Ok wow, I didn’t expect to warm up to Forces nearly as much as I did on this replay. I’ve had the idea of giving Forces another honest shot for quite a while. This is both because some discussion of the game I’ve seen on twitter made me start to see the game from a perspective that I previously hadn’t really considered before, and the fact that it no longer has the awkward stigma of being the “big new Sonic title” now that Frontiers is on the horizon. I had a pretty deep hatred for this game because of how it represented the current state of the franchise, where the series had a pretty grim future if this is the best that they could do with the IP. However, the time where it was the current state of the franchise appears to be well behind us. Having that grandiose viewpoint of Forces was a bit silly in retrospect, and I feel like thanks to it not having to be in the spotlight as the most recent big flagship title, it’s much easier to look at the game on its own terms. But beyond that, I mentioned a perspective that I hadn’t considered with the game before, and I’m honestly a bit embarrassed how I didn’t think of it; speedrunning.

With this playthrough I decided to take the route of attempting to speedrun the game’s levels, learn them inside and out and master them as I would any other Sonic game that I’m fond of. Taking this approach was incredibly rewarding in the case of modern Sonic and the avatar, and it helped me appreciate what makes Forces unique to the other boost games. Biggest thing that stood out to me was the way Sonic’s boost functions. It’s a far cry from any of the previous boosts mechanically with how it can influence aerial movement, whether it’s timing it just right with a jump or using the new aerial boost to fly through the sky. The latter is definitely my favorite inclusion to Sonic’s kit, it opens up options for shortcuts quite considerably, allowing for some insanely cool skips throughout levels. I wouldn’t mind seeing this form of the boost more often in games moving forward. Speedrunning levels in this game in general gives a much heavier emphasis on sequence breaking than I’ve experienced in other entries. More often than not, if there’s a scripted cinematic element to a stage, live an automated rail loop, there’s a way you can skip past it. Noticed this especially with my attempts on Metropolitan Highway, my favorite stage in the game. There’s a good amount of automated parts like the rail spirals at the beginning that you can go right past with skillful maneuvering. It’s kind of ironic how the biggest problem I had with the game mechanically was its heavy automation, while what made me love the game so much more on this playthrough was being able to blow right past it. I don’t prefer this approach to the level design of Unleashed or especially Generations, definitely not, but it was really enjoyable. This also applies to a smaller extent to the Avatar stages, with how Wispons can change the way you approach level design and your loadouts. This also made me appreciate how the Wisps are much more seamlessly integrated into gameplay than their previous appearances. Though it is slightly dampened by the Drill Wispon just being the best one for tearing through levels, but even then there’s some fun to be had by ripping stages to shreds with a Giga Drill Break ripped right out from Gurren Lagann.

The biggest problem that Forces has as a game is that it does not make for a good casual playthrough. If you’re just planning on going through the whole story and nothing more, then I can’t say that Forces will be worth your time in that regard. However, if you are willing to approach it with the philosophy I have with most Sonic games, that repeated attempts at mastery and getting faster can transform the experience of them like no other, then you might be in for a surprisingly fun experience.

Tldr: It's a perfectly fine game that's really fun to sink your teeth into, but came out at a time when it really wasn't what the series needed

Side Note: Classic Sonic is still garbage, has no place in this game and I better not see him in 3D ever again.

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.