I have been sitting on this post for too long and I want to believe what caused me to get to this post finally was the release of the long-awaited DLC that was released in January 2020.
Here are my thoughts and review of both Kingdom Hearts 3 and KH3: ReMind.
As an avid Kingdom Hearts fan I’ve played the games that were available at the time until they began to release the final mixes, cellphone games DS games in the US, and for the games that I did not play I heavily researched them and or watched playthroughs of the games.
But after 13-14ish years of waiting for Kingdom Hearts 3 everyone was ecstatic when it launched, I myself was OVERLY excited for it that I took a couple of days off of work to fully immerse myself in it. I will not lie, I did beat the initial game in a sitting and a half (two days).
But besides the hype, KH3 felt as if it lacked something.
KH3 picks up after Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance (KH: 3D). Riku is a keyblade master as he has passed the Mark of Mastery exam, Sora failed his test due to the plans of Xehanort and the result of Xehanort’s plans leaves Sora without his cool abilities and skills he had in KH2. Generally speaking, KH3’s first goal is to get Sora back his abilities followed by saving the worlds from darkness, get rid of Organization XIII, stop Xehanort, etc.
Those are the basic goals in the beginning of the game, but if you are familiar with the previous KH games, you know that your focus changes depending on what is happened, and well the trend continues in KH3.
But as you traverse the various and new (Disney) worlds you learn about the struggle within the darkness, the struggles of friendship and how he is spreading himself thin which was fully expected from the time-traveling (young) Xehanort. In addition to Sora’s struggles, you begin to learn more about Organization XIII and Xehanort’s grandiose plan to open Kingdom Hearts to finally lead all the worlds to darkness.
What I mentioned above is a huge generalist statement about the game as well as purposely omitting some of the finer details. I highly recommend checking out the series by either playing the games now that they are easily accessible or take a look at the wiki if you prefer to read or finally looking at playthroughs via youtube.
Here’s my
review of Kingdom Hearts 3!
Rating Guide:
☆: Could be better
☆☆: Ok
☆☆☆: Decent
☆☆☆☆: Great!
Story:
I had high
expectations for KH3 especially because we had waited so long for the conclusion,
so I was pumped to have all the questions that I had finally answered, various story
arch closed, and prep for the next story.
We didn’t
exactly get that.
There was
no revisiting old worlds besides Twilight Town and a different take of Olympus (Hercules’
world) and not to mention that all of the new worlds were Disney centered.
There were moments where we did meet up with previous characters and one of my
big gripes were the fact that there were no Final Fantasy characters seen…anywhere.
Each world
that was visited there was no connection to the story let alone the characters (although
I did enjoy Tangled & Frozen’s world). There were instances in each world
they threw in the original story of Kingdom Hearts like fighting against Ansem,
Xemnas, Replica Riku and of course the Organization XIII members but other than
that it was focused on Disney.
I
personally felt that Kingdom Hearts 3’s story was 95 percent Disney and the remaining percentage was the original story of Kingdom Hearts, and three
percent of the original story is towards the end.
After beating the game I was left with more questions and the fact that I've realized Square Enix and Disney will continue to milk Kingdom Hearts for everything it has.
Gameplay:
Hands down
the fighting in Kingdom Hearts 2 was the best out of the entire series but in
KH3 they added updates and some new fighting mechanics. One of the best things
that I noticed right away was Sora’s running. HE RUNS SO MUCH FASTER! It makes
traversing through the various world ridiculously fast and I love it. Another
thing I quickly noticed about Sora was the fact that he fights completely
different than he did in KH2 and that’s because of the events that happened in
KH: 3D I feel that he’s a little stiffer compared to KH2.
But out
with the old and in with the new.
Another feature they added into KH3 was the fact that Sora can use specific pieces of
the environment to sling-shot himself into enemies, he can destroy some
environment, use almost any flat surface to 'Naruto-run' up and over, different
forms of key blades, as well as adding
more Disney specific special attacks instead of those quick really cool quick
triggers.
As for
general controls, those have not changed one bit which is a plus, the enemy
encounters are generally the same – you walk into an area, heartless or
nobodies appear, get too far away
Art/Graphics: ☆☆☆
The art style and graphics have been highly improved upon! The original cartoon-ish like design of KH has been combined to be more realistic. Although, each of the characters looks similar to plastic dolls in CG moments, but tends to look better during actual gameplay (my personal opinion).The colors are vibrant and coincide with each world and the characters that reside in them. The designs of the enemies are have generally stayed the same as the previous games.
Pirates of the Car
Read Tetsuya Nomura's Interview here
SPOILERS!
ReMind Review:
A bit shaded from the initial release of KH3 I was gifted funds to get ReMind, I also tried to come into ReMind with an open mind and well...I was disappointed again.
I will not be using my standard rating guide as I will just go through it.
Sora's main goal is to bring Kairi back and he will do anything to bring the girl back and that includes sacrificing himself.
Essentially, this DLC is full of cut scenes with instances of fights that you've already done with some changes. I thought it was a little lazy and half-done. But even though you've already fought these battles the change that they've added is giving you the chance to play as the other member. For example
- Your fight against Replica Riku, Ansem, and Xigbar, you can play as Riku instead of Sora but the downfall is the fact that Riku does not take on Sora's level or abilities and you cannot customize anything about the character.
- So small health bar, limited abilities, limited magic.
I thought it was cool that they added that change to the battles but the character being used did not change the outcome of the battle, you still see the same cutscene. But with the plethora of cutscenes, you also have more insight into the things behind the scenes, you learn a bit about Xehanort, the Organization XIII being more suspicious of one another, and how much Sora doesn't care about his well-being (but I think we knew about that).As you play through the DLC you reach your goal of bringing Kairi back, fighting Xehanort with Kairi's limited abilities while Sora heals you and you get this cutesy double team attack with the two.
Once you complete the ending a second time and see all the cutscenes including the secret movie you get an additional cutscene of surprise! Final Fantasy characters making an appearance as they too are helping look for Sora as well as everyone else.
This next part is the main feature of this DLC that infuriates me, the DLC introduces a 'Limit Cut" Boss rush. There is a selection of bosses that you fight with a "data" Sora and I think this is the worst feature they could have added and you MUST defeat every single one of these bosses before you pass through to the final boss of the DLC.
Limit Cut means, the original levels of the bosses have been removed and severely ramped up to the point where they could end the battle before it even started. Not to mention you are fighting all of these bosses solo.
Lastly, once you get past the Limit Cut bosses, the final boss of the DLC has two endings depending on if you win or lose, it's just minor change in dialogue but nothing too substantial.
In short:
- The DLC was $30 that mostly consisted of cutscenes
- We fought the same bosses + few new ones
- We got to explore Scala ad Caelum ( the music is SO GOOD)
- Saw Final Fantasy Characters for 10 minutes
- Forced to fight ridiculously hard bosses to get to the end of the DLC
- Yozora.
In my personal opinion, the DLC should have been less than $30 for the content that was included in-game. I understand that there were more boss fights, more exploration, and additional characters and cut scenes but I (personally) still felt that is wasn't enough. The DLC included things that should have been already in the game already and not be an 'afterthought".
I'm sure that's not the initial thought they had for the DLC, but that is what I feel that we received with this DLC.
Have you played the Kingdom Hearts 3? What about the DLC? What are your thoughts?
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