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.
@@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
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
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
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
The thing that bothered me most, Master Xehanort loves his fake outs, I was expecting at least 9 organization defeats to turn out to be replicas and we do KH2 style round trip. That hope was dashed when Xion was revealed and Roxas arrived
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times and I stand on business KH3 was the best disappointing game in the series. It was a great game, the gameplay was great, the story isn't what we wanted, the ending wasn't what we wanted. It wasn't satisfying, it was disappointing. But it was still a great game in and of itself.
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!
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.
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.
Coming from possibly the biggest KH superfan in the entire world. KH3 was a massive, rushed, terribly written disappointment. And the dialog was easily the worst ive ever heard in any gane ever. I couldnt believe what i was seeing.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
The final act at the graveyard just fundamentally doesn’t work for me and ultimately tried being more than it was allowed to be You can’t have every single plot line and hero require Soras presence, that worked in 1 and 2 when he was basically the only active force working against the villains, but the series spent two many games building up the rest of the cast for them to be nothing but NPC space wasters in a war
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....
KH3 in a Vacuum wouldn't be bad. But it doesn't exist in a Vacuum It is supposed to cap off a trilogy that has a ludicrous amount of spinoff games that became instrumental in understanding what was even going on. This finale was mid, not bad but mid, and then it drops a cliffhanger for content we now don't want to see because many of us(myself included) spent their VERY early childhood up until their young adulthood waiting for this series to reach its magnificent end.
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.
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?"
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.
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.
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.
KH3 to me destroyed the series. And with that I do not mean KH3 alone, but everything needed to create it. I loved KH1 for its easy but effective narrative, its almost childish optimism but also it sometimes dark situations overcome by struggle. I liked the concept of heartless and because of this KH2 was also great for me, because it expanded upon the heartless concept by adding the no ones as a mirror type of being. I also did not mind Sora and Roxas looking not alike because iirc we did not see the humans to the nobodies of Org13. But then after KH2 came all the spinoffs and while they have great moments, their plots to me felt entirely like being written to answer questions I think are meaningless. iirc Birth by Sleep explained via Ven touching Soras heart why Roxas looked like Ven, and because the somebodies of the Org13's nobodies looked alike it felt this was solely added to answer the possible question "why do Sora and Roxas look not alike when other somebodies/nobodies do?" And this can basically done with 358/2 days, Dream Drop Distance and the mobile game stuff and its inclusion of prophecy and foretelling n shit. It just went into the mode of answering questions I personally would never have asked myself. And in the process of it the narratives I do look for in a KH game went meaningless, barren even. It went from a "we can achieve anything if we put our heart into it" narrative into a "actually theres ancient mechanisms going on that all control what we do" and this just feels completely foreign to how I learned and loved KH.
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.
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
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
@ 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.
A lot of the issues stated in this video was the catalyst towards my distaste for the series. Considering Square had cramed so much canon lore in side and spin offs, you would think they'd respect the amount of time (and money) that dedicated fans had used, just to get promotion for their next story, and lack of care towards the arc we had spent so much time studying and theorizing about. I do not see how people have not lost faith in the series, and trust that when this next arc finishes, it would be worth your time. I wouldn't recommend this series to anyone unless they focus only on gameplay or if their Disney fans. For anyone who still enjoys the series, I'm glad it still makes you happy. I would just suggest you consider playing a game that respects your time.
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.
If I had to resume my opinions: lacking and disappointing. And more so because the team has proven itself previously telling well the story and having incredible moments and worlds. Most of the worlds are just there, the same as Sora and the team, when they could have been more involved, a lot of moments, as you said, that should have had more time and expansion on them, were just glossed over while other moments that did nothing for the story or the characters had a lot of time. The combat was kinda easy and I didn't like the attractions. Kinda liked the transformations, but I prefer the fusions from KH 2, although I loved that the shotlocks were back, although more simple, sadly. At the beginning the Critical difficulty wasn't even unlocked unless you finished the game, and even then it still was not as hard nor snappy or precise as KH 2. Maybe it's me. And the thing that actually made me mad, was that the team proved that they were capable of not making those mistakes, as the DLC fixed most of them at the end of the game. But to get there, you must play first the base game and you have to buy the DLC, and fixing the end of the game doesn't remove all of the middle which still has the same issues. Corona was beautiful, but we did nothing there, Monster INC was simple but well implemented, but Sully throwing Vanitas, even if funny is nonsense as he can return immediately with a dark path. Olympus was quite cool, I didn't really like San Fransokyo although it is true that at least the team was involved and was part of the story there. But I didn't like the world. And Frozen... what to say, you said it exactly as I think. And the worst part is that it had potential. I'm just a guy that plays games. I'm no writer, nor do I work in the game or media industry in any capacity. But let me pitch something for anyone who reads this: We begin the game playing as Kairi arriving to train with Axel, and the tutorial is trough her, learning to fight, use items all that jazz, in a new unique world. After that we follow with Sora and Mount Olympus. After the first quarter of the game, we jump to Riku and Mickey, EXPLORING and fighting a lot of difficult enemies in the World of Darkness, in a similar way as we played with Aqua in her 0.5 mini-chapter, but facing a very strong and cool monster at the end (and not the fu***ng pillar dudes) and then retreating. Then we follow with Sora until half game, when we jump back to Kairi, this time exploring a dangerous area of the world, and we see her in a different outfit, with more skills, spells and everything, in the end facing a strong Heartless that maybe for her is dangerous, but for Sora or Riku it is just kinda challenging but not threatening, showing how her power and skill is growing but not there yet. And after that, we return to Sora until 75% of the game and we go back to Riku with his new blade, and continue from where we left off, again, EXPLORING more of the World of Darkness until we arrive at the beach, were we fight Aqua in an amazing fight, but when they think they've won, she transform in a more shadowy form, and as Riku is about to get killed, Sora senses it and jumps in, and then you fight her together. You finish the couple last worlds and have a final BOSS fight with Kairi against Axel in a cool and unique match. Then, we return for the Keyblade Graveyard, and they make it as in the DLC: every group is fought not through Sora but with him as a helper in the same way Donald and Goofy are, and that way we could see what Sora looks like when we fight. And in the end, after the last fight, we enter Scala ad Kaelum and we are able to explore it (although I've seen gameplay and still think that it could have made more rich and varied, but even if it is as in the DLC). Regarding the worlds: it would have been cool to fight in each world one of the 13 members, but in a way that they are containing themselves, as they must wait until the final battle. That way we could see their moveset, and they should be hard fights to show that Sora is weaker. And the bosses we fight in the game could be mid-world bosses, maybe in phases as the worlds were done in KH 2. In Corona, we should have had more interaction with Marluxia, the Bandit Tavern should have been in there, the two brothers should have been there and corrupted to become Heartless, when Flinn is tied to the boat, the team should have seen that, Sora, worried for Rapunzel should have chosen to go to the other side of the lake to see if she is okay, and then fighting Marluxia, and at half health he puts us to sleep and later we fight at the tower with Gothel. And while Sora fights Marluxia, Goofy and Donald are sent to save Flint, and when they return they throw Sora in the lake or Donalds hits him with lightning making a cameo to how he wakes up Goofy in KH1 instead of the stupid scene of the horse. In Frozen, we should have had the kingdom, the fishing village, the troll forest and the ice castle to explore. Giving it variety, and Larxene could have used her magic on Elsa's castle to trap us, in the end of it fighting her until she