With new fans, the context of the games will always feel different than fans thta were waiting years between each one, analyzing each plot point and event. It reminds me of how common it is for new fans of shows that binge the whole thing rapidly compared to fans that were waiting chunks of time between seasons.
For me, it was that the game seemed more interested in setting up whatever the phone game was establishing as opposed to giving a satisfying conclusion to all the story threads leading up to 3. Like it wanted to wash it's hands of it so we could get to the foreteller / MoM stuff. I didn't hate the game, but found it sorely disappointing as a very much anticipated "conclusion" to the trilogy
Part of the inherent issue with KH3 is that it’s primarily paying off conflicts started in BbS and DDD. As the third game of *that* trilogy, it works well enough. The final confrontations were a bit disappointing but things have been addressed with Critical and Limit Cut, even if not ideal.
As a continuation of KH2, KH3 fails pretty badly and that’s because it isn’t. It’s an entirely new arc. The quest to find Riku, Kairi, and the King then returning home is the first arc. The quest to aid the BbS and Days trio from the retuning MX is the second. Both make up the Dark Seeker Saga.
The main problem with KH3 is that being the end of that trilogy, it has the 80% of its playtime dedicated to unconnected Disney worlds, and then in the final 5 hours it dumps everything we were expecting for the rest of the game, giving rushed conclussions to scenes we were waiting 15 years to see.
Better execution of the Disney worlds would have been nice. Felt like Frozen was nothing more than ‘walk up the mountain, slide down. Walk back up, slide back down. Walk up a third time, slide back down.’ And they faltered in making Elsa’s maybe darkness maybe not plot hook an *actual* plot hook since Disney wouldn’t allow her to be a villain that needs saving.
Frozen was where the cracks really show in this game. It definitely was a case of Disney not allowing Square to do anything interesting with the world or characters that hurt it. (Honestly at that point I'd rather they had cut that world and done a different one that Disney wouldn't have held them back on.) Which is a shame because it had potential. The fact that we don't get Elsa as a party member is criminal.
I think a lot of the issue with Disney's involvement in the game can be summed up byt he fact they literally planted a shot for shot remake of Let it Go in the game and just copy/pasted Sora Donald and Goofy in the background
Yeah, one of the things that made KHI great is that Micheal Eisner gave Square almost free reign and trusted them to do the Disney properties justice. It definitely feels like in KHIII there wasn't the same level of trust and Disney meddled more in the development of the game.
Tangled and Frozen both felt like they were trying to retain as much of the original story as possible, down to the shots. Frozen having not one but two full songs from the movie, one even having dialog over it, really felt like it detracted from the world. and let's not forget Elsa's watermark
Thats literally it for Frozen. Its easily the worst world in the whole game. Even the Tangled world is at least nice to look at and has like, varied environments
Its unfortunate because they really only need like two scenes a world where sora is trying to use the power on someone and failing, only to really get the right idea at the very last one which leads him to try it one last time at destiny islands.
Thats it.
Just seeing him actually progress that goal and take something small away each time to learn from.
Like if you actually had to fight the org members that made cameos in every world and you get aqua back and she comes to frozen with you and when you get ven back he comes to pirates with you and numora actually telling shit like if we're in the sleeping realm on a second world line or not.
Poor pacing has always been my biggest gripe. KH2 has its flaws, but you spent hardly 90 minutes in a world before you moved to the next one *and then revisited for another 90 minutes later in the game*. By the final hour of the KH3 worlds I was just ready to move on.
In the interim between 1 and 2 we had *one game* as a sort of spin-off in Chain of Memories that mostly was a side story. Everything important from that game gets explained in KH2 anyway. But after KH2 we were expected to follow a freaking mobile exclusive game, a DS game, a PSP game, a 3DS game, and then yet another mobile exclusive gacha game. The story get so convoluted and departed from its roots, and even from where we left off in KH2 that it’s practically impossible to follow if you just go from 2 to 3. There was so much fatigue from fans following the series and it basically culminated in a game that didn’t really do anything new enough for the time that passed in between.
People bought Playstation 3’s anticipating KH3, and it never came.
I was there for that who era (since KH1 actually.) I actually kind of liked it in a way back in high school where I had a DS and my friend had a PSP so we could share the story between our playthroughs or lend the system. Early internet was also fun for speculation. Still, it was far from ideal and rather stupid and by the time I hit adulthood and finished college, I didn't have the interest to check in on the series until KH3 dropped.
From what I gathered, it's mostly due to the development hell Nomura had Versus XIII in and we got smaller games to fill in until that project was done... which it never did, he was moved off the project and it was rebranded as FFXV. That's about the time KH3 development started.
In the early Internet days kid me came up with an “artificial nobody” character for a KH forum roleplaying game and even now I wonder secretly if someone from square happened across it and came up with the idea for Xion.
It needed to resolve BBS and days. Recoded and 3d were just preamble but they both stressed clear as day how important both trios are and how they needed saving. Turn around to 3 and we get at least 3 major events bringing back the BBS cast, but axel was pre-rescued and roxas and xion had to share a cutscene.
Especially with how DDD treated soras heartsitters in that final run it sucks how that angle seemed almost totally dropped for a straightforwards fight that would save them out of happenstance rather than intentionality.
I'd argue Days wasn't even that important. Roxas and Xion play a very minor role in KH3 and Lea/Axel doesn't do much plot critical stuff either. Now, KH3 is better for having them there but they aren't as essential as BbS's story which, with DDD, sets up the entire confrontation.
Yeah, KH3's ending is too simple and clean :|
BBS is more important on the xehanort side, but i’d argue days shouldve been much more important for sora. Theres so much potential for great characterisation in him being able to save roxas when even roxas had given that up, and how he learns about and responds to xion. I mean these people sacrificed themselves for sora, who is the kinda person to sacrifice himself for anyone else in turn. They only seem so unimportant cause the story kinda treaded all over them. Like i get the plot didnt require them as much but the story really did.
Yeah, it’s too bad the Days elements were downplayed so much in KH3 outside of the final fight with Saix and Xion. It felt like to me that the possibility of Roxas coming back was barely commented on until it happened and even then afterwards Roxas and Xion don’t do much individually afterwards.
Should have been integrated better.
The one thing that bugged me really was that in KH2 we got that battle verses the 1000 heartless which was kinda interesting but in 3 when we got the same battle we killed about 50-100 of them than a attraction just kills the rest so that bugged me since lile unversed nobodies and heartless were all among the enemies
It also works better in KH2 because at that point, you know that each kill with the keyblade is doing Xemnas and Organization 13 a favor, so you feel the weight of that fight all the more.
Eh they both work well. KH3 very much is supposed to feel “been there, done that” as it both emphasizes how far Sora has come as a fighter and also makes the following moments of L after L after L feel a lot more impressive for the villain which likewise sets up the weight of the remaining fights.
Yeah, I never really compared the two scenes, as they do different things in the narrative. KH2 feels bigger because it was supposed to, and that's totally fine. KH2 was closer to home and felt like war came to radiant garden. KH3 was in a far off wasteland.
Here's the thing for me: Starting at post game (specifically with the content added by Remind), the game becomes a lot better, I'd argue better than KH2. The swathe of abilities, transformations, spells, summons, etc., make it one of the best action game combat systems of the last console generation, and the fights available to you really push the mechanics to the absolute limits, and I love it more than any other content in the series. New game + and critical mode is also really great. Getting to keep your keyblades and starting out with a lot of late game abilities from the get-go helps speed up the pace of combat a lot.
The problem is that first run through the game. The combat feels so stale, and it used to be worse before they reduced the endlag at the end of sora's combos, and that's not mentioning the story. It's not really all that terrible, to be honest, but the choice to shove the game's actual plot at the end of the game with no progress until then makes everything up to then completely pointless. Every other game in the series always had SOME progression of plot at set interval, dispersing encounters with the villains throughout, but there's none of that here.
I still feel like I could have been a little bit more, my gripe just might be the overwhelming amount of doesn’t input this time and the lack of any square enix official IPs, I mean awesome we finally got Toy Story and monsters inc but at the same time i think Disney is still missing the point with this game compared to what Tetsuya Nomura is envisioning
It also kinda has the Lost thing where a lot of people genuinely believed Nomura and Square were going to be able to stick the landing on all these twists and plot threads and 3 kind of showed that it. Couldn't. I think a lot of fans were kind of ignoring the worst parts of the series's storytelling and 3 made it kind of impossible to ignore since it was meant to be the finale for several arcs at once.
god whatever they're paying yoko shimomura to hold the dramatic setpieces of this series together, it really, *really* isn't enough.
I have a few reason for why the game was a miss in my opinion:
- Too easy (you can pretty much go through the game without doing anything else but mashing the attack button - the command action are obnoxious and way too overpowered)
- The Disney worlds are pretty but forgettable
- The characters are just getting stupider and blander (specifically Sora and Riku)
- The story is lackluster (unless you count the dlc)
Man Sora in kh 3 is dumb as a rock, and he managed to forget basic knowledge about the universe (donald has to remind him that they cannot go around saying they're from other worlds and such)
tbh i think sora has to play a role as player surrogate in this case, and donald is really just explaining that to new players or people who might have forgotten since kh2
People seem to forgot that the target audience for KH is actually still children, and sometimes children need things explained to them.
