A Nobody wielding a keyblade to begin with made me feel like I knew absolutely nothing about KH. I seriously cannot think of a more convoluted story. P.S. Other Keybladr wielders to begin with made Sora feel unspecified and unlike a main character. Adding Riku and Kairi to the mix would have made sense to me for reasons I won't spend an eternity talking about, but the more keyblade wielders I see (past or present) the more it feels like the keyblade is just... nothing special? Like... like it's a job someone chooses, not a calling specific to the user.
@@xStrife1997x canonically there are millions of wielders, but, the war with Xemnas was a special instance that killed most of them. Thats when Sora is awoken as a new wielder, and starts a new surge of light. Now, anyone with pure intent can wield one because the worlds and their powers are reconnected. It's not a matter of being special or chosen, but accepting your own power and claiming it, in the name of justice.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if they hadn’t wrapped up EVERY single story plot in the last 10 minutes of the last quest. Going from group to group to finish their story was very disappointing. Also making the game more of a “kingdom hearts for everyone” instead of for the fans hurt the entire fanbase that has been waiting for this game for years. Very sad.
@@Italiansauseege yeah. It could have been easily fixed too. Just split plot points, 2 worlds apart Beat 2 worlds. They save aqua. But they can't get ven because, she just got freed from hell. She needs to rest. Beat 2 more worlds. Save Ven. Now he needs to rest. Etc etc Nothing would've changed and the game itself would have felt more rewarding to play as your not waiting ages for the plot to actually start
I think there's a lot of issues I have with the gameplay too. at least compared to the second game, the gameplay feels repetitive and drags, and it doesn't have the same rpg details as KH1 and KH2
@@gorbla1231 yes, and I mean everything before scala ad calum, should have been integrated through the game, saving aqua and ventus, fighting the xehanorts through the game
@@runicex2310you don't seem to understand. The end segment of the game had 3-5 plot points that could have easily been distributed earlier in the game. For example, rather then save aqua all the way at the end. Sora could partially unlock the power of waking and end up with riku, saving her 2 worlds in. Then they can say, Aqua needs time to rest before going to get ventus and you need to pass 2 more worlds before going to go get him. Etc etc. Instead. Essentially NOTHING happened during the actual game until we were down to the last few hours and suddenly, we get 20 plot points a minute
KH 3 managed to do what I thought was impossible. It made me, a fan since kingdom hearts 1 (from my elementary days) finally fu*king moved on from this franchise. Not because it gave me closure, it made me realize I will never experience the same high I experienced from KH 1&2. I mean, I was a huge fan I literally wore a keyblade necklace for like 10 years. Seriously, this game was such a huge dissapointment to me. Considering 90% of the plot doesn't matter, I think it justifies how I felt. Not to mention, the story that was told wasn't competently executed or written. I get the whole theme of the plot beats, but they did it in the most unnatural way like an expositary dialogue. Speaking of expositary dialogue, it's like the whole fu*king dialogue. The gameplay wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good and satisfying as the first two. It felt worse on the second run. I mean sure, it was a spectacle but it doesn't have a lot of depth to it, making it more boring the more you see it. Overall I felt like this game broke my heart and then completely blue balled me with the ending. It doesn't feel as genuine as the original and the sequel, it felt more like corporate decisions trying to rope you in on the next project without giving us a deserved closure. By now I don't think Nomura is a good director or writer, and I'm tired of pretending how "intricate" or "deep" or "planned out" this whole story is. At least now I can move on to better things.
I despise Nomura after the FF7 rebirth ending. The man actively sabotages the greatest death scene in JRPG history and replaced it with a "deep, mysterious" multiverse subplot bullshit and robbed all of us of either a chance to save her and change history or to mourn this version of her properly. Instead we got ambiguous multiverse bullshit.
I had exactly the Same thought. Im so disappointed with this game, that I moved on with the KH franchise. KH2 was just a magical masterpiece. After I’ve finished kh3 I felt empty and disappointed. Than I realized, I will never get another kh2. So I moved on. Anything KH related, doesn’t interest me anymore, sometime i think it is cringe now.
To me KH3 is a very dull game that's more concerned with setting up the next storyline than wrapping up the one it already had. The Disney worlds are more pointless than they've ever been (Sora gets most of his old abilities back in Olympus and then some with the Keyblade forms and Attractions while he never makes any progress on the power of waking until the plot demands he needs it; except when it doesn't in Aqua's case) and waits until the last world for the game to tell the story it actually wanted to tell.
I agree completely. They spend so much time setting up the box and other stuff that will only be important in later games that it feels like KH3 is a prequel to KH4 more than a finale to the Xehanort saga
I don't agree. It's more of a character study. While the Disney worlds are points of conflict that Xehanort is using to drag Sora into the conflict deeper and deeper, the point is that Sora is finding his power through observing how others protect and care for their loved ones. It's less about Western plot structure and more about an Eastern or specifically Japanese structure which delves into the character. Sora is making new friends and through them he is remembering the bonds he's made.
@@thedappermagician6905 That's a weak character study then. None of his quests developed him as a character OR the story in a connected way, it's just him bouncing from place to place with no direction. Even Journey to the West had the main group going linearly to a designated location. They didn't grow at a lot of the stops but you still understood their mission after each of them. Sora was just doing random crap on top of a really boring battle system. The game already has to base the world around the stories of Disney IPs, having Sora's goal to be observing that is just silly and doesn't give his character any weight.
The replicas don't have weight because we never saw how hard it was to make them or if you need special materials. Instead they are just plot devices and there was no need for replica Riku to sacrifice himself
@Erdrick-c9bthey are all replicas. They are Replica Nobodies with their actual hearts in the Replicas that Xehanort summoned with the power of waking.
I wish this game was better. It really feels like kingdom hearts fell off because of this game. My entire friend group moved on completely after this game. I miss the days of KH2. The hype was insane. The story and mystery was crazy in a good way. KH3 just kinda resolved too many things in unsatisfying ways. Especially Xehanort
@@Pikaru-c4u I agree partly. I really hate that you basically need 7 different platforms to really understand the whole story. Concentrating on one console (maybe an additional pc port) would've been enough. But I also get that different platforms may result in different art- and gamestyles and gives different audiences the possibility to dive into this franchise. I don't think that this was the reason for it... But it could be.
@@onlywiigame. Best selling when gaming is more popular than ever, repeat sales across multiple platforms, not being exclusive that way prior titles are. The actual relative numbers aren't particularly impressive either in their full context. You're not painting a full picture. We should also consider that this was the culmination of a very long saga, and naturally many would want to see that end, but how many fans are now jaded about the franchise. Destiny 2 has seen a similar position with the end of its "Light and Darkness saga". Yes, it's actually called that lol. What a wonderful example for comparison. Will these long time fans rejoin the adventure with KH4? The reality is that a game simply selling well doesn't mean much other than commercial success. KH3 is a contentious entry, and while many fans loved it, many fans are also done with the series as a result.
I think the biggest issue for me was that it felt like the series was aging with its audience until 3. Each game in the series had a depth of tragedy and emotion that moved with how we were aging, and then out of nowhere, we got the most anti climatic non emotional corporate garbage story of 3.
My biggest issue. Every impactful moment is invalidated. No I don't think every character getting a happy ending served the series well. Those emotional moments when I go back and play old titles lose their weight. It's hard to care when you know everyone gets a happily ever after. It's hard to feel invested going forward because I know nothing bad is permanent. All weight has been removed from narrative consequences.
It was okay, but I would have preferred Riku over Sora saving Terra, it would have made more sense since they've met and already had connection before.
Biggest issue I had with KH3 was replaying the exact Disney movie instead of creating a new adventure with those characters. Frozen, Tangled and a little of PotC were a drag while Hercules, Toy Story and Monsters Inc felt like classic KH formula. Just my opinion though.
i LOVED THE TANGLE WORLD CAUSE YOU COULD PLAY WITH REPUNZEL though i think everyone agrees the frozen world sucks. talking over the songs also is just always audio vomit.
This game has some of the most bizarre writing problems I have ever seen, in that 90% of it is essentially goofing off and wasting time in the Land of Licensed Media, and the other 10% is so rushed and businesslike in its movement from plot point to plot point that it forgets to be any fun at all. You generally want a story to have both of these to some degree, but the balance and distribution is just wildly off. It's like a burrito where the first ten bites are pure cheese and all the beef is stuck at the tail end. All the emotional moments depend entirely on having played other games, because no one here acts like friends. They don't have time! They're too busy explaining weird metaphysical plot points and losing fights so Sora can come save them. It's just sad that in a game series that sold me on the power of friendship, nobody really feels like friends by the end. It feels like they are acting more out of a sense of duty and obligation than anything.
I wish they sprinkled a couple of org 13 fights throughout the game instead of all of them being rushed and easy at the end of the game. In kh2 the most memorable points of the game for me are when we run into an org 13 member and fight them. Fight axel xaldin and Demyx really made me feel like we were making progress beating back org 13. Here it just feels like we’re on vacation in Disney worlds until we finally get called in to work in the world
For some reason everyone refuses to acknowledge that normura was made to work on 3 games at once. One of which he didn't even know was coming. While I don't think kh3 was bad, it did leave me wanting in a way. I forgive nomura but I do blame square as a whole.
@@nesoukkefka1741I blame Disney more than Square since Disney owns all the original Kingdom Hearts characters along with their own characters. There aren’t any FF characters (unless you count Verum Rex ig) in KH3.
You blame Disney for Nomura saving 99% of the story for the very end? Or looking for crabs? Or the cast being completely useless besides Sora? Cope. Pure cope.
What made it for me that hard is the fact that Sora and Riku had character development in KH2. They started to grow up like i did as a child. Taking things more seriously and learned to know that things can take much bigger consequences. In KH 3 especially Sora acts a lot more like 5 years old than beforw in KH 2. Then there have been no final fantasy characters which are an important part if you play a game which is colap of Disney and Final Fantasy. No possibility to discover a rebuild Radientgarden, to see the complete Twilightown with the hide out the struggle field and the mansion. Story arcs got cut short, didnt give you the feeling that everything went reasonable. I mean other games in the series had this too but not at this amount. At least not in kh1, chain of memories, kh2, birth by sleep. You can really tell that square did a whole piece of s... In the organisation and then just said... Nomura will fiz it and if not, its his problem. This game could have been so great if they just have said give it 1 or 2 years more with full support in development but nope. I played it 2 times and i am still disappointed how it turned out
This!!! Sora’s regression sucked. I loved his development in KH2. And like you said, taking away Radiant Garden and Twilight Town which were made so special in KH, especially KH2 and 358/2 days, and BBS, really sucked. It’s like they forgot all about those games which are personally why (especially KH2) I fell and stayed in love with the franchise despite all the additions and retcons. I really wish KH3 was more than it was. I know they felt KH could stand on its own without FF chars, but the returning FF characters’ KH iterations actually really mattered to me. :(
Little to no FF characters this time except later in the DLC. Forcing more storylines in an entry where it’s supposed to wrap up a saga. Not able to fight the Disney villains as much as this time, no Hercules coliseum where there should have been one on Mt Olympus. They definitely dropped the ball with this, and it feels like I barely scratched the surface
Realistically speaking, the problem with Kingdom Hearts III's story is the same problem Kingdom Hearts II had: there's so many characters on the board, but there's not really enough time to use them all. Kingdom Hearts II has Riku off doing who knows what for most of the game, Mickey is in and out, Naminé and DiZ disappear entirely without explanation, and Kairi spends half of the game standing on a beach and the other half in a prison cell. Kingdom Hearts III decides to take all of those characters, bring them back, and then add another *seven* or so to the plot. And then the focus is STILL entirely on Sora despite that.
For KH2, what all those characters are up to being a mystery is part of the story, Sora is in the dark about what's going on, with both you and him gradually figuring out the bigger picture as you get closer to the last world. DiZ, Namine, and Kaira are even established as being non-active forces from the start, instead leading with the expectation that they'll be an active force as things get rolling in the plot. KH3 does the opposite on both fronts, we _know_ exactly what other characters are up to, are made to expect that those other characters will be active players in the plot, and then we just don't switch to their perspective for any substantial amount of time in the entire game, on top of them barely doing anything of importance to begin with. It's like if BBS just had you play as Ventus, and just told you what the other two were doing in the background, with only Ventus's actions having actual plot significance, that's what KH3 is.
KH1 is still the only game in the series that actually took creative liberty with the Disney worlds & characters in order to properly integrate them into the overarching story; KH2 onward is where the Disney World start to feel like shallow cameos that simply halt the main story with gimped retellings of the original stories rather than being integrated into the main plot. As for the Final Fantasy cameos they served there purpose just fine in the previous titles, so removing them from KH3 completely and relegating them to a small appearance in the DLC just seems like an unnecessarily backwards decision. KH1 to this day is still the simplest & cleanest KH experience.
I think the biggest part of that is they never really expected to make more than one game. Sure there's a secret ending or whatever, everyones got ideas for sequels to their own stories. But the original really is the only one that NEEDED to stand on its own. The second biggest part I think is just how much more chill Disney was with their IP. They used to be more ok with original stories and lower budget productions but that does not fly for them anymore. So they just used to be like "eh just keep the characters on theme, don't make Sully a crazy villain in the Monsters Inc game." Or "oh you wanna make a game based off the little ending from The Incredibles? Hell yeah go for it!" Now they're so locked down they're scared to let anyone be creative with their characters.😊
The game just felt rushed, like there weren't any actual stakes and it felt like character development ends up not being fully utilized. Aqua was in the dark for 10 YEARS and got nothing but a palette swap and some angry voice lines?!?! Aqua + Riku, despite being Keyblade Masters, end up being plot fodder to kill time until Sora shows up? Axel + Kairi got Keyblades just to not do anything? Its hard to believe they spent all that time on such a dissatisfying game.
it's almost as if Aqua was raised since she was a baby by a mentor who's so incredibly stringent about controlling, resisting, and suppressing the darkness that a tiny little puff of purple smoke was enough for him to flunk Terra, a kid with a heart the size of a planet, out of the mark of Mastery. So no shit Aqua survived being in the realm of darkness with very minor changes, she was literally born and raised to do as much. Please for the love of god play the games before you criticize them, I beg you
They even wrapped up stories that they didn’t have to. This game feels like a lazy reboot to me. We didn’t need to see half of these characters again like roxas and namine’s stories felt pretty much wrapped up in kh2. It undermines their original tragic stories with the silver lining that they still exist inside their original versions. Bringing them out here was very unnecessary. All of the Disney worlds were also unnecessary. Honestly 80-90% of this game was unnecessary
Im curious to see how Nomura will handle these characters going forward. No matter what he does, you're going to get people asking, "Where's Roxas?! Where's Aqua?! I wanna see Xion!" despite their stories being fairly well tied up.
Generally, I liked KH3, I would probably give it a 7/10. Gameplay was very good, the graphics and environmental design were astonishing and sadly the story was a crap fest. Storywise we know at this point what we are dealing with in the KH saga, but they overdid it with the amount of unexplainable plot twists and way too much stuff deciding to either work or not plus characters popping in and out simply because it allows the story to continue whether if there is any comprehensive relevance. To me, it also felt like they made Sora too dump in this game while his sassiness and clever points were totally absent. In fact, almost none of the characters do anything memorable with their behavior except for Donald who reminds you every 30 seconds that this might be a good spot to find some ingredients. Gameplay was almost perfect at least according to my opinion. Flowmotion was dreamy, grinding the enemies to become stronger was surprisingly satisfying and addicting plus I loved almost every world the game had for you to explore. However, there were 2 things that bothered me. First of all the hard difficulty "Proud" was extremely easy and made the game dull. There were so many mechanics present in the game but there was absolutely no reason to utilize any of those simply due to the lack of challenge. On the other hand "Critical" which came after the release as an update because too many people complained, was definitely a more rewarding experience but it was rather unfair at most points. It's okay that this difficulty exists but we needed something in between these two mods. Also...is it okay to complain about the "Disney rides" as a total turndown? Sora in KH2 was break dancing in the air to execute combos and looking like an absolute boss. Why is he spinning a teacup or riding a carousel mid-battle?!?!? 🤣 My opinion is that if you like Kingdom Hearts and made it thus far through the years you have to play it, it is an overall good time. The saddest part of this whole package is that it is just good, while you can obviously see so much potential that makes you constantly wonder how much better this would have been if only a couple things were more polished.
The only plot progression in the entire game happens in the beggining and the end. Everything in between is just a giant Disney merch ad. The organization members barely even contributed to the plot, even though they were in every single world.
I liked the happy ending for xehanort in concept but not in execution. It shows that continuing to try and destroy him never works to end him and perpetuates a cycle that only kindness could break I just don't think that's a device you can rush the way it was rushed.