leaves, and then we go down the mountain (only fu***ng once) and fight the wolf. And to be honest, even though I found curious and actually well made the Caribbean world, I would have chosen another world, there are so many. And we do nothing in there, we only see fragments of the movie. The Toy Story world is interesting and we do participate a lot in it, but KH is already quite the shonen; friendship is what will help us move forward, and combining that with Toy Story, which is the same x 2, just made it too much. Twilight Town was a sad shell of what it was. We could not go to the sand lot, nor the place of reunion, nor the station, nor inside the mansion and even less at the hill with the mysteries. It would have also been awesome to go to Destiny Islands, see the main city and the island where we grew up. Maybe finally meet everyone's family. And the Land of Departure would have been cool to explore it now that it was broken, bot outside the castle and inside, but it was restored to perfection after unlocking it. Weird, but whatever, I would have been happy exploring it even fixed. The outside area, maybe expand it, and the same with the interior. Make it so that when we unlock it, Unversed start appearing and we start making our way through them trying to get to Roxas before Vanitas. (And I do think it is well made that Aqua loses against Vanitas, as she is weak and has been trapped in darkness for a decade, which would have drained her of her strength, as she did not have her armor). If I was asked, that's what I would have suggested after seeing the final product. How is it possible for professionals who are paid, with years of experience to make it like this. I don't know if there were problems in development or if the investors had something to do with it, I mean, explain to me why there were no FF characters in the whole game. Did Nomura really chose to leave it to the side? The combination of FF and Disney is what made KH what it is. You can dial it back in both sides and focus on more original ideas, but if you completely remove it, it just looses. And if the DLC is a way to fix what they did wrong, it should have been free. Because no matter how you look at it, the DLC was a fix for the final push of the game. KH 1 and 2, even if you remove the Final Mix versions, still had challenging and difficult encounters, even more so on Critical. The Shadow of the Clocktower, the Snake giant in Agrabah and the Ice Titan and Sephirot, and Dragon Maleficent, Riku-nort, Ansem were all challenging. In KH 2 you had almost all of the Organization members and once more Sephirot. I honestly can't remember one challenging fight in KH 3 except Ansem in the end and the Heartless swordsman in the Graveyard; the secret boss. Again, Critial was locked until NG+, I think they patched that up, but by then I just didn't want to play it again. But I'm sure that even NG+, if I use summons and attractions it would not be that much of a challenge. But in KH 2, as the combat there was very polished, I had to use all my arsenal to be able to beat the game on Critical. Here I finished it easely with no summons and no attractions. And even my transformations I only used on occasion. I didn't even stop for one second to farm. I don't think I even got the best accessories. But I did get Ultima, so not sure about the items. But I'm not sure if I even hit level 50. And above all else, I don't understand why they chose to remove the Reactions, as it gave KH 2 a cool, powerful and immersive option in combat, which they can minimize by placing rules, as when you can kill the Samurais in one hit if you press the right button, but if not you are hit hard. And they could have used said system to implement the attractions in specific times and moments against big and powerful bosses the way they did with the Rock Titan. A good game in general, nothing amazing, but a complete letdown as a Kingdom Hearts. Be it the worlds, the story and dialogue a lot of times or even the combat. And this was the finale of the Darkseeker Saga... Disappointing, truly. And what I was expecting wasn't KH 2 x 2. If it was at the level of KH 2, but with a couple of new things and better graphics I would have been happy. KH 2 is one of my TOP 5 game, of all time. It's there with The Witcher 3, Ghost of Tsushima, now Elden Ring and FF XII (I know, weird FF but I loved the customization and the Gambit system and the world and characters. And a big fan of Star Wars, so... xDD). At the level of Black Myth: Wukong and the new God of War games. And yet KH 3, for me, is not near close to that level. And they had the base, the story and the gameplay. And the talent, as they showed it once again with the DLC, to do it. I was just baffled and disappointed.
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 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 was basically a giant Disney ad, no FF characters, and they put all of the plot in the last 4 hours of the game. On top of that xehanort, a guy who was brought up to be a ruthless destroyer of worlds said sorry and was a good guy at the last second. The mobile games ruined kingdom hearts because that's where the fo us shifted, and KH3 was a nail in that coffin because they realized the mobile story was what they wanted to focus on instead of the previous one. Anyone who claims it's a masterpiece is either dumb or a Disney shill. Also combat was not tuned at launch. The game was insanely easy.
@AnAverageGoblin stfu moogles are specific to each game so NO there aren't any FF characters. And who gives a fuck about DLC that costs half the game. That wasn't what I was talking about. DLC doesn't make the base game better and getting a small clip of a few ff characters that were shoehorned in a year later after people were bitching about it doesn't count either. So get your facts strait and kick rocks nerd.
@@WatsonDynamite I literally only played any of these other games BECAUSE they were in Kingdom Hearts. FF cameos were one of the best parts of KH and something that literally was part of the series from the beginning. Pretending like having FF cameos in KH was not something a huge part of the player base was actively looking forward to is laughable. The Hollow Bastion gang has been a part of Soras journey from the beginning. Cloud and Sepiroth were always some of the coolest cameos, the Sepiroth Boss fights were some of the best parts of the games. Having characters like Auron appear in Hades Underworld in KH2 and Zack in the past in BBS because their arcs were both fitting with the respective Worlds they were in was awesome. As a Final Fantasy fan whos only a FF fan because I met some of these characters in KH1, not having FF characters, whether the old gang or just some new ones that fit with the plot of certain worlds definetly was the biggest dissapointment in an already dissapointing game. I also play Kingdom Hearts for Kingdom Hearts, but for me Kingdom Hearts is Disney x Final Fantasy x original characters. By your logic we can also remove any Disney worlds from Kingdom Hearts and it'd still be Kingdom Hearts enough for you.
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).
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.
As a challenge runner, its gameplay was fantastic for me after all the patches and dlc, it also has the best superbosses in the entire series. It has problems for sure (no kh game is perfect) but the amount of fun I had with the combat was at least equal to kh2fm. And people tends to forget how much contents vanilla kh2 didn't have as well (gameplay-wise)
@daigu2509 arenas are perfectly fine in both games, they aren't a problem in most cases combat-wise. The difference is that kh3 worlds have actual exploration while most kh2's worlds didn't
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
@pascalfernandes6957 that's like saying i hated the entire meal cause I didn't like the desert. It was a mediocre attempt at a conclusion till the DLC came out.
First off, Great video, and thank you for explaining it all so well. I didn't get the dlc because I didn't like the original game, that part was well done. Here are my thoughts as someone who only played KH1.5, KH2, BBB, DDD, and KH3 (no dlc). My favorite part about the series was going into disney worlds and fighting villains from the movies. And this game dropped the ball. HARD. The only villains you fought were the titans, and davy jones. The rest were all just random heartless or organization members. While I certainly agree they spent too much time re-creating movie scenes, I also wish they spent more time making the disney worlds actually matter. Like, if you just skip all the disney worlds and cut to Sora going to save Aqua, you wouldn't really lose anything. The story doesn't progress in the worlds, and Sora doesn't really learn anything. In KH1 especially, pretty much every world moved the story or at least had you fight a disney villain, but in this game the disney worlds felt like filler to increase the game time. Very disappointing. Pirates was my favorite world! The titan fight was ok, but fighting Davy Jones on the dutchman just felt iconic, and I loved it! Also, although I agree that the world should maybe have been smaller and denser, I had a good time, going to islands, finding treasure, and upgrading my ship. San Fran was also very open, but it didn't have anywhere near as much appeal to me, since there wasn't the world specific currency to collect. Aesthetically Corona was my favorite, but the lackluster boss fight and relative linearity of the world brought it down. And of course, Frozen was absolutely the worst and the biggest let down. Elsa could have been such a cool ally, but no, we get snowman. Overall, I didn't hate it, but it felt like the spent much more time on the darkness saga for my own liking. Interesting to hear that even the people who liked the darkness saga weren't satisfied. The lack of Final Fantasy characters was also disappointing. It's the only KH game I've only played once, all the others I've played at least 3 times, and KH1.5 I've played at least 15 times including a lv1 run. Something about the gameplay just didn't click with me. Anyway, thanks for the video!
