I've been dwelling on a review of this game for basically the whole year. It's a pretty similar case to my review for The World Ends With You for how I struggled to get all my thoughts out on text. The difference here is that, rather than having it be due to an effort to convey everything about the game and what it means to me that I can possibly fit into a 10+ page thesis, my struggles with reviewing Kingdom Hearts III came from the fact that I genuinely had no clue where to begin approaching this game from. Should I go over how brilliant so much of this game is? Well no, cause for all of its great elements, there's a bunch of other problems that get in the way. Should I start it from the angle of how rough the base game is? Well no, since the inverse is also true that there's so many brilliant elements to this game that I can't just discredit. Should I insert some way to say that attraction flows are a garbage mechanic and the game experience is improved by removing them through Pro Codes and Critical Converter? Okay, you get what I mean. So many thoughts about this game have been spiraling around in my head for so long, so I'm just going to write this as a series of scattered thoughts. I won't get to everything I can talk about, but I feel like going into everything would burn me out all over again. If there's any way I can start it, it's what separates this recent playthrough I did from the past times I've played it: critical mode.

Earlier this year I played KH2 Final Mix on Critical Mode for the first time, and it was mostly a fantastic experience. It really showed me the beautifully intricate elements of KH2's design and how well they come together for an excellent action game experience. The experience even elevated KH2 to my top 5 of all time. Did the same apply to KH3 for me?

No. Quite the opposite, actually.

KH3's early game on critical mode is an absolutely miserable experience. You aren't well equipped to handle a lot of what the game throws at you and you'll often get one-shot or two-shot if you're lucky by projectiles with poor visibility, made worse by how it limits your options by the way it shortens the MP bar. For most of the game, Critical Mode served to expose me to more of the game's faults than it did make me appreciate the game's design, the complete inverse of what KH2's did for me. The experience does improve more and more as the game goes on, and I do think it ends up being worth it for the tension they add to the boss fights in Re:Mind, but the early game experience is so bad that I have a much harder time recommending that someone play on Critical.

Alright, now that I got all of that system, I want to move on to talking about other aspects of the game's mechanics. To start off with, I think that KH3 has the best traversal and world design that the series has seen yet. It's like the perfect middle ground between how KH1 and 2 handle it. KH1's world design had a lot of freeing and open exploration, but traversing it was often dreadful. KH2's was the opposite, where your means of traversing it are far more enjoyable, but the feeling of exploration left a lot to be desired. KH3 gives us the best of both worlds in this regard. Movement and traversal options are the best they've ever been, especially due to the implementation of flowmotion into Sora's moveset, and the game's worlds are very intricately designed, offering a lot of immersive and distinctive environments while also providing incentives to explore all over the place. My favorite example of this is The Caribbean, where you get to go across a whole open sea filled with islands with all sorts of nooks and crannies to look through. Hell, Port Royal alone has more to look around and find than some worlds in 1 and 2. There's less worlds total to go through this time, but I think their approach of quality over quantity really paid off.

The worlds also narratively pay off really well for the game's themes. For a while I was struggling to find a distinctive theme that ties the worlds together, like the theme of identity present in all of the worlds for KH2. I was initially going to go for the angle of the game's themes of loss and acceptance was prevalent in most of, but not all of them. However, I came to realize that the KH3 worlds' thematic ties aren't about drawing ties to a broader theme, but rather Sora as a character. Many of the events in the Disney worlds he experiences mirror parts of his journey, like how the Tangled world mirrors his optimism and excitement for exploring worlds past Destiny Islands, or how the ending of the Caribbean mirrors the choice he has to make at the end of this game. It's woven pretty brilliantly into Sora's character arc of learning to find his own strength and resolve to move forward.

I think KH3 is a really brilliant game despite the many, MANY faults it has to its name. Pre-ReMind combat is really rough around the edges, but it makes up for it by the inclusion of great mechanics like airstepping and keyblade forms that could be expanded upon pretty well in later titles. The story is incredibly disjointed and messy as a conclusion to the Xehanort saga, but it gives Sora the most compelling arc he's had as a character. Despite everything going against it, I can't bring myself to not love this game to some degree.

There is thought that the more sluggish a game, the more it pledges itself to cinema, while the more quickly it moves, the more action and spectacle coalesce into a central torrent of 'pure videogame'. Kingdom Hearts III gets closer to this than KH2 where Sora's feet never touched the ground and the linear level design revealed not so much the experience of turbulence as a rush to get to boss fights (where the surprisingly involved action game would begin and end). III ever so slightly tangles the levels to suggest nonlinearity, and offers a consistency of headrush from level movement to the bigger fights, but before long it is clear that it only wants us to get to the end, that there is no interest in the levels beyond their function in the story, that it is all surprisingly empty.

The tragedy is that there is actually a good game in this but that it is all shoehorned into the product that ties the most loose ends. Which reveals a kind of ignorance on the part of the developers — fandom thrives on ambiguity, on unpolished edges, on exchanges left unsaid, and not on what this thinks it's doing.

The truth is that I really enjoyed KH3 and I loved playing it at the same level I enjoyed KH1 and KH2. However, it is not at all up to par in terms of plot, and in my opinion, neither in terms of gameplay, as the approach they wanted to give to the game just does not end up pleasing me at all. I dare to say that they are a disappointment in some ways, but not entirely. However, Kingdom Hearts III is still tremendously fun and enjoyable, it has very high production values, and to be honest, I'm really glad I played KH3 despite how angry and disappointed I was at times, I'm glad to have finally given closure to that very convoluted story.