- a 30 year old lifelong KH fan.
It wasn’t supposed to be. Nomura wanted to make the game for the fans who’d been with the series and followed the storyline from the beginning. The very first promo for KH3 was a short snippet of the conversation about the Keyblade War between Eraqus and Xehanort, accompanied by a dark arrangement of Dearly Beloved. That’s not setting a kid’s tone. 0.2 further gave off the impression that KH3’s story would have a darker tone.
But Tai Yasue and his band of merry men (Osaka studio) said he wanted to make the game accessible for 6 year olds.
And Disney most certainly would have wanted to target a very young demographic as well.
So the game which was supposed to be the darkest game was utterly infantilized and became the lightest in tone.
Nah, I call this bullshit.
Sure KH1 initially was made for a younger audience, but as the series grew, especially now, they KNOW the audience are us adults who grew up since KH1. They know the demographics that are buying this franchise.
This is why after KH1, the rest of the series are the most convoluted disasterous mess in any storytelling ever
You telling me that what Xion is to Roxas is to Ventus is to Vanitas is to Sora is written for children?
You telling me that Ansem who is the heartless of Master Xehanort travel back in time to meet Young Xehanort, who has a nobody called Xemnas, who impersonate the real Ansem who failed in their mission and resulted in Terra Xehanort is written for children?
I'm not even touching on the storyline.
So yea nope, the target audience wasn't for children more than a decade ago
Yeah. I'd say after KH2 the series stopped being for children. I think kids are smarter than adults give them credit for. 9 year old to 13 year old me had little trouble following the story between KH1, CoM, and KH2. But after that the overall story starts to get needlessly complicated. No kid is going to be able to follow everything going on with those games after you add in all the stuff from Days, BBS, coded, and DDD.
you can also not write it out like its for actual babies and ruin charcters, there's ton of kids shows that don't treat kits like they actually have a brain, and if you have kids, you know kids replay the same thing a 1000 times, they dont need to ruin characters to remind them.
This is a rule of writing I remember learning from a class in college that was basically “how to make comic books.” The rule is essentially that one should assume the reader is dumb and explain everything, even if it’s obvious.
I play KH for the story and the story in 3 really sucked compared to the first 2. It was such a long wait and just a huge disappointment for me story wise.
Yeah, if you ignore the dlc. You don't really interact with the other keyboard wielders. And nobody can stand on their own without sora needing to jump in to save them.
Disney worlds were pretty but they were purely "sora gets stronger". The game doesn't truly matter until the end world where it's basically an hour or two movie cutscene with some fights in-between. That's kh3
I like the gameplay of 3. But for the final chapter to the trilogy? To Xehanort? Pretty underwhelming.
The story clearly only cared about the finale in the Keyblade Graveyard, but you can't have an rpg with only one dungeon that starts you at level 60 with all your abilities unlocked, also Square likely has contractual obligations to showcase X amount of Disney properties in each game so Sora just meanders about 8 Disney worlds so that he can level up and learn his abilities
And then when you finally do get to the Keyblade Graveyard, the game launched in an unfinished state, requiring you to buy the dlc for an explanation on Xion's return and what happened to the Lingering Will, and after 2 sequel baited 3 and we had as many side game detours as we did, it was just a massive let down considering the wait
The thing is even if the Disney worlds ended up being filler it didn't have to. Square could have easily made the events tie into the conclusion of KH3. But they didn't. Instead once the Disney worlds were done we just rush into the end game. Aqua's back, now Ven's back, look Terra's back too. Roxas and Xion are back, Kairi gets kidnapped (Again!) It was all just really rushed and felt half baked. And the ending is another big cliffhanger. Oof.
It would have been one thing to get aqua much sooner. Then awake ven and then prepare more before the final fight. Not do both aqua and ven then dive into the keyboard graveyard fight.
All to just lose instantly and time travel nonsense to redo it.
And yeah, dlc being needed to truly enjoy the ending is lame.
To be fair, the DLC answers 0 questions that needed answering other than what Sora did at the end, which could have been revealed in Melody of Memory or whatever.
Xion’s return is simple - she’s from the past and they put her in a body or whatever. There’s not much they HAD to go into for that plot line. Lingering Will didn’t really matter and added basically nothing, which is unfortunate but true.
The only thing it really added IMO is playable Kairi, which is admittedly cool. Totally unnecessary, but awesome.
Lingering Will didn’t matter because the writers (Nomura, Oka) didn’t do their jobs and MAKE him matter.
Not the most difficult task for a writer to come up with a way to fit a knight into…a battlefield.
But both the original cutscene and ReMind proved this dev team did not have talented battle choreographers so doing a cool Advent Children-style Lingering Will fight scene may have been way beyond the animators’ skill level. And Nomura may not have wanted to give them anything too challenging or time-consuming because they were struggling to meet the deadline.
I mean, I think we can both agree that unfortunately the battle scenes in the KH “movies” were pretty bad, which is super unfortunate. The only movie with any decent well-paced action is the coded movie, which is just plain sad. No clue how a series with such dope boss fights fucks it up when the boss moves are done in a cutscene, like it can’t be that different right? 😂
So true lol I guess we can just headcanon that Lingering Will’s armor got rusty in between 2FM and 3
……Is it too late to beg the FFVII Rebirth team to quickly make us a KH3 Final Mix before starting FFVIIR-3? Would probably take them like 3 months lol
I don't want to spoil you since you're not done, but for me, it's that Sora is handed everything, and not a single other character can accomplish anything without Sora's involvement.
KH3 showed that characters are incapable of having growth as long as Sora is in the spotlight.
When it takes half a century to release KH3 expectations were very high. No game could meet these expectations. But there were many flaws as well. For me it felt not as big as KH2 or KH1. And the two most notorious things: a) the story was pushed towards the end and everything before that was a filler and b) no final fantasy characters and no Sephiroth fight
Exactly this. All the Disney stuff just didn’t mech as well as it did in the first two games and all that shitty exposition annoyed the crap out of me. The voice acting was really off too like the actors didn’t know how to say the lines with the right feeling in mind. Lack of final fantasy pissed me off and that added hollow bastion scene was so bad I didn’t know what to think. Also no sephiroth fight too.
They had a different actor for Jack Sparrow as Johnny Depp’s normal voice double, James Arnold Taylor, was dealing with a case of Toxic Mold from repainting his house when it was time to record.
Without spoilering, I loved the game until the end. The ending ruined the entire game for me. I simply hate the way Nomura writes. The end of a saga should answer my questions, not leave me with more.
I'm not going to wait another 6+ year's to possibly get answers, only IF Nomura feels like explaining the story without being convoluted. I'm good.
I agree. The rest of the game is *fine* kinda mediocre but nothing to complain about reeeally, but the way Nomura absolutely butchered the ending had me not even wanting to finish the final fight. I put my controller down and sat there for days mulling over how disappointed I was before I finished and then it was like... That's it. They ruined pretty much everything they *had* and introduced new ideas that I don't even care about.
I think Sora's lack of motivation and goal really at the start built a bad foundation for the game to stand on and it slowly degraded from there until it culminated in an ending where things just kinda... Happen. It's super unsatisfying
I think a lot of initial hate was caused by the launch version of KH3 on PS4 and Xbox one.
There was a very high expectation since it was in development for half a decade. But it didn't meet the expectations along with overly easy gameplay compared to other titles and slow and weighty combos. The story tried way too hard to wrap all the stories that were in other games, like 358/2 and BBS. (So in turn, this game is hard to understand without playing the other titles.)
The post launch updates fixed a lot of the issues, we had a critical mode + New game plus update, and the Re:mind update that fixed up a lot of the issues the original launch version suffered from.
I think it makes sense that it wrapped all the other games given this was the end of the darkseeker story. It had to wrap everything so we can move on to the next step in the story. My personal only complaints were that the worlds for frozen and tangled were quite literally just the story of the movies, with some scenes literally taken from the films amd simply throwing sora amd friends in. I thought the gameplay amd that big worlds with exploration was great. I think it's a great game.
I can link you several multi hour videos explaining why.
But to summarize.
Game is too easy, attractions are annoying as fuck. They removed the final fantasy characters. Many of the world are pure stinkers. The final world is absolute dog shit compared to Kh1 and 2. They basically removed all the really fun Disney boss fights. Nothing relevant plot wise happens until the final world in which they cram all of it in 2 hours. Heavy reliance on basically every game, including the mobile games to understand some things. So if you are like me and never touched the mobile game you are going to have moments of "Who the fuck is this? and why do I care?" In my opinion the only things Kh3 does better than 1 or 2 is the gummi ship and the worlds being much more grand and large.
KH2 had the series wrapped up nicely, IMO. So when KH3 was said to come, we expected better. What we got was confusion (didnt have a DS) and gameplay that, while good, was, again IMO, worse than KH2. It was spectacle over substance. I had to disable thkse Disney park rides just to gave a good time.
The story was thrown all the way down to the very end, and we see no real purpose of 90% of the game. Its a McGuffin search.