I feel like it’s biggest “issue” was always that due to the long wait for the game, the expectations got far above what could have been delivered, people set the bar too high, and as such felt let down by the (still very good) game.
@@loregasmicI’m not denying there are legitimate issues, such as the ones listed in this video, just that when most people say it was bad, they really mean it just didn’t meet the high expectations placed on it because of the long wait
It had one job, conclude the seeker saga in a meaningful fulfilling adventure, it did not. Even tho I played the series since I was a kid following all the entries. Kh3 was the first game I legit went, okay when is the plot gonna start tho and I didn't get that until the last 10% of the game. Sora breaking down at the keyblade graveyard had me laughing because for such a critical moment as far as the game is concerned it was literally everyone standing there doing nothing.
Naw dude, I was at a point in my life where I thought maybe I'd outgrown the series, so I had zero expectations. The game still sucked ass. And it turns out I didn't outgrow the series, since I was still able to replay KH1 and BBS (which is itself not a good game but I digress) without much difficulty. KH3 had zero excuse to not appeal to me. I even tried coming back to the game recently (last time I played it was release), and... naw, dude.
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.
The only issue KH3 had was the fandom. People hyped up this game so much that it could never match their expectations. I, too, was excited for the game, but I set realistic expectations and therefore was not disappointed. I got exactly what I wanted out of this game, and the DLC was just the icing on the cake.
I have been a KH fan since 2012 and was looking forward to KH3. I couldn't afford it during 2019, so I watched a playthrough because I didn't want to stumble upon random spoilers. While some stuff annoyed me here and there in the cutscenes, I could forgive it. Nothing I truly disliked there. However, everything that happened in the Keyblade Graveyard and after is where the game truly lost me. Kairi being tossed aside after years of hyping her up since that cutscene in DDD at Yen Sid's tower, the rushed reunions, the fact that Roxas and Ven didn't interact, and Xehanort didn't face proper consequences after all his crimes soured the game for me. It was one of those finales that made me feel silly for caring about the story in the first place. I played the KH3 for the first time in 2023 in hopes my opinion would change after some time passed. I gave up after the Big Hero 6 world because I was so bored. There wasn't even a scene that made me emotional like in the previous KH games. How did Re:Coded manage to make me more emotional than KH 3 did? It's baffling. The only other KH game I couldn't finish was Chain of Memories. I will gladly go back and replay KH1, 2, and BBS, but KH3 is the game that made me give up on future installments for this series, and wonder why they made us wait for so long only to underdeliver in terms of story and character development.
Looking back at the game, all I remember thinking was that the amusement park attacks basically were the combat system and 95% of the game was just Disney and they crammed basically all the actual KH story and payoff into that last tiny section. It was bad to me, all the years and all the build up for the Xehanort saga to end like that was the definition of anticlimax for me. The way it hurt me physically that Axel and Kairi were 2 of the lights and got key blades and basically did nothing but Donald and Goofy weren't even though Goofy face tanked a boulder in KH2, a literal ride or die, and Donald blew Terranort's wig off into orbit sacrificing himself to save everyone, again a literal ride or die. They should have been the main ones in the 7 Lights with the craziest looking shield/magic rod hybrid key blades.
What's wrong with KH is that some of its characters are barely developed. Aqua and Ven in particular. They tell us they have this deep friendship but that's never shown so none of the scenes feel earned... Also they handled Aqua so bad, she spent 10 years in the realm of darkness, so what? She just sheds a tear and moves on, like it never even happened (same as her being consumed by darkness... No consequences whatsoever). She feels like such a "non-character" I'm surprised she has fans at all.
Tbh, it's because she's hot. If Aqua wasn't a looker, I don't think she'd have nearly as many fans as she does. Case in point, look at how people talk about Terra.
The Aqua thing extra pissed me off because she was a survivor for 10 years, having to be a vicious fighter just to survive. Then in KH3 she loses every fight she’s in. So disappointing, and stupid.
Yes, yes it was. No final fantasy characters, 1 disney world(the rest pixar), no drive forms, confusing story, had to play every side game just to understand whats going on if you havent played since kh2
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
My friend convinced me last year to play kingdom hearts for the first time, and over a course of a year i played every one (beating MoM mid summer 2024) and player every one on the hardest difficulty available I would probably have KH3 tied with KH2 for my favorite game in the series, so I unironically believe it must be either a nostalgia thing or an overhyping problem (and the trailer thing I've learned about afterwards)
As someone who’s been a fan since I was a kid. The community has had a problem with writing what they think should happen next since even the early days. When the predictions are inevitably wrong the cries of “bad story” start. Idk I liked KH3 and thought I was insane when no one else did
@@DijiEva This game does SO much right but it infuriates ms all of the same because every time I look at sn aspect of kh3 that brings me joy theres also one or two things that irk me! Maybe my thoughts down below are not agreeable and seem cynical but I feel like the desire for this game to have completely seceded the older titles in all qualities shouldnt be scorned at. I wasnt expecting perfection, but I had scarcely seen any fan content or theories about how the series would progress going forward and still ended up dissapointed Dont bother going below if you dont wanna see my salty ramblings (I wouldn't blame you at all) the thing is, I have been part of many communities that have heavily theorised and wrote fanfiction about how a story might progress and what interactions may occur and still ended up feeling satisfied with the content the devs provide regardless. There are SO many characters in kingdom hearts that deserved more presence and significance to the story (kairi is still underutilised despite her connection to sora, and you only get to play her in the DLC? We should've been able to play as kairi with axel during their training arc and maybe even get more scenes with them as well!) So little time is spent in kingdom hearts 3 where we get to see a ton of character interactions that I feel wouldve helped to not only satisfy the fans, but also help to cement the ambitions, struggles and perspectives of lesser used characters. It feels like this game prioritises recounting Disney film plots rather than using them as a means to convey character motivation and growth. This a problem earlier games had as well. I'm not surprised people had such a high Hope's for this game when so many beloved characters appear here. If the entire frozen world disappeared and you had more opportunity interact with and play as the other trios and have MEANINGFUL interactions with the organisation that either provides insight to each individual members ambitions and doubts. Imagine an interaction between riku and roxas where they discuss the time they fought against each other, or an interaction between riku and terra about their journeys and how rikus life was shaped by terras decision to impart the key blade into him. Even IF kingdom hearts 3 has a good story its conveyance of the plot with the dialogue (which is still awkward) is poor, the use of the power of waking as a sora focus for growth and learning feels like wasted potential (it was done well in Olympus I loved soras interactions with Hercules! ), its combat mechanics are both a major step forward and a step backwards too and poorly paced (choosing to front load a lot of the games story with Disney plots rather than an intertwined experience).