KH3 pretty much starts where DDD ends, which means that Sora failed his exam to become a Keyblade master, and to top it off, he's also lost all his strength to the point of being "in theory" the weakest version of Sora to date. So the story will be about Sora exploring, once again, Disney worlds to try to regain his powers and thus be able to rescue Ventus and Aqua. For starters, what I don't like at all about this premise is that there's really no real reason to visit Disney worlds, unlike KH1 and KH2 where there was, where for example you traveled to protect something and got involved in the story and with the characters of said world, instead, in KH3 you simply visit them to have a new biome to explore inspired by the Disney world in question and that's it, and worst of all is that in worlds like Frozen, Tangled or Pirates of the Caribbean, Sora or the Organization are not even important, they are just there for decoration to highlight a super compressed version of the original movie. The only reason you visit these worlds is to see some scenes recreated in Unreal Engine 4 and nothing else, as I'm not exaggerating when I say that literally Sora or the Organization have no relevance whatsoever, which makes it feel like filler as there is no real apparent reason to visit these worlds. Sora is supposed to be on an important mission to save the universe, but instead he's going to waste time to try to follow Elsa and watch her sing "Let it Go" and then get thrown off a mountain like 4 times "so he doesn't disrupt the original story order of the movie". What a bullshit justification. Thankfully worlds like Toy Story, Monsters Inc. or Big Hero 6 do have a new story to tell that involves Sora and the Organization in one way or another, which I liked.

Anyway, speaking of the main story, I don't want to do spoilers, but it's super wasted. Anyone could say "all KH stories are just as bad", and I might partially agree on that, but it's just that here they go overboard with how bad it is. There are a bunch of subplots that come out of nowhere and promise interesting development, but come to nothing and are discarded in pursuit of a super simple solution, there are also a bunch of characters that aren't well utilized, there are a bunch of scenes that have poor execution, and overall, nothing makes sense anymore. While there are a few fan-service scenes that I did enjoy, for the most part I was disappointed that KH3 instead of being a story evolution for the series, it's a big step backwards.

The world of KH has never looked as beautiful as it does in this game, although everything has a cartoon style, the quality of the models, textures, lighting and everything, I'm impressed by how close it comes to looking like CGI cinematics in some occasions where it was really the game running. Also, it's the first game not counting remasters to run at 60FPS which makes the movement in general feel so much more fluid and polished than any of the previous ones, it's just very satisfying to look at. The music is also great, although I feel like most of the pieces were reused songs, as the OST is made up of orchestrated versions or remixes of songs from previous games, still, overall I quite liked the OST and the new tunes as well as the returning ones are very good.

Despite the problems I have with some Disney worlds as I explained earlier, it was great to explore these worlds. I loved every single visit you make to the worlds, now they are not just made up of small interconnected rooms, but now they feel like large areas that we can explore at our leisure thanks to the return of KH3D's flow-motion, but now improved and a bit more balanced so as not to break the levels. Also, thanks to there being a lot of variety in terms of gameplay in each of the worlds, there are sections that have mechanics that are never repeated anywhere else, like being able to ride a Mecha in the Toy Story world for example, among other mini-games. I'm simply blown away by how varied it is, which makes the game too entertaining no matter where you look at it.

Lastly, I will talk about the combat system of this game where I have a lot of mixed feelings. As I mentioned at the beginning of the review, as polished and varied as the combat system is, it feels like a simplified version of KH2's combat system, since now everything boils down to pressing a single button to attack, while in KH2 the fights against enemies required you to use the X, triangle and even square buttons to generate and connect combos, here it doesn't. There are no reaction commands that you could activate with some enemies, instead now with triangle you now trigger "attractions", which consist of a 0PM consuming cinematic in which you are invulnerable and cause a lot of damage to all enemies, and yes, it looks very cool and all, but it makes everything feel over-simplified and like it's being played on autopilot, reduced to being a visual spectacle instead of a challenging and challenging combat that depends on the player's skill. Fortunately you can disable these "attractions", relegating the triangle button to activate the other actions that may arise, such as other team attack sequences or to activate forms. Speaking of the forms, I loved this aspect of KH3, as each Keyblade has its own unique form that you can activate once you've done a certain amount of attacks, it's similar to KH2's forms, but here it's much more varied and each form feels very different from the others, and what I like the most is that this game allows you to equip 3 Keyblades that you can exchange in the middle of a fight by just pressing left or right on the D-Pad, which allows you to reach a form, but when you exchange Keyblades you can reserve that form for another time in that mode. Also, thanks to the worlds being bigger now, there are a larger amount of enemies and it's pretty cool to be able to travel long distances by targeting an enemy with R1 and pressing square to reach them in an instant, it makes Sora's movement in KH3 feel very nimble and fluid.

Unfortunately I made the mistake of playing in Critical Mode, which I did because that's how I played the other KHs as well back in the day the first time I played them, and also because I had heard that this game was very easy even in Proud Mode, but wow, things in Critical Mode are just too complicated and difficult, everything kills you in one hit or two, even to your teammates, and the worst thing is that since the scenarios are now so big, an enemy can come out of nowhere and hit you from behind or they can shoot projectiles that you don't even know they were coming at you because said enemy wasn't in your field of vision, things that result in an instant Game Over. Despite everything, with a lot of patience and dedication, I managed to finish the game in Critical Mode, although I do not recommend it at all, as you can tell that the game was not intended for that mode, although in the end it was a good challenge to overcome and quite satisfying for how it made me master and appreciate each of the boss battles, making the gameplay of this game shine more in a certain way.

Conclusion
Despite all the problems I have with Kingdom Hearts III, I can't deny that it's a pretty entertaining and fun game, and it's an evolution in some aspects of what had been seen in the PS2/PSP/3DS games thanks to being developed for a more modern console like the PS4. Anyway, although the combat is very polished and could be the best in this series, due to the approach they wanted to give it, it feels like a super limited version of KH2's combat, which makes me not end up loving it, and as for the story, this one was worse than a disappointment, that although it may be my fault for having taken it seriously, I will continue to maintain that the story is horrible if we compare it with previous games in this same series.

