Kingdom Hearts 3

[Karo]

Oh man the Twilight Town trio is coming back it seems like everyone is here just like in Super Smash Bros ultimate!

I'm glad to see a final conclusion to the Xehanort saga, because I am tired of him after killing him so many times.

The new worlds seem interesting I am definitely looking forward to Rapunzel and BIg Hero Six. I'm curious how they are going to handle it and if we will be joining in on the story.

[queenzelda]

11 more days left before KH3 launches!! Idk if everyone has kept up with the news for KH3 but I'll try to sum everything up in my post. A few weeks ago, someone got an advanced copy for the Xbox One & has been selling them online. source SquareEnix has already acknowledged this has happened & is asking fans to wait for the game to release on it's proper date & to avoid watching streamers on youtube/etc due to spoilers: etc. (more here)



So beware of spoilers KH's fans!

[Moonface]

I was aware of this happening, and I think some copies went out early on purpose on behalf of SE. Good on them for not having the ending included regardless so that it can't be leaked.

[Moonface]

So for anyone who got and started the game, what do you think so far? Was it worth the long wait?

[queenzelda]

So for anyone who got and started the game, what do you think so far? Was it worth the long wait?

I bought it & so far so good. 

I do have a few complaints though. Like you can't see all of the character's, you can only see half of their torso. Also, what's up with the whole ride animation sequences? It's nice, & is fun. But, I guess I don't get why it was added but to add extra flashy stuff. :p

[Dragon Lord]

So far it's okay. The combat is great, and I'd say it beats out KHII's combat. However the rest of the game so far is lacking. The worlds are pretty meh for the most part and the story is pretty boring for the first chunk of the game (I still haven't gotten to any good parts yet).

I don't feel like this game is going to surpass KHII overall. Like I said, it's definitely better in combat, but so far every other aspect of the game (aside from graphics but graphics do not matter) doesn't come close to what KHII did. We'll see how it goes the rest of the way.

I'll put the biggest issue with the game so far in a spoiler, so that if anyone wants to read it they can, otherwise they can avoid it.

Spoiler

So far the biggest issue with the game is how god awful the Tangled world was. It was literally just the movie. Most of the scenes in the world were literally just the same exact scenes from the movie, with the same exact dialogue. I haven't done the Frozen world yet, but I've heard that it is also the case for that world. There's very little "Kingdom Hearts" added into the worlds, and it's just going through the scenes of the movies with a few battles against Nobodies/Heartless along the way.

It just proves that they only put these two worlds in the game because they thought they'd get sales for the game doing so, and not because they actually fit into the theme of Kingdom Hearts. Very disappointing to see and takes a lot away from the game. They should have put in worlds that would have actually been fun and could have fit into the theme of KH, like Brave and Star Wars (I mean, come on. KH is about Light vs Dark and Star Wars has the dark side of the force. They could have easily slotted the Heartless into a Star Wars world and made it cohesive).

The only good world so far was Olympus, which was the first world. Toy Box (Toy Story obv) was decent, though it could have been a little better.

Would I say KHIII has lived up to the 13 year hype? Yes and no. The combat certainly has. The story, worlds and characters/character interactions have not.

[ShiraNoMai]

Been watching trihex stream the game after he restarted it on Proud Mode (he found Standard to be too boring).

My biggest gripe seems to be a matter of the worlds feeling disconnected in terms of consistency? It feels like they've had different teams working in different times (over the course of development) working on each world. Some look so incredibly nice while others feel like they almost belong on the PS3.

[Dragon Lord]

Unfortuantely Proud Mode is just as boring as Standard. The fact that they made this game this damn easy, and didn't include a Critical difficulty mode like in previous games, is a huge negative on the game.

The worse thing about the worlds is that some are basically just the movie. The scenes and dialogue exact copy/pastes from the movie with Sora and company standing awkwardly in the background. Then other worlds are completely their own things.

There is another huge issue with the game, but it's a potential spoiler, so I'll put it in a tag.

Spoiler

One of the most unforgivable acts this game does is the fact that there are no, zero, none, nadda -- not a single Final Fantasy character in this game other than them references Cloud and Auron at the beginning of Olympus. There are other FF references in the game, but for a series that was all about the Final Fantasy x Disney crossover, not having a single FF character is just not okay.

With how the Tangled and Frozen worlds are just the scenes from the movies (complete with the annoying songs in Frozen's case), and the fact that there is hardly any FF representation at all in the game, it almost feels like Disney got their panties in a twist that the series was becoming more of its own thing (aside from the worlds and character appearances, the Disney aspect of KH hasn't been that prominent since the first Kingdom Hearts. Every game after that, the Disney aspect was more of a "hey, here it is" thing. But KH3 feels like Disney told Nomura that they needed to put more focus on Disney than anything, because most of the worlds focus more on the Disney characters and shit than they do Sora and company, who are supposed to be the focus of the game. KH3 was supposed to be about Sora and his allies gearing up to take down Xehanort and his 13 darknesses. Instead it felt more like hey let's watch a bunch of Disney movies... oh yeah, we better give you guys that final battle against Xehanort before we forget.