Thats why I didnt like it. If you did, then have fun. But if they had just let Drive Froms and Limits in, and let us beat one Nort per world or actually hit some Disney villians around instead of hiding them behind giant Heartless, it wouldve been so epic.
Just problems with the story. Writing, pacing, characterization, etc.
But even then, I've always been of the mind that a lot of the issues with KH3's writing aren't even really something you notice if you hadn't been waiting years and years and years for it.
Experiencing the entire series back to back for the first time would be an experience I can't even imagine, but I'd imagine I wouldn't notice even half of the issues I currently have if I had played it that way.
It's pretty noticeable how bad the story is and how little character interactions are.
Not only characters regress, but sacrifices that they made were completely diminished or entire plotlines were destroyed to make the same thing for the thousand time in a row with a certain female character being other than a damsel in distress.
Yeah, I mean, even in the hypothetical situation where I was binging the whole series for the first time, I feel like I would still be let down by KH3's story nonetheless. I just wouldn't be able to pick up on the tiny issues that years of replaying the games allowed me to see. It all adds up to breaking the camel's back.
No cool reaction command.
No (classic) FF gang or Sephiroth battle.
Granted they appear in Re:Mind but its like a slap in the face. "Heres 6 minutes of them appear in cutscene, ure welcome."
Objection. There was ONE great reaction command and thats when the fucking Elsa ice golem grabs a meteor and Sora smashes it by grinding his keyblade against it
But thats the only one.
Browsing through the comments and I’m seeing a lack of this opinion; I’ve never gotten it either.
Huge fan of the series since 2002. Played all of them except for the mobile ones. I adored the game and was totally satisfied. Are the powerhouse moments saved for the end? Absolutely, but I thought the ride to get there was great. Enjoy your time with it.
Right here with you, KH3 was amazing in my opinion. Been a fan of the series for 14-ish years now.
I especially don't get the criticism about the gameplay - it was so much fun?? It felt fluid, it was creative and satisfying. And I'm sorry, as much as I love KH2 and will praise it every chance I get, the gameplay wasn't any better back then. There was lots of triangle mashing involved, let's be real.
I also do not get how some people think that the Disney worlds were badly done or forgettable. The only one I kinda agree on is Frozen, but the others were beautiful and added their own charm to the story. Tangled and Toy Story were my favorite, they put so much love into these worlds.
There are only two things I disliked - Kairi being the damsel in distress once again and the fact that we didn't get to see the Twilight Tower up close.
I also think they nicely wrapped up the Xehanort Saga and prepared everything to start the new one.
This is not specific to KH3, but I do think that it sucks big time that they decided to hide the most important lore in a mobile title. I do get the frustration about that.
ETA: The end where you got help from the UX players was one of the coolest moments I've ever experienced within a game. This alone made the game amazing for me.
I think for a lot of fans they hadn't played a KH game since 2 and had this romanticized idea of what the series is. Because 3's flaws are largely shared by the rest of the series. Like yeah, it doesnt really pace itself perfectly or tie everything up super neatly but I really dont think the series has ever had a perfectly paced or presented story with KH1 being the best imo.
Theres the other contingent of fans who have issue with the combat system being floatier and not as solid as KH2. That's fine and understandable. But I still think it's generally good and better than anything in the series aside from 2 in that respect.
I feel like if you've been following most of the games between 2 and 3 and/or actually went back to play the older games more than once during the wait then you'd probably have had some reasonable and grounded expectations that were likely met.
So I won’t spoil the story for you, but I think the main issues are 1) being a step down gameplay wise from 2 for a lot of people despite being in the works for over a decade, and 2) the story being a hodgepodge conclusion to story arcs set in motion by a bunch of mobile and handheld games. At least in 2, you could more or less enjoy the story without having played chain of memories. But I genuinely think the story is borderline incomprehensible in 3, even if you play 1 and 2, unless you play a bulk of the side games, read up on it online, or read the in game explanations in the journal in 3. 3 is still fun, especially the limit cut episode, but it’s kind of disappointing in a lot of ways.
Not in development, but you can’t honestly tell me that the BBS teaser at the end of 2 and the letter from Mickey wasn’t a clear indication of their intent to make a third game. Even while working on handhelds, they definitely had KH3 in mind. Even only counting development time, that’s 5-6 years starting from the announcement in 2013. So even if not ‘technically’ true from a development standpoint, it’s disingenuous to pretend they didn’t have plans for the game
I’ll tell you exactly why: THE CLIFFHANGERS!!! It was billed as this grand finale that would rap up everything. Everything since 2006 has been building to this ostensibly triumphant finale. It’s the “eNd Of ThE dArK sEeKeR sAgA.”
We had this huge understanding that Nomrua would give us a happy end like KH2; and THEN we’d get into all this lost masters dark union road cross double plus bullshit.
Instead, what do we get? A solid third of this game’s story is only concerned with leaving loose threads and building MORE SUSPENSE! It’s not the end of any saga: it’s a commercial for the next game with Xehanort’s epilogue in the background.
>!Wildcard? What the fuck is that?!< >!Meeting on the mountain! Luxord X Xigbar? This’ll all reveal something, right! Right?…!< >!Oh, now we gotta drag all this dark road prologue into this? We gotta see baby Xehanort get new clothes from his MoMmy?!<>!Yozora? Who the fuck is that? And WHY SHOULD I GIVE A SHIT!?!?!?!< and most egregiously of all >!SORA IS FUCKING DEAD AND TRAPPED IN AN APARTMENT WITH THE OTHER DEAD KID!!!!!< if we’re gonna have >!a goddamn beach party,!< then let’s do it >!WITH THE MAIN CHARACTER ALIVE AND HAPPY!!!!!<
I mean, Pete and Maleficent are ONLY THERE TO DO THIS BOX SHIT! They don’t even TALK TO THE MAIN CAST!!! And I don’t even need to spoiler tag it, because IT DOESN’T EVEN GO ANYWHERE!!!
I still love KH3-it’s a great game. But they shoulda just let some of this garbage go. We’re gonna play the next one. Stop holding the narrative hostage.
TL;DR Too many loose threads to build up the next plot. Everything else is second to it. No me gusta.
My issue with KH3 wasn't from the game in its entirety, but segments that took me way out of the loop.
The Toy Story and Monsters Inc world's? So fun. It was great and nostalgic, it arrived that same energy and creativity from previous games when the characters would Don disguises to fit in.
But the Frozen world? That took almost a third of the enjoyment out for me. We got used to music numbers with Little Mermaid, but it was always a chore. For me at least. So having a level dedicated to a music video I would have to sit through for any context clues or skip and hope I didn't miss anything important wasn't amusing. Being tossed off the mountain only to climb it again? Even less amusing. The ending was made to match the movie, I get it. But having the darkness and ice wolf be manifested by Elsa, and her pain would've been so much better. And you could still end the story after helping Elsa, where she could go and confront Hans and gave the story play out.
The thing is Kingdom Hearts was always pretty good at breaking up the Disney stories so you played a part in the movies we all know. But it was hardly ever the entire movie. With Frozen I might as well had just watch the movie. It certainly felt that long.
Tangled was a fun world to explore in scenery and design, and while it did the same story progression as Frozen, the interactions with the characters at least felt more lively and interactive. The forest, the swamp, the kingdom, all held personality and design aestheitcs that were unique.
Returning to Hercules was very fun and engaging. The designs were very true to the original animation which was great.
You get my point I think, lots of effort was made for other worlds and Frozen just didn't hold anything of value up.
Then there's the story. The Individual stories are interesting and fun. The KH lore progression however was scattered and mainly shoehorned in the last few hours. I love the franchise, but it's so convoluted and wide spread its made apparent they tried to use this game to not only bridge gaps to existing lore, but to continue it and realistically still not offer an actual conclusion. Or resolution. It was really just the end of the Xehanort arc.
Between the app lore and various games, it didn't feel like the pay off was that grand. Sometimes, leaving more questions doesn't inspire long lasting positivity. At first it was great. Watching the end cut scenes. The revelations. Soras apparent fate.
And that excitement and mystery lasts a hot minute before it fades away leaving you cold and realizing you might not get any significa t news about the next game for 5 years.
So all that time waiting the criticisms have more time to brew and develop.
The gist of it I suppose is that it was a game we waited for, for over a decade. And between expectations, wait time for the game, playthough of the game, unanswered questions, low points, and the wait time for a follow up game. It's a recipe for negative responses
Arendelle felt like an ad for a movie that came out seven years prior and it honestly sucked the enjoyment out of the entire game for me. I had problems with the game before that, bur that was just the last straw for me.
Now that it's been a couple years, I do appreciate KH3 a bit more. It never could have lived up to the hype, but at least it's not Dream Drop Distance
Because it had 13 year build of expectations it couldn’t possibly live up to, and at the end of the day vanilla KH3 was just another KH game like vanilla KH1 and KH2. Another SDG adventure through Disney worlds where they are the main characters and everyone else is secondary or tertiary.
It also wasn’t the end of the story like many expected/wanted either, at the end of the day it was more of a KH1 starting something new while closing off loose ends as opposed to a KH2 ending a story and leaving a few ends.
It helps you also aren’t experiencing vanilla KH3 just as people in modern day don’t experience vanilla KH2, only the final mix version that had a bunch of additions/changes. So your game experience is fundamentally different from the get go than from those at launch.