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. 😅
The initial experience before the dlc was released was the worst thing ever for me so much that i didnt end up going back for the dlc. Ive said this a many times before on different kh3 videos, but heres the truth for me The moment i accidently activated a disney ride attack during the dark aqua fight i hated the game forever.
@-JaggedGrace- well i already wasn't enjoying it, i found my excitement souring as I played. Then it hit me hard at that moment during the aqua fight. I was super extra pissed off when I got to the ending and sora disappeared
It was bad , no substance , no coherent story , barely any villain motivation, combat system needed a dlc and ripped moved from Kh2fm just to be good , ending was bad , dialogue is horrendous, no real purpose for visiting the world that you do (and if there was a purpose it was some ret conned bull made up by square to justify it ) no hollow bastion , no really good secret boss (e.g Sephiroth in kh2 ) Disney worlds were basically a giant ad and uncreative level design … man I could on dude
@@pryanik1337 that’s just not true . Most of these points kh2 did very well . Maybe the level design was a little too simple , but everything else was top tier even the dialogue was better and the story actually had neat twist with roxas .
What I don't understand is how they could take the worse aspect of 1 and 2 which was the giant boses and make almost almost every world have them as the boss.
It didn't deliver the same satisfaction as KH2 did. That's it. It may have tons of new features and flashier combat mechanics but the story was let down and the DLC having cool playable characters but are locked to just ONE Fight is boring.
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: It was an astoundingly mediocre game relative to the series as a whole, most of the game is pointless, poorly written AND acted, with all of the potentially interesting content shoved into the final world and not given any time to be handled properly. The worlds are all pretty meh, big and pretty and extremely boring to work through. KH2 might be a series of hallways but at least it has a good pacing, Atlantica and 100 acres aside. Olympus was good, toy box was good at the start but is wayyyy too long, Tangled world is fine, I guess, Monsters Inc is ok, Frozen is awful, Big Hero 6 is ok, but has no reason to be as big as it is. Xehanort is a really, really dumb villain with a stupid plan and nobody in the entire cast has the braincells to call it out or acknowledge how ridiculous it is. Remind is also very dumb, and pointless since it changes nothing until Mickey tells Sora that Kairi isnt dead, which he could have done before Sora violated the laws of nature or whatever. The power of waking is duuuumb. On the plus side KH4 will be free of the brain rot of the Dark Seeker saga so it will be better thought out. Also I still don't really know what Kingdom Hearts actually IS other than, like God, or something. Or why it looks different in every game it appears in. It was blue, it was a door, it was made up of hearts and then exploded, and then theres the KH 3 one.
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.
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'm honestly not interested in what's happening next, I wanted the story that I grew up with to get a proper ending and conclusion. That's why I'm still bitter about KH3, I'm over hating it but at the same time I no longer care, which imo is worse. I'm no longer in the age demographic for these games , they really took 17+ years to finish this story, I started as 13 years old now I'm married and a father of 2. 😅
Yes yes it was that bad maybe even worse. Not for the same reasons as most but the dialogue was slowed down by 1.5x from any other kh. I get it was to make it accessible for children but it made it even more so cringe even as you get older the dialogue becomes “darkness darkness my heart light sora something darkness “ this was the first kh game I shipped cutscenes routinely. Also knowing sora had the power of waking makes the entire game pretty meaningless he could’ve done it at the beginning. Ig it was the friend u made along the way type shii. Last but not least I’ve bought and played every kh game and grew accustom to playing as multiple characters instead of being limited to just…sora dream drop bbs 358 chains etc maybe not number mainline titles but for a next Gen. Fame they didn’t meet my standard of gameplay being only one character besides the very end. Much rather play dmc5 anyday!!!
Without ReMind the story makes less sense. Had we gotten ReMind first and THEN Kh3 it would've seemed more meaningful as we got to see the backroom dealings of everything.
Honesty KH3 is my favorite entry due to it being the culmination of my favorite KH titles both story and gameplay wise. I feel like this game gets a lot of backlash due to the strong KH2 nostalgia bias that has grown within the last decade. Either people want a carbon copy of KH2 story wise or people complain about the gameplay since it's an Osaka title and the physics are not like KH2. Don't get me wrong, I love KH2, but I feel like people's nostalgia and strong opinions on other KH titles are represented as facts instead of just opinions. And that stains people's perception of this game and puts KH2 even higher on a golden pedestal.
the games is trivially easy unless you play critical (which wasnt an option on release) and then its just bullshit and not real difficulty. combat where you dont have to think and just mash x while sora magnetizes to the target no matter how far is objectively bad. kh2 sits on a pedestal for far more reasons than nostalgia.
Its funny I went back and replayed kh2 and kh3 just to try and give the later a fair shake. Kh3 while a solid game falls short hard, there is no meaningful plot progression till the literal last section of the game while everyone's interactions are stilted and flat. The game outright says it doesn't know how to progress the story in its opening the only reason things are more cohesive Is because of hindsight as far as what the organization was doing between each world but in the end it just paints the heroes as a bunch of idiots. Gameplay wise its fine, bit floaty but has more depth than people realize with the Remind bosses highlighting that but the DLC really doesn't fix anything outside of that. Kh3 was more focused about setting up a sequel than it was concluding its own story.
KH2 lets you cancel ur combos like Jump > Attack > Land > Attack > repeat, man, that shit is so damn cool and one of many thing not in 3. Irdk how anyone can think 3 is better or as good. I guess people with low standard do... KH3 It actually pure bubu and put the final nail in the coffin that the handheld games were hammering in for years... Unless KH4 pulls that nail out and revive it but it's doubtful for me.
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.
It was too straightforward and the first 3 worlds were more developed.. the rest seemed rushed.. i thought i would have a second visit to the world.. not go to radiant garden was strange for the plot.. or the world of darkness in search for aqua.. we could have the perspective of riku and aqua at least.. to build the finale, to get Xehanort better.. i felt i player half
I think this game was about love in all forms, family love for Ven Aqua and Terra, love of friends with sora and the gang, the love of crushing on someone with Kairi, and so on
Kingdom hearts 3 was a disappointment for some people because of how easy it was and I can’t blame them but Remind fixes that issue. The story was rushed but I’m glad that we ended the saga in this game
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.
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
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
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
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
The thing that bothered me most, Master Xehanort loves his fake outs, I was expecting at least 9 organization defeats to turn out to be replicas and we do KH2 style round trip. That hope was dashed when Xion was revealed and Roxas arrived
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
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
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
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
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
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
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”
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
Honestly nothing really has felt the same. The first game just had this dark and otherworldly feeling.
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.
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.
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.
I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times and I stand on business
KH3 was the best disappointing game in the series.
It was a great game, the gameplay was great, the story isn't what we wanted, the ending wasn't what we wanted. It wasn't satisfying, it was disappointing. But it was still a great game in and of itself.
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 ! :)
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.
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.
Coming from possibly the biggest KH superfan in the entire world. KH3 was a massive, rushed, terribly written disappointment. And the dialog was easily the worst ive ever heard in any gane ever. I couldnt believe what i was seeing.
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.
Sora: im going to save aqua!
Riku: how?
Sora: by beating the crap out of her!
Riku: makes perfect sense!
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.
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
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
The final act at the graveyard just fundamentally doesn’t work for me and ultimately tried being more than it was allowed to be
You can’t have every single plot line and hero require Soras presence, that worked in 1 and 2 when he was basically the only active force working against the villains, but the series spent two many games building up the rest of the cast for them to be nothing but NPC space wasters in a war
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....