I finally gave a conclusion to the Kingdom Hearts story by playing this game... and it's also clear to me if I really want to keep playing these games or if they are not for me anymore.

The last proper kingdom hearts game for now caps things off with a bang by taking previous gameplay mechanics and polishing them to an even more extraordinary degree. Despite the improvements, there are also some elements in the game that just feel disappointing or half-baked. The version i played includes all the updates and patches released for the game as of august 2021 and doesn’t include the dlc re:mind.
The gameplay is the best the franchise has seen so far (yet again). The combat is the most expressive and most acrobatic that it has ever been, thanks to a wide range of movements, keyblades, abilities, shotlocks, styles, finishers and so much much more that the player can utilize and experiment with. The game introduces its own improvements as well. The keyblade forge allows you to upgrade keyblades with different synthesis materials you find on your journey, allowing for all keyblades to be useful all the way to the end and for the player to never drop their favourite one. Now Sora can wield three keyblades simultaneously, introducing another layer of freedom and experimentation for different builds of varying effectiveness. Each keyblade has a second or even third form, made possible by the different styles Sora can turn into when using the keyblade in encounters, each one useful in their own ways (magic focused, crowd control focused, attack focused etc). With these improvements also come some flaws. Due to how many options you’re given, the game becomes painfully easy, that it might even become boring at some point (personally the spectacle made up for the difficulty and i never got tired of it). One of the additions, literal disneyland rides, are so overpowered that i didn’t even use them to keep the game fun. They’re easily the worst addition to the combat.
The story is pretty fun. While the content of it don’t exactly matter until the endpoint, the journey throughout is pretty entertaining, thanks in no small part to sora, donald and goofy’s banter and writing. It’s the best writing these characters got and it makes their interactions so fun to watch…which might also explain why the dialogue for literally everyone else is pretty mediocre or bad. Outside of a few instances here and there, most of the characters don’t have much in terms of good dialogue, but they’re somewhat redeemed by their voice acting being mostly good and their roles in the story. Speaking of, the endpoint is where the engaging, compelling and emotional part of the story reside as the rest of it is either filler or setup for the next games. Overall, a fun story where the actual important parts happen in the end and 2/3 are filler.
Presentation is fantastic. If you thought 0.2 looked great, wait till you see how noticeable the improvements are in kh3. Textures, character models, animations, cutscenes are all fantastic and extremely gorgeous, to the point that it’s one of the best looking games this generation of consoles offers. Hell, there were many times during the game where i couldn’t figure out what cutscene was in-game and what was prerendered. It’s mindblowing we have come to this point.
The worlds are the best the series has seen. They are very big, but all that space is not wasted as it’s populated with actual people (a first for the series), that make the worlds feel more lively than ever before, chests, enemies, secrets and so much more for the player to find for themselves. It helps that the movement options given to the player make exploration extremely fun and not tiring in the slightest. Oh yea and the views are pretty to look at. The only worlds i didn’t like were Arendelle (because it felt extremely padded), 100 Acre Wood (it’s the smallest the series has seen and the minigames are the weakest as well) and San Fransokyo (too big and vertical for its own good).
The boss fights are also very good throughout. They may not be as challenging as previous titles, but they make up with how fun they are to fight. Highlight bosses are definitely the final bosses in the endpoint of the game.
Music is the usual…absolutely fantastic. While i prefer kh2’s music more, kh3 is easily top 3 in terms of music, bringing back old classics either remixed or untouched, as well as its own set of new compositions that sound great.
The side content is the most varied of the series. The gummi ship makes a return, this time fusing the exploration element of kh1’s gummi ship with kh2’s more fast paced arcadey encounters to create what is, in my opinion, the best version of the gummi ship in the series. Exploration rewards you with gummi parts, synthesis items and even hidden optional bosses (one of which is a tribute to an obscure square game). The actual fights are also extremely fun to tackle. Throughout the game, you can also find different little “game and watch” minigames as collectible, which also serve as a fun (and unironically addicting) little break from the main content of the game. Cooking is another spicy addition to the minigames pot (hehe), which can be summarized with three words: Warioware with Remy the Rat (ok that was five but whatever). Do i need to say more? These minigames also give you food that can buff stats, not only proving to be fun but also useful. Each world also has its own unique minigame like sliding, sailing on a ship (my personal favourite), VR obstacle course, literal dancing with townsfolks and all of them prove to be fun. My only complaint is that postgame is extremely weak, as only gauntlet portals unlock after beating the story, alongside one “superboss”, which prove to be short and easy to finish.
Overall, i found this game to be pretty great. The combat is really fun, story is entertaining to go through, game is gorgeous, worlds are fun to explore, bosses and music are great, and the side content and minigames are very fun as well. While the game is extremely easy, the disneyland rides are overpowered and terrible, throwing combat balance out the window, 3 worlds aren’t as good and the story is nothing until the end, don’t let these distract you from what is otherwise the most fun i had with 100% a kingdom hearts game since kh2….i would still take kh2 over this though.

Kingdom Hearts has a special place in my heart. I remember when the first game came out, and it was talked about by a lot of people on the school grounds. I was in junior high when it was released, but I didn't get it until it was a Greatest Hits release at $20. I found it hard at the time and never finished it. When the second game came out, I rented it from GameFly and actually cried at the ending. It was so memorable and engrossing for me as a teen.

