Kingdom Hearts 3 holds a special place in my heart being one of the only games I’ve ever pre-ordered in my life, I was that excited for it. So much so I tried in vain to marathon all the previous games before playing it (only got as far as 2 IIRC)
The discourse around this game is pretty passionate, and recently I’m being recommended a lot of post-mortem videos of it, which I haven’t watched, but all seem to have the tone that it was a disappointment and didn’t live up to the hype.
I can’t speak for everyone else – but I find it hard to agree with this sentiment – although I will say that video game fans have a knack for getting swept up in hype to the point of unreasonable expectations and always end up disappointed and it fuels this toxic cycle. Do publishers exaggerate/mislead in adverts? Almost always, yes, absolutely. But equally do fans get themselves worked up and expect things they’ve invented in their own head which are impossible to attain? Also yes. Do Publishers take advantage of this? Yeah, they do. The publishers are not innocent here, but I do think gamers would do well to be a bit more self-aware when they let themselves get over excited about things that video games haven’t promised and absolutely won’t deliver on.
Kingdom Hearts 3 is a fucking good game, and in my mind combines a lot of what 1 and 2 did well individually but lacked from each other. 3 returns to form with intricate level design which encourages the player to explore and traverse to find things, and not just go from a to b to find the next combat objective – but it also retains the more involved and flashy combat system of 2. To me this is a perfect balance. Kingdom Hearts 1 has levels that rival something in the vein of Mario 64 with their secrets, utility, and artistic integration – but who’s combat may be somewhat clunky when viewed from a modern lens – where 2 ironed out combat at a sacrifice of worlds that just feel like palette swap arenas and corridors to fight hordes of enemies in.
Which of these playstyles you prefer will be entirely based on what you yourself want from a game – but personally I appreciate 3’s merging of the two, making what I think is arguably a perfect kingdom hearts formula from a purely design perspective. It’s taken 20 odd years, but I think Kingdom Hearts finally nailed what made a Kingdom Hearts game appealing.
That’s not to say the execution was perfect. Some of the worlds are blander than the others, Arendelle loses all spectacle being nothing but snowy mountains and one labyrinth to explore. San Fransokyo feels far too focused on verticality that the world ironically feels very one dimensional. And Monstropolis is a bit too linear for my liking and doesn’t take full advantage of the setting.
But those are mostly nitpicks – Olympus is the best we’ve ever seen it, Toy Box lets you explore a multi story toy mall unique to the game, with outlets ranging from doll stores, video games, and a huge indoor play area, Kingdom of Corona captures the majesty of the Tangled setting, and the Caribbean is vast enough to be a whole game on its own. From a purely fan service perspective – going from exploring the 2-3 rooms in Wonderland to these densely populated and faithful recreation of more recent Disney properties is a dream come true.
Combat is refined and expanded compared to 2 – taking some elements from Birth By Sleep and Dream Drop Distance – and simplifying the command menu down a bit, without losing the spectacle that 2’s system allowed.
Reaction Commands are gone for the most part – which I’m fine with. They were a great addition to a limited engine to add depth and cinematics to a combat system that was criticised for being button mash-y – but with the new engine and all the tools are your disposal, they’re not really missed. Each weapon you obtain throughout the game has its own power-up/transformation to alter how they’re used, kind of similar to drive forms, but there’s more of them, and they run on a system similar to Birth By Sleep rather than have their own consumable bar – meaning you’re rewarded with these power ups if you can keep up your own combos/combat flow.
The weapons also have their own innate abilities, and their stats can be boosted and refined – solving a problem that’s plagued every single game before now that used to render the previous keyblades moot after the next one has been found. 3 has actually made it worthwhile reviewing your weapons and levelling them up as while the newer ones will start off more powerful – you might prefer the formchanges of the older ones, and you can modify them to make them on par with your newer weapons, rather than just simply equip the one with the biggest strength boost every time.
This game also brought in attractions in place of reaction commands. I’m not 100% sure how these work in game, they seem to be at least somewhat context sensitive, in that some boss fights/locations will spawn specific attractions. I can take or leave these – I didn’t get them at all at first, until I realized they were meant to be references to Disneyland rides – so that’s a cute edition I guess. Definitely my least favourite part of the combat however, and unless they’re supremely beneficial I’ll tend to ignore them during most situations.
Moving onto Story – I’ll admit this could be seen as a step down – and Pacing is definitely worse than the previous titles. This game is attempting to tie up a lot of loose ends – but it was also the first game to release on multiple platforms – meaning that it was likely to reach an audience of people who hadn’t played previous entries. The game does try to cover the key characters and lore quickly – and gives you resources in game to refresh the plots of the previous games – but these I think would be a lot for new players, and I’d actually recommend going in completely blank if you haven’t played any of them before and just going with the story as it’s presented. Kingdom Hearts 3 is more confusing if you only vaguely understand what happened in the previous games than If you don’t understand anything. I won’t go into spoiler territory in case anyone still hasn’t played it and wants to – but suffice to say some of the resolutions to plot points building for the best part of a generation feel a bit contrived and forced. Nothing that ruined the experience for me, but still a bit anticlimactic after everything.