KH3 in a Vacuum wouldn't be bad. But it doesn't exist in a Vacuum
It is supposed to cap off a trilogy that has a ludicrous amount of spinoff games that became instrumental in understanding what was even going on. This finale was mid, not bad but mid, and then it drops a cliffhanger for content we now don't want to see because many of us(myself included) spent their VERY early childhood up until their young adulthood waiting for this series to reach its magnificent end.
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.
Yes. It was Game of Thrones bad. It ruined all franchise titles before and after.
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?"
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.
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.
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??
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Yeeeeeeeeeeees
KH3 to me destroyed the series. And with that I do not mean KH3 alone, but everything needed to create it. I loved KH1 for its easy but effective narrative, its almost childish optimism but also it sometimes dark situations overcome by struggle. I liked the concept of heartless and because of this KH2 was also great for me, because it expanded upon the heartless concept by adding the no ones as a mirror type of being. I also did not mind Sora and Roxas looking not alike because iirc we did not see the humans to the nobodies of Org13.
But then after KH2 came all the spinoffs and while they have great moments, their plots to me felt entirely like being written to answer questions I think are meaningless. iirc Birth by Sleep explained via Ven touching Soras heart why Roxas looked like Ven, and because the somebodies of the Org13's nobodies looked alike it felt this was solely added to answer the possible question "why do Sora and Roxas look not alike when other somebodies/nobodies do?"
And this can basically done with 358/2 days, Dream Drop Distance and the mobile game stuff and its inclusion of prophecy and foretelling n shit. It just went into the mode of answering questions I personally would never have asked myself. And in the process of it the narratives I do look for in a KH game went meaningless, barren even. It went from a "we can achieve anything if we put our heart into it" narrative into a "actually theres ancient mechanisms going on that all control what we do" and this just feels completely foreign to how I learned and loved KH.
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.
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
Remember: Tetsiya Nikita is not a good director, he puts his games into development hell without having a handler
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
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.
A lot of the issues stated in this video was the catalyst towards my distaste for the series. Considering Square had cramed so much canon lore in side and spin offs, you would think they'd respect the amount of time (and money) that dedicated fans had used, just to get promotion for their next story, and lack of care towards the arc we had spent so much time studying and theorizing about. I do not see how people have not lost faith in the series, and trust that when this next arc finishes, it would be worth your time. I wouldn't recommend this series to anyone unless they focus only on gameplay or if their Disney fans.
For anyone who still enjoys the series, I'm glad it still makes you happy. I would just suggest you consider playing a game that respects your time.
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
If I had to resume my opinions: lacking and disappointing. And more so because the team has proven itself previously telling well the story and having incredible moments and worlds. Most of the worlds are just there, the same as Sora and the team, when they could have been more involved, a lot of moments, as you said, that should have had more time and expansion on them, were just glossed over while other moments that did nothing for the story or the characters had a lot of time. The combat was kinda easy and I didn't like the attractions. Kinda liked the transformations, but I prefer the fusions from KH 2, although I loved that the shotlocks were back, although more simple, sadly. At the beginning the Critical difficulty wasn't even unlocked unless you finished the game, and even then it still was not as hard nor snappy or precise as KH 2. Maybe it's me. And the thing that actually made me mad, was that the team proved that they were capable of not making those mistakes, as the DLC fixed most of them at the end of the game. But to get there, you must play first the base game and you have to buy the DLC, and fixing the end of the game doesn't remove all of the middle which still has the same issues. Corona was beautiful, but we did nothing there, Monster INC was simple but well implemented, but Sully throwing Vanitas, even if funny is nonsense as he can return immediately with a dark path. Olympus was quite cool, I didn't really like San Fransokyo although it is true that at least the team was involved and was part of the story there. But I didn't like the world. And Frozen... what to say, you said it exactly as I think. And the worst part is that it had potential. I'm just a guy that plays games. I'm no writer, nor do I work in the game or media industry in any capacity. But let me pitch something for anyone who reads this:
We begin the game playing as Kairi arriving to train with Axel, and the tutorial is trough her, learning to fight, use items all that jazz, in a new unique world. After that we follow with Sora and Mount Olympus. After the first quarter of the game, we jump to Riku and Mickey, EXPLORING and fighting a lot of difficult enemies in the World of Darkness, in a similar way as we played with Aqua in her 0.5 mini-chapter, but facing a very strong and cool monster at the end (and not the fu***ng pillar dudes) and then retreating. Then we follow with Sora until half game, when we jump back to Kairi, this time exploring a dangerous area of the world, and we see her in a different outfit, with more skills, spells and everything, in the end facing a strong Heartless that maybe for her is dangerous, but for Sora or Riku it is just kinda challenging but not threatening, showing how her power and skill is growing but not there yet. And after that, we return to Sora until 75% of the game and we go back to Riku with his new blade, and continue from where we left off, again, EXPLORING more of the World of Darkness until we arrive at the beach, were we fight Aqua in an amazing fight, but when they think they've won, she transform in a more shadowy form, and as Riku is about to get killed, Sora senses it and jumps in, and then you fight her together. You finish the couple last worlds and have a final BOSS fight with Kairi against Axel in a cool and unique match. Then, we return for the Keyblade Graveyard, and they make it as in the DLC: every group is fought not through Sora but with him as a helper in the same way Donald and Goofy are, and that way we could see what Sora looks like when we fight. And in the end, after the last fight, we enter Scala ad Kaelum and we are able to explore it (although I've seen gameplay and still think that it could have made more rich and varied, but even if it is as in the DLC).
Regarding the worlds: it would have been cool to fight in each world one of the 13 members, but in a way that they are containing themselves, as they must wait until the final battle. That way we could see their moveset, and they should be hard fights to show that Sora is weaker. And the bosses we fight in the game could be mid-world bosses, maybe in phases as the worlds were done in KH 2. In Corona, we should have had more interaction with Marluxia, the Bandit Tavern should have been in there, the two brothers should have been there and corrupted to become Heartless, when Flinn is tied to the boat, the team should have seen that, Sora, worried for Rapunzel should have chosen to go to the other side of the lake to see if she is okay, and then fighting Marluxia, and at half health he puts us to sleep and later we fight at the tower with Gothel. And while Sora fights Marluxia, Goofy and Donald are sent to save Flint, and when they return they throw Sora in the lake or Donalds hits him with lightning making a cameo to how he wakes up Goofy in KH1 instead of the stupid scene of the horse. In Frozen, we should have had the kingdom, the fishing village, the troll forest and the ice castle to explore. Giving it variety, and Larxene could have used her magic on Elsa's castle to trap us, in the end of it fighting her until she leaves, and then we go down the mountain (only fu***ng once) and fight the wolf. And to be honest, even though I found curious and actually well made the Caribbean world, I would have chosen another world, there are so many. And we do nothing in there, we only see fragments of the movie. The Toy Story world is interesting and we do participate a lot in it, but KH is already quite the shonen; friendship is what will help us move forward, and combining that with Toy Story, which is the same x 2, just made it too much. Twilight Town was a sad shell of what it was. We could not go to the sand lot, nor the place of reunion, nor the station, nor inside the mansion and even less at the hill with the mysteries. It would have also been awesome to go to Destiny Islands, see the main city and the island where we grew up. Maybe finally meet everyone's family. And the Land of Departure would have been cool to explore it now that it was broken, bot outside the castle and inside, but it was restored to perfection after unlocking it. Weird, but whatever, I would have been happy exploring it even fixed. The outside area, maybe expand it, and the same with the interior. Make it so that when we unlock it, Unversed start appearing and we start making our way through them trying to get to Roxas before Vanitas. (And I do think it is well made that Aqua loses against Vanitas, as she is weak and has been trapped in darkness for a decade, which would have drained her of her strength, as she did not have her armor).
