Kingdom Hearts 3: A Rushed Disappointment

            Everyone these days has an opinion on KH3, so I figure, why not revive this old, withered blog and just throw mine out there?  I finished KH3 yesterday and despite having not played the other games in at least a good 7 years, I remember them very fondly. Vexen was my favorite organization member in terms of design, voice, and weapon(C’mon, a shield as a weapon? Awesome, plus it’s cool as heck.) It sold me on the idea that a Final Fantasy and Disney crossover would work. It’s how I met my current girlfriend. I have a lot of heartfelt memories for the KH series. That said, Kingdom Hearts 3 is a failure.  Long story short, as a game, divorced of story, it’s pretty good and very fun. As a game with story, it is a convoluted, poorly paced mess. As a KH game, Kingdom Hearts 3 is woefully inept. As the finale to the Xehanort, seeker of darkness saga…it’s just an embarrassment.

I’ll go into gameplay and graphics first, then we get into spoilers.

Gameplay

From a gameplay standpoint, KH3 is at its strongest, with some very cool additions. Flowmotion can be hard to understand, as the tutorial doesn’t really go into it, but once you hit your groove, running up walls, rail sliding, and air dashing is pretty cool. The ability of every keyblade to weapon change ala Bloodborne is pretty spiffing awesome and each has a different moveset to accommodate to different players, be they physical, balanced, or magical. Your partners are smarter. The team choreographed attacks are fun and flashy. The…Disney theme park rides are out of nowhere and make the game stupidly easy, however.

The combat in Kingdom Hearts 3 is mostly good, but feels a bit stiff at times, like when you get combo locked, it is easy to just be air juggled and killed in the final stretch. It feels just a smidge like you have less control than in KH 2 or Birth by sleep, which is a disappointment.

There’s a lot to say about the gameplay outside of battles, but not much of it is good. There are minigames in this setup, but they feel…oddly soulless compared to previous KH games. Some are a blast, like dancing in Corona or the cooking, which can be charming. However, most of them feel like, why did you bother? Couldn’t this time have been spent improving what we already have? The game and watch extra games, Classic kingdom SHOULD have been a one off joke, rather than over a dozen extra games that few people will ever play and even fewer will actually enjoy. The scavenger hunt for crabs in Pirates of the Carribean is tedious and though ship combat is pretty fun, it loses its luster fast. The scavenger hunts for pictures with your phone to make new synthesis items is a cool idea, but synthesis is way more boring and I barely used it. And hunting lucky emblems gets tedious fast unless you just do it as you go. There isn’t much to like outside of combat. Exploring some of the beautiful worlds is fun, more on that with graphics, but it’s…ultimately pointless. Oh, and don’t forget Gummi ships. God, I know you tried. They’re back, and they’re a giant waste of time.

KH3 has barely any secrets or extra content. Only about a dozen battle arenas AFTER you beat the final boss with ONE secret boss. No, it’s not Sephiroth. A stark contrast to the 5 super hard secret bosses of KH 1. There isn’t even an arena here to grind or win cool prizes from.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically, the game has an uncanny valley feeling to it. The unreal engine…works pretty good for the pixar worlds and the overall KH-centric worlds, but anything meant to be 2-d, like Hercules and Olympus are…a bit weird. You get used to it though, and it’s got a ton of detail. The pixar worlds are pretty lush and even Pirates of the Caribbean looks decent. Some worlds, however, are noticeably duller and emptier than others, like Arendelle being a boring frozen trek up a mountain. That doesn’t detract from the visual splendor of battle, though. The keyblades, are another matter. Almost all of them are garishly ugly, which is a shame, considering how interesting the alternate modes are. You don’t even get a cool Keyblade for the final stretch, like Oblivion or Oathkeeper.

Sound wise, the music is excellent and most the soundtrack and sound effects hit a sweet spot that KH has always occupied for feeling good while playing. The voice acting…is often hit or miss, as Haley Joel…kinda outgrew Sora in the 13 years since KH 2. It feels weird, like he’s stuck in that high pitched puberty phase. And other line reads are very wonky, such as with the new Mickey actor or some of the characters later.

The Missing

This leads into why I called this a rushed game. This has some spoilers, so if you’re iffy about anything, turn back here.