It would have been cool to have longer cutscenes of the trios reuniting but it would have killed the pacing of the climax if after each battle we got a 3 minute cutscene
I think my biggest complaint (other than the ones in this video) is how we only have 6 Disney Worlds and we are done with them in one shot. One of the coolest things about other games is how each world had essentially 2 parts but in this one you go into the world and you are done immediately. Also, we can see how less “chill” Disney was about their property in KH3, not allowing any alteration in their “fan favorites”to the point we are just watching the movie instead of inhabiting these worlds.
I dont think a game has ever disappointed me harder than this game did. And having to pay 30 flippin dollars for what is one of the strongest examples of "shouldve been in the game already" makez it even worse. KH4 has a lot to make up for
Fully agree, except i dont even care about KH4 anymore so it wont even get a chance from me. I cant believe how the Keyblade War turned into a checklist of 1-minute cutscene for each character to wrap up, and Kairi was nothing but a liability. I can believe Disney ruined the disney worlds by corporate interference, but the Keyblade Graveyard and Scala Ad Caelum was all squarely on Square’s shoulders.
During the frozen area, I feel like sora could've had a small musical fight with the gang trying to get Elsa to see what she's doing instead of letting her powers run wild, much like Riku, with Larxien tempting her more and more reminding her why she's doing what she's doing, that would've been a more interesting dynamic for the world, even letting it show that darkness is still watching and waiting during really weighted decisions, allowing Elsa to have a taste of their power if she desired to.
That would require them to write a bad guy as more than just “sneering and contemptuous” which I’m not sure theyre capable of anymore. Larxene would have to make herself appear sympathetic to Elsa.
@-JaggedGrace- not really, larxene just needs to stoke her rage and feelings of showing her true self, uninhibited by fear of hurting others, this also plays to the original movie, after all sora would be trying to stop her just like her family did for years, this would open her up to darkness and make it more interesting, especially if Elsa asked Larxene for some help by combining their magic, thus creating the ice dungeon we go through anyway.
Not the worst. But I had finished KH2 days before and gameplay wise Kh3 was very floaty, story wasn't as good. It was all Disney world after world. And usually you would have the KH story in-between worlds but for most of the worlds is just some black coats messing with the world and being mysterious and then it's all left for the last act and they throw ALL the KH lore we have been waiting for for the last hours on the game. I love kingdom hearts. kH1 was my very first PS2 video game , the cgi cutscene left me completely mesmerized and was burned to my retinas, and Kh3 made me cry like a baby with the ending,but I had to dig a huge hole to get there.
I think the most disappointing part of 3 is how Riku felt completely sidelined especially after the insanely epic fight with Xemnas at the end of 2 where Sora and Riku showed off their teamwork and how much it felt like a satisfying conclusion to both their arcs in how they each matured from their individual journeys. Not to mention how they pushed Riku even more into the spotlight with DDD that I was expecting to be able to either have Riku in the party for 3 or at least be able to play a good chunk of the game with him, but no. He honestly needed to have more prominence in 3.
@@timekeeper2538 it is valid kh3 is waaaay to floaty you dont need any strategy or anything to beat stuff its just button mashing unlike kh2 and especially kh1 where you needed certain stuff to become better
As much as Roxas coming back was pretty obvious for many fans, I always felt him not coming back would have been more emotionally impactful. Like, they could have ot where Roxas temporarily takes control of Sora during the fight where he helps Xion and Axel and after the fight, Roxas would reassure them that he'll always be there for them because after all, Roxas is Sora. But that's just me. Other than that, I felt that the other keyblade wielders didn't contribute much sadly. Like, remember when Sora and Riku fought side by side to defeat Xemnas? That was such a spectacle that felt like a satisfying conclusion to both Sora's and Riku's journey. Sora had matured and become a Hero for the Realm of Light while Riku conquered the darkness in his heart and created his own path to become a Hero of Darkness. The final fight in 3 should have had all the keyblade welders fighting alongside Sora or Hell could have been Sora, Riku and Kairi or something
This is Sora we're talking about. The world gave up on Roxas but he never did. Sora is the connection. That's why I'm fine with Roxas coming back, because he was never supposed to exist and he was never supposed to come back, but Sora wasn't happy with that.
@@REDEEMERWOLFI actually agree with you. However the way they went about it was so bad it just felt like pure fan service and nothing else. It should’ve been a fleshed out plot point
@redeemerwolf I get that. It's just the whole Replica stuff felt so rushed not helped by the fact that we get all this plot dump at the end instead of it being spread out. Would feel more satisfying if we did save Terra, Ven, and whatnot throughout the course of the game and boss fights with the Organization Members in the Disney Worlds where the resulting clash created the fragments of the X-Blade so there was that tension much like in Two when Sora learned killing Heartless was what the Organization wanted him to do and he had that moment of doubt
🌋Interestingly, as someone with D.I.D., we kind of wish Roxas got to still exist in the way you describe here. Roxas and Naminé's experiences remind us a lot of how it is to exist as a person who shares a body with more than one person. We've talked to other fans before, but, there can still be tragedy in the sense that they can't have separate bodies AND they can still take control of the body every now and again to reassure their friends and family they're still there.
Agreed. I don’t like him coming back tbh. I always felt that since he was originally apart of sora that he simply returned to that. That should have been his arc. Hm coming back just ruined all that. Especially xion. She was never suppose to exist at all and yet she’s a whole person now. Definitely didn’t agree with that
My favourite part of the game is the 10 hours of cutscenes where they re hash the decade of story development and throw it out the window🎉. Maybe kingdom hearts was the friends we made along the way
Was excited to see an hour long critique/analysis of this game, but I’m 23 minutes in, and this has been almost entirely recap. The little bits of your thoughts that came through were mostly just versions of “it felt good” or “it felt bad”.
Spoiler alert from the future, it doesn't get much better. Even when the analysis/critiques actually starts 47 mins in, it's weird considering how many times he says "I'll explain what I mean later" that he only continues to explain story events.
I see this more and more in "critiques", people don't seem to even know what a critique is, this is why going to university and learning how to be a professional is important. 99 percent of people don't even know how to be insightful or use references, never mind actually form a full critique.
@@upon-fe2720 I personally think the big thing is the video length. Understanding HOW to give a critique is one thing. But the primary problem is the video is much too long for only one or two real critcisms to be cited. I don't think he cited the points that well either, but the story summation could've been replaced with simply citing the specific instances in the story that support the specific critiques he had and that could've cut the video in half
Yeah this is a HUGE problem with much of the younger creators. They don't know how to establish facts and tie them into a greater thesis. Almost all of their reasoning tends to be governed by feelings and vibes as opposed to structured reasons for WHY they feel or think some particular way.
The Disney worlds were basically nothing and the sidecast didn't have their time given as much as they should have and literally the entire plot TRULY starts and ends after the final Disney World making me think "What was even the point of all this?"
Yeah. Easily the weakest in the franchise in my opinion, I’d rather play the ds games and that’s not an over exaggeration. Kh3 is the only one that I’ve never replayed. And I can’t ever make myself get past Olympus whenever I try.
What started out as a game with good characters, gameplay and a story that was simple and clean, turned a convoluted milked IP. The series should have ended with KH2. It the setup for a great ending.
you perfectly summed up the issues i had with kh3. i found myself blasting through all the disney worlds to reach the end because they did not give me anything to care about storywise. and while i still find myself emotional rewatching all the cutscenes of trios reuniting, it feels so lackluster in the grandscheme of things. we spend entire games watching the trio's stories end in tragedies and wait years for them to reunite, only for a resolution to happen in 10 minutes after fighting easy bosses. i wish side characters had a more grand stage in kh3, and i really hope they dont get completely sidelined in the future releases. i love kh3, but it's story just doesn't play out as well compared to the past games.
11:55 small disagreement here, imo Aqua doesn't get "washed" in this fight - Vanitas could see he was getting nowhere and gave up on trying to beat her head on, playing dirty by threatening Ven. Aqua threw herself in front of Ven as an act of protective sacrifice, which wouldn't qualify as a wash in my book.
you'd have a point if you hadn't blocked 5 of those fireballs with ease immediately before. my boy goofy would have blocked it, his guard works in cutscenes.
And one other thing among the issues that losses people with KH3 is that they reference movies that the older generation who played KH1 and 2 on release as kids are too old for to have some sort of nostalgic connection due to the game referencing movies like Tangled, Frozen and Big Hero 6 I mean sure they added Toy Story and Monsters Inc but still it really feels like the newer movies that KH3 introduces are made for the new generation to enjoy in the game
I'm a KH3 hater. I hate how the game invalidates several prior impactful story beats. Consequences don't really exist in its narrative and every emotional story beat loses all weight. That makes me sad. It's my favorite childhood franchise. The damage is done. I hope the eventual KH4 can pull me back in, but I'm hesitant to even consider it. Also I hate the mobile game time-in. That's gonna be tough to get over if its narrative has a front seat in the future narrative. Final boss rush was a nice spectacle though.
as someone who knew very little about the KH series going into KH3, i also felt like there were things that were missing. my first thought going through the game was "who are all these people and why should i care?", which didn't get answered until i went back and learned the story. but going back to it after learning more about the entire series makes it still feelriddled with holes.
Yeah, imagine following the series for years since the first game which started out with a simple enough premise but overtime became this convoluted mess of a plotholes and retcons
@@soulkibble1466I think that because after kh2 and bbs he wanted to make v13 with the ideas he had for a while before kh2 so he started introducing new characters with the games after bbs thinking that he could turn kh3 in v13. I wonder how kh3 woulda turned out if the og v13 released
"I jumped into a nearly 2-decade old franchise on the very last installment and I have no idea what's happening, why couldn't this game pander to me specifically and make it completely unnecessary to play the other games?" ridiculous complaint KH is a franchise for fans who are willing to dig through hours and hours of lore to discover its universe, if you don't like it, you have literally every other franchise in the world willing to spoonfeed you everything. This one is for us, not you.
@@WatsonDynamite none. I literally started this series on the PS2 with the first game when in originally came out and had followed it throughout the years.
The game is floaty, it has no good feeling ground combos, or air combos that hit the ground in a satisfactory way. The story is so disjointed, there is no middle at all. Its just Same thing over and over again, dont learn lessons from past stories but you dont need too cause nothing you learn is useful. Sora doesn't move the plot it just happens to him and no one knows what he is thinking no one communicates other than the villians... Then you reach what would have been the middle but then the game ends If you want an ending you have to buy the DLC if you even know it exists and its not an ending at all. Its just "buy the next game in 10-20 years" if you want to know what happens. 100% Trash ruined my most favorite child hood story before this game even released, too many side games to know basics of the story. YES ITS BAD AND THE ONLY THING THAT CAN FIX IT IS A REMAKE THAT WONT HAPPEN.
Honestly, the gameplay fun, but the main issue was the story. The story felt like it didn't matter until the End. Now imagine if...Okay, here me out...The game starts with the ending. -You start off saving Aqua and Ventus, then go straight to the Keyblade Graveyard with everyone. Afterwards, we get to the part where everyone dies. -Afterwards, Namine sends Sora to find everyone's Hearts which are separated in The Disney Worlds. -Now we have a reason to go to these worlds, and relive the movies. -THEN we go back to the Graveyard
I remember how KH3 ending made me feel. I cried at the end of it. More of a feeling of “wow I can’t believe I made it to see this, cuz I didn’t think I’d live to see it” but other then that feeling I don’t remember much about the game
The "Let It Go" and Pirates scenes were probably intended to be tech showcases with UE4. Not sure if it was Disney's call or if it was some sort of deal made with Epic to prove the engine would make for a valid animation tool. And yeah, that probably cut into the game's budget pretty deeply regardless.
For me yes, so much plot shoved into the last part of the game and none of the Disney Worlds meant anything, I was so excited for KH2 and even more so after FFXV, but KH3 was just an equal letdown and it killed my love for the Series and I have no excitement for KH4.
Ive always felt like kh3 is exactly what people who refuse to give kingdom hearts a chance think kingdom hearts is. And that's always made me deeply upset.
This right here, is exactly how it feels. Can’t even tell people to get into the series because it leads exactly to what they thought was wrong with the series to begin with
@@oathkeeperofoblivion972 ironically, I’m actually more excited for KH4, but only after playing Re:Mind, which really just put a band-aid over the game. But KH4 is the last chance the series has before I’m done with it.
@@mathewgilbert9190 I didn't sign up for versus 13. I'm glad Numora is making what he wants but. It's not something I have any interest in whatsoever. Even if it weren't for that. Every plot point I was invested in is tied up, whether it's in a way I like or not. There's....nothing left for me. So I won't bother getting excited, cuz I don't have anything to get excited about.
@@oathkeeperofoblivion972 I’m kind of rooting for him at this point. Square kicked him off the development for versus XIII,which supposedly was gonna be his magnum opus, to focus on KH3. But my theory is that Disney didn’t want Nomura to make the KH3 he envisioned for the series. That’s why the game was “made for everyone,” so anyone could hop on to the story. I’m also willing to bet Disney is the reason there were exclusively no FF character til the DLC and that’s why the worlds felt very bland, because they didn’t want to make a Kingdom hearts game, they literally wanted to retell their stories and make sure Sora didn’t effect the overall plot of their movies, for meta sake. I think KH4 is a middle finger to both Disney and Square for ruining both things he wanted to make
Kairi should have had way more agency in the series. She’s repeatedly been a damsel in distress when she was a fierce tomboy in the first game. She should have evolved into being a keyblade wielder and the powerhouse that comes with it considering she’s also a princess of heart. She has so much potential that never got explored and it’s so disappointing because they definitely have so many throwaway stories like dreamdrop.
Every time I heard Olaf say “I’m over here!” I wanted to throw my controller at the wall. I love snowy areas and Arendale made me genuinely loathe snow. I already hated Frozen and having to basically watch the movie again made it a slog. I’m also of the opinion that instead of At World’s End, Deadman’s Chest should have been the pirate world. We skipped the middle part of the trilogy and it just felt so weird. Also annoying how they never followed up the “Jack might wield a keyblade” thing they did in KH2, would have been nice to see him whip one out lol. Like you, I also felt upset that Ven and Roxas didn’t say a word to each other. They just did a Spider-Man meme and moved on from it. Like come on man. We waited for so long for this and all they do is the “Sup dude” head nod and that’s it? I have good memories of my first play through of the game, but after I let it marinate, I just started questioning so many things. I’ve replayed all the games in the series multiple times yet I’ve replayed 3 only once and I dunno, it just didn’t feel like a conclusion, but a segue into a new saga. Which is alright but there’s no finality. Not to mention Xehanort got a happy ending when no, this bastard ruined lives, he shouldn’t be happy, but we gloss over that. In the end, KH3 isn’t a bad game, but it’s definitely not a good KH game.
Honestly, WHY did they say that Sora needed the power of waking to save Aqua? I get Ven, but Aqua???? Rescuing Aqua shouldve been half-way through, give her some gawsh darn time to re acclimate to the realm of light before the final showdown, maybe have her spend some of that helping to train Lea and Kairi. Because there was absolutely NO REASON WHATSOEVER for why Sora needed the Power of Waking to save her. I honestly enjoy KH3 for what it is, but this one thing bothers me a lot.
Aqua was trapped in the world of darkness and yen sid assumed that Aqua fell into the deep abyss (same thing that happened to Sora in DDD). The pow was required to pull her out but since she ended up pulling herself out, it ended up not necessary to get her out using the pow.
@@supershiba8346that's a BINGO! Because Aqua DID fall into the Deepest Darkness. At that point she would have been unreachable. No one counted on that she would be able to find her way to the shores that Riku and Sora (and Mickey) had been to. In fact, it was Mickey and Riku who were going after Aqua. It wasn't Sora's job. He found his way there via Divine Providence and the power of the key blade. Mickey and Riku found Aqua but she and the Heartless Devil Spiral bodied them which they weren't preparing for.
The community wanted to use more of the team! To introduce all 7 of light to only use the in one final battle is absolutely ridiculous. Riku with 5 seconds in the story like DLC could’ve easily made this game GOTY! 😢😢😢
I didn't like the combat as much as KH2 because of how floaty it was but I also feel like it was 50% "cutscene". Even the footage you chose had a lot of "cutscene" in it. Every attraction/keyblade transformation was just 'hit a button and everything around you collapses' which felt like a cutscene with an extra step. I know you could just not use those but then every 10 steps there was like 10-15 insane hp sponges in front of you where you're just doing your 3 hit floaty combo for way too long. I couldn't even last more than a few hours in that game which was disappointing because of how much I loved KH1&2.
"Just don't use them!" wouldn't even be so bad if it didn't add tedium on top of the combat. If you chose not to use them, now you're playing a secondary game of carefully monitoring the constant influx of situation commands. Say you're fighting a berserker or a dusk in kh2, and you see the triangle prompt appear. You instantly know whether or not you want to engage with it, because it's always the same prompt for the same enemy. It allows the player to style the gameplay around the predictablility of a particular enemy quirk. These random green circles in kh3 however could be anything. They appear at random, and are activated solely by engaging with combat at a base level. You better make sure you're monitoring your command menu! Lest you spawn the stupid teacups!