If I was asked, that's what I would have suggested after seeing the final product. How is it possible for professionals who are paid, with years of experience to make it like this. I don't know if there were problems in development or if the investors had something to do with it, I mean, explain to me why there were no FF characters in the whole game. Did Nomura really chose to leave it to the side? The combination of FF and Disney is what made KH what it is. You can dial it back in both sides and focus on more original ideas, but if you completely remove it, it just looses. And if the DLC is a way to fix what they did wrong, it should have been free. Because no matter how you look at it, the DLC was a fix for the final push of the game. KH 1 and 2, even if you remove the Final Mix versions, still had challenging and difficult encounters, even more so on Critical. The Shadow of the Clocktower, the Snake giant in Agrabah and the Ice Titan and Sephirot, and Dragon Maleficent, Riku-nort, Ansem were all challenging. In KH 2 you had almost all of the Organization members and once more Sephirot. I honestly can't remember one challenging fight in KH 3 except Ansem in the end and the Heartless swordsman in the Graveyard; the secret boss. Again, Critial was locked until NG+, I think they patched that up, but by then I just didn't want to play it again. But I'm sure that even NG+, if I use summons and attractions it would not be that much of a challenge. But in KH 2, as the combat there was very polished, I had to use all my arsenal to be able to beat the game on Critical. Here I finished it easely with no summons and no attractions. And even my transformations I only used on occasion. I didn't even stop for one second to farm. I don't think I even got the best accessories. But I did get Ultima, so not sure about the items. But I'm not sure if I even hit level 50. And above all else, I don't understand why they chose to remove the Reactions, as it gave KH 2 a cool, powerful and immersive option in combat, which they can minimize by placing rules, as when you can kill the Samurais in one hit if you press the right button, but if not you are hit hard. And they could have used said system to implement the attractions in specific times and moments against big and powerful bosses the way they did with the Rock Titan.
A good game in general, nothing amazing, but a complete letdown as a Kingdom Hearts. Be it the worlds, the story and dialogue a lot of times or even the combat. And this was the finale of the Darkseeker Saga... Disappointing, truly. And what I was expecting wasn't KH 2 x 2. If it was at the level of KH 2, but with a couple of new things and better graphics I would have been happy. KH 2 is one of my TOP 5 game, of all time. It's there with The Witcher 3, Ghost of Tsushima, now Elden Ring and FF XII (I know, weird FF but I loved the customization and the Gambit system and the world and characters. And a big fan of Star Wars, so... xDD). At the level of Black Myth: Wukong and the new God of War games. And yet KH 3, for me, is not near close to that level. And they had the base, the story and the gameplay. And the talent, as they showed it once again with the DLC, to do it. I was just baffled and disappointed.
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 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 was basically a giant Disney ad, no FF characters, and they put all of the plot in the last 4 hours of the game. On top of that xehanort, a guy who was brought up to be a ruthless destroyer of worlds said sorry and was a good guy at the last second. The mobile games ruined kingdom hearts because that's where the fo us shifted, and KH3 was a nail in that coffin because they realized the mobile story was what they wanted to focus on instead of the previous one.
Anyone who claims it's a masterpiece is either dumb or a Disney shill. Also combat was not tuned at launch. The game was insanely easy.
Moogles are FF characters and a couple FF characters appear in the dlc
at least get your whinging about this awful game right dude.
@AnAverageGoblin stfu moogles are specific to each game so NO there aren't any FF characters. And who gives a fuck about DLC that costs half the game. That wasn't what I was talking about. DLC doesn't make the base game better and getting a small clip of a few ff characters that were shoehorned in a year later after people were bitching about it doesn't count either. So get your facts strait and kick rocks nerd.
I play Kingdom Hearts for Kingdom Hearts, not for bastardized cameos of characters from other games I've already played
@@WatsonDynamite I literally only played any of these other games BECAUSE they were in Kingdom Hearts. FF cameos were one of the best parts of KH and something that literally was part of the series from the beginning. Pretending like having FF cameos in KH was not something a huge part of the player base was actively looking forward to is laughable. The Hollow Bastion gang has been a part of Soras journey from the beginning. Cloud and Sepiroth were always some of the coolest cameos, the Sepiroth Boss fights were some of the best parts of the games. Having characters like Auron appear in Hades Underworld in KH2 and Zack in the past in BBS because their arcs were both fitting with the respective Worlds they were in was awesome. As a Final Fantasy fan whos only a FF fan because I met some of these characters in KH1, not having FF characters, whether the old gang or just some new ones that fit with the plot of certain worlds definetly was the biggest dissapointment in an already dissapointing game. I also play Kingdom Hearts for Kingdom Hearts, but for me Kingdom Hearts is Disney x Final Fantasy x original characters. By your logic we can also remove any Disney worlds from Kingdom Hearts and it'd still be Kingdom Hearts enough for you.
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).
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.
As a challenge runner, its gameplay was fantastic for me after all the patches and dlc, it also has the best superbosses in the entire series.
It has problems for sure (no kh game is perfect) but the amount of fun I had with the combat was at least equal to kh2fm.
And people tends to forget how much contents vanilla kh2 didn't have as well (gameplay-wise)
Dude the arena alone from KH2 is more content then KH3
@daigu2509 arenas are perfectly fine in both games, they aren't a problem in most cases combat-wise.
The difference is that kh3 worlds have actual exploration while most kh2's worlds didn't
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
Loved every part of KH3 except it's story. The DLC was truly it's saving grace.
ALSO YES YES YES IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS
Then you dudnt like kh to begin with
it was so fun.
@pascalfernandes6957 that's like saying i hated the entire meal cause I didn't like the desert. It was a mediocre attempt at a conclusion till the DLC came out.
@@Sappyhourr I'm happy you made the video in such a short amount of time
First off, Great video, and thank you for explaining it all so well. I didn't get the dlc because I didn't like the original game, that part was well done. Here are my thoughts as someone who only played KH1.5, KH2, BBB, DDD, and KH3 (no dlc).
My favorite part about the series was going into disney worlds and fighting villains from the movies. And this game dropped the ball. HARD. The only villains you fought were the titans, and davy jones. The rest were all just random heartless or organization members. While I certainly agree they spent too much time re-creating movie scenes, I also wish they spent more time making the disney worlds actually matter. Like, if you just skip all the disney worlds and cut to Sora going to save Aqua, you wouldn't really lose anything. The story doesn't progress in the worlds, and Sora doesn't really learn anything. In KH1 especially, pretty much every world moved the story or at least had you fight a disney villain, but in this game the disney worlds felt like filler to increase the game time. Very disappointing.
Pirates was my favorite world! The titan fight was ok, but fighting Davy Jones on the dutchman just felt iconic, and I loved it! Also, although I agree that the world should maybe have been smaller and denser, I had a good time, going to islands, finding treasure, and upgrading my ship. San Fran was also very open, but it didn't have anywhere near as much appeal to me, since there wasn't the world specific currency to collect. Aesthetically Corona was my favorite, but the lackluster boss fight and relative linearity of the world brought it down. And of course, Frozen was absolutely the worst and the biggest let down. Elsa could have been such a cool ally, but no, we get snowman.
