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.

After getting my Switch on launch along with Breath of the Wild, I was excited to see what games the console would have in the future. I bought Master Blaster Zero and eventually The Binding of Isaac for the third time, but a month and a half later Mario Kart 8 Deluxe came out. Now look, this may be a rerelease and all but it was for a portable console. Mario Kart 8 was great but I could only play it at home and with a game like Mario Kart, its more fun to play it on the go with friends. When this came out, I was nearing the end of my Junior year in High School. Let me tell you, me and my friends played this all the time during the span of the rest of my high school experience. We played it in lunch, we played it in study hall, we even played it in class whether it was sneaking it or just when we had free time. This was THE Switch game to play when it came to my friend group alongside Jackbox Party Pack 3. It's just a ton of fun and while I said it was a rerelease, it's not just a lazy port. They not only included the DLC tracks, but they also added some new characters and revamped the battle mode.

I said the character selection was a bit lacking in the original game but the ones they added here are all good. Bowser Jr, King Boo and Dry Bones are all good additions that were in past games. The completely brand-new addition tho is Inkling Girl/Boy. Now, I was a huge Splatoon 1 fan before this so I was hyped when they were added. I mained them a lot when I first played and honestly, they're a perfect crossover addition just cuz Splatoon was originally supposed to be a Mario game which I found funny. This isn't even getting into the characters they added from the booster course pass. Most of those are also great, tho I haven't used them myself since I don't own the booster courses. If you do though, easily the best roster in the series.

The other thing they fixed of course is the battle mode. Easily the worst part of the original game and the worst battle mode I've played, it's really good here. Not as good as Mario Kart DS since there's still no option to have it be elimination rules, however you're not forced into teams like Wii and there's a whopping 5 modes this time around. Balloon battle and coin runners are classics of course. Shine thief makes a return and it's also pretty fun here. Bob-omb blast apparently originated from Double Dash and that's also fun tho definitely the most chaotic of the bunch. The brand new mode this time around is renegade roundup and its basically cops and robbers. Pretty fun mode as well but the real reason these are all actually fun is they gave us battle courses again THANK GOD. The old courses are great and some of the new courses are awesome too like Urchin Underpass. Love to see a little Splatoon representation since it didn't get a race track.

So there you go, the character selection was expanded and while not my favorite battle mode, the battle mode was made actually fun again. The only other thing they added, and they added it 5 years after deluxe came out, are the booster courses. Now I don't own them but my good friend Quent has the expansion pass so along with him and my friend wheatie, we played a bunch of online races for this review and I was able to play pretty much all the courses I wanted to. I didn't play them all but I can see the course quality varies greatly. You have some really half assed tracks and then you have really great ones like Yoshi's Island or SNES Bowser's Castle. A lot of the returning ones are Wii courses which is a plus too. Obviously most of these are just straight up ported from Tour and the visuals on a lot of them are pretty unacceptable compared to the base game but, if you don't care about then then the value of 48 tracks for $25 is great. That's basically 50 cents a track plus the added characters. Not only that but they added the ability to choose custom items, plus a music player in the main menu.

With the slightly better character roster and the MUCH better battle mode, I can say this is definitely THE definite Mario Kart. Though I may end up liking Wii a tad bit more now due to it's wacky physics. Either way, definitely a must have as a Switch owner and as a Mario Kart fan.

Well, that's the end of the Mario Kart marathon everyone unless I end up actually playing Tour lol. Been playing Persona 3 FES this whole time alongside these games and I'm in December now so I think I'm nearing the end of it, stay tuned for that review!