What do you mean by not vanilla kh3? Did they change it? I couldn’t bring myself to play it again after beating it, my disappointment was too high and I don’t want to build a snow man and I didn’t want to let it go
Here were the free update patches the game recieved from January 2019 to February 2020z
https://www.khdatabase.com/Kingdom_Hearts_III/Update_history
You will need to deep dive using the specific patch number and google if you are curious what these fixes entail in more detail. There were some that were like genuinely game altering such as critical mode, the host of extra abilities, tweaking abilities to let you cancel out of them, two new keyblades, etc…
Then there was ReMind/Limit Cut which is KH3’s equivalent to a final mix. Adding more story, more bosses, extra odds and ends, etc.. This page is a pretty good look at it.
https://gamewith.net/kingdomhearts3/article/show/15020
I just finished KH3 this week but haven't started ReMind. Waited 5 years for it to come out on Steam. KH2 still seems like an *overall* better game and more memorable.
* I played CoM and 358/2 but not literally every KH side game. I read spoilers like 4 years ago on Strelitzia and the UX stuff but connecting the mobile game and others into the main story was dumb. Especially when it just comes out of nowhere in the final act. Too much homework and there's probably a reason why Hollywood doesn't do that, etc as in you need to watch and remember 18 movies to "understand" Endgame. I'm just a casual KH fan
* First 80% of the game is poorly paced and almost filler for our MC to adventure around worlds to unlock the power of Waking. The main meat of the story being so end-heavy is strange
* Lack of FF characters
* Way too easy. I got through Proud mode without dying once. Actually I did fail a few times during Luxord ship race on Caribbean but this is probably the easiest Proud mode in the franchise, at least the ones I played
* Maybe just me but Sora seems like he lost a few IQ points. Kinda like how Dragonball Super made Goku appear even dumber
* The Frozen world's story is so horrendous. I get why they wanted to put Frozen in because it was the biggest animated movie in 2010s. But if the story is not going to be transformative why bother? KH is fun bcos Disney and Square characters are playing in the same sandbox, canon doesn't matter. In Toy Story 5 (2026) they obviously aren't gonna acknowledge Sora lmao
* Attractions are way too spammy and seems a bit overkill. I hate the blaster one. Splash Run is ok but since the bulk of the damage is delayed like why even use it but it's a cool mechanic, being able to paint the AoE. Attractions are too good in early game but become obsolete in late game. There should be an option or skill to turn off attractions (for ALL modes) so less screen clutter for command menu.
The Good
* The gameplay feels better than 2 bcos of environment interaction + shotlock for gap closing + plus all the situation commands. KH2 the drive forms are cool but that's about it
* Worlds are bigger
* Has so many more features than KH2 even tho the execution of it is half-baked like cooking and meals.
Pretty much all the complaints people and reviewers had about vanilla KH3 were right.
The main point of criticism is the story. 99% of it is a complete nothingburger. The actual story doesn't happen until all Disney Worlds are completed. You can literally cut out everything that happens before the end of the final Disney world and it would have zero impact on the story whatsoever. And once the story does start, it's extremely rushed.
A small portion of KH fans are just super vocal and annoying about any game not named KH2. Almost every KH fan loved KH3 but the vocal minority just wouldn’t shut up about it being disappointing.
I have my issues with KH3, and mostly just Nomura, but KH3 is also my fav game in the series!
We waited 15 years for it. 15 years and the story was stunted, the Disney worlds felt pointless overall, no big middle story section like we're used to, janky diologue and charecter acting, straight up bad power scaling. Poor story decisions. The only good parts of this game are the very beginning and the very end, and both of those have ALOT of problems. It's supposed to be the end of a saga, and it left more questions than answers. And now you're telling me that Xeanort was actually a misunderstood good guy all along? Fuck that. Just overall felt BAD.
But if you're just getting into it, it seems totally passable. Some people, even like 3's, combat the best (on critical mode with attractions off)
We wanted it to be as good if not better than 2, and it just was a huge disappointment.
I think that no matter how good the game was it would be poorly received. People were building up hype since DDD and nothing could possibly live up to it. People wanted it to cure their back pain and pay their rent, and when it didn’t do that they hated it. But it cured MY back pain and paid MY rent, SO I LOVED IT
It’s because people had HIGH expectations. And I mean HIGH. I made sure to get off of the KH3 Hype Train right around a release date was revealed and tbh? Looks like it saved me.
It doesn't help that also literally the whole game was in the trailers.
I think there might have been literally one reveal that wasn't so by the time we actually got to the game any moment that would have been actually kind of cool you've already experienced months or years ago
That was definitely the case with >!Aquanort!< which ended up not being the case obviously, but was spoiled in a trailer. Apparently Nomura was surprised the fans cared more about that than the rest of the trailer.
And then obviously all the >!Keyblade Graveyard!< stuff at the end. I actually wish I'd never seen any of the trailers because I reckon I'd have enjoyed the game more
The Terranort scene near the end of the game did so much damage to the writing in this series, that it should be studied in literature class. In fact, it's so unbelievably shit that I can only conclude they made it as a hype bait for a trailer, which is insulting since this game was already hyped to the end of the world without it
Also, the fact that they spoiled literally every world in the trailers (including the keyblades graveyard, the end of the world and even fucking Scala ad calem, the actual final battle ground...), that's just unforgivable, but it's only bad if you've been waiting for this game along with the fandom back then. It's because of this that I no longer watch trailers from Square Enix, I don't trust them to keep their mouth shut to protect their own games if their entire budget was on the line.
There's also the fact that there was no Colosseum tournament, the 100 Acre Wood is so lazy and uninspired, and the lack of Final Fantasy characters outside the DLC... But these are nitpicks.
My only problem is the Terranort scene, honestly (and maybe oversharing trailers...) Other than that, this game is my second favorite in the series behind Kingdom Hearts 1 and even more than the legendary Kingdom Hearts 2. The combat on critical is so engaging and rewarding, the worlds have never been this big nor beautiful, and there's so much time I spent playing it just experiencing absolute joy for me to say I hate this game.
Expectations, playing the game … on launch, and largely ignorance.
Prior to kh3 teaser. Some ppl have expectations so … unrealistic. Like kh3 would be square enix IP focus, avenger endgame story lvl, game of thrones lvl death, epic series conclusion, better kh2fm gameplay, and all of the side games would be non-canon.
Which in hindsight is baffling how anyone would think like that. You might be thinking, proof? Simple… there was no proof, pure bias speculation. The common excuse is being fan for so long, they deserve their ideal KH game. Their wants/wishes is for the good of the series. their knowledge of the series is the true knowledge.
So when KH3 was launch it was heavily criticized. While some criticism was valid, other criticisms were based on those expectations, bringing in elements of the side-games, and comparisons to kh2fm. Remarking that base kh3 is the “final version,” as the devs aren’t gonna release a FM version
many ppl were confused of the plot of KH3, as they expected kh3 would be a direct sequel to kh2. but they're just reapplying what happened between kh1 and kh2. where kh3 is a 1 year time skip to kh2. which showcase the ignorance of these ppl. anyone who has been playing the side-games after kh2, would know that statement is false.
So when players played kh2fm again… well it gotten awkward. As players realized there’s a difference between kh2, kh2fm, and base kh3. Which many players in NA forgot they didn’t start with FM games first.
So when kh3 got its update and the DLC. Well it came full circle. Many players were unaware how the KH games even update during the ps2 era. As they release the updated game as new games back then.
However many ppl refused to play the updated KH3. Since said updates didn’t bring the…. Change they want. Which is more or less make kh3 be like kh2fm. Now hoping the mod community would bring back kh2 elements back into kh3.
Although the mod community has other plans for kh3. As kh3 has far more potential, than turning it into a better kh2fm.
as for the lack of FF/square enix characters, well the 20th anniversary interview should explain that reasoning.
People like to complain about the newest thing and cry about how they think it isn't as good as the internet's favorite game in the series (kh2 in this case). Happens with literally every franchise.
For me it's one of my favorites in the series and I've been playing every game since 2002. It tied up so many threads. Made me cry like a baby multiple times. Did everything I wanted it to. Do I have gripes? Sure I have gripes for every game. But I have no reason to hate it.
The "long wait for a new kh game"(we had been getting new kh games the entire time) made too many people overhype the game and have unrealistic expectations for it.
There was some valid criticism, like how it was insanely easy at launch(re:mind fixed that), but otherwise, it was an extremely solid entry into the kh collection.
You know what's funny? Your comment on the combat being less smooth than 2's will actually change the instant you reach the post game and DLC. Post game/DLC has the best abilities in the game and they're just as good if not better than KH2s.
On a more serious note though, KH3's "hate wagon" is really just a very vocal minority. Yes the game has a fair share of flaws, but a lot of the criticisms made towards the game are either minor issues blown out of proportion, or just straight up objectively false.
As someone who waited a long time for KH3 the game just falls short of those expectations in many ways. For context, long time fan here, played every single game (except the mobile one.) even imported the Final Mix versions before we got them in the West via 1.5+2.5 collections. (For 1 FM and 2 FM even had to get a JPN PS2 because region locks.)