There is a ton of stuff here that hints at a bigger game, what KH3 was supposed to be. Maybe it will be remade in one of the dozen or so re-releases we can expect before the next big thing, but…plot points are introduced and dropped as setup and bait for sequels. Potential chances to revisit the Disney worlds are also wasted here. Most critically, are the wasted opportunities. Castle Oblivion, World of Departure, and Radiant Garden, as well as Dark World, are ALL shown in the game in CUTSCENES. You cannot visit them. These were some of the most beautifully rendered and amazing worlds in past KH games, with Dark World being an opportunity to see what was beyond the door of light. None of the are utilized, but the assets are all there…it feels like they were GOING to be utilized, but time, money, or interference kicked them to the curb. And we get only one reference to our past Final Fantasy friends. The rest of the game ignores them completely. This is shameful. Kingdom Hearts was sold as a crossover of the epic stories and melodrama of Final Fantasy with the light hearted whimsy of Disney. And to remove one half of the equation? It wastes characters we’ve come to know throughout the other games. If we HAD been allowed a tournament mode, to visit Radiant Garden, or hell, a new FF world, we could have seen them all again. Even Twilight town, which you do get to visit, is HUGELY downsized, basically made into one town square, and a forest path(Also missing all its FF characters who were regular residents there). No mansion to explore, no train station, hell, the iconic clock tower of the town cannot even be approached in this game. Let’s not even get started on Yen Sid’s tower, which we visit like half a dozen times, but can never explore. Winnie the Pooh gets three short minigames, all the same kind of game, then his world is over. What. A. Load. Also, finish Olympus. Go on, I’ll wait. See that black box Pete digs up? Looks spooky, don’t it? Like maybe we come back for a second act surprise in Olympus to deal with it? Nope! Gets totally ignored. This game feels rushed and empty compared to previous entries. You don’t need a huge Final Fantasy cast to make it good, Birth By Sleep got away with a single Final Fantasy cameo and it was fine, but you rushed this game out the door and it shows. You had 13 years and it still felt rushed.

Plot and Writing

And now, we get to major spoilers. Turn back now, lest you have the whole plot revealed to you. I do want to say, the opening movie and the framing device of Eraqus and Xehanort playing a chess game is kinda cool. It would be even cooler if it had more parallels to the game at large, but…it all comes back in the end, to some rather unsatisfying results.

Okay, first, the Disney worlds come in two flavors. Retellings of old stories, and fun new side adventures. Big Hero 6, Monster’s Inc. and Toy Story are excellent self contained adventures, because they do something new or different with the material. Tangled, Frozen, and Pirates are boring, lifeless wastes of time, because they rehash and rush you through the movie stories where you do almost nothing and are just there because you have to be. The writing is almost always a bit wonky, though. Buzz Lightyear feels overly paranoid, and the re-hash worlds are really lifeless with scripts lifted straight from the movies, but I do like the Monsters Inc. world and The team dynamic of Big Hero 6 in San Fransokyo was a lot of fun.

Pacing-wise, the story is atrocious. You have a plot dump of cut-scenes after every two or so worlds, but it never feels organic or natural. It feels like a bad fanfic writer was hired to do the plotting and character writing throughout, with the world running on, BECAUSE I SAY SO, OKAY? There is no real pacing until the ending. Up until that point, you just go from world to world, dealing with their barebones story and lackluster bad guy cameo, then you get all the spoilers and plot details at the very end, with no build up, emotional pay off, or really, any characters beyond Sora. There are people there, but they may as well be card board cut outs.

The story also feels highly contradictory when it comes to gameplay vs cutscenes. The Organization routinely throws Sora and co. around in cut scenes, but get wasted in the actual gameplay. This feels very much like it runs on BECAUSE. The player feels divorced from the story as a whole. The big bad, Xehanort, in our final confrontation, has the strongest Keyblade, can control time, space, and even reality to a degree in our final battle…and yet, we trash him. How does that work?! Larxene tosses me down a mountain, twice, but she’s the first to go out when I face her in the final battles. We get the villains withering on about how evil and powerful they are and all these minor plot points that NEVER pay off. Pete and Maleficent are USELESS in this game and do little more than cameo.

Now, let’s get to the heart of the issues here. We do not get a chance for other characters to breathe. We see them in cutscene after cutscene after cutscene, but it’s like watching a bad movie to another game, we don’t get a good feel for them. We are told they’re strong or important, but that buildup is universally betrayed by the end of the game. There are a few moments, a few brief bright moments where characters can be themselves…and this is what gave me the most joy in the game. Vanitas being scared by Sully and tossed into three doors and a wood chipper? Hilarious. Demyx being strong armed into helping out the good guys after a shouting match with Vexen? Wonderful. Saix and Axel sharing ice cream on the Twilight Town Clock tower before the climactic battle? Where. Was. More. Of. This? We get the game withering on about the importance of the 7 guardians of light and 13 darknesses, but…save for these brief moments, we get no feel for who anyone is, beyond Sora. And we might know who Riku or Kairi are historically, but they feel flat, empty, and pointless in this story. Characters are plot devices here rather than living breathing entities. Even Sora falls prey to this. This is a kid, who’s saved the entirety of creation two times over. But he sees a giant heartless tornado, (Bear in mind that at this point, he’s trashed four titans in Olympus, WITHOUT his other keyblade buddies as backup) and suddenly, “There’s no hope! I’m weak without my friends! Everything’s over!” It feels so out of character and tone deaf, servicing one scene rather than the story as a whole. Wasted time all around. Axel and Kairi get benched because “Ooooo, they’re training to be keyblade masters!” but Axel gets chumped almost immediately in the final battle and Kairi gets…are you ready for this?  Kidnapped and killed at the end of the game. Kairi, I barely knew ye…no, literally, I think I saw you hold a keyblade in like…one scene? You weren’t in this game. Speaking of not in this game, Xion and Roxas come back…for like a minute…with almost no explanation for Xion and a blink and you miss it explanation for Roxas. What a disservice to all these characters.