@@qrowing Skill issue, honestly. Monitoring situation commands is a lot more intuitive, and easier to perform, than fumbling around the command menu manually to do certain inputs in KH2.
Were you upgrading your equipment as you progressed, including exploring to get treasure chests with better gear, crafting better great when possible, and upgrading your preferred keyblades? I've never had any damage scaling problems, even at Level 1. Yes, not even when I go to Arendelle or Corona before Monstropolis and Toy Box respectively. Taking on a higher-level world with a weaker build for desired rewards is a calculated risk, not tedium.
They built Roxas’ entire story arc to lead up to an inevitable clash with Xemnas, but at the very last minute they relegate Roxas to fight Saix? That made zero sense to me. I understand that Sora is the main character, but brushing Roxas storyline to the side like that killed all of the momentum 358/2 built up
KH3 killed it for me, no more KH after this one for me, I still have the remainder of the collection to play through, but I won't be buying new games after that disappointment.
Man, I agree with everything you said! I waited for more than ten years for some characters to meet each other, only for them to nod and walk away. It was so frustrating. Sora gets more interaction with Marshmallow (the frozen golem from Arendelle) than he does with Roxas or Ventus. Everything is wrapped up in a few minutes, with some extremely confusing things like Xion's return. And to be honest, the Keyblade Graveyard scenario was too basic: four big walls and that's all. After all the verticality that the game previously had, the climax happens in the most basic scenario (except for Scala ad Caelum, which you can't explore in the main game). Traverse Town was cut down too... No train tower, no train station, no "usual place", no mansion... Castle Oblivion/Land of Departure gets the same treatment: the area is just a corridor, a stair, and the main hall. And we don't get Destiny Islands or Radiant Garden, two of the most iconic places in the story, which are featured in the game, but you don't even get to walk in them... It's like everything important to the main story was cut down (Realm of Darkness too!). The direction for the last act was bad/rushed too. For example, when they enter the Keyblade graveyard, and Terranort hits Ventus, they all wait two full seconds to react to the fact that their friend has been knocked unconscious. All the pacing of that scene is bad (Sora protecting Kairi with his back towards Terranort?? Aqua freezing for no apparent reason...). Or when the whole cast is in one scene, they just stand and blink, there's not a single bit of personality in anyone (for example, in the final scene in the Keyblade graveyard, after finally defeating Xehanort, everyone but Sora, Riku, and Mickey are just extras with no personality). Another problem was that they wanted to give redemption arcs to everyone. I never liked Saix, he did awful things, but in the end, he appears with ice cream and then everything is fine (Sorry Saix fans! But they could at least pretend they don't get along). Or Xehanort being a good guy in the end, when he destroyed a lot of lives in the first place. Or Larxene, or Marluxia (even when he seemed like a better guy from before). I did like Xigbar's plot twist tho. It's a very fun game, but it's like they left aside the main story only to give fanservice of Disney movies. And the fans only got a barely pleasant ending. Great review, Sappy!
Sorry for the long read, but I feel like I need to express some frustrations with Kingdom Hearts III - especially regarding the characters and the story. Let’s start with Axel (or should I say, Lea). For all the hype surrounding Axel from previous games, we didn’t get much of him in KH3. He insists on being called Axel, yet he’s actually Lea and shouldn't have memories of his Nobody life. This inconsistency with the established lore is frustrating and just one example of how Kingdom Hearts tends to bend its own rules whenever it suits the plot. Then there's Riku and Mickey. These two are supposed to be Keyblade Masters, yet they don’t really accomplish much throughout the game. They are involved in some battles at the end, sure, but they couldn’t even save one of the Wayfinder trio before Sora arrived. As Masters, this really should have been within their capabilities without needing Sora’s help - something you kind of hinted at in the video. Kairi is a huge letdown. After training in the “Dragonball Hyperbolic Time Chamber,” she still ends up getting captured again. At this point, she deserves more than just being a damsel in distress. She could have turned things around and maybe even been the one to save the others, especially after all she and her friends have been through. Terranort is probably the most insulting aspect for me. Instead of saving their original Terra, they end up rescuing a Terra from an alternate timeline. So, their own Terra is still part of the heartless (and probably dead), while another timeline is now missing its Terra. This whole twist felt cheap and unsatisfying. Now for Sora, and why his story really bothers me. After his failure in the Mark of Mastery test during Dream Drop Distance, he spends KH3 trying to get the Power of Waking. But it feels like the game only really begins after we finish the Disney worlds and move on to rescuing the lost Keyblade wielders. The Disney worlds themselves are problematic because Sora and co. don't impact the story in any meaningful way. Sora doesn't even seem to learn from his experiences in those worlds. For instance, after Olympus, Hercules could have talked about how he saved Meg because he loved her, and Sora could have related that to Anna saving Elsa in Frozen. But nope, no meaningful growth or reflection. Sora deserves a break from adventuring. After everything he’s been through, especially fighting through his childhood, he deserves a happy ending with Kairi. Setting up a future game at the cost of a happy conclusion that’s been 17 years in the making? That feels like a cruel twist. Toy Story world was another major disappointment. The story was a mess. The toys were in some alternate world, with only Andy's toys around, and Sora didn’t even offer to fix things later. It felt like the stakes of this world were forgotten or brushed off. The whole "Black Box" subplot was infuriating. There’s more focus on this mysterious box than on the reunions we had been waiting for. The second group of Princesses of Light subplot? It didn’t even matter in the end. If they had cut half of these unnecessary cutscenes and dropped the subplot, they could’ve spent more time tying up the story in a satisfying way. Finally, we should have had more moments where we played as other characters in the main game. Locking these moments behind paid DLC felt like a slap in the face, especially since not everyone is going to buy DLC for a game they already found disappointing just to see the good parts.
The magic system is so fucked. Why can Larxene, a lightning mage of moderate power, spawn an ice castle with a snap of her fingers? Why was Terranort at least twice as powerful as Xehanort? Why can Xemnas catch a molten keyblade with his hand using only his glove? It’s so painfully amateur. It feels like they didnt even have a basic outline for what characters can and can’t do.
@@-JaggedGrace- No worries, it’s pretty obvious. A running joke in my friend group is that the entire story feels like it was written on toilet paper during long bathroom breaks. Any part that didn’t add up got ‘wiped away’ and replaced with random subplots or twists to fill the gaps. And KH3? That was one serious case of diarrhea. Hope you enjoy the analogy as much as we do!
I'd never say kh3 was bad. My main 2 complaints were always 1. It was way too easy on release And 2. The story pacing was all squished to the last 20 % of the game. Causing me to stop caring about the last 2 worlds and rush through them. That's not a problem previous games had
@@timekeeper2538 no I'm not. We literally had the organization making itself known to sora and co the FIRST visit to hollow bastion. Never mind that even then, that happens at the MIDDLE of the game. Aqua isn't saved until 90% into the game. It sounds more like you are blinded by cope
@@timekeeper2538 my guy. You clearly don't know how good pacing works. Yes it's a big mid point. Stories are supposed to have those. The game also had the plot moving in smaller ways in between the bigger story bits. For example, the occassional run in with riku. Running into org members, and in the second half even taking out a couple org members before the final world. The game gave a steady flow of story progression with multiple important events happening before ever reaching the final world. And before you say it. No. Org members showing up to call sora a nerd in kh3 is not story progress. In kh2 they were new. Getting to know them even slightly was progress. In kh3, they only show up to remind us they exist Meanwhile k3 went World 1 no story progres World 2 no story progress World 3 no story progress World 4 no story progress Hey it's the mid point. How bout that story progress yensid? NO. Ok... World 5 no story progress World 6 no story progress World 7 no story progress and a massive world that at this point given the lack of story progress is more annoying in its size than it should be since it's gatekeeping the end game World 8 no story progress and a massive world that at this point given the lack of story progress is more annoying in its size than it should be since it's gatekeeping the end game End game Progresss progress progress progress prepgress Sora dies
@@1slayer959 So Young Xehanort explicitly stating he's studying the toys in Toy Box to learn how to bring Xion back and make her an org. member just flew over your head? Luxord looking for the black box?Vanitas gathering the leftover screams of children in Monsters Inc.? Vexen and Demyx being on our side was revealed in between worlds too. What about Riku and Mickey constantly dropping lore and interacting with our characters instead of the occasional "lore less" run in?
@@dangerexplosian i played a little bit of dream drop but never finished it. I finished Birth by sleep, kh1, kh2 and kh3. I love all of them but I still don't understand what people mean when they say sora is worse in 3. Like how?
@@codsworthh it's just his character seems like he's stupid like a literal baby can understand it's hard for you to know if you haven't played all of it. There's a really good RUclipsr his name is Regular pat he had a dream drop distance ranking for worlds and he also talks about the differences between the sora and Riku worlds
18:07 no no no, the name section still makes me so mad. I was one of the top players while that game was out and overnight a bunch of hackers got in, and ruined everyone's placements. I'm talking suddenly being within the top 100th to pushed to 600th, then a few thousands within two days. I dropped the game right after and then suddenly player names were in the game. I missed out on having my name in the third game all because hackers got in and ruined it, I'm forever going to stay upset about it.
@@Sappyhourr Oh yeah, there was a lot of issues with the game too, like whales would ruin player placements all the time. Basically the more you payed, the higher your ranks. I heard of one player paying thousands when the game dropped trying to win a Kairi medal that wasn't even in the game yet. The fanbase will do anything to get what they want to the point of everyone else's detriment. I also ended up losing my medals and entire account because I had lost my phone and had to get a new one. Hundreds of dollars down the drain and had to start over. When the hackers kicked me out of my place I had had enough by then. It just wasn't worth it after that.
I think something else to consider which you did touch on was the amount of time spent waiting for KH3. 6.5 years from Dream Drop Distance and 8.3ish years from Birth by Sleep. So much time for fans to generate their own scenarios, interactions, etc of what could happen only to be met with, "Yay we saved them! Alright, gotta go!". Hype for KH3 really gave fans a false sense of rose colored glasses. (I might be using the idiom wrong, lol) In all fairness, it was a keyblade "War" which means Sora ain't got time for that sentimental shite lol. It is a bummer, and something I tend to complain about when it comes to other franchises and even in anime. We're just forced to accept interactions we really want to see just happen off screen. I mean hell, it's what drives so many people to write and/or read fanfiction which ties to what I said in the beginning. Anyway, enjoyed the video and your takes on the game. Personally, I like the game if we're including Re:Mind, and I only like the game slightly less without it. I'm more of a take what I can get kind of guy, haha.
I know that Squeenix likes to be really soft and not push over boundaries, but I always found it weird how there is a perfect tear jerker opportunity to be emotional, say something valuable, or even make you feel what a character is going through, and instead they just get a pat and a thanks.
Kh3 lost alot when they removed the ff7 cast. And they ended up trying to wrap it all up in such a small package. This game needed to be like 100 to 150 hours to complete the full story properly so the game can be cut into 3 or 4 acts that allow time for each one and in the final act everyone reconnects to take down the final boss
Gameplay wise it was fun. That ending fight is where it killed the entire game for me. Finished it and never went back even for the secret stuffs, never done this in any of the kh games. Usually I root for the good guys but boy was I rooting for the bad guys on this one. The whole game they spend antagonizing you at the end of every world, then when it was time to fight they showed up and threw hands. The good guys just froze up and became wimps at the end. Only respectable people there was Roxas, Riku, Donald, and Terra's linger will. Everyone else just honestly sucked. Only person who should have frozed up should had been Kairi as it makes sense. Not having any of the FF characters in the game until some cutscenes and no Sephiroth fight was a crime. They played an important supporting role in the series and got abandoned.
The only thing that upset me about this game was the forced attraction attacks. It took me out of the combat. The combat was at its best without forcing the rides.
@ oh i totally agree. all the characters felt like lifeless versions of themselves, especially with sora seeming like his entire character was reset along with his stats.
I've never seen anything as crazy as this game spinning its wheels for the first half, and then abrubtly beginning a climax that takes the whole back half to resolve. The most unfathomably insane pacing of any game ever.
Kingdom Hearts III was a very terrible finale because it wasn't one, despite what it was advertised to be. As just another game in the series, it's fine enough. It has its weaknesses, but it has a lot of upsides, too.
yes, it was the end of a saga, not the series but thats zero excuse to rush through that story just to set up the next one. KH3 has no sense of finality for the storyline it was wrapping up, a storyline almost 20 years old at that point. KH2 wasn't one either, and its ending feels conclusive for the characters as they were at the time which is absolute proof KH3 has no excuse to be excessively bad at finishing something.
Look, nothing, and I mean NOTHING will scream "rushed ending" more than when Roxas and Ven finally met. I waited my entire childhood For this quick reaction "😮" "...😮" Like dog, neither of you have questions about that reflection of you on our side?
What they did to Kairi ... will never be forgotten. Or forgiven. She deserves a game. Riku's had 2 (and was arguably the main protagonist of DDD). AND NO, MoM does NOT count, at ALL.
I would've thought the final battle underneath water was random too, if you hadn't also fought in the sky. Maybe they were doing a land, sea, sky tribute to the heroes' name themes? Or it could be me giving the developers too much credit. 😅
I didn’t finish Kh3 and don’t know why ppl don’t like it but for me the game lost a lot of the charm and aesthetic it once had. The story I did play felt so pointless and directionless and I felt so disconnected with everything. To me the aesthetic felt like a corporate version of Kingdom Hearts that was also trying to be hip? Why do they have phones and social media now or maybe I’m misremembering lmao. I didn’t care for the gameplay. The Disney rides were cool ig but it just got super repetitive and kinda annoying. No final fantasy was a gigantic miss. I seriously don’t know how they fumbled what was such a simple story this hard
Given how much wrapup they had to do, it would not have been unreasonable for them to Avengers Infinity war/Endgame it, and make the entire game one long ending to the saga. Wheel of Time's "A memory of light" understands this task well as the capstone of a 14 book saga. The approach they took would have been fine for a 3 game saga, but adding the BBS plotlines, and then on top of that barely using the disney world elements, gave them too much to do in the final act. A problem made profoundly worse to what i think is a major part of the game's demographic, "casual" fans who played 1 on ps2 in their childhood, 2 on ps3 a few years later, and then 3. This demographic would have had no idea what the hell's going on, and by better pacing the plot points throughout the game, there was room to help these people enjoy what's going on. I think KH3 should have opened with what we got as a separate item in the 2.8 collection, "A fragmentary passage" which with little or no retooling would have set up the BBS characters for this demographic, and allowed that part of the plot to land better. Do what KH2 did and start us off playing another character to explore an idea, then fold it back into the plot later. I also think the selection of disney worlds this time around was weak, largely for how weakly many of them tied into the main plot of the game, when often they shouldn't have been. I'll give an A+ to monstropolis though, as the fight against corropted emptions weally did fit that setting. A basic example of this disconnect is the Frozen world, where the main plot stalls while we watch frozen play out. Frozen is a story about learning to love yourself and those who care for you. I think Sora was the wrong character to experience that, cause he has nothing to learn here.
The thing that really disappointed me most about this game on release (and I didn't play the non-numbered games, so cant comment on how much of a trend this had become over time) was the complete and utter lack of Final Fantasy characters, or Square Enix characters in general within the main story. One of the main appeals of the KH games dating back to the first was that it was legit the only games where you could experience SE and Disney characters genuinely interacting. The dynamics, the chemistry, the unlikely camaraderie that came from putting these characters in a room together. The heartwarming and sometimes hilarious moments that sprang from it. Cloud fucking Strife talking with 100% sincerity to Donald fucking Duck. No other game can replicate that kind of thing. So when I made it about 60% of the way through KH3 and it had dawned on me that we hadn't met a single FF character along the way, I definitely felt embittered toward the game for just dropping half of what gave KH its original flair. Forever felt afterward like Disney had bought out SE from their own IPs to make more room for their own, and, as we'd later see, shoved them in a DLC sized locker. I certainly felt the usual gripes about the story feeling like an inconclusive finale to a long awaited trilogy and the gameplay being piss easy. Attractions lose most of the fun factor after the like third or fifth time you use one, but are so dumb for doing so much damage AND making you invincible AND being handed to you constantly, that you feel like a moron for NOT wanting to make use of them. But I think the entire lack of other SE IPs in a game series thats primary selling point from the begging was "FF meets Disney" is just such a disappointment. They were never, like, IMPORTANT. They were never there for like the conclusion of the game's story, they never had to be. But they were an important part of the series' texture, its flavor, its SAUCE, that when you take a bite and its missing, you cant help but notice the recipe aint right anymore.