Here we are, almost 15 years later, with the third installment in the mainline series. I was insanely excited and didn't follow any previews or reviews for the game leading up to actually getting around to buying this game. I played the first area of Hercules (again?) and got to Toy Box (Toy Story!) and lost interest. Yeah, the game hasn't really evolved all that much. My biggest problem with Kingdom Hearts III is the lack of imaginative level design and the use of mostly modern Pixar movies. The best part about a new Kingdom Hearts game is discovering what the next Disney movie will be that you get to explore. It's like a surprise each time, and I loved that with previous entries. This was the first time I was praying it wasn't another modern Pixar movie.

While Hercules was very cinematic, scripted, and looked great, it's an overused Disney movie in the series. Toy Story was exciting, especially when we were in Andy's room, but we wound up in a generic boring mall? It was such a boring level to get through, and I didn't feel anything like the movie. We then move on to Repunzel. Why? Another issue with this game is playing each movie scene by scene around the second act. We're stuck at a generic forest level here. After this, we get into Monsters Inc., which is actually pretty cool, but it's a generic monster factory. Then it's...FROZEN?! Why Frozen? We even get a literal, scene-by-scene, shot-by-shot rendition of the "Let It Go" song. If I wanted that, I would just watch the movie. A generic snow level awaits us here.

Then we go back to Pirates of the Caribbean, of all movies. I appreciate that the visuals are improved enough to give us realistic versions of this movie and not the cartoony one we got last time, but I didn't care as the original voice cast wasn't present again. And it's based off of the third film for some reason. I liked the fact that you get to sail an open ship and go find crabs to upgrade your ship, but I skipped all of this. The ship steers like a hot-wheeled car, and the generic seaside town and ship battles weren't very interesting. Then we finally arrive at Big Hero 6, which is also pretty cool, but it's a generic large map of San Francisco, and it is incredibly boring. That's it. No more worlds, and you are stuck in the last level for about 10 hours doing boss rushes like every other RPG has done, and this seriously needs to stop to just bloat game time.

Even if you like or dislike these Pixar movies, the fact is that the levels are incredibly boring, and each one plays out the same way. You get through several mini-bosses, fight waves of enemies, collect some stuff, and fight the movie's main antagonist. Every world is a generic feeling with no life from the movie injected into it. The reliance on playing through scenes of these movies isn't what I want in a Kingdom Hearts game. I want a unique experience at each level that makes me feel like I'm part of that world. Not just some character who crashed the movie in the middle of its runtime.

I can go on and on about how much I hated the uninspired level design and repetitive nature of each world, but then there's the Gummi Ships. I hated these in the first game, and I really don't like them here. I like that the Gummi Ship part is a large open map that you can explore freely between worlds, but there's nothing interesting here. You fly around collecting parts, Munni, and you can find shooter waves flying around that have levels and stars attached to them. Upgrading your ship but being able to buy parts to put together blueprints is a staple of the series, but I just don't find it interesting. A new alpha Gummi part can be attached now to help fight in battle. It's essentially a satellite ship flying around yours. There are speed tunnels all over the place, asteroids, and various obstacles, but I just wanted to get to the next world.

Finally, there's the combat itself. I never really cared for Kingdom Hearts' combat. It works, it's fine, and it can be fast-paced, but you fight the same Heartless over and over again, and the game is heavily reliant on keyblade transformations. Actual attacking and magic have taken a back seat. I rarely touched magic, and it felt useless. I was just attacking until I got my three pips and I could transform my keyblade into a more powerful weapon and execute its finishing move. This does the most damage and is a must for bosses, or you won't survive at all. The final act of the game pits you against around a dozen bosses, one after another, and it's a frustrating chore. You can still use Link commands, but they aren't that great this time around, and I felt like they hindered battle more than anything. The goal was to attack and get a few combos in, transform my keyblade, execute attractions that put you on famous Disney park rides that do damage, and just rinse and repeat. Items are useful for sure, and it's important to keep abilities tagged, as adding combos and modifiers to combat really gives you an edge. However, this all gets so repetitive, and you just stop caring before you get to the third world.

Then there's the story, which I haven't even touched on yet. It makes zero sense, even to people who have played the series up until now. My main interest was in the little stories inside each world. I never cared for the overarching Kingdom Hearts story. It's a bloated, overcomplicated mess involving Organization XIII, and Final Fantasy isn't even a part of this story anymore. Xehanort was the X-Blade. Aqua is trapped in a world, I think, where there are multiple versions of everyone. Yeah, I don't know. Go watch a comprehensive timeline explanation on YouTube instead. Sadly, each world is just a retelling of each movie, which I could just go watch if I wanted to. At least the visuals are really good, and everything is bright, colorful, and full of life.

The voice acting is also hit-and-miss, but mostly terrible. Haley Joel Osment as Sora again was a bad choice; he's just not a good voice actor. Outside of some of the mainline Disney characters, the voice acting is just wooden and awkward. Most Disney films don't retrain their original voice actors. Especially in Pirates of the Caribbean…again. What's worse is the writing. The script feels like it was written by a grammar school student. It's just the most basic lines, replies, and banter. It's just enough to get through each scene. There's a lot of nothing being said by most of these characters. Shouting each other's names a lot, and a lot of "You will never stop us!" or "I will defeat you!" over and over again. Yawn.

So, there's a lot I don't like here. The lack of older Disney movies, the complete absceneness of Final Fantasy stuff, and the fact that each movie is just a scene-by-scene replay of the original movie are boring. The levels feel generic, uninspired, and repetitive, and the combat, while flashy, uses an overreliance on keyblade transformations, attraction attacks, and links and magic. Enemies repeat far too often, and the final act is nothing but a frustrating slog of a boss rush. The story is insanely and wildly confusing and unnecessarily complicated, but at least the visuals are a nice treat. If you didn't like previous games in the series, this does nothing that will convince you to like it now.