Overall, I didn't hate it, but it felt like the spent much more time on the darkness saga for my own liking. Interesting to hear that even the people who liked the darkness saga weren't satisfied. The lack of Final Fantasy characters was also disappointing. It's the only KH game I've only played once, all the others I've played at least 3 times, and KH1.5 I've played at least 15 times including a lv1 run. Something about the gameplay just didn't click with me.
Anyway, thanks for the video!
I feel like it’s biggest “issue” was always that due to the long wait for the game, the expectations got far above what could have been delivered, people set the bar too high, and as such felt let down by the (still very good) game.
Yeah, no.
@@loregasmicI’m not denying there are legitimate issues, such as the ones listed in this video, just that when most people say it was bad, they really mean it just didn’t meet the high expectations placed on it because of the long wait
It had one job, conclude the seeker saga in a meaningful fulfilling adventure, it did not. Even tho I played the series since I was a kid following all the entries. Kh3 was the first game I legit went, okay when is the plot gonna start tho and I didn't get that until the last 10% of the game. Sora breaking down at the keyblade graveyard had me laughing because for such a critical moment as far as the game is concerned it was literally everyone standing there doing nothing.
Naw dude, I was at a point in my life where I thought maybe I'd outgrown the series, so I had zero expectations. The game still sucked ass.
And it turns out I didn't outgrow the series, since I was still able to replay KH1 and BBS (which is itself not a good game but I digress) without much difficulty. KH3 had zero excuse to not appeal to me. I even tried coming back to the game recently (last time I played it was release), and... naw, dude.
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.
The only issue KH3 had was the fandom. People hyped up this game so much that it could never match their expectations. I, too, was excited for the game, but I set realistic expectations and therefore was not disappointed. I got exactly what I wanted out of this game, and the DLC was just the icing on the cake.
Exactly.
There's literally more plot going on after every single world than in KH2 but these clowns have collective amnesia.
@@timekeeper2538 True!
This is the only correct comment here. 3 and 4 don't deserve the hate and dislike they get at all.
I understand, but I disagree. I don't think it's the fans' fault to expect a good game that the company has been hyping up for years.
I have been a KH fan since 2012 and was looking forward to KH3. I couldn't afford it during 2019, so I watched a playthrough because I didn't want to stumble upon random spoilers. While some stuff annoyed me here and there in the cutscenes, I could forgive it. Nothing I truly disliked there. However, everything that happened in the Keyblade Graveyard and after is where the game truly lost me. Kairi being tossed aside after years of hyping her up since that cutscene in DDD at Yen Sid's tower, the rushed reunions, the fact that Roxas and Ven didn't interact, and Xehanort didn't face proper consequences after all his crimes soured the game for me. It was one of those finales that made me feel silly for caring about the story in the first place.
I played the KH3 for the first time in 2023 in hopes my opinion would change after some time passed. I gave up after the Big Hero 6 world because I was so bored. There wasn't even a scene that made me emotional like in the previous KH games. How did Re:Coded manage to make me more emotional than KH 3 did? It's baffling. The only other KH game I couldn't finish was Chain of Memories.
I will gladly go back and replay KH1, 2, and BBS, but KH3 is the game that made me give up on future installments for this series, and wonder why they made us wait for so long only to underdeliver in terms of story and character development.
Looking back at the game, all I remember thinking was that the amusement park attacks basically were the combat system and 95% of the game was just Disney and they crammed basically all the actual KH story and payoff into that last tiny section. It was bad to me, all the years and all the build up for the Xehanort saga to end like that was the definition of anticlimax for me. The way it hurt me physically that Axel and Kairi were 2 of the lights and got key blades and basically did nothing but Donald and Goofy weren't even though Goofy face tanked a boulder in KH2, a literal ride or die, and Donald blew Terranort's wig off into orbit sacrificing himself to save everyone, again a literal ride or die. They should have been the main ones in the 7 Lights with the craziest looking shield/magic rod hybrid key blades.
What's wrong with KH is that some of its characters are barely developed. Aqua and Ven in particular. They tell us they have this deep friendship but that's never shown so none of the scenes feel earned... Also they handled Aqua so bad, she spent 10 years in the realm of darkness, so what? She just sheds a tear and moves on, like it never even happened (same as her being consumed by darkness... No consequences whatsoever). She feels like such a "non-character" I'm surprised she has fans at all.
Tbh, it's because she's hot. If Aqua wasn't a looker, I don't think she'd have nearly as many fans as she does. Case in point, look at how people talk about Terra.
The Aqua thing extra pissed me off because she was a survivor for 10 years, having to be a vicious fighter just to survive. Then in KH3 she loses every fight she’s in. So disappointing, and stupid.
I will say this Aqua vs Vanitas kinda makes sense cuz Aqua hadnt fought since she lost her blade and she wasnt ready for a fight.
Yes, yes it was. No final fantasy characters, 1 disney world(the rest pixar), no drive forms, confusing story, had to play every side game just to understand whats going on if you havent played since kh2
Nope fight me kh3 was a MASTERPIECE. Sue me
i totally agree
It's my favorite game.
Though KH, KH2, BBS, 3D, and Days are all close.
I ain't sueing because I agree.
O nah. You must be one of them trolls.
@@bronsonisaboss I'm not trolling.
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
My friend convinced me last year to play kingdom hearts for the first time, and over a course of a year i played every one (beating MoM mid summer 2024) and player every one on the hardest difficulty available I would probably have KH3 tied with KH2 for my favorite game in the series, so I unironically believe it must be either a nostalgia thing or an overhyping problem (and the trailer thing I've learned about afterwards)
As someone who’s been a fan since I was a kid.
The community has had a problem with writing what they think should happen next since even the early days.
When the predictions are inevitably wrong the cries of “bad story” start.
Idk I liked KH3 and thought I was insane when no one else did
@DijiEva You weren't insane. People are dumb. There's clearly an audience that recognizes the good quality of 3 outside of the haters.
@@DijiEva
This game does SO much right but it infuriates ms all of the same because every time I look at sn aspect of kh3 that brings me joy theres also one or two things that irk me! Maybe my thoughts down below are not agreeable and seem cynical but I feel like the desire for this game to have completely seceded the older titles in all qualities shouldnt be scorned at. I wasnt expecting perfection, but I had scarcely seen any fan content or theories about how the series would progress going forward and still ended up dissapointed Dont bother going below if you dont wanna see my salty ramblings (I wouldn't blame you at all)
the thing is, I have been part of many communities that have heavily theorised and wrote fanfiction about how a story might progress and what interactions may occur and still ended up feeling satisfied with the content the devs provide regardless. There are SO many characters in kingdom hearts that deserved more presence and significance to the story (kairi is still underutilised despite her connection to sora, and you only get to play her in the DLC? We should've been able to play as kairi with axel during their training arc and maybe even get more scenes with them as well!) So little time is spent in kingdom hearts 3 where we get to see a ton of character interactions that I feel wouldve helped to not only satisfy the fans, but also help to cement the ambitions, struggles and perspectives of lesser used characters. It feels like this game prioritises recounting Disney film plots rather than using them as a means to convey character motivation and growth. This a problem earlier games had as well. I'm not surprised people had such a high Hope's for this game when so many beloved characters appear here. If the entire frozen world disappeared and you had more opportunity interact with and play as the other trios and have MEANINGFUL interactions with the organisation that either provides insight to each individual members ambitions and doubts. Imagine an interaction between riku and roxas where they discuss the time they fought against each other, or an interaction between riku and terra about their journeys and how rikus life was shaped by terras decision to impart the key blade into him.
