this seem like an ensemble piece, they did very little to let you use all the other characters which is a shame and a missed opportunity.
While I'm at it, there was literally no point to having Axel and Kairi in the game for as little as they contribute to it. You get two cutscenes of the two of them in between training sessions of them talking to each other, to kind of bridge a number of the loose ends. But spoiler, by game end they provide pretty much no assistance in the final battle and one of them gets captured immediately. If the presence of one of them wasn't required to tie up a loose end, they could have not been a part of the game and it probably wouldn't have been impacted in any meaningful way.
Now, you would think with the psychotic ranting I've gone on in this review that I'd be ready to slap a big old "do not recommend" on this one. But I can't say that's necessarily true. For all that I complained about at its core the game is solidly built and if I had played it on a more challenging difficulty I would have absolutely enjoyed it more. With the two left shoulder buttons providing hotkeys, combat was fast paced, fluid, and fun to do. Which is impressive for a technically menu based game.
Boss characters were large and interesting, once you get your appropriate skills up it's fun to fly around the battle field and take them down, and it does leave a satisfied feeling of completion when you do so. Considering this stigma boss fights have become in modern gaming, I applaud any game that chooses to include them.
I have to appreciate some of the self aware commentary that Kingdom Hearts III provided. They have some in-jokes poking fun of the ridiculous number of spin-offs and stupid naming convention this series uses. There is a stupidly over the top CG battle sequence that turns out to be a fake game trailer that basically pokes fun at SquareEnix's whole marketing strategy for game releases. Honestly it was pretty awesome to watch, really. Axel specifically indirectly breaks the 4th wall a few times about how fucking complicated this story is and that there are too many characters. Makes me wish he had a bigger role.
As I said above, the ending of this game was incredibly satisfying. That's always been Square Enix's bread and butter, making great cinematics that feel good to watch. I hated the majority of Final Fantasy 13 but I'll be damned if I didn't love that ending. Seeing that ending cinematic made it feel like the slog through all the entries of this series was worth it.
And while I was disappointed this isn't going to be the final installment of this series, I will say that the end game teasers absolutely have me excited for 2 reasons. One, it looks like it's going to include a property that was used in Dream Drop Distance and one of my favorite DS games ever, AND it looks like we might be having a hard disconnect from Disney as much of that story finally got closed out. I've always said that if this series could have been fine if didn't have any Disney and Final Fantasy crossover, and it looks like it might actually be going that route if we get a KH4.
It's hard to say if I give this game a recommendation or not. Kingdom Hearts 3 is an offering to the patient fan base who have been waiting a decade for it. People who are fans of this series have already bought and played it long before this review came out. People new to the series are going to feel incredibly lost and put out because they are essentially 13 games behind the curve. It is a game that is not for them.
So I guess my bottom line is this: Is the game functional and playable? Yeah, very well done on that front. Did I enjoy my time with it? Sure, I might be a bit KH'd out at this point but I am glad to finally put a cap on this one. Was it worth the wait? Absolutely not. The prematurely announced the game, and then took an excessive number of years to actually get the product up. People built up too many expectations to the point of them being unable to be met. There was no way it could possibly deliver to peoples hopes at this point.
It's not a world beater, its not innovative, it just does just enough to be a palatable experience, but after 10 years of waiting that just doesn't feel like enough. Kingdom Hearts 3, in my eyes, is average at best. If they are going to follow this one up (and they are), then they gotta get it out within the next 4-5 years at most. Buy with caution.
Seriously, Robin Hood is the best.
I can't believe he's never been in these.
In researching this, I found that yes, Tangled was essentially a recreation as well.
But it felt like it had more freedom than Frozen did to play around with the story.
But it felt like it had more freedom than Frozen did to play around with the story.
That being said, when the game actually focuses on its own story and characters, that's when Kingdom Hearts III is at its most interesting. There were a lot of loose threads in this series that this game needed to tie up after a near decade of spinoffs, but I have to say that does an admirable job of doing so in a reasonably satisfying manner. This is probably something I wouldn't have been able to appreciate if I haven't powered through the whole series to have context for everything that is happening.
Credit to where it's due on this front, but its soundtrack is exceptional from its original tracks to arrangements to the assorted Disney sources. Yoko Shimomura has composed all of the major installments and contributed to many of the spin-offs and rightfully so. Her work and the vocal tracks from singer-songwriter Hikaru Utada are a major reason these games feel so magical as you play through them. I have always appreciated a solid classical score to my games, and Utada's vocal tracks always give me chills. "Sanctuary" is one of my favorites. The music of this game carries a lot of emotional weight in my opinion.
While I can't say if the game has a lot of replay value, I will say that depending on your level of dedication to completion you will certainly get a significant amount of time out of this one. If you were just to power though the main story missions and keep your side questing to a minimal degree, that alone will still take up roughly 30 hours of time to get through. Not bad for a non-RPG. But if you throw in collectibles, hidden fights, the secret boss, and mini game completion this amount of time doubles at least. Take on trying to play it on a harder difficulty (which I should have) and you could invest a serious amount of time to this one.
I did find it incredibly frustrating that so many bosses could fly. It made for too much waiting during segments.
If the rest of this review wasn't an indication, I obviously have a handful of complaints on this one. First thing I really noticed is that this one felt too easy. I played it on normal but a coworker of mine recommended that I don't. He was correct. Thanks to the inclusion of all the mechanics of the previous games, combat is snap because the game is literally throwing special attacks at you, many of which you are complete invulnerable during. With the exception of some early bosses that literally just fly out of range and make you wait for them come down, practically every fight in the game is trivial if you are using you specials.