Side note: I was incredibly disappointed by Utada Hikaru's song with Skrillex on this one. Both Simple and Clean and Passion/Sanctuary are classics and some of Utada's best work. This song was terrible and wasn't a good start to the game for me.

hercules has been my favourite movie of all times for as long as i can remember to a point that i dont know if theres been any contender whatsoever in the landscape of the films ive seen since my birth

theres other movies that i deem as favs see the way he looks the wolf of wall street blade runner american psycho shutter island nocturnal animals black swan basically every single disney + pixar movie ever and lots of other stuff i still go back to hercules every single month of my life and i cant really shake the feeling that its just a movie made entirely for me like disney producers really had a meeting and said we are gonna make a movie for user lvbldevil to watch any time he feels depressed or suicidal and they managed to make that real

maybe its because ive been watching it since i was a toddler or maybe its because i love the renaissance disney animation style or maybe even because i really resonate with the themes of the movie or the characters and storylines but to that i cant even tell you

but anyway what does this even have to do with KH3

ummmmmmh the very first world you explore in this game is olympus coliseum i mean not really coliseum anymore but yknow hercules was explored to the fucking limits its probably the level that stayed as a staple for most of the games in the series so i wasnt expecting to be that blown away this time around and still guys this entire world was an incredible experience

as the opening world it has the tutorials and incipit and all and im so fucking glad this was the one because its an incredible sight that i thought about even at the ending of the game like i was in the final world and i kept thinking damn but did they eat with hercules this time like exactly 25 hours later i was just in deep awe at this one idk

in the first game i was a bit let down by the fact that my fav disney movie was confined to only a coliseum then they expanded it during kingdom hearts II and i already couldnt believe it how good it was but now they blew it out of the water and gave me not only the complete full uncut kingdom hearts disney world experience but this is an unbelievable way to experience yet again one of the movies that accompanied my entire existence

hercules and megara and all the other characters are as lovable as i remember thebes and olympus and the lands of greece are absolutely stunning to traverse and fight in and explore its idk i was almost brought to tears at how beautiful it was it just kept pulling at my heartstrings it was wow

umh anyway i think im done with that and probably it got too sentimental for my own good

NOW KINGDOM HEARTS III AMIRITE ? possibly one of the games that i wanted to play the most since its release and i couldnt first because of my potato pc and also because i needed to marathon the whole fucking series which i finally did

now what do i talk about first umh …….. umh idk this game is huge like really huge i have no idea what to say to be honest i mean its probably gonna be kind of all mild heavy spoiler territory from now on so you should have played it before reading this possibly

so the story picks up from the end of dream drop distance clearly you should play 0.2 first too and follows a powerless sora that has to retrieve his power of waking to continue his journey and finally help aqua and the others out of their decades of grief

they begin to explore every single world and now im gonna do an excursus for the disney worlds in this one im sorry im long winded

DISNEY WORLD EXCURSUS

hercules kh3 is and will be my favourite world in any kingdom hearts ever but we already talked about that plentiful and all

i hate toy story i mean actually i dont hate HATE it but its not like i have any positive feelings for it that being said this world was a fucking slog and its maybe also because the story was oh no we lost some toys boo hoo . fuck you boring ass characters

monstropolis was fun and i liked the fact that they rearranged the story a bit and didnt completely put the same entire plot of the movies in it (im watching at you frozen and tangled) but its fine and sora monster shouldnt be this cute

frozen and tangled are basically the disney movies with sora and the others in the background while the plot unfolds but make up for that with beautiful beautiful worlds and landscapes its just breathtaking

pirates of caribbean is a fucking blast with the plot and ship fighting and all and also the places you visit are jaw dropping very very cool

100 acre wood is the same since kh1 just with a coat of unreal engine on top

san fransokyo is also great but i wanted the city to be more mmmm eccentric like in a stray (2022) japanese inspired kind of environments but its fine its a metropolis and it sells that idea + the bridge fight is super cool

traverse town is also the same but with some different stuff and also i will not forgive the developers to make the station tower inaccessible thats robbing me of a very emotional place mind you

keyblade graveyard is also augmented in UE and the labyrinth is kind of a really cool addition

and in the end theres scala ad caelum a MASSIVE location that i completely adored its just wow i was speechless seeing it in union x isnt the same as seeing it here its amazing

END OF EXCURSUS

so what happens is while going through this worlds encounters late members of the organization (marluxia larxene luxord i love you guys youre literally my family alright) that now are out and about because of vessels they are using in the present from the past or whatever have no idea what this plot point is about but its great i love it and basically what xehanort is trying to do is put his heart into every single organization member and make them battle with the guardians of light to unlock the chiblade yet again wow

in the meantime for this final battle to happen sora manages to save aqua from the darkness (1 cry) then with her help they also get ventus out of his slumber (2 cries) so they can finally take on the xehanort affair together

so with 7 umh 7 ? i dont remember 7 i think warriors of light wait lemme count aqua ventus sora mickey axel/lea (my boyfriend) kairi and riku ok thats seven lets go + goofy and donald they go to the graveyard to be completely SLAIN by terranort and i was honestly dumbfounded at that moment i thought some of my choices resulted in a bad ending or something honestly and then one of my fav worlds out there

the final world in which sora recomposes himself with the help of chirithy (the little animal from union x) and travels back through time to that moment when terra in his army suit gets his body back so thats 8 now

what happens now is you gotta fight with every single organization member kh2 style and i will say that it was pretty sad for some of them to be defeated in such a manner definitely because the organization has some of my fav characters from the entirety of kingdom hearts so thats something

and now for the most fucking heart breaking moment of this game

one for one you have to side with 2 or 3 characters against some of their enemies or anyway people that have some relation to them