Even IF kingdom hearts 3 has a good story its conveyance of the plot with the dialogue (which is still awkward) is poor, the use of the power of waking as a sora focus for growth and learning feels like wasted potential (it was done well in Olympus I loved soras interactions with Hercules! ), its combat mechanics are both a major step forward and a step backwards too and poorly paced (choosing to front load a lot of the games story with Disney plots rather than an intertwined experience).
Nerfing Sora and him getting laughed at/punked in every world didn't help lol
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
The initial experience before the dlc was released was the worst thing ever for me so much that i didnt end up going back for the dlc. Ive said this a many times before on different kh3 videos, but heres the truth for me
The moment i accidently activated a disney ride attack during the dark aqua fight i hated the game forever.
I hated the game way before that but i cant deny your reasoning
@-JaggedGrace- well i already wasn't enjoying it, i found my excitement souring as I played. Then it hit me hard at that moment during the aqua fight. I was super extra pissed off when I got to the ending and sora disappeared
It was bad , no substance , no coherent story , barely any villain motivation, combat system needed a dlc and ripped moved from Kh2fm just to be good , ending was bad , dialogue is horrendous, no real purpose for visiting the world that you do (and if there was a purpose it was some ret conned bull made up by square to justify it ) no hollow bastion , no really good secret boss (e.g Sephiroth in kh2 ) Disney worlds were basically a giant ad and uncreative level design … man I could on dude
All of that can be said about kh2, but oh well
@@pryanik1337 that’s just not true . Most of these points kh2 did very well . Maybe the level design was a little too simple , but everything else was top tier even the dialogue was better and the story actually had neat twist with roxas .
What I don't understand is how they could take the worse aspect of 1 and 2 which was the giant boses and make almost almost every world have them as the boss.
It didn't deliver the same satisfaction as KH2 did. That's it. It may have tons of new features and flashier combat mechanics but the story was let down and the DLC having cool playable characters but are locked to just ONE Fight is boring.
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: It was an astoundingly mediocre game relative to the series as a whole, most of the game is pointless, poorly written AND acted, with all of the potentially interesting content shoved into the final world and not given any time to be handled properly. The worlds are all pretty meh, big and pretty and extremely boring to work through. KH2 might be a series of hallways but at least it has a good pacing, Atlantica and 100 acres aside. Olympus was good, toy box was good at the start but is wayyyy too long, Tangled world is fine, I guess, Monsters Inc is ok, Frozen is awful, Big Hero 6 is ok, but has no reason to be as big as it is. Xehanort is a really, really dumb villain with a stupid plan and nobody in the entire cast has the braincells to call it out or acknowledge how ridiculous it is. Remind is also very dumb, and pointless since it changes nothing until Mickey tells Sora that Kairi isnt dead, which he could have done before Sora violated the laws of nature or whatever. The power of waking is duuuumb. On the plus side KH4 will be free of the brain rot of the Dark Seeker saga so it will be better thought out. Also I still don't really know what Kingdom Hearts actually IS other than, like God, or something. Or why it looks different in every game it appears in. It was blue, it was a door, it was made up of hearts and then exploded, and then theres the KH 3 one.
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.
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!
I'm honestly not interested in what's happening next, I wanted the story that I grew up with to get a proper ending and conclusion. That's why I'm still bitter about KH3, I'm over hating it but at the same time I no longer care, which imo is worse. I'm no longer in the age demographic for these games , they really took 17+ years to finish this story, I started as 13 years old now I'm married and a father of 2. 😅
*GAMEPLAY* good, *STORY* trash
Yes yes it was that bad maybe even worse. Not for the same reasons as most but the dialogue was slowed down by 1.5x from any other kh. I get it was to make it accessible for children but it made it even more so cringe even as you get older the dialogue becomes “darkness darkness my heart light sora something darkness “ this was the first kh game I shipped cutscenes routinely. Also knowing sora had the power of waking makes the entire game pretty meaningless he could’ve done it at the beginning. Ig it was the friend u made along the way type shii. Last but not least I’ve bought and played every kh game and grew accustom to playing as multiple characters instead of being limited to just…sora dream drop bbs 358 chains etc maybe not number mainline titles but for a next Gen. Fame they didn’t meet my standard of gameplay being only one character besides the very end. Much rather play dmc5 anyday!!!
Cant believe you didnt say friendship
@@-JaggedGrace- u know 😂 the way they kinda watch each other lives fall apart u wonder are they really friends 😂
5 years passed???
yeah bro
I felt the same time passing scary fast
Without ReMind the story makes less sense. Had we gotten ReMind first and THEN Kh3 it would've seemed more meaningful as we got to see the backroom dealings of everything.
Honesty KH3 is my favorite entry due to it being the culmination of my favorite KH titles both story and gameplay wise. I feel like this game gets a lot of backlash due to the strong KH2 nostalgia bias that has grown within the last decade. Either people want a carbon copy of KH2 story wise or people complain about the gameplay since it's an Osaka title and the physics are not like KH2. Don't get me wrong, I love KH2, but I feel like people's nostalgia and strong opinions on other KH titles are represented as facts instead of just opinions. And that stains people's perception of this game and puts KH2 even higher on a golden pedestal.
trash taste
the games is trivially easy unless you play critical (which wasnt an option on release) and then its just bullshit and not real difficulty. combat where you dont have to think and just mash x while sora magnetizes to the target no matter how far is objectively bad. kh2 sits on a pedestal for far more reasons than nostalgia.
@@dasavagecabbage9483don’t forget the stupid carnival things that are OP and make every battle easy af
Its funny I went back and replayed kh2 and kh3 just to try and give the later a fair shake.
Kh3 while a solid game falls short hard, there is no meaningful plot progression till the literal last section of the game while everyone's interactions are stilted and flat. The game outright says it doesn't know how to progress the story in its opening the only reason things are more cohesive Is because of hindsight as far as what the organization was doing between each world but in the end it just paints the heroes as a bunch of idiots.
Gameplay wise its fine, bit floaty but has more depth than people realize with the Remind bosses highlighting that but the DLC really doesn't fix anything outside of that. Kh3 was more focused about setting up a sequel than it was concluding its own story.
KH2 lets you cancel ur combos like Jump > Attack > Land > Attack > repeat, man, that shit is so damn cool and one of many thing not in 3. Irdk how anyone can think 3 is better or as good. I guess people with low standard do... KH3 It actually pure bubu and put the final nail in the coffin that the handheld games were hammering in for years...
Unless KH4 pulls that nail out and revive it but it's doubtful for me.
KH 3 is better than most modern games nowadays
One of my top 3 favorite games of all time. Storywise it ain't the best, but the gameplay is too peak for me to care.
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.
It sucked
fair
Nope
It was too straightforward and the first 3 worlds were more developed.. the rest seemed rushed.. i thought i would have a second visit to the world.. not go to radiant garden was strange for the plot.. or the world of darkness in search for aqua.. we could have the perspective of riku and aqua at least.. to build the finale, to get Xehanort better.. i felt i player half
I think this game was about love in all forms, family love for Ven Aqua and Terra, love of friends with sora and the gang, the love of crushing on someone with Kairi, and so on
i like that
Kingdom hearts 3 was a disappointment for some people because of how easy it was and I can’t blame them but Remind fixes that issue. The story was rushed but I’m glad that we ended the saga in this game