I think square should just get rid of Disney in its entirety. It doesn’t progress the actual story forward nor does it make the story any simpler. It’s like filler with themes that reference the main plot. Though yes it can create character development and I’m sure Disney owns most if not all of KH, but the story has been lacking in KH3. They need to stop making the story so convoluted by adding different elements like time traveling, memories, data, dreams, etc. The most compelling games that I have played have been linear and to the point with some side quest that actually play a role to the story. As an OG KH fan, KH3 was a let down.
Was it bad? Not bad. Was it upsetting? Hell yeah. Can’t believe they release a game with a confusing ending just to release a DLC with the actual ending knowing we would buy it
For the next game, they need to reference KH1 for level design & story telling, KH3 for world size (every world should receive the same treatment, not just Disney), and combination of KH2FM & KH3 for combat (I prefer Keyblade transformations to drive forms in concept, but latter was FAR better executed).
It wasn't a bad game per se. The combat was great and the mini games were okay except for cooking. The gummi ship missions were fun. What disappointed me was no arena, no Sephiroth fight even when they could've added it in DLC, no Final Fantasy characters in the base game, and an extremely unsatisfying ending.
For me, my biggest issue with the game play was that it was entirely cut scenes. I miss the puzzles and intricate world exploration of KH1 and lesser degree KH2 where it didn't guide you exactly where you needed to go. You had to run around and figure it out. It has gotten simpler and simpler with each iteration. I felt like this gameplay was just easy fights, running forward on the clearly defined path, and cut scenes. There were so many parts where you would finish one cutscene and it would bring you back to gameplay for you take 5 to 10 steps forward just to start another cutscene. Alongside the movie scene recreations it made KH3 feel more like an interactive movie than actually playing a game.
let me first state that you can like this game or dislike it and thats your opinion i have no problem with your opinion. however, this game has serious problems that cannot be ignored. most people who defend the game always use the argument of "this game was never going to deliver on the hype" or "you just had your expectations too high" and i hate those arguments because 1) its just throwing the rushed game under the rug and allowing the devs to get away with an unfinished unpolished product just because you had a few good feeling moments and 2) it completely ignores the actual arguments for what is wrong with the game because you dont want to acknowledge that a game that you and everyone else waited 13 years for could actually be a bad game and trust me i get it thats not something i want to acknowledge either but it is the reality. to acknowledge those arguments i say it absolutely could deliver the hype because the hype wasnt a perfect game the hype was delivering the promises it made and that wasnt hard to do. bbs trio finally getting back together and having their moment, twilight trio coming back together, disney worlds that feel like disney worlds and not just open worlds of very little to do outside of main story, decent story and pacing in a game thats been in development for this long, and a completion to this story. all of that is deliverable because all of that has been delivered in every single game up til this games release. kh2 was an improvement on kh1 massively with characters having even more depth, gameplay being vastly improved, story being just as mysterious but having solid pacing. the same goes for bbs, ddd, and all of the other side games. again none of them were perfect but all of them delivered what we expected them to deliver. some were better than others and some people hold in such high regards they will never acknowledge the bad about but none are perfect. kh3 delivered nothing but singular moments of nostalgia and emotional bait. i was so excited for bbs trio to get back together but how can i be excited about that moment when its jarring due to the other norts in the arena who are supposed to be fighting just sitting there watching like why are you not attacking why are you waiting there. the same with the twilight trio. why did none of the storiies get resolved in those disney worlds? end some of their stories there and leave parts of the story open and mysterious and even allow master xehanort to get the pieces he needs for the ki blade and have it be a push to the end. that way the worlds feel more important and the stories pace feels solid and flows smoothly and when you get to the final world the cutscenes have more time to happen and feel less jarring because there arent 2 other enemies just breathing over your neck waiting for the cutscene to end. to continue on they never had to do kairi like that. what was the point of her training if she got taken out in 0.2 seconds. why build the hype around kairi being a keyblade wielder if you arent going to let her be a keyblade wielder. you want a reason why the game would never deliver on the hype? that right there is why. they built the hype and told us kairi would be a keyblade wielder and be important to the final battle and she was taken out like a chump. "but she was important to the dlc" the dlc should have never happened outside of the data battles. the dlc is entirely ridiculous because they did the exact same thing as ff15. they made a game with glaring plotholes that made no sense and then added a dlc that explains the plotholes in perfection. in ff15 why did i have to wait for the final dlc to understand the final bosses motivation? why did i have to wait for the dlc to understand why one friend left for 2 weeks? or why one friend went blind? same with kh3 why did i have to wait for dlc to find out why lingering will showed up? or why time rewinded? or why these things just happened? that should be main game main story information. save the yozora bit and the data battles for dlc thats solid dlc the data fights were the best part of the entire game entirely difficult but satisfying to beat. finally why did they try to make master xehanort a sympathetic villain at the very end? i get it with dark road and other smaller side stories its showing him being sympathetic but thats too late. you cant wait til the end or after hes gone to explain why hes sympathetic youve spent years building him up as this evil villain who is just evil for evils sake. he willingly convinced terra to kill eraqus he convinced a teenager to kill his father figure/mentor. thats fucked up. he split the heart of his own disciple and then tossed him aside like it was nothing. thats fucked up. he stole the body of terra, broke the heart of ventus, and left aqua in the world of darkness(though that one is mostly on her but i digress). in just bbs alone hes done enough evil to be unforgiveable but then we take into account every other game hes been in and his other selves ansem seeker of darkness, xemnas, terranort, and young xehanort. terranort took the life of their master ansem then split his own body apart to become heartless and nobody while simultaneously splitting apart like 9 other people at the same time some against their will others willingly and created an organization built around stealing peoples hearts. none of what xehanort is is sympathetic in any way and yet they tried to make it so that he did those evil things because it had to be done to save the worlds. i dont accept that. its canon so i have to but its a stupid decision. its ok to have some villains be evil just because. having him being sympathetic makes no sense at this point. theres still far more i could rant about but this has gone on for too long so far so ill end it here but again if you like the game thats your opinion i cant tell you youre wrong for liking something but at least acknowledge the game has massive problems and dont use the excuse of "it was never going to live up to the hype" or "you had too high of expectations" because really my only expectations were to deliver similar if not better than kh2 which in itself was similar if not better than kh1.
I absolutely agree that the people saying “it just didn’t live up to the hype” are just plugging their ears. I was a huge fan of the series, played most of the games multiple times, and it’s the only series Ive bought a costume to be one of the characters. But it had been so long for the big #3, i hadnt thought too much about what would be in it. Back when i bought it, it sat on my to-play pile for like 2 months before i loaded it up. By the second world, i was already hate-playing it. The amount of even basic stuff they couldnt get right was insane. The dialogue was so forced i couldnt believe basically anyone is a real person. And the amount of time between each line was like 2-3 times what it should have been. And nobody ever rushed for anything, it was always “let me finish my monologue before we do anything” which was incredibly frustrating. And Sora had been replaced by Platitude Bot 3000. Then there were the more macro story issues, like all dead characters coming back to life, abysmal pacing, utterly unexplained power scalings. Sora is “reset to lvl 1”, but can kill 3 titans in hercules world. 7 worlds later Terranort can take him and his entire gang with a smile on his face. Half a world later he can take on 3 final boss Xehanorts. What even is happening. I dont even care about kingdom hearts 4 anymore, and it’s all down to this one game.
@-JaggedGrace- that's the problem with one rushed game in a series it can effectively ruin the entire series for others. I'm curious to see if they learned from their lessons when it comes to kh4 but considering the absolute disappointment of kh3 I don't think I'll ever be excited for another kh game. Why get excited for long story lines and character development when it's all going to be relegated to a 10 second cutscene at the end of the series in the most jarring un-immersive way possible? Why look forward to gameplay when it's going to be a flashier showboatier downgrade from every previous title? Why look forward to finally beating that big bad when they're going to tell you feel bad for mass murderer number 2 in the series because he cried once. Kingdom hearts has been a beloved series for me since I was a child I still go back and replay kh1 and 2 and watch all the cutscenes but kh3 has been sitting in a box in my closet since I finished playing it and I've never once thought about opening it back up to try again I'm just not interested in being disappointed again except for the dlc but as I stated outside of the data battles and yozora the dlc should never have happened. the worst part is because it's the end game of the saga it makes it so much worse. Kh2 being bad wouldn't have been a big deal bbs being bad wouldn't have been a problem those are minor stories in comparison to the main story. Kh3 being the culmination of the saga ending all stories and setting up the next being a bad game and a bad story just ruins it. As I said though there's a lot to rant about with this game.
@breathofthestars7043 high expectations are to give me a perfect game. I want amazingly detailed combat with every key blade being 100% unique and changing the flow of combat with each world having a new companion who changes the flow of combat and the world's like toy story bringing back Tom Hanks and Woody Allen to portray their roles same with xehanort to have his original voice actor back. To have sora and kairi officially become a couple as they've hunted at for riku to stay the edgey boy he always was for naming and Roxas to get together for terra and aqua to take the place of master eraqus completely for the box to be opened and answered for maleficent to have an actual plot point in the story for 100 acre wood to be an actual world and not fucking candy crush for the story to not have glaring plot holes that are answered in dlc for kairi to have her og voice actress back for kairi to be a competitive key blade wielder what I wouldn't give to see kairi fuck larxene up with a key blade for aqua to have rocked vanitas and not the other way around the list goes on and on and on. Nothing burger my ass. Again you can like the game I won't tell you that you're wrong to like the game that's your opinion but to sit here and pretend that the reason people don't like it is high expectations is ridiculous. Cyberpunk 2077 people had ridiculously high expectations but the game didn't fail because of the high expectations it failed because it couldn't even deliver on low expectations and the low expectations was a functioning playable game. At least kh3 is functioning and playable. It just don't deliver on its own promises. Do not equate high expectations with the developers own promises. No mans sky failed because the developers did not deliver on their promises. Kh3 delivered on in nostalgia and emotional bait and that pulled in people who wanted the emotional bait. I want more than 2 seconds of emotion I want to love the game same as I love every prior game in the series even the mediocre ones. Kh3 isn't even mediocre. It's a failure to deliver on every single promise except for it being the end of xehanort saga. Come up with a better argument or argue against the substance of my comment but don't skim the comment and pretend you read anything.
It honestly felt rushed to me. The worlds offer barely any story significance, mostly because they NEED the 13 darknesses to fight the 7 lights, so you can't have any fights with them before the final conflict. On top of that, you have an absence of the supporting FF cast, and side characters like Lea and Kairi "training" and still going mostly unused. I'm of the mind that KH1 is still the most cohesive and thought-out story, with each game having less effort put into making everything fit together comfortably. Going through 3D, I started to care significantly less about following the KH story. Don't even get me started on the mobile games. I'd like to see KH get back to being grounded, but I don't see that ever happening. Bringing in some reverse-engineered Versus XIII ideas and Not-Japan (Quadratum) will not fix anything. It'll just make way for more jargon about "un-reality" and ass-pull Keyblade powers to justify whatever Nomura thinks is cool during that dev cycle. Overall, as a game, KH3 is fine. It wraps up story beats but still goes out of its way to say "it's not over yet." As a story, KH3 is 90% padding, with the last 10% (and DLC) as worthwhile content. Though I hate to see them retcon Xehanort into a misguided character who is only a villain because of his methods. Dude shot his best friend in the back and killed him, and jumped bodies so he could experiment on people and start a war. And they gave him a happy ending. I'm still curious to see where the story goes, and KH4 will likely be fun, but I don't think I can ever really care about it like I once did. It's just too convoluted.
Kh2 was far worse in terms of story and characters. Sora was OOC and unlikable. Donald and goofy were practically irrelevant. Kh3 was a lot deeper and more mature in terms of theme and story.
I think you should look at KH2 again, it has a LOT of things worse than KH3, like it doesn't have a Retry botton, you need to redo your entire menu again before the fight if you did in that room, it is lacking in dodging mechanics for most of the game, maps are way too linear and have barely any design as you simply go back and forth in corridors most of the time, you need to get out of the worlds if you want to go in another save point location of the same world, you can't even keep cameos party members without taking off Donald or Goofy, mobility is meh for a big part of the game and so on.
@@gustavos.8511 don't forget the horrendous drive form grind that then punishes you for doing what the game makes mandatory to get movement options (by making you grind for movement options, the game basically locks you out of forms for a lot of the fights when you want to use them). Also, it hides how to gain exp for said forms in a menu that no one ever looks at.
@@tombolt13thexehanort29 not only that, but the geniuses made Anti form as a "punishment" for abusing Drive forms, you know, the ones they force the player to abuse in order to get decent growth abilities...
Also in KH2FM there was an extremely dumb glitch that is depending if you do part of the Tron world after you completed cave of remembrance, the exit you unlocked will be closed and you need to do the whole path again EVERY time, it happened to me on my first save file....
The whole game was extremely alienating on so many different levels. Alienating with not being able to touch upon the tragic substories that have been developing for at least 15 years for the vast majority of the game, alienating with us having to be mere spectators in the Disney characters’ story, ending up with doing little more than taking out their trash in the form of defeating a heartless boss at the end, alienating with Sora who’s been through so much in the past games turning into nothing but a superficial happy go lucky kid, and alienating with substories concluding in the most contrived, unsatisfying way. KH3 was terrible.
I remember playing it thinking this is actually good and then the way they decided to wrap up the story just killed me on the inside. They built up this games ending with like 40 games.
Well I think it wasn't that bad but the expectations were quite high after the masterpieces KH1 and 2 were. I remember reaching Keyblade Graveyard and asking myself "this was it? No B-Plot to return to all those worlds? Thats quite sad..." It felt like I reached a conclusion where in KH2 you had the doubled amount of plot until that point. PotC World was quite cool but basically AC Black Flag and I quite loved anything what came with the Keyblade War at the Graveyard. That was really cool. And *that* Post-Credit Scene got me really hyped for KH4. I recently replayed KH2 at PC and it was not only nostalgia - it was really that good as I remembered it.
Turning Axel and Kairi into Keyblade wielders to do a whole bunch of nothing kills my soul
Fr, they did my guy n gal dirty 😔
They did look cool though
A Nobody wielding a keyblade to begin with made me feel like I knew absolutely nothing about KH. I seriously cannot think of a more convoluted story.
P.S. Other Keybladr wielders to begin with made Sora feel unspecified and unlike a main character. Adding Riku and Kairi to the mix would have made sense to me for reasons I won't spend an eternity talking about, but the more keyblade wielders I see (past or present) the more it feels like the keyblade is just... nothing special? Like... like it's a job someone chooses, not a calling specific to the user.
Don't trust Merlin for training. Dont buy his ecourse
@@xStrife1997x canonically there are millions of wielders, but, the war with Xemnas was a special instance that killed most of them. Thats when Sora is awoken as a new wielder, and starts a new surge of light. Now, anyone with pure intent can wield one because the worlds and their powers are reconnected. It's not a matter of being special or chosen, but accepting your own power and claiming it, in the name of justice.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if they hadn’t wrapped up EVERY single story plot in the last 10 minutes of the last quest. Going from group to group to finish their story was very disappointing. Also making the game more of a “kingdom hearts for everyone” instead of for the fans hurt the entire fanbase that has been waiting for this game for years. Very sad.
@@Italiansauseege yeah. It could have been easily fixed too.
Just split plot points, 2 worlds apart
Beat 2 worlds. They save aqua.
But they can't get ven because, she just got freed from hell. She needs to rest.
Beat 2 more worlds. Save Ven. Now he needs to rest.
Etc etc
Nothing would've changed and the game itself would have felt more rewarding to play as your not waiting ages for the plot to actually start
I think there's a lot of issues I have with the gameplay too. at least compared to the second game, the gameplay feels repetitive and drags, and it doesn't have the same rpg details as KH1 and KH2
You don't make your last entry for everyone... You make the soft reboot or arc change for everyone.
Yeah it makes me feel like kh4 is gonna be an over glorified mod of kh3.
@@juicybuttercup5393 completely agree
The problem with KH3 is that the ending should be distributed through the entire game
That’s been a problem with every kh game that’s not bbs days or kh1
Then it wouldn't have been the ending
@@runicex2310 that's 70% of the important ones, and I would throw KH2 there too
@@gorbla1231 yes, and I mean everything before scala ad calum, should have been integrated through the game, saving aqua and ventus, fighting the xehanorts through the game
@@runicex2310you don't seem to understand.
The end segment of the game had 3-5 plot points that could have easily been distributed earlier in the game.
For example, rather then save aqua all the way at the end. Sora could partially unlock the power of waking and end up with riku, saving her 2 worlds in.
Then they can say, Aqua needs time to rest before going to get ventus and you need to pass 2 more worlds before going to go get him. Etc etc.
Instead.
Essentially NOTHING happened during the actual game until we were down to the last few hours and suddenly, we get 20 plot points a minute
KH 3 managed to do what I thought was impossible. It made me, a fan since kingdom hearts 1 (from my elementary days) finally fu*king moved on from this franchise. Not because it gave me closure, it made me realize I will never experience the same high I experienced from KH 1&2. I mean, I was a huge fan I literally wore a keyblade necklace for like 10 years.