clearly when you get to kairi and axel you know whats gonna happen is you battle against saix/isa axels childhood friend and an unknown nobody (guess who will it be omg i have no idea) and when xemnas almost strikes axel they protect him and its revealed that theyre in fact xion and after soras plea and this helps to release roxas heart into a new vessel (people died ok and im people) so you fight alongside roxas and xion WITH AN ARRANGEMENT OF ROXAS AND XION THEME I HAD GOOSEBUMPS DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS IT WAS SOMETHING ELSE OK its just ughhhhhhh i hold these characters too dear to my heart

they defeat saix some more heartfelt exchanges between axel and isa and he vanishes

silence and the first thing that breaks this silence is xions cries in the middle of nowhere with her theme in the background and when i tell you that in this instant i could not take it any longer and completely broke down in a crying fit i swear to fucking god this was too much for my pure heart its just idk these what 20 seconds ANNIHILATED ME i cannot make this shit up for me this is the highest point in all of kingdom hearts 3 and i dont care what anyone says i love my babies a not so normal amount

so anyway after the best scene in all kingdom hearts you decimate the organization members and youre back against xehanort he fucking breaks kairi apart and this opens the way for the chiblade to be reformed and at that point kingdom hearts is summoned you get to battle against him in scala ad caelum the world where keyblade masters once resided and its an incredible battle i do still prefer the final battle against xemnas in kh2 but this is just a great great great clash

you beat xehanort and eraqus makes him stop with the power of love like theres a lot of flashbacks to young xehanort and eraqus playing chess together and they also vanish together now tell me with a straight face they dont love each other

now the finale . everyone is back together they all smile and be happy and live their best life but sora is gonna go after kairi and look for her again

i have no idea what happens to sora and its probably something that will haunt me forever since in the final scene its hinted that hes with kairi but he vanishes shortly after (i also cried like a bitch here) so boys and girls i have no answers for you at the moment

and dont ask me why hes in shibuya

all in all i loved this story even tho its king of lets all love each other and a tad weaker in comparison to kingdom hearts 2 but its fine ok i love you anyway kingdom hearts 3

the story still managed to make me so damn emotional in the end and i was so glad to see every single character in this series like what kingdom hearts is great at its just sheer nostalgia i always feel like crying its incredible

in the end they finally get to give a body to naminé i swear i had another crying fit i shoulve counted how many crying fits i had in this and honestly maybe i dont even want to know but yea THATS MY SWEET BABY

also the secret ending with the back cover/union x characters kind of is a big reveal but its up to you to know what the fuck that means im not those guys who make theories on theories i just like to be braindead and experience stuff as it is presented to me amen

NOW

lets wrap this up quick

graphics are a sight to behold honestly disney worlds are characterised to heaven and back and the characters all look gorgeous its just stunning stunning stunning

outstanding step up from the graphics from 0.2 i didnt think they could do better than that but they really smashed their big unreal engine dick in my face this time around

magics look incredible animations are super fluid and everyone is hot

the gameplay is kind of standard ish kingdom hearts at this point but they added some new keypoints

explorations now has a greater focus also thanks to little collectibles side quests like emblems to photographs that look like king mickeys ears and some moogle requests to take pictures of places around the different worlds that are a cute additions to the playthrough

you can cook you can do some simulated fights you can synthesize stuff you can do go around with the gummi ship in the entire cosmos which is cool to do like explore the open world ish gummi segments and fight some stuff or collect some new loot

now the battle system oooooooh boy theres basically everything . the skeleton is kingdom hearts 2 battle system but they added some new commands that pop up after you manage to hit enemies are certain number of times and this can be mega spells or a special ability with a party member or a special keyblade transformation

yeah i said transformation and thats because EVERY SINGLE KEYBLADE GOT UP TO 2 EVOLUTIONS naaaaaaaaaaah and they all have v different play styles its so fun i assure you i never used all the keyblades in other games but this time i was just using all of them to see the evolved forms and its UGHHHHHHH i love it im so fucking down for evolutions in every game format whatsoever

i love this battle system i love it so much i would play this game to death

theres also umh attractions which are something that exists in this game . i dont particularly hate them or love them but i kind of ended up skipping them because theyre not that fun to use compared to the other stuff in here but theyre interesting additions that make this game even more frantic than it already is

also the other usual stuff is here count down MP magic AP abilities and also flowmotion is back which is great i loved it in DDD and seeing it back here

basically in this game theres everything that they ever put in the kingdom hearts series apart from command deck i miss you command decks oh and also the re:com card system but that one should burn in hell

you fight against everything and everyone unversed heartless and nobodies (which look great in this one obviously)

umh anyway

ost is great and its basically a best of kingdom hearts series sometimes rearranged for that sweet sweet modern approach or maybe

theres a lot of stuff from union x rearranged a lot of kingdom hearts II 358/2 days and birth by sleep here its just FEELS MAN i cant put all of them here because i should just hyperlink the entire ost at this point and also because i need to relisten to it when im calm and i wont cry at every single note in these pieces of music

and anyway vector to the heavens is fucking great LIKE you put roxas theme and xions theme in the same track in a battle arrangement and pretend like im not gonna scream with all my lungs to the heavens because this is just incredible my body reached nirvana my soul expired

theres new arrangements for the 13th struggle for luxord and larxene theres l’impeto oscuro for xehanort l’eminenza dell’oscuro for ansem and l’oscurità dell’ignoto for xemnas (flexing the fact that im the only one here whos gonna pronounce these names correctly because im italian suck my dick) theres even the 13th dilemma for both xigbar and saix and forza finale its just UGHHHHH + all the new disney worlds tracks this is an incredible score its just out of this world entirely

and the new stuff is great like wave of darkness the final battle ? fucking unbelieavable

and in particular in the graveyard when theres themes respectively for every single pair of characters AND THAT ONE really hit me right in the feels its great