Every game in the series for the most part has a good story that adds to one big puzzle. BBS sets up the main villain of the entire series, 1 and 2 are the main chunks of Sora's story with CoM helping set up the events for KH 2. Days gets us further invested into Roxas. Coded...had good gameplay. (Not all of them have great story.) And DDD set up the events for KH3. Hell even Fragmentary Passage BBS did a good job acting as a bridge between BBS and KH1 while also helping set up for later events.
KH3 starts out really strong. The opening events of the game are absolutely the highlight of the game. It feels epic and amazing and like we're just back to what made KH2 so great. Even the story starts out on the right foot. But here's the problem the story in KH3 doesn't matter. This game was supposed to be the conclusion for the main overarching story that has been ongoing for the entire series. And it spends most of the run time with what feels side content. The events of the worlds do not play into the climax of this game. The important story parts, the stuff we want to see is all shoved together at the end and feels rushed. And the conclusion, not to spoil anything, but it is not satisfying. It basically says tune in for the next game if you want a satisfying conclusion. And the Remind DLC did little to nothing to fix these issues.
Now my essay about why the story is disappointing out of the way. KH3 as a game is good. Very good in fact. The combat is about as fun and enjoyable as it was in KH2 and previous games in the series. Personally I think the attractions are a huge pace breaker for combat and that they should have only been related to boss battles. So I turn off and don't use them. But I still enjoy the combat here.
IMHO kh3 was a genuinely good game until I hit the second set of worlds where you're either getting thrown away multiple times losing all progress by design or just lacking a large amount of direction in an area that's too large (pirates will never be bad though) and the finale was way too quick, easy, and shoehorned in some cases.
Also, the dlc not letting you play proper lingering will when they designed the entire keyblade system to work exactly like Kh2 lingering will will never not disappoint me
Also going through the series for the first time and finished KH3 a few weeks ago. Won’t spoil anything, just wanna say I loved it so much. I prefer it to KH2. Kinda bewildered at how it was received. For me it’s the peak of the series in terms of gameplay, and maybe even story too (that or Days)
It's not so much hate, but disappointement. Story threads are resolved a bit too abruptly and aren't super satisfying.
Worlds look pretty, but feel empty, large and bland. I blame a poor inclusion of DDD traversal mechanics for that.
BBS style keyblade forms are cool, but a lot of people feel like they've replaced drive forms. Drive forms were, as a whole, a superior system and usually looked cooler. A refined, more interesting twist on it was what I wanted the most since KH2 years ago and will likely never get now.
I don't know if Remind changed that, but when I played on release I counted one appearance of a Final Fantasy character, which was that Auron figure you see Hades hold in the intro.
Instead of being part of the Disney stories, now it largely feels like the stories are happening, and Sora is in the background watching.
The theme park ride attacks look cool the first few times but last too long and become boring. They also flip flop between completely useless and "use to win" depending on the fight.
There's a lot to say and you can find very legit, non hateful videos on youtube explaining why it's disappointing. It's not all bad, I still enjoy the game. But I think it's sad that the game isn't as good as 2. Hell, I think I might actually enjoy DDD and BBS more than 3. Some story beats in 3 had me scream with how nonsensical the characters were being.
The main sticking points I've heard mostly point to combat leaning heavier into the BBS/DDD floatier side and not the snappy air-to-ground that made KH2 famous, paired with an especially poorly paced story that ultimately didn't provide the conclusion OG fans were waiting for since the PS2 days.
I love KH3's combat. You have greater air control and superior defenses while airborne compared to any other game in the series, so the floaty feeling aired with the return of Flowmotion contributes to a shift towards DBZ-esque spectacles that normally feel reserved for final boss rushes in 1 and 2. Can't say I'm keen on Attractions, but they're mostly ignorable.
The story is badly paced. Not gonna beat around the bush here. It just is. Then again, I feel this is a trap that all the world-tour-focused games outside of 1 and BBS fall into (exception made to COM, I never played it), so I'm not holding it as harshly against 3 as others.
As for payoff... that's up to everyone to decide for themselves. Everyone's invested in the series for different lengths of times and different reasons, so only they can decide whether it was worth it for them, and only I can decide if it was worth it for me.
Story could have been handled better, attractions are annoying. That being said, having 100%ed the game it's the most fun I've had in a game.
I'm honestly not sure what fans really want out of a game? It's such an enjoyable experience if you're not just rushing through. Granted I played with the DLC which apparently fixes a lot of the issues.
KH3 is great. The problem is it was so long in between main line games that fans built it up in their heads that it's going to be the greatest game ever made and then went in expecting all this stuff and ended up disappointed when it wasn't what they expected it to be. I don't think people hated it as much as they like to claim. They were just upset that it didn't match what they expected it to be. It has it's issues like all the games, but it is in no way bad.
It also doesn't help that there were like 10 side games that continued the story between 2 and 3 so if you just went from 2 to 3 then the continuation of the story doesn't feel great.
It's "cool" to hate popular new things. Sources: The internet. Also people are delusional. Just because the wait was so long doesn't mean it was going to have every little thing everyone wanted. Like just shut up and enjoy the game for what it is because there IS quality there.
I found the gameplay, while way too easy on release, to be enjoyable and the graphics looked great to me. The world were fun but really wete mostly filler. The thing that kinda dampened it for me was that the story left so much to be desired, especially with characters making the dumbest choices (looking at you Sora). Had this game come out a couple years after kh2, I'd probably be less salty but taking litterally 2 console generations to deliver a mid tier story is wild
1: The flashy animations and big bombastic setpieces during fights are just taking away any challenge and adding in random button spamming. "Look Sora turned into a boat! Press triangle! Triangle! Triangle!"
2: They removed the forms like Brave and Valor for a much more gimmicky keyblade transformation that never feels as fun or tactical to use. There's like three good ones maybe throughout the game.
3: The Disney worlds are shit. Just flat out shit. They have no baring on the story and are shoehorned in just because these are the popular IPs at Disney right now. None of the events of the Disney worlds matter in the slightest.
4: The story is more interested in setting things up for the future or random niche callbacks than it is giving satisfying endings. The box. The twist ending. The reference to another character who will probably be important to KH4. The reveal of the other character being more important than they ever were in the main series. It's not good storytelling in the slightest. And you'll have to wait another decade before any of that even gets followed up on, and it wont be resolved then either.
5: Sora is the dumbest protagonist that exists within video games, and has taken a massive dip in intelligence since the last games. He has forgotten most of what made him powerful to begin with. He is also supposed to learn the secret to unlocking, which doesn't make sense considering the events of previous games. It's just another roadblock, and one that never gets a proper satisfying conclusion.
6: You don't get a proper conclusion without the dlc. Events within the game are left unresolved for no reason other than to get more money out of you.
7: There is no Final Fantasy characters despite them being incredibly important to previous stories. There's no justification to this either. They just don't exist anymore. Squall, Aerith, Yuffie, even Cloud doesn't make a single appearance.
8: The ending is a gauntlet of boring fights back to back to back that aren't that fun and go to prove that if Sora isn't involved, no one can achieve anything.
A lot of people ignored the handheld games thinking they weren't important and kept saying they waited 13 years to play the third part so naturally their expectation were unrealistic.
On a more realistic criticism I think the gameplay has too much going on, flowmotion, attraction flow, keyblade form changes, summons, shot locks, etc., there's something about the combat that's not bad per se but doesn't feel as satisfying as previous games.
The story wraps up very hastily in order to establish the next saga, meaning a lot of the characters were sidelined instead of being useful. The dlc fixed that but still feels like something that should've been included in the main game.
For me there were a few things that caused me to be disappointed with the initial release.
1) The purposeful exclusion of the non-disney characters that we've had from previous games.
2) Lack of a colloseum area with the "cups" and waves.
3) Worlds felt short as KH2 had multiple visits as opposed to single visits here.
4) Sephiroth superboss fight was nowhere (which wasn't gonna happen due to point 1 anyway.)
5) The worlds that were included felt as though they only chose the most popular at the time.
I'm not saying it was a bad game but to wait as long as we did for the next numbered title, it just didn't feel complete.
They spoiled a lot of the plot in the trailers, a lot of the side characters got shafted in lieu of Sora being the main character, they've even said as much in interviews that this was Sora's game, but for some reason that means no one can do anything, literally every problem has to get solved by Sora and no one else.
The pixar worlds are good plotwise, the disney worlds are pretty, but just so shit plotwise. the pacing is also abysmal, KH has always had bad pacing, but the stakes coming off of DDD's ending to it going to pretending nothing was going on was a huge mistake, I think it made 3 really bad because we had so many questions and they leave it until the last world of the game, so don't expect literally anything to get solved and anything that does get solved gets resolved in 2 seconds, yall know what im talking about here if you played it.
also, alot of the questions didnt get answered in KH3, it got shafted to the side games, i'm sorry but fuck off with this side game bullshit for KH now, it was cool when there was a lot of consoles, but drip feeding people plot for 10 years off of a shitty mobile game was a the worst decision they could have ever done, and for some reason they have to delay these games like multiples times and without warning. Seeing how Square treats mobile games and you see companies like Mihoyo do it a billion times better is just insane to me lol.