Seriously, this game was such a huge dissapointment to me. Considering 90% of the plot doesn't matter, I think it justifies how I felt. Not to mention, the story that was told wasn't competently executed or written. I get the whole theme of the plot beats, but they did it in the most unnatural way like an expositary dialogue. Speaking of expositary dialogue, it's like the whole fu*king dialogue. The gameplay wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good and satisfying as the first two. It felt worse on the second run. I mean sure, it was a spectacle but it doesn't have a lot of depth to it, making it more boring the more you see it. Overall I felt like this game broke my heart and then completely blue balled me with the ending. It doesn't feel as genuine as the original and the sequel, it felt more like corporate decisions trying to rope you in on the next project without giving us a deserved closure. By now I don't think Nomura is a good director or writer, and I'm tired of pretending how "intricate" or "deep" or "planned out" this whole story is.
At least now I can move on to better things.
“ I will never be 13 again and be able to enjoy video games ever again” is basically what you’re saying
@@KalMunqWay to try and invalidate a fans honest opinion on a flawed game.
@@KalMunq lol was it too long for you to read? Because that was definitely not the point of their comment
I despise Nomura after the FF7 rebirth ending. The man actively sabotages the greatest death scene in JRPG history and replaced it with a "deep, mysterious" multiverse subplot bullshit and robbed all of us of either a chance to save her and change history or to mourn this version of her properly. Instead we got ambiguous multiverse bullshit.
I had exactly the Same thought. Im so disappointed with this game, that I moved on with the KH franchise. KH2 was just a magical masterpiece. After I’ve finished kh3 I felt empty and disappointed. Than I realized, I will never get another kh2. So I moved on. Anything KH related, doesn’t interest me anymore, sometime i think it is cringe now.
To me KH3 is a very dull game that's more concerned with setting up the next storyline than wrapping up the one it already had. The Disney worlds are more pointless than they've ever been (Sora gets most of his old abilities back in Olympus and then some with the Keyblade forms and Attractions while he never makes any progress on the power of waking until the plot demands he needs it; except when it doesn't in Aqua's case) and waits until the last world for the game to tell the story it actually wanted to tell.
I agree completely. They spend so much time setting up the box and other stuff that will only be important in later games that it feels like KH3 is a prequel to KH4 more than a finale to the Xehanort saga
I don't agree. It's more of a character study. While the Disney worlds are points of conflict that Xehanort is using to drag Sora into the conflict deeper and deeper, the point is that Sora is finding his power through observing how others protect and care for their loved ones.
It's less about Western plot structure and more about an Eastern or specifically Japanese structure which delves into the character.
Sora is making new friends and through them he is remembering the bonds he's made.
@thedappermagician6905 I don't think he needed to go to Disney world to realize that!
@@thedappermagician6905 That's a weak character study then. None of his quests developed him as a character OR the story in a connected way, it's just him bouncing from place to place with no direction. Even Journey to the West had the main group going linearly to a designated location. They didn't grow at a lot of the stops but you still understood their mission after each of them. Sora was just doing random crap on top of a really boring battle system. The game already has to base the world around the stories of Disney IPs, having Sora's goal to be observing that is just silly and doesn't give his character any weight.
They needed half of them to protect the next Princesses of Heart.
The replicas don't have weight because we never saw how hard it was to make them or if you need special materials. Instead they are just plot devices and there was no need for replica Riku to sacrifice himself
We knew how tger beeing createt since CoM.
By Replikation once heart via Data.
The bodys ar just Programms in dummies
@Erdrick-c9bthey are all replicas. They are Replica Nobodies with their actual hearts in the Replicas that Xehanort summoned with the power of waking.
@@thedappermagician6905Screw the power of waking
I wish this game was better. It really feels like kingdom hearts fell off because of this game. My entire friend group moved on completely after this game. I miss the days of KH2. The hype was insane. The story and mystery was crazy in a good way. KH3 just kinda resolved too many things in unsatisfying ways. Especially Xehanort
Kh fell off when they made games on a million platforms
@@Pikaru-c4u I agree partly. I really hate that you basically need 7 different platforms to really understand the whole story. Concentrating on one console (maybe an additional pc port) would've been enough. But I also get that different platforms may result in different art- and gamestyles and gives different audiences the possibility to dive into this franchise. I don't think that this was the reason for it... But it could be.
Kingdom hearts 3 I the best selling kingdom hearts game.. it actually made the franchise more popular
@@onlywiigame. Best selling when gaming is more popular than ever, repeat sales across multiple platforms, not being exclusive that way prior titles are. The actual relative numbers aren't particularly impressive either in their full context. You're not painting a full picture. We should also consider that this was the culmination of a very long saga, and naturally many would want to see that end, but how many fans are now jaded about the franchise. Destiny 2 has seen a similar position with the end of its "Light and Darkness saga". Yes, it's actually called that lol. What a wonderful example for comparison. Will these long time fans rejoin the adventure with KH4? The reality is that a game simply selling well doesn't mean much other than commercial success. KH3 is a contentious entry, and while many fans loved it, many fans are also done with the series as a result.
I think the biggest issue for me was that it felt like the series was aging with its audience until 3. Each game in the series had a depth of tragedy and emotion that moved with how we were aging, and then out of nowhere, we got the most anti climatic non emotional corporate garbage story of 3.
My biggest issue. Every impactful moment is invalidated. No I don't think every character getting a happy ending served the series well. Those emotional moments when I go back and play old titles lose their weight. It's hard to care when you know everyone gets a happily ever after. It's hard to feel invested going forward because I know nothing bad is permanent. All weight has been removed from narrative consequences.
Saving Terra was honestly the most emotionally satisfying part of the entire game. Every time, it is literal goosebumps for me when I watch it
its good stuff
It was okay, but I would have preferred Riku over Sora saving Terra, it would have made more sense since they've met and already had connection before.
@@joshbro8435It could have worked well if we had the more mature kh2 sora instead of the braindead sesame street DDD Sora.
@pedrito890 Yeah, ddd Sora really felt like a reset of his character. I would even argue that kh1 Sora was more mature than this.
Fuck terra Is an idiot and server better dead
Biggest issue I had with KH3 was replaying the exact Disney movie instead of creating a new adventure with those characters.
Frozen, Tangled and a little of PotC were a drag while Hercules, Toy Story and Monsters Inc felt like classic KH formula.
Just my opinion though.
i LOVED THE TANGLE WORLD CAUSE YOU COULD PLAY WITH REPUNZEL though i think everyone agrees the frozen world sucks. talking over the songs also is just always audio vomit.
This is more of a general criticism of KH as a whole.
PotC was peak
Finding crabs is not peak i dropped the game there@@velvet_victor
@@velvet_victor i agree
This game has some of the most bizarre writing problems I have ever seen, in that 90% of it is essentially goofing off and wasting time in the Land of Licensed Media, and the other 10% is so rushed and businesslike in its movement from plot point to plot point that it forgets to be any fun at all. You generally want a story to have both of these to some degree, but the balance and distribution is just wildly off. It's like a burrito where the first ten bites are pure cheese and all the beef is stuck at the tail end.
All the emotional moments depend entirely on having played other games, because no one here acts like friends. They don't have time! They're too busy explaining weird metaphysical plot points and losing fights so Sora can come save them. It's just sad that in a game series that sold me on the power of friendship, nobody really feels like friends by the end. It feels like they are acting more out of a sense of duty and obligation than anything.
Aqua: How about i block off my friends so i can win by myself! - ah shoot i losed, how could this catastrophe have been avoided??
I mean we did need to stop them from tampering with the new princesses of heart.
I wish they sprinkled a couple of org 13 fights throughout the game instead of all of them being rushed and easy at the end of the game. In kh2 the most memorable points of the game for me are when we run into an org 13 member and fight them. Fight axel xaldin and Demyx really made me feel like we were making progress beating back org 13. Here it just feels like we’re on vacation in Disney worlds until we finally get called in to work in the world
Being rushed after 15 years since the second one is crazy🤣🤣🤣
I felt insulted when they added paid dlc like we didnt wait 20 yrs.
For some reason everyone refuses to acknowledge that normura was made to work on 3 games at once. One of which he didn't even know was coming. While I don't think kh3 was bad, it did leave me wanting in a way. I forgive nomura but I do blame square as a whole.
I also blame Disney for not allowing Nomura to create more original story, for some of their movies, most famous being the Arendelle world.
@@nesoukkefka1741I blame Disney more than Square since Disney owns all the original Kingdom Hearts characters along with their own characters. There aren’t any FF characters (unless you count Verum Rex ig) in KH3.
You blame Disney for Nomura saving 99% of the story for the very end? Or looking for crabs? Or the cast being completely useless besides Sora? Cope. Pure cope.
That's no excuse for bad writtting.
I don’t care for the reasons lol game isn’t as good as it should be
What made it for me that hard is the fact that Sora and Riku had character development in KH2. They started to grow up like i did as a child. Taking things more seriously and learned to know that things can take much bigger consequences. In KH 3 especially Sora acts a lot more like 5 years old than beforw in KH 2.
Then there have been no final fantasy characters which are an important part if you play a game which is colap of Disney and Final Fantasy.
No possibility to discover a rebuild Radientgarden, to see the complete Twilightown with the hide out the struggle field and the mansion.
Story arcs got cut short, didnt give you the feeling that everything went reasonable.
I mean other games in the series had this too but not at this amount.
At least not in kh1, chain of memories, kh2, birth by sleep.
You can really tell that square did a whole piece of s... In the organisation and then just said... Nomura will fiz it and if not, its his problem.
This game could have been so great if they just have said give it 1 or 2 years more with full support in development but nope.
I played it 2 times and i am still disappointed how it turned out
This!!! Sora’s regression sucked. I loved his development in KH2. And like you said, taking away Radiant Garden and Twilight Town which were made so special in KH, especially KH2 and 358/2 days, and BBS, really sucked. It’s like they forgot all about those games which are personally why (especially KH2) I fell and stayed in love with the franchise despite all the additions and retcons. I really wish KH3 was more than it was. I know they felt KH could stand on its own without FF chars, but the returning FF characters’ KH iterations actually really mattered to me. :(
Sora: im going to save aqua!
Riku: how?
Sora: by beating the crap out of her!
Riku: makes perfect sense!
Little to no FF characters this time except later in the DLC. Forcing more storylines in an entry where it’s supposed to wrap up a saga. Not able to fight the Disney villains as much as this time, no Hercules coliseum where there should have been one on Mt Olympus. They definitely dropped the ball with this, and it feels like I barely scratched the surface
Realistically speaking, the problem with Kingdom Hearts III's story is the same problem Kingdom Hearts II had: there's so many characters on the board, but there's not really enough time to use them all. Kingdom Hearts II has Riku off doing who knows what for most of the game, Mickey is in and out, Naminé and DiZ disappear entirely without explanation, and Kairi spends half of the game standing on a beach and the other half in a prison cell. Kingdom Hearts III decides to take all of those characters, bring them back, and then add another *seven* or so to the plot. And then the focus is STILL entirely on Sora despite that.
For KH2, what all those characters are up to being a mystery is part of the story, Sora is in the dark about what's going on, with both you and him gradually figuring out the bigger picture as you get closer to the last world.
DiZ, Namine, and Kaira are even established as being non-active forces from the start, instead leading with the expectation that they'll be an active force as things get rolling in the plot.
KH3 does the opposite on both fronts, we _know_ exactly what other characters are up to, are made to expect that those other characters will be active players in the plot, and then we just don't switch to their perspective for any substantial amount of time in the entire game, on top of them barely doing anything of importance to begin with.
It's like if BBS just had you play as Ventus, and just told you what the other two were doing in the background, with only Ventus's actions having actual plot significance, that's what KH3 is.
Also kingdom hearts is about Sora, Donald and Goofy going on adventures together. The creator wanted to focus more on Sora because it’s his story.
@@isaaccabal7054Doesn't mean he should force him in everything
KH1 is still the only game in the series that actually took creative liberty with the Disney worlds & characters in order to properly integrate them into the overarching story; KH2 onward is where the Disney World start to feel like shallow cameos that simply halt the main story with gimped retellings of the original stories rather than being integrated into the main plot. As for the Final Fantasy cameos they served there purpose just fine in the previous titles, so removing them from KH3 completely and relegating them to a small appearance in the DLC just seems like an unnecessarily backwards decision.
KH1 to this day is still the simplest & cleanest KH experience.
I agree with you, but KH 2 is my sanctuary.
I think the biggest part of that is they never really expected to make more than one game.
Sure there's a secret ending or whatever, everyones got ideas for sequels to their own stories. But the original really is the only one that NEEDED to stand on its own.
The second biggest part I think is just how much more chill Disney was with their IP. They used to be more ok with original stories and lower budget productions but that does not fly for them anymore. So they just used to be like "eh just keep the characters on theme, don't make Sully a crazy villain in the Monsters Inc game." Or "oh you wanna make a game based off the little ending from The Incredibles? Hell yeah go for it!"
Now they're so locked down they're scared to let anyone be creative with their characters.😊
The game just felt rushed, like there weren't any actual stakes and it felt like character development ends up not being fully utilized. Aqua was in the dark for 10 YEARS and got nothing but a palette swap and some angry voice lines?!?! Aqua + Riku, despite being Keyblade Masters, end up being plot fodder to kill time until Sora shows up? Axel + Kairi got Keyblades just to not do anything? Its hard to believe they spent all that time on such a dissatisfying game.
it's almost as if Aqua was raised since she was a baby by a mentor who's so incredibly stringent about controlling, resisting, and suppressing the darkness that a tiny little puff of purple smoke was enough for him to flunk Terra, a kid with a heart the size of a planet, out of the mark of Mastery. So no shit Aqua survived being in the realm of darkness with very minor changes, she was literally born and raised to do as much.
Please for the love of god play the games before you criticize them, I beg you
They even wrapped up stories that they didn’t have to. This game feels like a lazy reboot to me. We didn’t need to see half of these characters again like roxas and namine’s stories felt pretty much wrapped up in kh2. It undermines their original tragic stories with the silver lining that they still exist inside their original versions. Bringing them out here was very unnecessary. All of the Disney worlds were also unnecessary. Honestly 80-90% of this game was unnecessary
Yeah I thought of playing this once but assumed basically what you said to be the case. One of the most major disappointments.
Im curious to see how Nomura will handle these characters going forward. No matter what he does, you're going to get people asking, "Where's Roxas?! Where's Aqua?! I wanna see Xion!" despite their stories being fairly well tied up.
Generally, I liked KH3, I would probably give it a 7/10. Gameplay was very good, the graphics and environmental design were astonishing and sadly the story was a crap fest.
Storywise we know at this point what we are dealing with in the KH saga, but they overdid it with the amount of unexplainable plot twists and way too much stuff deciding to either work or not plus characters popping in and out simply because it allows the story to continue whether if there is any comprehensive relevance. To me, it also felt like they made Sora too dump in this game while his sassiness and clever points were totally absent. In fact, almost none of the characters do anything memorable with their behavior except for Donald who reminds you every 30 seconds that this might be a good spot to find some ingredients.
Gameplay was almost perfect at least according to my opinion. Flowmotion was dreamy, grinding the enemies to become stronger was surprisingly satisfying and addicting plus I loved almost every world the game had for you to explore. However, there were 2 things that bothered me. First of all the hard difficulty "Proud" was extremely easy and made the game dull. There were so many mechanics present in the game but there was absolutely no reason to utilize any of those simply due to the lack of challenge. On the other hand "Critical" which came after the release as an update because too many people complained, was definitely a more rewarding experience but it was rather unfair at most points. It's okay that this difficulty exists but we needed something in between these two mods. Also...is it okay to complain about the "Disney rides" as a total turndown? Sora in KH2 was break dancing in the air to execute combos and looking like an absolute boss. Why is he spinning a teacup or riding a carousel mid-battle?!?!? 🤣
My opinion is that if you like Kingdom Hearts and made it thus far through the years you have to play it, it is an overall good time. The saddest part of this whole package is that it is just good, while you can obviously see so much potential that makes you constantly wonder how much better this would have been if only a couple things were more polished.
The only plot progression in the entire game happens in the beggining and the end. Everything in between is just a giant Disney merch ad. The organization members barely even contributed to the plot, even though they were in every single world.
I liked the happy ending for xehanort in concept but not in execution. It shows that continuing to try and destroy him never works to end him and perpetuates a cycle that only kindness could break
I just don't think that's a device you can rush the way it was rushed.
It would have been cool to have longer cutscenes of the trios reuniting but it would have killed the pacing of the climax if after each battle we got a 3 minute cutscene
i agree, but i rebuttal with they could've paced the entire ending better
But like.....they already DID that, because every time we beat a boss, we got a cutscene of the organization members. The pacing was already dead
I think my biggest complaint (other than the ones in this video) is how we only have 6 Disney Worlds and we are done with them in one shot. One of the coolest things about other games is how each world had essentially 2 parts but in this one you go into the world and you are done immediately. Also, we can see how less “chill” Disney was about their property in KH3, not allowing any alteration in their “fan favorites”to the point we are just watching the movie instead of inhabiting these worlds.