honorary mention to chikai instrumental version opening that plays out in the title screen when you boot up the game thats great and gave me fucking goosebumps yknow idk i just feel like crying again here

all in all theres a lot of stuff i want to say about this game but my uni studies are calling me and i dont even get payed for this stuff maybe when i open a youtube channel but i guess this is all

i dont have the words to say how much i love this game it may be flawed and its story may be a bit incoherent and fan servicey and all but i just cant help but be completely bewitched by this one

its not as monumental as kingdom hearts II and its not a timeless classic as kingdom hearts I or even my fav narrative work in the entire series (thats 358/2 clearly) but this is a game that i wont get off of my mind for some time for sure and the amount of tears this made me shed is enough for me to remember it as dearly as possible

if you think this is utter trash i understand but im not you im not one of the longtime fans i played this series for the first time in 1 month and its spectacular you can just not emulate the nostalgia that this series gives you in any way shape or form and thats probably why i came back to finally finish this marathon once and for all and it was a damn fucking ride

maybe i am a kingdom hearts fag now maybe thats what ive become ? well whatever im cringe but im free and AXEL PLEASE AXEL COME HOME AXEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL
will be tuning in for kingdom hearts 4 surely so until then i will just remember this game as a dearly beloved experience DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE DID YOU SEEEEEE

ok enough

i love kingdom hearts there i said it im sorry people ok im really done now

have a nice day and i cant wait to cry again as soon as i see videos on quotes like "You never stopped lighting my way back." or "Sora, you don't believe that...I know you don't." OR MOST HEARTBREAKING OF ALL "It's alright...Xion."
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭



lets roll the playthough comments for those who have nothing to do but read these reviews i make for me myself and i:

clearly the opening is fap material as always

characters in this new graphic style look kinda weird but I love it

riku is possibly the most final fantasy character in this game I think

I like the more open world ish gummi segments but maybe I preferred kh2 levels more but maybe that's just me

AXEL IS SO HOT IN HD GRAPHICS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD AXEL IM FREE ON SATURDAY IF YOU WANNA WATCH A MOVIE OR KISS OR CUDDLE ON SATURDAY THE DAY WHEN IM FREE

the different keyblade transformations are making me lose my mind why is this game so fun what the fuck

LETS GOOOOO THERES MARLUXIA BEST BOY GO GET THAT ASS

I will literally fight anyone who thinks goofy is useless I swear hes so cool I love him

toy story unh i dont like toy story and im not enjoying the trajectory of this plot it's just yknow maybe I hate toy story is that what this game made me realise

i cant believe the rapunzel plotline is the same just with sora and Co in the background is so funny what the hell

the fucking let it go is killing me I can't escape frozen anywhere its gonna haunt me till I die (I like frozen)

larxene can you like idk peg me or something can i say that on this site

THE FUCKING FROZEN WORLD FINAL BOSS FIGHT IS OUTSTANDING OH MY GOD I love that ice dragon hes so cool what the fuck

what even is the power of waking im gonna go crazy can someone explain it to me CAN YOU GUYS JUST GET AQUA OUT OF THERE IM GONNA GO WILD

oh no there's luxord oh no he's hot this game is becoming too dangerous for me

just realised I got the same number of earrings of luxord dammmmn is that a sign from god that we should fuck oh no I meant umh cut the cameras deadass

NOT PIRATES OF CARIBBEAN AGAIN STOP ITS GONNA BE UNCANNY VALLEY AGAIN NOOOOO

SORA LOOKS SO CUTE WITH PIRATE CLOTHES NOOOO OH MY GOD MY BABY I BIRTHED HIM

ok actually they look less uncanny than I thought because graphics got better + Johnny depp is look really snack here

i love assassins creed 4 black flag

no I really can't go on like this any time an organization member shows up i get h0rnee no please this is unfair like you expect to put larxene luxord and friends in front of my face and expect for me to be completely unfazed ? sorry that's not who I am

luxord: "put a leash on…" me me . me put in on me me me me @me me #me "me" (me) [me] me+me=me me x me

not me having a complete crying fit when they saved aqua this is actually like top 10 crying fits I had in a game no that's not true actually I cried for a lot of games

ok well it was fun playing as aqua for 3 minutes

aqua hugging ven was kinda umh … I'm gonna cry again

oh my god ven thanking sora for keeping him sage also gonna make me cry this game I swear

axel alone on the watchtower with 3 ice creams made me cry some more ok

ok sora and kairi exchanging the star fruits making me cry some more whats the count 5 damns

who the fuck is xemnas voice actor i want him to speak dirty to me in my ears

damn donald kinda bomber with zettaflare alright

sora screaming kinda my guiding spirit

did I just get a bad ending what ?

A CHIRITHY ? WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUCK IM SO CONFUSEDBWHATS HAPPENING

EPHEMER ?????? I DONT UNDERSTAND HELLOOOOO

are these the player names of union x what is honestly happening in this god forsaken video game I have no idea i swear

this is so stupid oh my god completely took me out of the experience for a sec

yen sid going full moses

I love marluxia hes so cool

the labyrinth is so good what the hell every single location in this game has the polygons out of the solar system but also I havent played that many current gen games as of yet so that could also be the reason why

ansem and xemnas I wanted to let you know that I got 2 holes

CLONE RIKU SAVING A VESSEL FOR NAMINE IS MAKING ME TEAR MY HAIR OFF I SWEAR

can somebody give axel new clothes that coat must stink give it to me

NOT XION PLEASE DONT MAKE ME CRY AGAIN

ROXAS OH MY GOSBOCKSODKLSKCPWKOFKSKSJ MY SWEET LITTLE ANGEL

I literally got chills the arrangement of roxas theme I sweat to fucking god AND THERES ALSO XIONS THEME IN THERE IM GONNA GO CRAZYYYYYYY FUUUUUUCK THIS GAME