The story of KH3 and especially the ending are a pretty huge mess. I don't even know if Nomura knew what he was trying to do with this one. Which isn't surprising, considering Nomura has become complete trash at making games over the last, what, 10 years or so? Kingdom Hearts 2 was probably his last good game. So I shouldn't be surprised that KH3 turned out to be like this, but I'm still disappointed. Definitely confirms that there is absolutely no hope of FFVII Remake being any good in that hack's hands.

[Moonface]

Spoiler

I think it would have been hard to implement any FF characters into the story of KH3 without it feeling like straight out fan service, considering how many KH entries there are already. I've not played the games so maybe there is a way it could have worked, but as an outsider looking in I wouldn't be surprised if having them in this game had no good way of incorporating them.

When I was watching Trihex's stream with Shira, I saw that Scala ad Caelum had a really cool title sequence to introduce the world and I was curious if the other worlds have it too (and it seems almost every location does) and I don't know if they've always been a thing with Kingdom Hearts, but regardless I think they're really cool! Some of them are a little simple compared to others, but I found them to be really cool and something I could appreciate despite having no idea what anything else is really about in this series.

[Dragon Lord]

They could have easily incorporated FF characters into the game. All they had to do was what they did with every other game.

The most likely case is that Disney was butthurt that KH had been becoming more of its own thing with its own original characters, and the Disney aspect of the games (along with the FF aspect) started taking more of a backseat. My guess is that Disney told Square Enix/Nomura that they had to put more of a focus on Disney in KH3 than anything else, which would explain why the story of KH itself is so neglected in KH3 in favor of "hey, watch the scenes directly from Tangled and Frozen instead of actually having an interesting world to play through."

KH3 is a 4/10 at best, and it's because of Disney. Their unwillingness to let Square Enix form worlds to fit KH and instead make them pretty much play the movies with Sora and company being awkwardly inserted into them made the game terrible. A couple worlds worked because they were allowed to form the world around Kingdom Hearts (Toy Box, Monstropolis) instead of the other way around.

If Disney was so worried about keeping their cashcow (Frozen) so pure and innocent, then they shouldn't have let it be in the game to begin with. They could have let Square Enix put in a better world that would have actually added to the game instead of ruin it, like Brave or Star Wars.

A 13 year wait resulted in a game where the conclusion of the story we've been waiting for took a backseat to "Let It Go", and had no relevance to the game whatsoever until the final world, which was then rushed as fuck, with a final boss battle sequence that was the worst in any KH game, followed by the dumbest ending we could have been left with, and a secret movie that just left more question marks than answers. Further proving that Disney ruins everything they touch.

Not to mention all of the staples of the Kingdom Hearts series that were not present in this game. An arena/coliseum, multiple secret boss fights, Critical Mode (resulting in an extreme lack of difficulty. Proud Mode is an absolute joke), among others. Like I said from the start, the combat in this game is top-notch, but everything is among the worst the KH series has ever offered.

[Moonface]

Oh, I thought FF characters had never been in any KH game and that's why I said putting them in 3 would have been weird. My mistake. XD

[Dragon Lord]

Yes, Kingdom Hearts has always had Final Fantasy characters in it. It started as a Final Fantasy x Disney crossover. But as more games in the series were made, the games started to go their own way with their own story and original characters, while the FF and Disney aspects started to fade more and more.

The fact that there are zero FF characters in KH3, and only a handful of references to Final Fantasy in general, while the game forcefully shoves Disney shit down your throat after two seconds, pretty much shows that Disney had way too much influence on how the game turned out.

Instead of getting the conclusion to the Kingdom Hearts story that we've been waiting 13 years for, instead we get "DISNEY! DISNEY! DISNEY! DISNEY! oh by the way here's the ending. DISNEY! DISNEY! DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSNNNNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!"

[queenzelda]

It's sad that KH3 turned out the way it did. It could have been so much better, but it's just a huge Disney movie cash in with Sora, Donald & Goofy taking you with them to see the movies & it's just them doing Mystery Science Theater 3000.. And it's AWKWARD. Here any more everything that Disney has touched has just turned into trash or horrible. I mean just look at what they've done to the Star Wars series.

I don't know if I can really go back to playing KH3, though I really want to.. But I've heard that the ending; for what it is... Really isn't that great. I don't know, I mean. I guess it could be worse, I could get an ending where the boss is squished by a God/Goddess statue & that's how the ending is resolved.

[Moonface]

Critical Mode Comes to Kingdom Hearts III Tomorrow
If you've been waiting for Kingdom Hearts III to get a higher difficulty mode, then tomorrow will be your lucky day because that's when Critical Mode is coming to the game as a free update!

As the tweet above says, there will be changes to this mode compared to previous games, but what those changes are wasn't specifically detailed. I guess that gives you more incentive to check out the changes for yourself tomorrow.

[Dragon Lord]

A little too late on their part. Anyone who has already completed this joke of a game has no reason to go back to it just for CM. I feel sorry for anyone who is actually going to torture themselves by playing this this shitshow a second time just for CM.