The end of the game feels like a stitched together Frankenstein of cutscenes. We get Organization members dropping humanizing secrets never before explored or hinted at in other games to try and make us feel the feels when…they’ve been as pointlessly evil or under utilized as anything else. We have an ENTIRE SECTION where Sora dies, has to scavenger hunt HIMSELF back to reality, and then, the scene where he dies plays, AGAIN, but THIS time, there’s something different…you could have excised that entire section, but “Ooops, we didn’t have time to finish it, rushed game, throw it in anyway and stitch it together!” We also have stuff that feels like it was retconned and added in, like a sub plot of a girl who used to be in Radiant Gardens that is important and that Ansem is looking for, but…who is she and why is she needed? Never answered. And then the three giant battles against a heartless swarm all back to back at the end of the game, culminating in a character we’ve never seen before offering us help and then a giant keyblade swarm saves the day…look, I get what you were trying to do. These were keyblade masters from the past, laid to rest in the graveyard, with each of their names being a reaction command to help us fight, but…it feels so out of place, not built up or explained properly, and…just running on BECAUSE.

There are also so many moments of stupidity that come about from trying to make something cool, but which don’t make sense. Why can Sora summon Disney rides? How about, Master Yen Sid says, this is because of your training to be a master. You can call on the power of other worlds, or some BS? Never explained. Why do we go to Disney worlds when the power of waking is never hinted at being released in them? It was in us all along? Makes no sense! Xehanort in his final battle says you need darkness and light to clash to make keys…why not get one guardian, throw your followers to them to die, then kill the last one to make your super duper mega key? Makes no sense! You have been shown to kidnap people for your purposes, and TRAVEL THROUGH TIME for some reason, but…you can’t just take Kairi, or Aqua, or one of the isolated guardians(We see Ansem visit, chat with, and try to kill Aqua, BTW, guess you didn’t need ALL those guardains), send them through a gauntlet, and not bother with Sora, who has TOTALLY wrecked your plans twice already. Then, there are the smaller moments. Xigbar is about to die, so he teleports up to a high ledge, then falls off a cliff…if you had enough juice to teleport…why not LEAVE?! Terra gets whooped up, but then his heartless is suddenly holding his heart, what happened to the lingering spirit armor we saw fighting?! Plot points dropped just to force us through to the end of the game. Why do we say that evil Riku is a time traveler when he’s really a replica? Was that needed? Call him a replica! And why does good Riku have his replica’s ghost? Ugh…The plot confusion isn’t helped by like three versions of Riku, Sora, and Xehanort all existing at once and looking very, VERY similar to one another.

Now, for the ending. After all I’ve said, I must hate it, right?  Actually…not really. Listen, I think the storytelling has been shit, but I do actually like the resolutions we get, barring one thing. So, they show Kairi dying(Yeah, I’m so sure, after Sora and Riku have died like twice each) and Sora has to go save her…we don’t see any of that. That’s stupid. That’s a waste of Kairi, disempowering her completely and, like so many other characters, making her a plot object rather than a person. BUT…and this is what matters, the ending does give us a satisfying conclusion to all the plot threads, for the most part. We see all the Disney worlds resolved peacefully, we see Radiant Gardens returned to glory, Ven, Terra, and Aqua pay their last respects, Axel, Saix, Roxas, Xion, and the Twilight town gang get to all hang out, Sora and Kairi are together on Destiny Islands, Mickey returns home, Riku takes a revived Namine(Yeah, she only appears in the ending, another wasted character) going out to explore the universe.  If you wanna nitpick, we don’t see a happy ending for Demyx, which is kind of a bummer, as all his scenes are actually pretty fun, but overall…yeah, this resolves everything. And I’m mostly content with it. A lot from the baddies’ perspective is unexplained, but…they’re dead, what do I care? And the teaser ending with Xigbar not being who he appeared…is kinda cool, as he always seemed to have more going on than anyone else. We needed more with the organization members, honestly. I wanted to know who Demyx and Luxord were before…and it’s clear the writers wanted to do something with Marluxia and Larxene, but…well, guess we’ll never know now.

Kingdom Hearts 3 made me feel like I was wasting my time for about twenty of the twenty seven hours I was playing. It’s a rushed disappointment that MIGHT be fixed in subsequent releases or DLC…but I won’t hold my breath. It’s not a bad game, as far as games go, but it is a waste for KH fans. I don’t regret playing it, because I did get my resolution and endings, but I doubt I will ever play it again. KH1, three times, KH2, three times, Birth by Sleep, three times, but KH3? Yeah, no. I’d rather replay KH 2 and dream of what might yet have been.