no here it is I couldnt bear xion and the others crying so now I just paused the game to have a crying fit wouldnt you know wow

terra is so hot and FOR WHAT

another crying fit lets goooooo

still dont know what kingdom hearts is

wow just noticed that ven and roxas side to side look identical

XION I LOVE YOUUUU OH MY GOD ROXAS-AXEL-XION SUPREMATIST HERE

how did he even pronounce scala ad caelum

LETS GO FINAL BATTLE AGAINST EVIL BALD GUY

OMG THE FAKE GAME OVER SCREEN FUUUUUUUCK

THE KEYHOLE ANIMATION OF KH2 IM GOING WILD

daddy eraqus hello there

xehanort and eraqus had steamy hot sex btw i dont make the rules theyre literally the achilles and patroclus of KH lore

this is just one cry after the other right

why do they look better in ingame models than CGI models im so confused

NO THE FINALE IS KILLING ME OH MY GODBCOSNSKSB FUUUUUUUUCK 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

THERES KAIRI NOW IN THE TITLE SCREEN OMGGGGG THEYRE SO CUTE WHAAAA

PS
wrote this with chikai orchestral version in the background and ended up crying again

crying counter: 99+ too emotional for this shit

would suck axel dry/10

How is this SO BORING???

The gameplay is like a cheap buffet. There's lots of variety here, and none of it is particularly appealing.

I'm most shocked at how stilted the dialogue is. There's an awkward pause between nearly every line, causing each cutscene to kill any momentum the game's story may have had. The pacing with which the lines were inserted feels like Middle School Theatre class.

so this was my first post-patch critical run on the main story and I'd say it has solidified its status as my favourite in the series, but it's just too long for me to play it as frequently as i do runs of kh2.

it's coming up three years since this game launched so i approached this run with a somewhat fresh perspective on all fronts. and so ill talk a little bit about the story. I've docked half a star for basically the shonen manga misogyny writing wrt kairi. with all that this game shoulders, i think it does the best with the hand it was dealt, of course the dealer and the player both here are the same nomura tetsuya. this is my favourite video game series so my thoughts are kind of all over the place whenever i talk about it but I appreciate this game a lot. how it lets it's characters cry, even a traditionally masculine to the point of actual stupidity character like terra. it's pure catharsis. of course final fantasy is not unfamiliar with pure displays of emotion. but even in the wider jrpg sphere it's not the most common even as they spell out what every character is feeling at every second. and in the now western aaa dominated video game industry it's as rare as it can get. so on that level, just allowing these characters to cry and hug each other is appreciated. i wanted to write more about the jrpg and it's relationship with the hollywood melodrama here but i think ill save it for when i next play a mainline final fantasy

Me playing through Kingdom Hearts 3: "It's like one of my Japanese animes!"

Kingdom Hearts 3 was such a horrible game, and I haven't been so pissed over something in a while. To describe the game, it's another version of Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni Sotsu. With the entire anime being 90% of a recap and 10% continuing the story, KH3 is 90% of filler and 10% of continuing the series storyline. And the story is done in a sloppy execution.

While the gameplay is fun and some islands are enjoyable, that alone doesn't save this pile of crap game. (As someone who hates Frozen and had to play through the ENTIRE ISLAND WHICH IS THE WHOLE MOVIE, I died inside)

Kingdom Hearts is such a mess that I don't even think the writers know what they're even doing. While the premise is simplistic, the writers horribly handle the premise in the sloppiest way possible. The series is straightforward but it always needs to be overexplained 24/7 to get its point across. But even so... it remains to be confusing. Even if you think about it, it's just messy. the series as a whole is confusing due to the number of unnecessary characters and how convoluted it is. III attempts to connect all of the games but fails because it has Islands that barely have significance to the story and crams the important moments near the end of the game.

Since the game is over, you can head to the next ga- OH WAIT! You have to pay $30 for the DLC which is a continuation of the game! And it's 3 hours long which is very generous of Square Enix. 3 hours of content? Seriously, man? It makes sense why KH3 is always $10 on sale most of the time because it's not even the full game!

Not sure if it's just me, but Kingdom Hearts tries a bit hard to be "edgy". The antagonist of the series, Organization XIII, is basically an emo group who are obsessed with "Darkness". Hell, even when you beat one of the members in a boss fight, their final words are literally "Darkness". Like bro, you sound like you listen to Metal music 24/7 and call yourself emo. Want to feel emo? Go to Tumblr lol

I'm totally forgetting to mention how Kingdom Hearts (it's an actual thing in the game) is basically the Antichrist of the series. Very Von Trier of Square Enix.

Playing through the series was a fucking nightmare since I bought it for a great deal, which was probably the worst mistake in my years of gaming. While there are some good games (only looking at 2), the rest is just BAD. The series as a whole gets very inconsistent as you progress as if the series doesn't know how to end.

KH3 is basically an advertisement for Disneyland that gets very boring as the game progresses since it never leads anywhere.

Imagine if Half-Life 3 was announced and released, but it's not as great as you thought while playing it. That's how I mostly felt playing through KH3.

Beating this game in retrospect is fun because a lot of the release hype has completely left me, so I personally ended up having a blast.
There are, of course, some hiccups. Arendelle is a SLOG of a world to explore, and the game throws a lot of new combat stuff at you AS SOON as you begin the game, but it's fine.
Pixar being added into the movie mix, alongside a lot of fun character interactions that help delve into a new interesting story arc is the best part about this game, and I'd be lying if I didn't say that the ending for the basegame absolutely threw me off-guard when it hit hard!
I love this game a lot. I'd dare call it my favourite KH game so far, but that might be recency bias kicking in. They're all good games! :)