I dont think a game has ever disappointed me harder than this game did. And having to pay 30 flippin dollars for what is one of the strongest examples of "shouldve been in the game already" makez it even worse. KH4 has a lot to make up for
Fully agree, except i dont even care about KH4 anymore so it wont even get a chance from me. I cant believe how the Keyblade War turned into a checklist of 1-minute cutscene for each character to wrap up, and Kairi was nothing but a liability. I can believe Disney ruined the disney worlds by corporate interference, but the Keyblade Graveyard and Scala Ad Caelum was all squarely on Square’s shoulders.
dont count on it. itll only get worse
During the frozen area, I feel like sora could've had a small musical fight with the gang trying to get Elsa to see what she's doing instead of letting her powers run wild, much like Riku, with Larxien tempting her more and more reminding her why she's doing what she's doing, that would've been a more interesting dynamic for the world, even letting it show that darkness is still watching and waiting during really weighted decisions, allowing Elsa to have a taste of their power if she desired to.
That would require them to write a bad guy as more than just “sneering and contemptuous” which I’m not sure theyre capable of anymore. Larxene would have to make herself appear sympathetic to Elsa.
@-JaggedGrace- not really, larxene just needs to stoke her rage and feelings of showing her true self, uninhibited by fear of hurting others, this also plays to the original movie, after all sora would be trying to stop her just like her family did for years, this would open her up to darkness and make it more interesting, especially if Elsa asked Larxene for some help by combining their magic, thus creating the ice dungeon we go through anyway.
Not the worst. But I had finished KH2 days before and gameplay wise Kh3 was very floaty, story wasn't as good. It was all Disney world after world. And usually you would have the KH story in-between worlds but for most of the worlds is just some black coats messing with the world and being mysterious and then it's all left for the last act and they throw ALL the KH lore we have been waiting for for the last hours on the game. I love kingdom hearts. kH1 was my very first PS2 video game , the cgi cutscene left me completely mesmerized and was burned to my retinas, and Kh3 made me cry like a baby with the ending,but I had to dig a huge hole to get there.
I think the most disappointing part of 3 is how Riku felt completely sidelined especially after the insanely epic fight with Xemnas at the end of 2 where Sora and Riku showed off their teamwork and how much it felt like a satisfying conclusion to both their arcs in how they each matured from their individual journeys. Not to mention how they pushed Riku even more into the spotlight with DDD that I was expecting to be able to either have Riku in the party for 3 or at least be able to play a good chunk of the game with him, but no. He honestly needed to have more prominence in 3.
Look this complaint just isn't valid if you played KH2 days before and liked it, it just isn't.
@@timekeeper2538 it is valid kh3 is waaaay to floaty you dont need any strategy or anything to beat stuff its just button mashing unlike kh2 and especially kh1 where you needed certain stuff to become better
As much as Roxas coming back was pretty obvious for many fans, I always felt him not coming back would have been more emotionally impactful. Like, they could have ot where Roxas temporarily takes control of Sora during the fight where he helps Xion and Axel and after the fight, Roxas would reassure them that he'll always be there for them because after all, Roxas is Sora. But that's just me.
Other than that, I felt that the other keyblade wielders didn't contribute much sadly. Like, remember when Sora and Riku fought side by side to defeat Xemnas? That was such a spectacle that felt like a satisfying conclusion to both Sora's and Riku's journey. Sora had matured and become a Hero for the Realm of Light while Riku conquered the darkness in his heart and created his own path to become a Hero of Darkness. The final fight in 3 should have had all the keyblade welders fighting alongside Sora or Hell could have been Sora, Riku and Kairi or something
This is Sora we're talking about. The world gave up on Roxas but he never did. Sora is the connection. That's why I'm fine with Roxas coming back, because he was never supposed to exist and he was never supposed to come back, but Sora wasn't happy with that.
@@REDEEMERWOLFI actually agree with you. However the way they went about it was so bad it just felt like pure fan service and nothing else. It should’ve been a fleshed out plot point
@redeemerwolf I get that. It's just the whole Replica stuff felt so rushed not helped by the fact that we get all this plot dump at the end instead of it being spread out. Would feel more satisfying if we did save Terra, Ven, and whatnot throughout the course of the game and boss fights with the Organization Members in the Disney Worlds where the resulting clash created the fragments of the X-Blade so there was that tension much like in Two when Sora learned killing Heartless was what the Organization wanted him to do and he had that moment of doubt
🌋Interestingly, as someone with D.I.D., we kind of wish Roxas got to still exist in the way you describe here. Roxas and Naminé's experiences remind us a lot of how it is to exist as a person who shares a body with more than one person. We've talked to other fans before, but, there can still be tragedy in the sense that they can't have separate bodies AND they can still take control of the body every now and again to reassure their friends and family they're still there.
Agreed. I don’t like him coming back tbh. I always felt that since he was originally apart of sora that he simply returned to that. That should have been his arc. Hm coming back just ruined all that. Especially xion. She was never suppose to exist at all and yet she’s a whole person now. Definitely didn’t agree with that
I remember literally falling asleep during the amount of dumb and aggressively long cut scenes
My favourite part of the game is the 10 hours of cutscenes where they re hash the decade of story development and throw it out the window🎉. Maybe kingdom hearts was the friends we made along the way
Was excited to see an hour long critique/analysis of this game, but I’m 23 minutes in, and this has been almost entirely recap. The little bits of your thoughts that came through were mostly just versions of “it felt good” or “it felt bad”.
Spoiler alert from the future, it doesn't get much better. Even when the analysis/critiques actually starts 47 mins in, it's weird considering how many times he says "I'll explain what I mean later" that he only continues to explain story events.
I see this more and more in "critiques", people don't seem to even know what a critique is, this is why going to university and learning how to be a professional is important. 99 percent of people don't even know how to be insightful or use references, never mind actually form a full critique.
@@upon-fe2720 I personally think the big thing is the video length. Understanding HOW to give a critique is one thing. But the primary problem is the video is much too long for only one or two real critcisms to be cited. I don't think he cited the points that well either, but the story summation could've been replaced with simply citing the specific instances in the story that support the specific critiques he had and that could've cut the video in half
Thanks for the warning guys I don’t have time to waste on a critique that is basically just recap and either “I like it” or “I don’t like it”
Yeah this is a HUGE problem with much of the younger creators. They don't know how to establish facts and tie them into a greater thesis. Almost all of their reasoning tends to be governed by feelings and vibes as opposed to structured reasons for WHY they feel or think some particular way.
The Disney worlds were basically nothing and the sidecast didn't have their time given as much as they should have and literally the entire plot TRULY starts and ends after the final Disney World making me think "What was even the point of all this?"
Yeah.
Easily the weakest in the franchise in my opinion, I’d rather play the ds games and that’s not an over exaggeration.
Kh3 is the only one that I’ve never replayed.
And I can’t ever make myself get past Olympus whenever I try.
To be fair, even though 358/2 days was a little grindy, the story is still top tier.
What started out as a game with good characters, gameplay and a story that was simple and clean, turned a convoluted milked IP.
The series should have ended with KH2. It the setup for a great ending.
you perfectly summed up the issues i had with kh3. i found myself blasting through all the disney worlds to reach the end because they did not give me anything to care about storywise. and while i still find myself emotional rewatching all the cutscenes of trios reuniting, it feels so lackluster in the grandscheme of things. we spend entire games watching the trio's stories end in tragedies and wait years for them to reunite, only for a resolution to happen in 10 minutes after fighting easy bosses. i wish side characters had a more grand stage in kh3, and i really hope they dont get completely sidelined in the future releases. i love kh3, but it's story just doesn't play out as well compared to the past games.
11:55 small disagreement here, imo Aqua doesn't get "washed" in this fight - Vanitas could see he was getting nowhere and gave up on trying to beat her head on, playing dirty by threatening Ven. Aqua threw herself in front of Ven as an act of protective sacrifice, which wouldn't qualify as a wash in my book.
you'd have a point if you hadn't blocked 5 of those fireballs with ease immediately before.
my boy goofy would have blocked it, his guard works in cutscenes.
Visuals 9/10
Dialogue 3/10
Combat 8/10
Story 6/10
Worlds 8/10
Sora’s Drip & Karen haircut 2/10
Seeing these cut scenes really gets my eyes watery. It's too bad that those feelings were more because of the past and not this game.
And one other thing among the issues that losses people with KH3 is that they reference movies that the older generation who played KH1 and 2 on release as kids are too old for to have some sort of nostalgic connection due to the game referencing movies like Tangled, Frozen and Big Hero 6 I mean sure they added Toy Story and Monsters Inc but still it really feels like the newer movies that KH3 introduces are made for the new generation to enjoy in the game
I'm a KH3 hater. I hate how the game invalidates several prior impactful story beats. Consequences don't really exist in its narrative and every emotional story beat loses all weight. That makes me sad. It's my favorite childhood franchise. The damage is done. I hope the eventual KH4 can pull me back in, but I'm hesitant to even consider it.
Also I hate the mobile game time-in. That's gonna be tough to get over if its narrative has a front seat in the future narrative.
Final boss rush was a nice spectacle though.
as someone who knew very little about the KH series going into KH3, i also felt like there were things that were missing. my first thought going through the game was "who are all these people and why should i care?", which didn't get answered until i went back and learned the story. but going back to it after learning more about the entire series makes it still feelriddled with holes.
Yeah, imagine following the series for years since the first game which started out with a simple enough premise but overtime became this convoluted mess of a plotholes and retcons
@@soulkibble1466I think that because after kh2 and bbs he wanted to make v13 with the ideas he had for a while before kh2 so he started introducing new characters with the games after bbs thinking that he could turn kh3 in v13. I wonder how kh3 woulda turned out if the og v13 released
@@soulkibble1466 nice opinion, which youtuber did you get it from?
"I jumped into a nearly 2-decade old franchise on the very last installment and I have no idea what's happening, why couldn't this game pander to me specifically and make it completely unnecessary to play the other games?"
ridiculous complaint
KH is a franchise for fans who are willing to dig through hours and hours of lore to discover its universe, if you don't like it, you have literally every other franchise in the world willing to spoonfeed you everything. This one is for us, not you.
@@WatsonDynamite none. I literally started this series on the PS2 with the first game when in originally came out and had followed it throughout the years.
The game is floaty, it has no good feeling ground combos, or air combos that hit the ground in a satisfactory way. The story is so disjointed, there is no middle at all. Its just Same thing over and over again, dont learn lessons from past stories but you dont need too cause nothing you learn is useful. Sora doesn't move the plot it just happens to him and no one knows what he is thinking no one communicates other than the villians... Then you reach what would have been the middle but then the game ends If you want an ending you have to buy the DLC if you even know it exists and its not an ending at all. Its just "buy the next game in 10-20 years" if you want to know what happens.
100% Trash ruined my most favorite child hood story before this game even released, too many side games to know basics of the story.
YES ITS BAD AND THE ONLY THING THAT CAN FIX IT IS A REMAKE THAT WONT HAPPEN.
Honestly, the gameplay fun, but the main issue was the story. The story felt like it didn't matter until the End.
Now imagine if...Okay, here me out...The game starts with the ending.
-You start off saving Aqua and Ventus, then go straight to the Keyblade Graveyard with everyone. Afterwards, we get to the part where everyone dies.
-Afterwards, Namine sends Sora to find everyone's Hearts which are separated in The Disney Worlds.
-Now we have a reason to go to these worlds, and relive the movies.
-THEN we go back to the Graveyard
I remember how KH3 ending made me feel. I cried at the end of it. More of a feeling of “wow I can’t believe I made it to see this, cuz I didn’t think I’d live to see it” but other then that feeling I don’t remember much about the game
The "Let It Go" and Pirates scenes were probably intended to be tech showcases with UE4. Not sure if it was Disney's call or if it was some sort of deal made with Epic to prove the engine would make for a valid animation tool. And yeah, that probably cut into the game's budget pretty deeply regardless.
No game in the series will ever compare to KH2’s combat, I fear. . .
Remember: Tetsiya Nikita is not a good director, he puts his games into development hell without having a handler
For me yes, so much plot shoved into the last part of the game and none of the Disney Worlds meant anything, I was so excited for KH2 and even more so after FFXV, but KH3 was just an equal letdown and it killed my love for the Series and I have no excitement for KH4.
Ive always felt like kh3 is exactly what people who refuse to give kingdom hearts a chance think kingdom hearts is. And that's always made me deeply upset.
This right here, is exactly how it feels. Can’t even tell people to get into the series because it leads exactly to what they thought was wrong with the series to begin with
@@mathewgilbert9190 I've recommended it to people with the caveat that kh3 ruined it for me, and explaining that I feel nothing for kh4 because of it.
@@oathkeeperofoblivion972 ironically, I’m actually more excited for KH4, but only after playing Re:Mind, which really just put a band-aid over the game. But KH4 is the last chance the series has before I’m done with it.
@@mathewgilbert9190 I didn't sign up for versus 13. I'm glad Numora is making what he wants but. It's not something I have any interest in whatsoever.
Even if it weren't for that. Every plot point I was invested in is tied up, whether it's in a way I like or not. There's....nothing left for me. So I won't bother getting excited, cuz I don't have anything to get excited about.
@@oathkeeperofoblivion972 I’m kind of rooting for him at this point. Square kicked him off the development for versus XIII,which supposedly was gonna be his magnum opus, to focus on KH3. But my theory is that Disney didn’t want Nomura to make the KH3 he envisioned for the series. That’s why the game was “made for everyone,” so anyone could hop on to the story. I’m also willing to bet Disney is the reason there were exclusively no FF character til the DLC and that’s why the worlds felt very bland, because they didn’t want to make a Kingdom hearts game, they literally wanted to retell their stories and make sure Sora didn’t effect the overall plot of their movies, for meta sake.
I think KH4 is a middle finger to both Disney and Square for ruining both things he wanted to make
Kairi should have had way more agency in the series. She’s repeatedly been a damsel in distress when she was a fierce tomboy in the first game. She should have evolved into being a keyblade wielder and the powerhouse that comes with it considering she’s also a princess of heart. She has so much potential that never got explored and it’s so disappointing because they definitely have so many throwaway stories like dreamdrop.
This is one of those franchises that should have grown older with its audience.
i agree
Every time I heard Olaf say “I’m over here!” I wanted to throw my controller at the wall. I love snowy areas and Arendale made me genuinely loathe snow. I already hated Frozen and having to basically watch the movie again made it a slog.
I’m also of the opinion that instead of At World’s End, Deadman’s Chest should have been the pirate world. We skipped the middle part of the trilogy and it just felt so weird. Also annoying how they never followed up the “Jack might wield a keyblade” thing they did in KH2, would have been nice to see him whip one out lol.
Like you, I also felt upset that Ven and Roxas didn’t say a word to each other. They just did a Spider-Man meme and moved on from it. Like come on man. We waited for so long for this and all they do is the “Sup dude” head nod and that’s it?
I have good memories of my first play through of the game, but after I let it marinate, I just started questioning so many things. I’ve replayed all the games in the series multiple times yet I’ve replayed 3 only once and I dunno, it just didn’t feel like a conclusion, but a segue into a new saga. Which is alright but there’s no finality. Not to mention Xehanort got a happy ending when no, this bastard ruined lives, he shouldn’t be happy, but we gloss over that. In the end, KH3 isn’t a bad game, but it’s definitely not a good KH game.
Honestly, WHY did they say that Sora needed the power of waking to save Aqua? I get Ven, but Aqua???? Rescuing Aqua shouldve been half-way through, give her some gawsh darn time to re acclimate to the realm of light before the final showdown, maybe have her spend some of that helping to train Lea and Kairi.
Because there was absolutely NO REASON WHATSOEVER for why Sora needed the Power of Waking to save her.
I honestly enjoy KH3 for what it is, but this one thing bothers me a lot.
Aqua was trapped in the world of darkness and yen sid assumed that Aqua fell into the deep abyss (same thing that happened to Sora in DDD). The pow was required to pull her out but since she ended up pulling herself out, it ended up not necessary to get her out using the pow.
@@supershiba8346that's a BINGO!
Because Aqua DID fall into the Deepest Darkness. At that point she would have been unreachable. No one counted on that she would be able to find her way to the shores that Riku and Sora (and Mickey) had been to.
In fact, it was Mickey and Riku who were going after Aqua. It wasn't Sora's job. He found his way there via Divine Providence and the power of the key blade.
Mickey and Riku found Aqua but she and the Heartless Devil Spiral bodied them which they weren't preparing for.