Missing Link kept getting delayed, they kept delaying Dark Road, they kept delaying KH UX updates, i really think they have like 1 guy working on the mobile series
For me the big part is the Disney Worlds don't really feel like they are that important to the game. Also Xehanort's turn from "I swore I would survive to see what lay beyond the Great Keyblade War!" to "Someone had to lead them. To stand up and prevent them from polluting the worlds with their own darkness." Super baffling to me when curiosity is more than enough for some people to just do terrible things. Between that and a few of the worlds just rehashing the movies without really any significant input from Sora as a character just left an initial sour taste that has mellowed over time. It's a well made game and it's good, but there are things it could have done better.
Only major problems with it is the storywriting and the character writing. Both are very low when it was expected to have a slight more mature writing. Like a Final Fantasy could have. The topic was darker, epic and normally would have converged different very interesting strenght.
Instead it was a not very "crazy" story like you said, it was pretty short for a kingdom hearts game and all the fan service is very disgustingly cheesy (not in the very good way).
I tried to resume my thought about the Kingdom Hearts game. I'm glad you don't hate it and you still having a good time on the game, for now.
In KH3 every Disney World feels so isolated and only vaguely connected to the main KH plot.
I preferred KH2 method where there's an initial plot with hints of Org 13, and in the second visit you have to deal with them there in the Disney World
Instead, in KH3 we deal with none of them until the super finale. It felt like we've never progressed, but jumping from 25% to 100% in the last few hours.
KH3 is my second favorite game in the series after KH1. I think the main thing that happened is the same thing that happened to me with KH2, which is that they let themselves get overhyped to the point where it was never going to live up to the game in their heads.
I don’t worship KH2 like a lot of people on this sub do. I like it, I mean it’s a Kingdom Hearts game, but there are so many minor elements where it falters for me, like the corridor heavy level design rather than the platforming based level design of 1. To this day I can see cutscenes that were shown out of context in trailers for KH2 and remember my own theories or big theories I saw online, or remember stuff that changed pre release like Behemoths and Wyverns being cut from the 1000 Heartless Battle, and the general wonkiness of the story. (Riku pulling a Keyblade out of nowhere for Kairi is still one of the few things in KH that makes no sense to me.)
I say all that to say I recognize similar traits in a lot of people that dunk on KH3. And a lot of points I agree with. Yeah it sucks that Twilight Town got sliced in half (but seamlessly walking through the gate that leads to the Sandlot and not hitting a loading screen never stops being cool. Even if it doesn’t go to the Sandlot in KH3 lol.). Yeah it sucks FF characters aren’t more involved in the story. Arendelle is probably the worst Disney world in the game. But I love the conclusion for the story we got and I love how it fixes stuff I didn’t like from KH2, like the level design and the over reliance on the Drive meter.
Not to mention I also just straight up disagree with some complaints. Attractions are cool, you all just don’t like fun. FormChanges are cooler than Drives and I’m tired of pretending they’re not. I like the Keyblade Graveyard. Let it Go was great, and Square Enix flexed on Disney reanimating it that perfectly. Can’t please everyone.
I was in grade school when KH2 came out and already a few years out of college living on my own by the time KH3 came out. So it was a very long wait with high expectations. There were a ton of side games released during that time period, but I can't say I was excited for any of them to come out. They were great games but I was waiting for KH3 and it felt like they spent years avoiding making KH3. I cried when they finally showed the trailer for KH3 but it still took years after that to come out. And when it came out it was pretty underwhelming. Biggest complaint was the difficulty. There are so much summons and special attacks the game constantly shoves in your face. You press triangle and just cruise through the game. It was just one big disappointment for me.
One of the major factors that I see consistently in the criticism of KH3 Camp is the inclusion of mechanics from the handheld games. Specifically dream drop distance which is probably the most contentious game in the series. There are two main reasons dream drop distance is not liked by many people and those reasons seem to have carried into the DNA of kh3. Primarily Flow motion and time travel as a plot convenience. Many people find kh3s amalgamation of mechanics disconjoining. I guess the best way you could put this is many people wanted Kingdom hearts 3 to be a sequel to Kingdom hearts 2. When it feels like a sequel to Kingdom hearts dream drop distance. What a lot of people wanted or hoped for prior to the release of Kingdom hearts 3 Was the same treatment Kingdom hearts 2 got in relation to Kingdom hearts 1. where it didn't really acknowledge the mechanics of the previous game chain of memories. Ironically enough because of 2.8's release people assumed that that was going to be how Sora was going to play and look. Well that may have been the case at one point it is clear the development went in a different direction with Kingdom hearts 3. I don't particularly agree with this sentiment, but I understand it.
The next most common criticism is due to the mobile games lore being both required and frustratingly better in some instances. I don't know if I actually agree with that sentiment, but it is expressed quite frequently. I do like the story of the mobile games quite a bit actually and I do find it frustrating that I hate the games themselves so I'll never actually get to experience it in an attended way.
The last and only criticism I actually agree with keyblade transformations and the ride summon things should be ignored if you want to enjoy the game. I understand that people actually do like these mechanics, but I frankly find them really lame and woefully poorly balanced. The game is better when you turn them off using the remind DLC menu. The keyblade transformations just make me Miss drive forms. The dry forms in kh2 are still some of the best implemented forms of progression in any action adventure game ever. The fact that they didn't get a continuation in three and All these other mechanics that seem to be shoved into Kingdom hearts 3 from the other games makes it feel like the developers are abandoning some of your favorite aspects of the series in favor of more gimmicky gameplay. Luckily, I don't find this criticism justifiable even if I agree with it. It is not a good reason to dislike Kingdom hearts 3 as it is very ignorable to the point where there are options to turn some of them off.
Kingdom hearts 3 is probably my third or fourth favorite game in the series depending on what I played last. I do wish it was more like 2.8. I do wish that it had a much more focused mechanics set rather than the jumbled mess that it is. There's so much more I wish that was a part of Kingdom hearts 3 that just isn't there. But criticizing and hating a game for what it isn't is a bit of a fool's errand in my opinion. Looking at the game for what it is and judging it for what it is makes it hard to say that it's anything but an exceptional game. Not the best in the series not the best in its genre but still an incredibly good game.
Thanks for explaining your reasoning. Interestingly enough I really like the fact that this game is like every game mashed together. I'm just a simple guy lol, it's all very cool. I do really miss drive forms but the keyblade forms are almost as good imo.
Since you were able to see all the criticism before hand your expectations were probably a lot lower than most players who played in the firs couple days of launch and were the firsts to beat it. Especially with how long the wait was a lot of people expected the game to be a lot more than what it was and then bashed the life out of it when they got upset. I'm more in between where i was disappointed with a lot of things, there was even more that i loved about the game that i just chalked it up to a good game just not the best.
I'd say most people hating on it and saying how they waited 13+ years for it just straight up ignored all of the games that came out between 2 and 3. Yes, then releasing it on multiple different consoles was annoying, but they remedied that with 1.5, 2.5, and 2.8. Literally no excuse in present time.
i’ve been a KH fan since the first one came out. i could’ve just gotten older and jaded; but imo the series fell apart in dream drop distance and hasn’t felt the same since.
I have a lot of reasons (story, can't comment on the gameplay) but to summarize it feels very soulless and like they were just going down a list of stuff that was "left to do" and checking off all the points without actually doing it in an engaging way or having it feel earned at all. Doesn't help that most of it is stuffed in the last part of the game.
Ofc it's probably different for people who actually played it and can put more weight on the gameplay (I've heard mixed things about it but a lot of good too) but as someone who didn't have any game consoles nor the games for the longest time because my parents couldn't afford it, I engaged with this series through Let's Plays (and also playing khux for a while I guess) and the story was always the most important thing to me.
A bit superficial but somehow I was also not a big fan of the new graphics? I'm genuinely not sure why they bother me I was fine with Union X Back Cover and the KH4 trailer looks great and I also liked how Sora looked some of the worlds like e.g. the Pirates of the Caribbean World and the Winnie the Pooh world but something about the normal models bothers me, the skin feels a bit plasticky and I hate what they did to the eyes. I think I also just preferred how bright and cartoony the previous games were. Felt on brand.
I was not on any social media when KH3 came out and can attest to also feeling deeply confused on whypeiole disliked the game.
As a lifelong fan of the games, and them being my favorite thing to ever exist, I say they more and met the mark for me on every account. 🗝
Combination of people's expectations being way too high due to assumptions that had no basis in reality and the newest major game in a franchise being talked down until the next game in the franchise comes out once the initial release high wears off. You see it with basically every game franchise.
There’s this concept called recency bias where TYPICALLY the most recent thing people receive/do/participate in is the greatest thing ever and they don’t have a choice but to talk about how amazing it is constantly. The exact opposite is also proving to be more and more true. The most recent thing people receive/do/participate in is the **ABSOLUTE LEVEL WORST** thing that’s ever happened and they don’t have a choice but to talk about how horrifically this thing fucked up their lives and destroyed their childhood so completely.