The game also progresses in a much more linear fashion than previous entries. While previous games usually went back and forth between levels when telling its story to make the whole universe feel cohesive and important – 3 gives you very little reason to re-visit a world after the story is completed unless you want to go for all the collectables. Because of this – the game feels a lot shorter than others, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but may be a bit of a downgrade if you’re used to the previous titles which had much more interesting story progression.
I will say that I do appreciate 3’s way of ensuring all Disney worlds are linked to the overall plot, even if shoehorned in, which is something 2 didn’t manage very well with some exceptions. But on the other hand I will say the Disney content outside of inspirations for world settings did feel a bit on the light side – there are very few encounters with Disney villians, with the bosses mostly being themed heartless/unversed/nobodies etc instead of any actual characters from the property. It does at times feel like 3 is ashamed of its Disney and especially final fantasy roots – barely including any of the latter, and some of the Disney content feeling tacked on as a formality more than anything else. Which is a shame. I get why they wanted to focus on all the original characters in this epic conclusion to what could I suppose be called the first phase of the Kingdom Hearts saga – but this game is at its heart a crossover, and does lose something if that crossover is just there as a fact of its existence, and not something used to drive the experience.
One thing 3 inarguably does better than its predecessors is the world traversal. Kingdom Hearts 1 had the gummi ship – which consisted of linear space shooting courses between worlds, which were slow, repetitive, but inoffensive for the most part. 2 mixed these up with more flashy speedway courses in the vein of 3D scripted sonic the hedgehog levels. These are more engaging, but also feel kind of arbitrary.
Kingdom Hearts 3 finally allows you to free-explore the space to discover worlds, items, easter eggs etc. This is objectively the best way of doing this – and gives the player a lot of freedom in how much they want to engage with it. They can if they want just set a target for the next world and ignore all combat – save for a couple of mandatory bosses most enemy ships can be ignored – but the space is rich with stuff to explore and engage with and honestly I might have even spent more time searching gummi space and grinding away at the challenges than I did on the main game some days, it’s so fucking good.
The original release of the game was lacking in post-game content, which is something that 2 Final Mix was the king of, so I was a little disappointed with the one “superboss” which was just a generic heartless who was a bit tougher than others – after 2FM gave us Data Battles and Lingering Will – some of the best designed and most challenging encounters in the genre.
3 did make up for this with its DLC however – adding a re-experience of the ending few hours which allow you to play as multiple characters and remix the bosses slightly, including getting to play as Kairi, long overdue – and providing a much expanded Scala Ad Caelum to explore complete with puzzles and secrets. After that you could attempt a new set of Data battles (remixed bosses designed to challenge your mastery of the core combat) and a superboss teasing the next instalment of the series – as has been tradition. If I were to have a minor gripe with this, it’s that these aren’t integrated into the main game like they were in 2FM – meaning that you can’t come and go to grind elsewhere if you need to – which can be a real issue when you’re running low on items and money. I don’t really know why they did it this way, but as long as you ensure you’re fully stocked up and you’ve done everything else in the game first you shouldn’t have a problem.
Then Yozora – the final challenge pulls out all the stops. So much so it took me 2 years of on and off attempts to final best him. Yozora is a fair fight, and actually quite forgiving in some ways – but less so in others. Like with Lingering Will from KH2 or Sephiroth from KH 1 – you really need to pay attention and learn the fight in order to win. Anyone who thinks Kingdom Hearts is just a button mash to win game needs to try these bosses. I said with Anti-Aqua in 0.2 the fight feels more like a dance than a fight with how precise your timings and execution needs to be to pull it off, reacting to your opponents moves and learning the choreography of a successful fight – Yozora is kind of the same, although a lot more manic. The game even trolls you by giving this boss a move that can steal your items – including your kupo coin (an item that can instantly revive you, essentially giving you an extra life when equipped). This means that you have to beat him twice, and you no longer have the safeguard. Given how much KH elitists bitched about its inclusion in the game in the first place, it’s cathartic see them turning this lifeline on its head. You then have to balance out whether it’s worth potentially giving him use of that power for some extra defence for yourself, or whether you should just discard it, meaning neither of you can use it. It’s a really 4 dimensional fight, and because it’s so precise, the satisfaction of pulling it off is comparable to nothing.
What more is there to say? The music is top tier as always, the art has translated well to the new engine, particularly with its focus on Disney and pixars CGI properties and not the traditionally animated ones (save for Hercules and Whinnie the Pooh…oh yeah, they butchered whinnie the pooh’s world in this game, absolutely awful.) and aesthetically all around it’s a delight to play, watch, or experience however you want to.
It's not a perfect game at all, it has some questionable implementations, and there are things that other games in the series did better – but all in all it’s a fantastic game that any fan of the series should play at least once – and a reasonable starting place for newcomers to the series but who like action rpgs. Just be prepared to take the plot at face value and don't worry too much about the intricacies. I promise you it does make sense - but it's honestly not worth following if you weren't there from the beginning now. If you can look past seeming plot holes and accept there's a reason for things to be that way, you'll have a much better time.