The community wanted to use more of the team! To introduce all 7 of light to only use the in one final battle is absolutely ridiculous. Riku with 5 seconds in the story like DLC could’ve easily made this game GOTY! 😢😢😢
I didn't like the combat as much as KH2 because of how floaty it was but I also feel like it was 50% "cutscene". Even the footage you chose had a lot of "cutscene" in it. Every attraction/keyblade transformation was just 'hit a button and everything around you collapses' which felt like a cutscene with an extra step. I know you could just not use those but then every 10 steps there was like 10-15 insane hp sponges in front of you where you're just doing your 3 hit floaty combo for way too long. I couldn't even last more than a few hours in that game which was disappointing because of how much I loved KH1&2.
"Just don't use them!" wouldn't even be so bad if it didn't add tedium on top of the combat. If you chose not to use them, now you're playing a secondary game of carefully monitoring the constant influx of situation commands.
Say you're fighting a berserker or a dusk in kh2, and you see the triangle prompt appear. You instantly know whether or not you want to engage with it, because it's always the same prompt for the same enemy. It allows the player to style the gameplay around the predictablility of a particular enemy quirk.
These random green circles in kh3 however could be anything. They appear at random, and are activated solely by engaging with combat at a base level. You better make sure you're monitoring your command menu! Lest you spawn the stupid teacups!
@@qrowing Skill issue, honestly. Monitoring situation commands is a lot more intuitive, and easier to perform, than fumbling around the command menu manually to do certain inputs in KH2.
Were you upgrading your equipment as you progressed, including exploring to get treasure chests with better gear, crafting better great when possible, and upgrading your preferred keyblades? I've never had any damage scaling problems, even at Level 1. Yes, not even when I go to Arendelle or Corona before Monstropolis and Toy Box respectively. Taking on a higher-level world with a weaker build for desired rewards is a calculated risk, not tedium.
KH1 was okay, KH2 had a soul, KH3 is just Disney.
They built Roxas’ entire story arc to lead up to an inevitable clash with Xemnas, but at the very last minute they relegate Roxas to fight Saix? That made zero sense to me. I understand that Sora is the main character, but brushing Roxas storyline to the side like that killed all of the momentum 358/2 built up
Yes. It was. Truly awful. Can’t even look at this series anymore.
damn bro
I agree I'm glad I never played kh3 it's so bad lol
You was never a fan then
@@chillpill1590you don't have the right to complain
KH3 killed it for me, no more KH after this one for me, I still have the remainder of the collection to play through, but I won't be buying new games after that disappointment.
Man, I agree with everything you said! I waited for more than ten years for some characters to meet each other, only for them to nod and walk away. It was so frustrating. Sora gets more interaction with Marshmallow (the frozen golem from Arendelle) than he does with Roxas or Ventus. Everything is wrapped up in a few minutes, with some extremely confusing things like Xion's return. And to be honest, the Keyblade Graveyard scenario was too basic: four big walls and that's all. After all the verticality that the game previously had, the climax happens in the most basic scenario (except for Scala ad Caelum, which you can't explore in the main game). Traverse Town was cut down too... No train tower, no train station, no "usual place", no mansion... Castle Oblivion/Land of Departure gets the same treatment: the area is just a corridor, a stair, and the main hall. And we don't get Destiny Islands or Radiant Garden, two of the most iconic places in the story, which are featured in the game, but you don't even get to walk in them... It's like everything important to the main story was cut down (Realm of Darkness too!).
The direction for the last act was bad/rushed too. For example, when they enter the Keyblade graveyard, and Terranort hits Ventus, they all wait two full seconds to react to the fact that their friend has been knocked unconscious. All the pacing of that scene is bad (Sora protecting Kairi with his back towards Terranort?? Aqua freezing for no apparent reason...). Or when the whole cast is in one scene, they just stand and blink, there's not a single bit of personality in anyone (for example, in the final scene in the Keyblade graveyard, after finally defeating Xehanort, everyone but Sora, Riku, and Mickey are just extras with no personality).
Another problem was that they wanted to give redemption arcs to everyone. I never liked Saix, he did awful things, but in the end, he appears with ice cream and then everything is fine (Sorry Saix fans! But they could at least pretend they don't get along). Or Xehanort being a good guy in the end, when he destroyed a lot of lives in the first place. Or Larxene, or Marluxia (even when he seemed like a better guy from before). I did like Xigbar's plot twist tho.
It's a very fun game, but it's like they left aside the main story only to give fanservice of Disney movies. And the fans only got a barely pleasant ending.
Great review, Sappy!
thank you ! :)
Damn it’s already be 5 years
Sorry for the long read, but I feel like I need to express some frustrations with Kingdom Hearts III - especially regarding the characters and the story.
Let’s start with Axel (or should I say, Lea). For all the hype surrounding Axel from previous games, we didn’t get much of him in KH3. He insists on being called Axel, yet he’s actually Lea and shouldn't have memories of his Nobody life. This inconsistency with the established lore is frustrating and just one example of how Kingdom Hearts tends to bend its own rules whenever it suits the plot.
Then there's Riku and Mickey. These two are supposed to be Keyblade Masters, yet they don’t really accomplish much throughout the game. They are involved in some battles at the end, sure, but they couldn’t even save one of the Wayfinder trio before Sora arrived. As Masters, this really should have been within their capabilities without needing Sora’s help - something you kind of hinted at in the video.
Kairi is a huge letdown. After training in the “Dragonball Hyperbolic Time Chamber,” she still ends up getting captured again. At this point, she deserves more than just being a damsel in distress. She could have turned things around and maybe even been the one to save the others, especially after all she and her friends have been through.
Terranort is probably the most insulting aspect for me. Instead of saving their original Terra, they end up rescuing a Terra from an alternate timeline. So, their own Terra is still part of the heartless (and probably dead), while another timeline is now missing its Terra. This whole twist felt cheap and unsatisfying.
Now for Sora, and why his story really bothers me. After his failure in the Mark of Mastery test during Dream Drop Distance, he spends KH3 trying to get the Power of Waking. But it feels like the game only really begins after we finish the Disney worlds and move on to rescuing the lost Keyblade wielders. The Disney worlds themselves are problematic because Sora and co. don't impact the story in any meaningful way. Sora doesn't even seem to learn from his experiences in those worlds. For instance, after Olympus, Hercules could have talked about how he saved Meg because he loved her, and Sora could have related that to Anna saving Elsa in Frozen. But nope, no meaningful growth or reflection.
Sora deserves a break from adventuring. After everything he’s been through, especially fighting through his childhood, he deserves a happy ending with Kairi. Setting up a future game at the cost of a happy conclusion that’s been 17 years in the making? That feels like a cruel twist.
Toy Story world was another major disappointment. The story was a mess. The toys were in some alternate world, with only Andy's toys around, and Sora didn’t even offer to fix things later. It felt like the stakes of this world were forgotten or brushed off.
The whole "Black Box" subplot was infuriating. There’s more focus on this mysterious box than on the reunions we had been waiting for. The second group of Princesses of Light subplot? It didn’t even matter in the end. If they had cut half of these unnecessary cutscenes and dropped the subplot, they could’ve spent more time tying up the story in a satisfying way.
Finally, we should have had more moments where we played as other characters in the main game. Locking these moments behind paid DLC felt like a slap in the face, especially since not everyone is going to buy DLC for a game they already found disappointing just to see the good parts.
The magic system is so fucked. Why can Larxene, a lightning mage of moderate power, spawn an ice castle with a snap of her fingers? Why was Terranort at least twice as powerful as Xehanort? Why can Xemnas catch a molten keyblade with his hand using only his glove? It’s so painfully amateur. It feels like they didnt even have a basic outline for what characters can and can’t do.
In case it wasnt obvious, i agree with you
@@-JaggedGrace- No worries, it’s pretty obvious. A running joke in my friend group is that the entire story feels like it was written on toilet paper during long bathroom breaks. Any part that didn’t add up got ‘wiped away’ and replaced with random subplots or twists to fill the gaps. And KH3? That was one serious case of diarrhea. Hope you enjoy the analogy as much as we do!
The combat was floaty and honestly terrible.
I'd never say kh3 was bad.
My main 2 complaints were always
1. It was way too easy on release
And
2. The story pacing was all squished to the last 20 % of the game. Causing me to stop caring about the last 2 worlds and rush through them. That's not a problem previous games had
Then you're blinded by nostalgia, KH2 was much worse, the battle of Hollow Bastion merely creates the illusion of plot happening for most.
@@timekeeper2538 no I'm not. We literally had the organization making itself known to sora and co the FIRST visit to hollow bastion. Never mind that even then, that happens at the MIDDLE of the game.
Aqua isn't saved until 90% into the game. It sounds more like you are blinded by cope
@@1slayer959 That's what I said, in fact I would bet money that just one BIG midpoint event in Twilight Town would've flipped your entire opinion
@@timekeeper2538 my guy. You clearly don't know how good pacing works. Yes it's a big mid point. Stories are supposed to have those. The game also had the plot moving in smaller ways in between the bigger story bits. For example, the occassional run in with riku. Running into org members, and in the second half even taking out a couple org members before the final world.
The game gave a steady flow of story progression with multiple important events happening before ever reaching the final world.
And before you say it.
No. Org members showing up to call sora a nerd in kh3 is not story progress. In kh2 they were new. Getting to know them even slightly was progress. In kh3, they only show up to remind us they exist
Meanwhile k3 went
World 1 no story progres
World 2 no story progress
World 3 no story progress
World 4 no story progress
Hey it's the mid point. How bout that story progress yensid?
NO.
Ok...
World 5 no story progress
World 6 no story progress
World 7 no story progress and a massive world that at this point given the lack of story progress is more annoying in its size than it should be since it's gatekeeping the end game
World 8 no story progress and a massive world that at this point given the lack of story progress is more annoying in its size than it should be since it's gatekeeping the end game
End game
Progresss progress progress progress prepgress
Sora dies
@@1slayer959 So Young Xehanort explicitly stating he's studying the toys in Toy Box to learn how to bring Xion back and make her an org. member just flew over your head? Luxord looking for the black box?Vanitas gathering the leftover screams of children in Monsters Inc.? Vexen and Demyx being on our side was revealed in between worlds too. What about Riku and Mickey constantly dropping lore and interacting with our characters instead of the occasional "lore less" run in?
Had theya staggered the reunions and interactions properly, it might have worked. But they didn't.
Honestly it felt like Nomura said how can i mess up sora as a character and that drove me crazy
He messed up sora as a character in dream drop distance as well. Sora has been cooked unfortunately
I don't understand why you think sora is messed up now. Please elaborate
@@codsworthh have you played dream drop ? His character regressed in that game and kh3 didn't help
@@dangerexplosian i played a little bit of dream drop but never finished it. I finished Birth by sleep, kh1, kh2 and kh3. I love all of them but I still don't understand what people mean when they say sora is worse in 3. Like how?
@@codsworthh it's just his character seems like he's stupid like a literal baby can understand it's hard for you to know if you haven't played all of it. There's a really good RUclipsr his name is Regular pat he had a dream drop distance ranking for worlds and he also talks about the differences between the sora and Riku worlds
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeees
18:07 no no no, the name section still makes me so mad. I was one of the top players while that game was out and overnight a bunch of hackers got in, and ruined everyone's placements. I'm talking suddenly being within the top 100th to pushed to 600th, then a few thousands within two days. I dropped the game right after and then suddenly player names were in the game. I missed out on having my name in the third game all because hackers got in and ruined it, I'm forever going to stay upset about it.
that actually sucks :(
@@Sappyhourr Oh yeah, there was a lot of issues with the game too, like whales would ruin player placements all the time. Basically the more you payed, the higher your ranks. I heard of one player paying thousands when the game dropped trying to win a Kairi medal that wasn't even in the game yet. The fanbase will do anything to get what they want to the point of everyone else's detriment.
I also ended up losing my medals and entire account because I had lost my phone and had to get a new one. Hundreds of dollars down the drain and had to start over. When the hackers kicked me out of my place I had had enough by then. It just wasn't worth it after that.
I think something else to consider which you did touch on was the amount of time spent waiting for KH3. 6.5 years from Dream Drop Distance and 8.3ish years from Birth by Sleep. So much time for fans to generate their own scenarios, interactions, etc of what could happen only to be met with, "Yay we saved them! Alright, gotta go!". Hype for KH3 really gave fans a false sense of rose colored glasses. (I might be using the idiom wrong, lol) In all fairness, it was a keyblade "War" which means Sora ain't got time for that sentimental shite lol.
It is a bummer, and something I tend to complain about when it comes to other franchises and even in anime. We're just forced to accept interactions we really want to see just happen off screen. I mean hell, it's what drives so many people to write and/or read fanfiction which ties to what I said in the beginning.
Anyway, enjoyed the video and your takes on the game. Personally, I like the game if we're including Re:Mind, and I only like the game slightly less without it. I'm more of a take what I can get kind of guy, haha.
Well said
I know that Squeenix likes to be really soft and not push over boundaries, but I always found it weird how there is a perfect tear jerker opportunity to be emotional, say something valuable, or even make you feel what a character is going through, and instead they just get a pat and a thanks.
Kh3 lost alot when they removed the ff7 cast. And they ended up trying to wrap it all up in such a small package. This game needed to be like 100 to 150 hours to complete the full story properly so the game can be cut into 3 or 4 acts that allow time for each one and in the final act everyone reconnects to take down the final boss
Gameplay wise it was fun. That ending fight is where it killed the entire game for me. Finished it and never went back even for the secret stuffs, never done this in any of the kh games. Usually I root for the good guys but boy was I rooting for the bad guys on this one. The whole game they spend antagonizing you at the end of every world, then when it was time to fight they showed up and threw hands. The good guys just froze up and became wimps at the end. Only respectable people there was Roxas, Riku, Donald, and Terra's linger will. Everyone else just honestly sucked. Only person who should have frozed up should had been Kairi as it makes sense. Not having any of the FF characters in the game until some cutscenes and no Sephiroth fight was a crime. They played an important supporting role in the series and got abandoned.
The only thing that upset me about this game was the forced attraction attacks. It took me out of the combat. The combat was at its best without forcing the rides.
You can choose to do that including taking it out of the game completely
It wasn’t a bad game, it simply just didn’t live up to the hype.
The story was godawful. The game part was … passable.
@ oh i totally agree. all the characters felt like lifeless versions of themselves, especially with sora seeming like his entire character was reset along with his stats.
I've never seen anything as crazy as this game spinning its wheels for the first half, and then abrubtly beginning a climax that takes the whole back half to resolve. The most unfathomably insane pacing of any game ever.
Kingdom Hearts III was a very terrible finale because it wasn't one, despite what it was advertised to be. As just another game in the series, it's fine enough. It has its weaknesses, but it has a lot of upsides, too.
The problem is the other ones all had decent endings despite not being finales
yes, it was the end of a saga, not the series but thats zero excuse to rush through that story just to set up the next one.
KH3 has no sense of finality for the storyline it was wrapping up, a storyline almost 20 years old at that point. KH2 wasn't one either, and its ending feels conclusive for the characters as they were at the time which is absolute proof KH3 has no excuse to be excessively bad at finishing something.
@@AnAverageGoblin exactly
Look, nothing, and I mean NOTHING will scream "rushed ending" more than when Roxas and Ven finally met.
I waited my entire childhood
For this quick reaction
"😮" "...😮"
Like dog, neither of you have questions about that reflection of you on our side?
Lack of Roxas and Ven doing the Spider-Man pointing meme was very disappointed indeed
What they did to Kairi ... will never be forgotten. Or forgiven.
She deserves a game. Riku's had 2 (and was arguably the main protagonist of DDD). AND NO, MoM does NOT count, at ALL.
I would've thought the final battle underneath water was random too, if you hadn't also fought in the sky. Maybe they were doing a land, sea, sky tribute to the heroes' name themes? Or it could be me giving the developers too much credit. 😅
It’s a plot point connected to UX
I didn’t finish Kh3 and don’t know why ppl don’t like it but for me the game lost a lot of the charm and aesthetic it once had. The story I did play felt so pointless and directionless and I felt so disconnected with everything. To me the aesthetic felt like a corporate version of Kingdom Hearts that was also trying to be hip? Why do they have phones and social media now or maybe I’m misremembering lmao. I didn’t care for the gameplay. The Disney rides were cool ig but it just got super repetitive and kinda annoying. No final fantasy was a gigantic miss. I seriously don’t know how they fumbled what was such a simple story this hard
KH3 doesn't make me want to see the next saga
Given how much wrapup they had to do, it would not have been unreasonable for them to Avengers Infinity war/Endgame it, and make the entire game one long ending to the saga. Wheel of Time's "A memory of light" understands this task well as the capstone of a 14 book saga. The approach they took would have been fine for a 3 game saga, but adding the BBS plotlines, and then on top of that barely using the disney world elements, gave them too much to do in the final act. A problem made profoundly worse to what i think is a major part of the game's demographic, "casual" fans who played 1 on ps2 in their childhood, 2 on ps3 a few years later, and then 3. This demographic would have had no idea what the hell's going on, and by better pacing the plot points throughout the game, there was room to help these people enjoy what's going on. I think KH3 should have opened with what we got as a separate item in the 2.8 collection, "A fragmentary passage" which with little or no retooling would have set up the BBS characters for this demographic, and allowed that part of the plot to land better. Do what KH2 did and start us off playing another character to explore an idea, then fold it back into the plot later.