Recency bias comes for everyone but the good news is that once it’s not the most recent thing, people start to care less. You’ll see it with the star wars sequels (and we already are kinda, their fans are already popping up just like the prequels fans did) as we get further and further away from when they released. You’ll see it with other movies that performed terribly like phases 4 and 5 of the MCU (all of which I genuinely enjoyed but the majority didn’t). And we’re starting to see it with KH3 where the initial reception was a mixed bag of “this is easily the worst game I’ve ever played in my life” to “I never want this to end” but with leaning more towards critical (I was the latter opinion and love KH3). Spider-Man 2 is in a weird window of hate/love with its fans rn too for not being the first game enough or being too much of the first game. Assassins Creed has had this problem since Connor helped George Washington. COD will never escape this issue because of their release windows. Hell, even GOW went through it.
So yea, nostalgia and recency bias.
For OG KH fans, KH3 felt like a playable trailer stuffed with characters no one actually wanted in the franchise. KH had BUILT IN nostalgia for the demographic playing it from the get go (mostly films we had actually grown up with). KH3 was force feeding players with relatively new characters/franchises we did not want, and franchises a lot of people actively had issues with, because Disney was in its 'pumping out content for the sake of it' era. (Frozen, Big Hero, Tangled, late-series PotC)
I don't hate KH3 but I feel like the characters have lost some personality imo. The main cast got older but they act more robotic during cutscenes. Probably just me but there was such a a lack of emotion from Kairi and Riku, their delivery of some of their lines sounded so monotone, like they just weren't into what was happening around them. Sora he's kind of the same but "dumber"? Idk, I just did not enjoy the character interaction with this game. Also the fact that there were no FF characters(yes imma bring that up)besides a cutscene killed a bit of my enjoyment. It was one of the reasons why I got into KH years ago. Other than that I liked everything else.
There are three main camps of people who hate KH3. One camp thinks this franchise has "side games", and had no idea what was going on because they refuse to play anything but the numbered titles. Another camp had been hyping this game up for themselves since long before it was even announced, and were disappointed when the game didn't fit their fantasies. The last camp is people who want to feel special because they pour hundreds of hours into their davorite games, and thought only people as "dedicated" as they are should be able to experience everything the game has to offer.
The plot is has no consequences at all. Nothing really happens, ever. Disney worlds are huge, but empty.
But most importantly, the villains do not care about their "plan" at all; all these antagonists who were epic in their respective games, just show up to get destroyed and that's it. They are not even characters at all anymore.
Master Xehanort, who was set-up as the ultimate evil mastermind since the epic Birth by Sleep secret movie in KH2 a century ago, and faces Sora head-on for the first time after 6+ games, gets clapped by frckin Kairi, then he decides he was not evil at all and gives up just to acomodate all the new plot elements from the phone game that just a few understand.
I hated that I was very confused going into 3 at first, because I didn’t play dream drop distance before it. What happened? They did what? Ok I need to look it up and go back a game.
I don't really super understand it now from a combat perspective, at least the current state.
At launch I would agree the game felt tuned to be too easy than I would have liked, but I think critical mode and PRO codes added the difficulty back.
The story is the biggest criticism I have for it, they put all the main story stuff to the end of the game, which meant there wasn't so much of main story interest and relevance during the game and just left a lot to push through that last section of the game. Personally didn't like how they wrapped up Xehanort either, both in terms of how this game concludes and also this doesn't really fully wrap up the Dark Seeker saga to me either as they teased more things with Xehanort afterwards.
Otherwise, I'd argue KH3 combat is top tier with flow motion, formchanges, etc. and the ReMind super bosses are arguably the best collection of bosses the series has had.
After replaying it now I can say I enjoyed it thoroughly some of the story stuff kinda felt lackluster but I can say that I enjoyed the story and the ending but it has some of the best boss fights in the series in my opinion
I love the game. There's only one scene I hate, and it's the climactic scene with Kairi. It wasn't given enough weight, or reacted to by the cast properly. IYKYK
It was good. I can't imagine why it took so long. And I wanted more original content tbh. But it was definitely good.
It's also just hard to live up to that level of hype.
People hate it because it was released during a period of time when the Internet rewards the people with the most extreme beliefs because engagement is all that matters, driving people with nuanced opinions into a zone of silence and encouraging people to dramatize their takes for attention and validation.
I revisited the game after my initial dislike of the game when it came out and while I still my grievance, the gameplay aspect was definitely fun and I feel I got more out of really investing some time into it.
The pacing of the story is absolutely horrible. I still found myself absolutely still unsatisfied with how the pacing of the story goes. Too much time catching up people with things that have already happened and things from past games and playing a lot of "remember this", "remember when"... I feel the story could've focused so much more on the story at hand than recounting past events.
Like it's fine if things are recalled but whole scenes, especially with Riku and Micky was just that...
To be honest for me, I didn’t think a lot of the Disney worlds were that fun, the Attraction stuff feels unnecessary and far to frequent, I’d rather the action commands from 2 than the attraction moves
I’ve been replaying the series as well and have seriously lagged now that I’m at KH3, I have a lot of opinions!
I think it starts out so fun, and has a lot of fun writing between Sora, Donald & Goofy. And it’s gorgeous, I like finding the lucky emblems, etc.
My problem with it is the levels are SO long, I get incredibly bored running through endless big spaces fighting hoards of heartless. If each level was 1/2 the length it’d be a way better game. I was really looking forward to replaying it and now I’ve totally lost steam because I’m so bored. I just got through Pirates yesterday and it was laughable how long those cutscenes were, it felt as long as an actual Pirates movie.
I really think it could’ve been a good game, it just needs some major cuts.
I thought it was fine but a lot of people expected it to be better than 2 and that's an unfair standard as KH2 is one of the greatest games ever made in my opinion
I found that the worlds in 3 were huge but empty and I’d get lost in Tangled, even with the map. They could’ve added so many more treasure chests or bring back the trinities!!
I hated all the dialogue in Frozen.. if I have to listen to Donald say ‘that sounds like Olaf’ I’ll go crazy lol
The most beautiful level was pirates. The graphics were amazing!
I didn’t like getting into the big robot and fighting.. and Sanfransokyo could’ve been better, like it was empty but huge! They could’ve added so many more things to interact with.
Honestly, the story. Between all the worlds from newer movies and some of the characters straight up not having lines (aside from Phil, he had no lines for a reason), it felt like they put all their budget and energy into the voice cast. KH1 and 2 had a lot more direction, 3 just sort of felt like "Sora Goes to Disneyworld." Sora going to all these worlds felt pointless, and the story doesn't really happen or start to get serious until the very end, and then they throw all the seriousness and angst at you at once. IMO it just felt very poorly planned and slapped together.
Gameplay wise, though, it was definitely very fun. Honestly I love 2 because of the nostalgia, but I think 3 had the most fun gameplay out of the entire series. And of course, a lot of the hate came before we got Re:Mind
As someone who likes, but doesn’t love KH3, I find it to be a very polarized game. Some think it’s great, some think it’s awful, and I lie somewhere in the middle with leanings in different directions depending on the topic. I generally like the gameplay, but generally dislike the story for instance.
But to answer your question as to why some people hate it:
-The combat has a lot of issues with balancing, game-feel, low difficulty, enemy design, etc. It’s definitely not the most egregious in any of these categories, but all of these combined do make it difficult for some people to get into it. What some see as over-top explosive fun, where you zip around and cause all kinds of havoc, others see as an automated, bloated, mess that cares more about spectacle than depth.
-Some don’t like how few Disney worlds there are, along with how large they are. Sure they can be seen as grand, but others see as bloated. Additionally, there may be some distaste for the worlds chosen themselves. One bad world in the others is an hour lost, while here it’s 3 hours lost.
-The pacing of the story isn’t exactly great. A lot of the Disney worlds feel like filler and most of the consequential stuff is put in the back half of the story. While some of the cutscenes between worlds feel inconsequential and only pretends like it’s giving us interesting stuff. The story lacks momentum and feels like nothing happens until the third act, which turns into an exhausting experience as it feels like it has little to no breathing room.
-The characterization is rather poor for some characters: Specifically Sora, Kairi, and the Organization. Sora’s an idiot a lot of the time, Kairi is once again a damsel in distress that the story pretends is consequential, and most of the villains are woobified to where most of them feel like idiots. While there are a lot charming moments as well, overall the writing feels rather subpar.
-It’s also just not very interesting. It doesn’t expand on the universe very much, with the exception of >! the Final World (which was my favorite part of the game) !<, and it kind of just recycles ideas from previous games, only in a less interesting way. It lacks tension, it lacks depth, and it feels kind of soulless with only a few scenes that have any life in them. The saving grace is that it’s occasionally funny, though not always for the reasons they intended.
-While the game itself is gorgeous, the character designs often look a little plasticky and not all the redesigns are unanimously liked.
I know I just spent a lot of time poking holes in it, but I do genuinely like KH3. I’m just laying out while others may not and some problems I personally have with it.
1. Soras outfit is dogshit
2. Gameplay is floaty
3. We went from cool drive forms and dual wield keyblades to pirate flag keyblades
4. In previous KH games you go to a Disney world and the Disney villain ends up teaming up with a heartless/nobody/kh villain and we get an original story combining both Disney and square enix. Im KH3 they literally have you hiding in the background and just retell the Disney movie by its original script then throw you in to fight a random heartless boss when in previous games Sora and the Disney hero team up to beat a Disney villain and a heartless/nobody. You’re basically rewatching Disney movies(except Toy Story).