Many of these moves are also one of the biggest detriments to the game's visual and sound design. Outside of the returning special moves, the team also has a series of abilities where you basically summon out famous Disney rides like the Teacups, Splash Mountain, the Carousel, etc. The attraction attacks are covered with blinking lights are constantly splashing particle effects and waves of light out. It has its own theme and each attack has their own sound effects and character reactions. It's almost a total sensory overload. By late game I wasn't even using it because I was having more fun comboing with my keyblade, and only used them when I wanted clear out groups quickly.
Sadly THIS is actually one of the spectacle-lite ones.
All of the Final Fantasy characters have been removed in this one. There was an incredibly strong focus on the Pixar sect of Disney represented in this game, the only animated film represented here was Hercules and that's a rehash from another game. So ONCE AGAIN, Robin Hood gets the snub and doesn't appear in Kingdom Hearts. Come on! He actually fights with a bow, and I don't think any of the the Jungle Book characters are represented in any of the series and they were in three different franchises. No TailSpin chapter? You know who I would have liked to team up with? Darkwing Duck. THAT should have been a chapter in this game. SHIT, WHAT ABOUT THE GARGOYLES??? Oh my god, I have to get off this train of thought.
Out of all my complaints about the story, I would have to say that my biggest one is probably that we have to control Sora. Having gone through the whole series now, practically every character to come out of this franchise (with maybe the exception of Kairi) has more depth and is more interesting to follow. Sora is just kind of a dummy who pretty much just relies on his feelings for motivation, but he rarely understands what is happening around him. Aqua is more interesting, Roxas is more interesting, Axel is more interesting. For making this seem like an ensemble piece, they did very little to let you use all the other characters which is a shame and a missed opportunity.
While I'm at it, there was literally no point to having Axel and Kairi in the game for as little as they contribute to it. You get two cutscenes of the two of them in between training sessions of them talking to each other, to kind of bridge a number of the loose ends. But spoiler, by game end they provide pretty much no assistance in the final battle and one of them gets captured immediately. If the presence of one of them wasn't required to tie up a loose end, they could have not been a part of the game and it probably wouldn't have been impacted in any meaningful way.
Oops. I've just spoiled about 90% of what these two characters do in this game.
Now, you would think with the psychotic ranting I've gone on in this review that I'd be ready to slap a big old "do not recommend" on this one. But I can't say that's necessarily true. For all that I complained about at its core the game is solidly built and if I had played it on a more challenging difficulty I would have absolutely enjoyed it more. With the two left shoulder buttons providing hotkeys, combat was fast paced, fluid, and fun to do. Which is impressive for a technically menu based game.
Boss characters were large and interesting, once you get your appropriate skills up it's fun to fly around the battle field and take them down, and it does leave a satisfied feeling of completion when you do so. Considering this stigma boss fights have become in modern gaming, I applaud any game that chooses to include them.
I really do recommend upping the difficulty. You get so many super attacks the game gets insanely easy by the end.
I have to appreciate some of the self aware commentary that Kingdom Hearts III provided. They have some in-jokes poking fun of the ridiculous number of spin-offs and stupid naming convention this series uses. There is a stupidly over the top CG battle sequence that turns out to be a fake game trailer that basically pokes fun at SquareEnix's whole marketing strategy for game releases. Honestly it was pretty awesome to watch, really. Axel specifically indirectly breaks the 4th wall a few times about how fucking complicated this story is and that there are too many characters. Makes me wish he had a bigger role.
As I said above, the ending of this game was incredibly satisfying. That's always been Square Enix's bread and butter, making great cinematics that feel good to watch. I hated the majority of Final Fantasy 13 but I'll be damned if I didn't love that ending. Seeing that ending cinematic made it feel like the slog through all the entries of this series was worth it.
And while I was disappointed this isn't going to be the final installment of this series, I will say that the end game teasers absolutely have me excited for 2 reasons. One, it looks like it's going to include a property that was used in Dream Drop Distance and one of my favorite DS games ever, AND it looks like we might be having a hard disconnect from Disney as much of that story finally got closed out. I've always said that if this series could have been fine if didn't have any Disney and Final Fantasy crossover, and it looks like it might actually be going that route if we get a KH4.
It looks like a game I'd rather be playing now, honestly...
It's hard to say if I give this game a recommendation or not. Kingdom Hearts 3 is an offering to the patient fan base who have been waiting a decade for it. People who are fans of this series have already bought and played it long before this review came out. People new to the series are going to feel incredibly lost and put out because they are essentially 13 games behind the curve. It is a game that is not for them.
So I guess my bottom line is this: Is the game functional and playable? Yeah, very well done on that front. Did I enjoy my time with it? Sure, I might be a bit KH'd out at this point but I am glad to finally put a cap on this one. Was it worth the wait? Absolutely not. The prematurely announced the game, and then took an excessive number of years to actually get the product up. People built up too many expectations to the point of them being unable to be met. There was no way it could possibly deliver to peoples hopes at this point.
It's not a world beater, its not innovative, it just does just enough to be a palatable experience, but after 10 years of waiting that just doesn't feel like enough. Kingdom Hearts 3, in my eyes, is average at best. If they are going to follow this one up (and they are), then they gotta get it out within the next 4-5 years at most. Buy with caution.
I can't believe he's never been in these.