I also think the selection of disney worlds this time around was weak, largely for how weakly many of them tied into the main plot of the game, when often they shouldn't have been. I'll give an A+ to monstropolis though, as the fight against corropted emptions weally did fit that setting. A basic example of this disconnect is the Frozen world, where the main plot stalls while we watch frozen play out. Frozen is a story about learning to love yourself and those who care for you. I think Sora was the wrong character to experience that, cause he has nothing to learn here.
The thing that really disappointed me most about this game on release (and I didn't play the non-numbered games, so cant comment on how much of a trend this had become over time) was the complete and utter lack of Final Fantasy characters, or Square Enix characters in general within the main story.
One of the main appeals of the KH games dating back to the first was that it was legit the only games where you could experience SE and Disney characters genuinely interacting. The dynamics, the chemistry, the unlikely camaraderie that came from putting these characters in a room together. The heartwarming and sometimes hilarious moments that sprang from it. Cloud fucking Strife talking with 100% sincerity to Donald fucking Duck. No other game can replicate that kind of thing.
So when I made it about 60% of the way through KH3 and it had dawned on me that we hadn't met a single FF character along the way, I definitely felt embittered toward the game for just dropping half of what gave KH its original flair. Forever felt afterward like Disney had bought out SE from their own IPs to make more room for their own, and, as we'd later see, shoved them in a DLC sized locker.
I certainly felt the usual gripes about the story feeling like an inconclusive finale to a long awaited trilogy and the gameplay being piss easy. Attractions lose most of the fun factor after the like third or fifth time you use one, but are so dumb for doing so much damage AND making you invincible AND being handed to you constantly, that you feel like a moron for NOT wanting to make use of them.
But I think the entire lack of other SE IPs in a game series thats primary selling point from the begging was "FF meets Disney" is just such a disappointment. They were never, like, IMPORTANT. They were never there for like the conclusion of the game's story, they never had to be. But they were an important part of the series' texture, its flavor, its SAUCE, that when you take a bite and its missing, you cant help but notice the recipe aint right anymore.
I think square should just get rid of Disney in its entirety. It doesn’t progress the actual story forward nor does it make the story any simpler. It’s like filler with themes that reference the main plot. Though yes it can create character development and I’m sure Disney owns most if not all of KH, but the story has been lacking in KH3.
They need to stop making the story so convoluted by adding different elements like time traveling, memories, data, dreams, etc.
The most compelling games that I have played have been linear and to the point with some side quest that actually play a role to the story.
As an OG KH fan, KH3 was a let down.
Was it bad? Not bad. Was it upsetting? Hell yeah. Can’t believe they release a game with a confusing ending just to release a DLC with the actual ending knowing we would buy it
For the next game, they need to reference KH1 for level design & story telling, KH3 for world size (every world should receive the same treatment, not just Disney), and combination of KH2FM & KH3 for combat (I prefer Keyblade transformations to drive forms in concept, but latter was FAR better executed).
It wasn't a bad game per se. The combat was great and the mini games were okay except for cooking. The gummi ship missions were fun. What disappointed me was no arena, no Sephiroth fight even when they could've added it in DLC, no Final Fantasy characters in the base game, and an extremely unsatisfying ending.
4:24 is that Halle Berry? 😂
For me, my biggest issue with the game play was that it was entirely cut scenes. I miss the puzzles and intricate world exploration of KH1 and lesser degree KH2 where it didn't guide you exactly where you needed to go. You had to run around and figure it out. It has gotten simpler and simpler with each iteration. I felt like this gameplay was just easy fights, running forward on the clearly defined path, and cut scenes. There were so many parts where you would finish one cutscene and it would bring you back to gameplay for you take 5 to 10 steps forward just to start another cutscene. Alongside the movie scene recreations it made KH3 feel more like an interactive movie than actually playing a game.
let me first state that you can like this game or dislike it and thats your opinion i have no problem with your opinion. however, this game has serious problems that cannot be ignored. most people who defend the game always use the argument of "this game was never going to deliver on the hype" or "you just had your expectations too high" and i hate those arguments because 1) its just throwing the rushed game under the rug and allowing the devs to get away with an unfinished unpolished product just because you had a few good feeling moments and 2) it completely ignores the actual arguments for what is wrong with the game because you dont want to acknowledge that a game that you and everyone else waited 13 years for could actually be a bad game and trust me i get it thats not something i want to acknowledge either but it is the reality.
to acknowledge those arguments i say it absolutely could deliver the hype because the hype wasnt a perfect game the hype was delivering the promises it made and that wasnt hard to do. bbs trio finally getting back together and having their moment, twilight trio coming back together, disney worlds that feel like disney worlds and not just open worlds of very little to do outside of main story, decent story and pacing in a game thats been in development for this long, and a completion to this story. all of that is deliverable because all of that has been delivered in every single game up til this games release. kh2 was an improvement on kh1 massively with characters having even more depth, gameplay being vastly improved, story being just as mysterious but having solid pacing. the same goes for bbs, ddd, and all of the other side games. again none of them were perfect but all of them delivered what we expected them to deliver. some were better than others and some people hold in such high regards they will never acknowledge the bad about but none are perfect. kh3 delivered nothing but singular moments of nostalgia and emotional bait. i was so excited for bbs trio to get back together but how can i be excited about that moment when its jarring due to the other norts in the arena who are supposed to be fighting just sitting there watching like why are you not attacking why are you waiting there. the same with the twilight trio. why did none of the storiies get resolved in those disney worlds? end some of their stories there and leave parts of the story open and mysterious and even allow master xehanort to get the pieces he needs for the ki blade and have it be a push to the end. that way the worlds feel more important and the stories pace feels solid and flows smoothly and when you get to the final world the cutscenes have more time to happen and feel less jarring because there arent 2 other enemies just breathing over your neck waiting for the cutscene to end.
to continue on they never had to do kairi like that. what was the point of her training if she got taken out in 0.2 seconds. why build the hype around kairi being a keyblade wielder if you arent going to let her be a keyblade wielder. you want a reason why the game would never deliver on the hype? that right there is why. they built the hype and told us kairi would be a keyblade wielder and be important to the final battle and she was taken out like a chump. "but she was important to the dlc" the dlc should have never happened outside of the data battles. the dlc is entirely ridiculous because they did the exact same thing as ff15. they made a game with glaring plotholes that made no sense and then added a dlc that explains the plotholes in perfection. in ff15 why did i have to wait for the final dlc to understand the final bosses motivation? why did i have to wait for the dlc to understand why one friend left for 2 weeks? or why one friend went blind? same with kh3 why did i have to wait for dlc to find out why lingering will showed up? or why time rewinded? or why these things just happened? that should be main game main story information. save the yozora bit and the data battles for dlc thats solid dlc the data fights were the best part of the entire game entirely difficult but satisfying to beat.
finally why did they try to make master xehanort a sympathetic villain at the very end? i get it with dark road and other smaller side stories its showing him being sympathetic but thats too late. you cant wait til the end or after hes gone to explain why hes sympathetic youve spent years building him up as this evil villain who is just evil for evils sake. he willingly convinced terra to kill eraqus he convinced a teenager to kill his father figure/mentor. thats fucked up. he split the heart of his own disciple and then tossed him aside like it was nothing. thats fucked up. he stole the body of terra, broke the heart of ventus, and left aqua in the world of darkness(though that one is mostly on her but i digress). in just bbs alone hes done enough evil to be unforgiveable but then we take into account every other game hes been in and his other selves ansem seeker of darkness, xemnas, terranort, and young xehanort. terranort took the life of their master ansem then split his own body apart to become heartless and nobody while simultaneously splitting apart like 9 other people at the same time some against their will others willingly and created an organization built around stealing peoples hearts. none of what xehanort is is sympathetic in any way and yet they tried to make it so that he did those evil things because it had to be done to save the worlds. i dont accept that. its canon so i have to but its a stupid decision. its ok to have some villains be evil just because. having him being sympathetic makes no sense at this point.
theres still far more i could rant about but this has gone on for too long so far so ill end it here but again if you like the game thats your opinion i cant tell you youre wrong for liking something but at least acknowledge the game has massive problems and dont use the excuse of "it was never going to live up to the hype" or "you had too high of expectations" because really my only expectations were to deliver similar if not better than kh2 which in itself was similar if not better than kh1.
I absolutely agree that the people saying “it just didn’t live up to the hype” are just plugging their ears. I was a huge fan of the series, played most of the games multiple times, and it’s the only series Ive bought a costume to be one of the characters. But it had been so long for the big #3, i hadnt thought too much about what would be in it. Back when i bought it, it sat on my to-play pile for like 2 months before i loaded it up.
By the second world, i was already hate-playing it. The amount of even basic stuff they couldnt get right was insane. The dialogue was so forced i couldnt believe basically anyone is a real person. And the amount of time between each line was like 2-3 times what it should have been. And nobody ever rushed for anything, it was always “let me finish my monologue before we do anything” which was incredibly frustrating. And Sora had been replaced by Platitude Bot 3000.
Then there were the more macro story issues, like all dead characters coming back to life, abysmal pacing, utterly unexplained power scalings. Sora is “reset to lvl 1”, but can kill 3 titans in hercules world. 7 worlds later Terranort can take him and his entire gang with a smile on his face. Half a world later he can take on 3 final boss Xehanorts. What even is happening.
I dont even care about kingdom hearts 4 anymore, and it’s all down to this one game.
@-JaggedGrace- that's the problem with one rushed game in a series it can effectively ruin the entire series for others. I'm curious to see if they learned from their lessons when it comes to kh4 but considering the absolute disappointment of kh3 I don't think I'll ever be excited for another kh game. Why get excited for long story lines and character development when it's all going to be relegated to a 10 second cutscene at the end of the series in the most jarring un-immersive way possible? Why look forward to gameplay when it's going to be a flashier showboatier downgrade from every previous title? Why look forward to finally beating that big bad when they're going to tell you feel bad for mass murderer number 2 in the series because he cried once.
Kingdom hearts has been a beloved series for me since I was a child I still go back and replay kh1 and 2 and watch all the cutscenes but kh3 has been sitting in a box in my closet since I finished playing it and I've never once thought about opening it back up to try again I'm just not interested in being disappointed again except for the dlc but as I stated outside of the data battles and yozora the dlc should never have happened. the worst part is because it's the end game of the saga it makes it so much worse. Kh2 being bad wouldn't have been a big deal bbs being bad wouldn't have been a problem those are minor stories in comparison to the main story. Kh3 being the culmination of the saga ending all stories and setting up the next being a bad game and a bad story just ruins it. As I said though there's a lot to rant about with this game.
Sooo in the end this is just your high Expectations 😂😂
This comment was a big nothing burger
@breathofthestars7043 high expectations are to give me a perfect game. I want amazingly detailed combat with every key blade being 100% unique and changing the flow of combat with each world having a new companion who changes the flow of combat and the world's like toy story bringing back Tom Hanks and Woody Allen to portray their roles same with xehanort to have his original voice actor back. To have sora and kairi officially become a couple as they've hunted at for riku to stay the edgey boy he always was for naming and Roxas to get together for terra and aqua to take the place of master eraqus completely for the box to be opened and answered for maleficent to have an actual plot point in the story for 100 acre wood to be an actual world and not fucking candy crush for the story to not have glaring plot holes that are answered in dlc for kairi to have her og voice actress back for kairi to be a competitive key blade wielder what I wouldn't give to see kairi fuck larxene up with a key blade for aqua to have rocked vanitas and not the other way around the list goes on and on and on.
Nothing burger my ass. Again you can like the game I won't tell you that you're wrong to like the game that's your opinion but to sit here and pretend that the reason people don't like it is high expectations is ridiculous. Cyberpunk 2077 people had ridiculously high expectations but the game didn't fail because of the high expectations it failed because it couldn't even deliver on low expectations and the low expectations was a functioning playable game. At least kh3 is functioning and playable. It just don't deliver on its own promises. Do not equate high expectations with the developers own promises. No mans sky failed because the developers did not deliver on their promises. Kh3 delivered on in nostalgia and emotional bait and that pulled in people who wanted the emotional bait. I want more than 2 seconds of emotion I want to love the game same as I love every prior game in the series even the mediocre ones. Kh3 isn't even mediocre. It's a failure to deliver on every single promise except for it being the end of xehanort saga.
Come up with a better argument or argue against the substance of my comment but don't skim the comment and pretend you read anything.
It honestly felt rushed to me. The worlds offer barely any story significance, mostly because they NEED the 13 darknesses to fight the 7 lights, so you can't have any fights with them before the final conflict. On top of that, you have an absence of the supporting FF cast, and side characters like Lea and Kairi "training" and still going mostly unused.
I'm of the mind that KH1 is still the most cohesive and thought-out story, with each game having less effort put into making everything fit together comfortably. Going through 3D, I started to care significantly less about following the KH story. Don't even get me started on the mobile games.
I'd like to see KH get back to being grounded, but I don't see that ever happening. Bringing in some reverse-engineered Versus XIII ideas and Not-Japan (Quadratum) will not fix anything. It'll just make way for more jargon about "un-reality" and ass-pull Keyblade powers to justify whatever Nomura thinks is cool during that dev cycle.
Overall, as a game, KH3 is fine. It wraps up story beats but still goes out of its way to say "it's not over yet." As a story, KH3 is 90% padding, with the last 10% (and DLC) as worthwhile content. Though I hate to see them retcon Xehanort into a misguided character who is only a villain because of his methods. Dude shot his best friend in the back and killed him, and jumped bodies so he could experiment on people and start a war. And they gave him a happy ending.
I'm still curious to see where the story goes, and KH4 will likely be fun, but I don't think I can ever really care about it like I once did. It's just too convoluted.
2 was better in every way aside from the graphics and keyblade transformations. 4 has a lot to do to impress the fan base again.
Kh2 was far worse in terms of story and characters. Sora was OOC and unlikable. Donald and goofy were practically irrelevant. Kh3 was a lot deeper and more mature in terms of theme and story.
I think you should look at KH2 again, it has a LOT of things worse than KH3, like it doesn't have a Retry botton, you need to redo your entire menu again before the fight if you did in that room, it is lacking in dodging mechanics for most of the game, maps are way too linear and have barely any design as you simply go back and forth in corridors most of the time, you need to get out of the worlds if you want to go in another save point location of the same world, you can't even keep cameos party members without taking off Donald or Goofy, mobility is meh for a big part of the game and so on.
@@gustavos.8511 don't forget the horrendous drive form grind that then punishes you for doing what the game makes mandatory to get movement options (by making you grind for movement options, the game basically locks you out of forms for a lot of the fights when you want to use them). Also, it hides how to gain exp for said forms in a menu that no one ever looks at.
@@tombolt13thexehanort29 not only that, but the geniuses made Anti form as a "punishment" for abusing Drive forms, you know, the ones they force the player to abuse in order to get decent growth abilities...
Also in KH2FM there was an extremely dumb glitch that is depending if you do part of the Tron world after you completed cave of remembrance, the exit you unlocked will be closed and you need to do the whole path again EVERY time, it happened to me on my first save file....
Honestly nothing really has felt the same. The first game just had this dark and otherworldly feeling.
0:33 kingdom hearts jersey club >>
The whole game was extremely alienating on so many different levels. Alienating with not being able to touch upon the tragic substories that have been developing for at least 15 years for the vast majority of the game, alienating with us having to be mere spectators in the Disney characters’ story, ending up with doing little more than taking out their trash in the form of defeating a heartless boss at the end, alienating with Sora who’s been through so much in the past games turning into nothing but a superficial happy go lucky kid, and alienating with substories concluding in the most contrived, unsatisfying way.
KH3 was terrible.
KH 3 is better than most modern games nowadays
I remember playing it thinking this is actually good and then the way they decided to wrap up the story just killed me on the inside. They built up this games ending with like 40 games.
Nerfing Sora and him getting laughed at/punked in every world didn't help lol
Well I think it wasn't that bad but the expectations were quite high after the masterpieces KH1 and 2 were. I remember reaching Keyblade Graveyard and asking myself "this was it? No B-Plot to return to all those worlds? Thats quite sad..." It felt like I reached a conclusion where in KH2 you had the doubled amount of plot until that point. PotC World was quite cool but basically AC Black Flag and I quite loved anything what came with the Keyblade War at the Graveyard. That was really cool. And *that* Post-Credit Scene got me really hyped for KH4. I recently replayed KH2 at PC and it was not only nostalgia - it was really that good as I remembered it.