Kingdom Hearts 3 (2019)
The long awaited Kingdom Hearts 3 is finally out! A weirdly popular series that Square Enix and Disney collaborates in. I got the deluxe edition mostly for the enamel pin of Sora and I don't regret it. The game itself is decent. Its not perfect, but I have been playing this series since the first game so there were some expectations. If you never played a KH game before, its going to be a lot of unpack so thankfully this game does come with an archive of videos that helps you catch up. Also if you never seen the Disney/Pixar movies that a featured in these games they will spoil the story for you so if don't want that be sure to watch them before playing! As a casual KH fan, I find this game to be mostly satisfying. It isn't difficult and was able to beat it in about 30 hours. If you are a fan of Disney and Square Enix I'd definitely recommend checking this series out! Beyond this paragraph will be spoilers so do not continue if you don't want spoilers!
I will start off by saying this game look gorgeous! Sure there are some character models that look slightly weird, but that's fine. Overall the graphics are great! The soundtrack was not intrusive and fitted well with the game. I did find it a bit funny that included the popular songs from Frozen in it so there are a couple musical bits. The others didn't have that at all. The voice acting is pretty good as well. Sadly KH games don't do dual audio probably for some copyright reasons? I'm not sure but I had no choice but to go for the English dubs. But the English dub isn't that bad at all even for the Disney characters. There's only a handful of times I found the voice acting odd but they were all minor.
Since Disney has Marvel and Star Wars I was hoping they might appear in KH but nope. Its really just Hercules, Tangled, Toy Story, Pirates of the Caribbean, Frozen, Monsters Inc, and Big Hero 6. Whats really disappointing is the lack of any Final Fantasy characters. While I know those characters were to attract FF fans to the KH serious, and now that KH is so popular there's no need for them I still want them! But I get it, the KH cast of characters has really grown so having FF characters might be too much. The real focus are the other trios: Axel, Roxas, Xion and Aqua, Terra, Ventus. After all these years its good to see their storyline come to an actual close. There isn't much of a trio action with Sora, Riku, and Kairi.
The story also focused more on the members of Organization XIII which is quiet interesting. I don't remember the story for most of them but they all have enough character to be interesting to watch. They still show up at every world you go to with Sora and bother him with riddle nonsense dialogue. All the dialogue are voiced so it really brings that silliness of the script but the characters feel more fleshed out when they're fully voiced. Axel and Kairi were training for the majority of the game, but we only see them talk for a bit. They didn't get very much action, but I'm use to that with Kairi as she seems to be a nonsense plot device for Sora. Its very apparent at the ending. I was glad to hear her be a keyblade wielding fighter and wanting to help and save Sora but nope that was a disappointment to me. And Riku has been a very good boy the whole game. You do play him a bit in a couple battles and thats it. He doesn't play a huge role in the story other than tie some loose ends on his past self which is overall is weird. Its all weird and the writers know that and have it reflected on some characters which was entertaining to see.
The Disney worlds are big. The maps are also complex. It definitely made finding those collectibles difficult. Some of them had quite a few minigames which are fun, but some not so fun. It definitely made going through these worlds not at all repetitive feeling. Think my least favorite is Frozen mostly because storywise we keep having to climb up the mountain only to get knocked down and then go up again. The cooking minigame is very simple and the food is used to buff you. But as you explore the worlds you party members will occasionally bug you about finding ingredients. This only triggers when you're nearby hit-able objects that drop stuff or gathering spots that you examine. Most of the time they're obvious and others are harder to find. I ain't good at this.
Since its been a very long time since the last game, they have implemented some modern stuff like giving Sora a smartphone and the loading screen are Instagram-ish posts that has hashtags. So of course there's a camera feature that you can take photos and selfies. A collectible with the camera is finding hidden "lucky emblems" which is a Mickey silhouette. These are very hard for me to find so I didn't find many. Unfortunately you do need to find a certain amount in order to unlock the secret movie. The amount depends on the difficulty mode that you completed the game in. I'll talk about the secret movie later.
The combat wasn't difficult, but I wasn't good at it. For the most part I was smashing that X button, but I didn't find it too much of a grind so I didn't hate it. The amusement park rides that trigger occasionally are interesting, but not sure why its there. Can't say they never helped me especially when I'm in a bind. For the majority of the game I've only failed in a few minigames mostly because there's a time limit that I didn't realize was there. The last part of the game is when I did start getting game overs from combat, but it was only a twice that it happened because I didn't have the ability to cure Sora. I like that you unlock abilities as you level up. I don't even use half of them I don't think. I hardly use the Focus thing, Magic, or the Link abilities. The boss fights are interesting to look at, but fighting them was a bit frustrating. Mostly because they move around so fast that it makes maneuvering the camera to find them a hassle. Locking on only helps slightly.Its bad enough with all the effects going on that its hard for me to see whats happening.
The pacing of the story is good, but I feel some parts dragged on a bit. The end part was a little long for me. Wasn't a fans of collecting all those Soras. Also I expected the mobile game to be connected somehow and it was interesting it be helping Sora in defeating that big tornado mass of monsters. It was kinda neat and it reminded me of Nier Automata. The story of the Ventus, Aqua, Terra, Axel, Roxas, Xion, Xehanort, and Eraqus seem so be at a close in this game. They got a happy ending! Not sure what will happen to some of the Organization members that didn't join the light side. Also there's Maleficent and Pete searching for a black box that was shown at the end but it was never opened. And Sora disappeared to try to save Kairi. That was weird, but the ending definitely left an opening for a sequel with Sora missing from Destiny Island and the black box mystery. The secret movie is a short video of Sora waking up in present day Tokyo in Shibuya and Riku is in Shinjuku. The main character in the FF-esque game use in Toy Story world even showed up and a Somnus-like song even played. Bizarre. Not sure what this means at all. It could be anything but its a thing.
Overall, the game delivered a good story for the side characters. Thought it be the end, but it seems like it'll continue.And Sora sacrificing himself is an excuse to get him to lose his powers and start at level 1 again. I think he's suppose to be 16 in this game so we'll see how much older he gets whenever this next game comes out. Hopefully no more plaid patterns clothing. This game is definitely a lot short than I expected but I didn't mind that much as I don't have much time these days anyways. I can see the dev team put time into the level design and the graphics. There were a lot of cutscenes. I enjoyed the game and now I need to figure out where to put my Sora pin on.
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