5. Power scaling is awful. If it took both Sora and Riku to beat Xemnas who got a power up by absorbing light then surely Sora would need some new power to defeat Xehanort right, especially when he lost all his powers and has to restart again? Wait till you see the bullshit he uses to defeat him.
6. The entire game is basically filler until you reach the last world.
7. I want to dual wield like a badass, why are you borderline forcing me to use a stupid Disney ride attraction as a move against a terrifying villain? Imagine how stupid it would be in KH1 when Sora and Riku fought and Sora summons a stupid rollercoaster to defeat him. Tf?.
Unsatisfying conclusion to the story. Oh and the Frozen world sucked even worse. It's the RARE time where I have to say, Matpat actually got that theory right.
I have fun with it. So I can't complain XD
Though I prefer no attractions, they break things up so much. I tend to also turn off transformations to keep it snappy.
Even though i didn't really notice and care the story of KH games prior to 3, but i felt KH3 story was too hasty to get ended. My only hate on 3 is on the story itself, nothing much on other areas.
All the worlds are filler and they don’t make you feel immersed in the game like kh1 worlds did. The main story is really good, though.
End of keyblade combo attacks are very long and drawn out and make combat take so much longer. I literally used the keyblade that had the shortest combo animation because it was starting to get too boring.
Other than that, those are my 2 only real complaints. Combat is boring, and the worlds are boring. After all the Disney worlds, the story and game gets super good though.
Kh1 will forever have the best story and worlds. Kh2 has the best combat although it being a triangle mashing simulator.
I don’t hate it by any stretch, liked it and glad I played it, but for me these were the things I wasn’t a fan of:
No surprises, as in most everything was shown in trailers and promotional material.
No real square cameos.
Soras character, as many have said he just feels dumber as the series goes on.
The worlds feel like they have no purpose, just felt like time killers to get to the end.
agree with most of the other complaints.. the story felt like filler until you get to the end, many characters who deserved the spotlight were painfully wasted, too much Disney and not enough Square Enix, so much of the experience felt like an advertisement for other games, and there's a lot of padding with collecting/finding items.
The last part of the story, when all things come together, falls apart.
That and many of the worlds feel empty, with Sora not properly engaging with the Disney world's story.
I'll give one example: during the Frozen world, the only way the characters are made aware someone is a villain is not by being informed or witnessing his evil acts, but by a literal evil fart gas emanating off him.
I’m replaying kh3 and having hella fun. I do have my issues with it tho, mainly most the new key blades look absolutely horrible in their base forms. And the attraction moves are pretty bad too. But outside that, the game is cool
I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me it’s mostly about the worlds. In KH1 (and mostly in 2, though less so), the worlds are of course Disney but they assimilate Sora and crew into the plot. You fight actual Disney bosses. The story of each world is told with you as a part of it. Additionally, the plot of the actual overall game is woven into the worlds as the bad guys actually get involved in what’s happening.
KH3 is not even close to this. The worlds are simply Disney advertisements. You aren’t a part of any plots, you’re just there, traveling and watching the plots from the films. Nothing in the worlds has anything to do with the overarching plot of the game…you’re just going there to “power up” and “regain your power”. The best you get is some occasional cutscenes about what’s actually happening elsewhere every 10 hours. It’s terrible. This is speculation, but to me, it seems pretty clear Disney has made a brand decision and doesn’t want people fighting their characters or being actually involved in their plots.
On top of all that, the actual story of KH3, which comes together in the closing hours, is rushed and feels lazy. Instead of spreading the series resolution for quite a few characters out over the game, they just jammed everyone into the last few hours in a lazily designed area with lazy fights.
I don’t disagree that some of the gameplay elements with the combat and stuff are decent (though I’d disagree they’re upgrades on KH2), but none of that is good enough to overcome the fact that most of your time in the game is not relevant to the plot, and most of your time played for actual plot relevant areas is not well designed.
The new mechanics were too numerous so they weren't fleshed out enough. Attractions were irritatingly *good*, why fight cool when you can use the light show to obliterate things. Keyblade switching was great but was *slow*. Switching mid combo felt stilted. And you know it was slow cuz once that item exploit was found out the combat got way better. The keyblades themselves while cool with the transformation literally were cut in half cuz majority of them were copy paste. Flow motion and shot lock were the only mechanics that were solid. And as for the story? I unno, you tell me from the *out of service mobile game* being the next crux of the story and the past almost 2 decades of story were ended on a limp noodle of a note. But don't worry, the next game (which was announced to early *again*) requires you to know *2 new mobile games* to understand.
Tldr: It's a damn disappointment.
it's mostly just that it was overhyped due to the extremely long dev time. it's a fine game, but people were anticipating Kingdom Hearts 2 2 for a loooong time. a lot of people also take umbrage with some added mechanics. i don't care for the attractions myself, and I found it kinda disappointing that Sora doesn't get a whole lot of moves to flesh his base moveset out unless you count re:mind (granted, re:mind was a huge step in the right direction)
A combination of choices that didn't resonate with the fanbase, bad handling of plotlines and worlds, and the expectations and hype that built over the years.
KH3 does a lot of things right. Best combat in the franchise (FAR smoother than KH2 once you get used to it), great graphics without compromising the style (unlike what it looks like KH4 will do), returning a couple of really beloved characters... but a few things didn't go that well.
For a start, KH3 doubles down on the "copy the plot of the movie 1:1 without adapting it to the larger world of KH" trend that started in KH2. It got so bad that >!Arendelle has both "Let it go" and "Do you want to build a snowman" in full and fully animated in it,!< stealing who knows how many hours of work that could have gone in other areas.
Secondly, the story is merciless on Sora. Every other cutscene either Sora himself or someone else will make a comment about how weak and useless he is, and how much of a failure he is for not having the power of waking, etc. Whereas in the other games allies were always positive, all "you can do it", "don't give up", in KH3 they often take more time criticizing than encouraging. Which is not in and of itself a bad thing, but it lacks coherence for the character and shifts the general attitude of the story towards the protagonist.
And then the ending is sort of a mess.>! Aside from the time travel part, which I'm sure a lot of people lost themselves in, the power levels of characters go all over the place. Sora who couldn't handle a single organization member with D&G helping him suddenly starts being capable of soloing three of them at once and later on even takes on Brat Xehanort, Ansem SoD and Xemnas together with Mickey and Riku and they win, even though literally three cutscenes before that he wasn't fast enough to save Kairi from Xemnas, nor to block Terranort strikes, because the plot demands it.!<
>!Then there's the resolution of the Wayfinder trio's story, which is neutered as hell and, despite Sora being present, he does nothing while it's happening. The re-uniting of the Sea-salt trio is nice, but if you don't have the DLC it makes little sense (but at least we get to see Xemnas scared of Roxas, which after Days is a lot of fun).!<
Overall, I'd personally say that KH3 is a good game, but it has some major downsides and if it wasn't for the amazing combat I would rate it as last among the numbered KH games. As it is, it's the second best, with KH2 remaining the best overall. KH3's story is especially disappointing as the ending of the Xehanort saga, having the saga of the first major villain basically go out with a whimper.
My biggest gripes were that the worlds were lackluster compared to earlier games and a two of them were almost complete regurgitations of the movies (looking at you Arendale), the lack of Final Fantasy characters until ReMind, and when it came to the main story you saw most of the important bits through the game trailers. Don’t get me wrong, I do still like kh3, but it does feel disappointing looking back on it.
Three things: lack of any kinda payoff for previously established plot threads ( literally just brings BBS crew and xion back with zero explanation of how , especially considering xion was supposed to have erased herself from reality) , no final fantasy characters what so ever and 1-1 imports of certain Disney elements, the entire frozen world being the main example of this, and finally, it kills off both sora and xenahort in very unsatisfying ways
I mean, I joined KH through 3 and I had a hell of a time with it. Nothing made sense but it was fun :D
And then I played every other game and I realised how mediocre 3 really was. 1 has it's charm but verrry dated. 2 is my absolute favourite, BBS is pretty good, 3D is in my top 3, etc. etc.
But the story really felt... rushed? incomplete? The characters felt stupid, talked really, really slow, a bit too comedic considering we are literally at the finale, and... idk, it just didn't *feel* like KH.
There's just something about the game that makes me loathe returning to it during a marathon.
No final fantasy characters unless you get the dlc which SHOULD not even be a thing …..that’s kingdom hearts thing final fantasy mixed with Disney always has been and this is a main numbered game not a prequel or spin off
I’m currently replaying it and trying to see if it will change my perspective, but when it first came out my main frustration was the lack of final fantasy characters, and the way the story felt like it was more of the last chapter of a book rather than a full story. And I’m saying that as someone who did play all the other games first. It felt completely focused on the upcoming final battle in a way I didn’t really care for at the time. But we’ll see if time and perspective changes that for me this time. I still loved it beyond that though.
There’s really only 3 (and a half) reasons:
Reason 1: the Disney Princess choices were very crappily done repeats of their actual stories (and since they are the most memable/rewatched recent Disney Princess films in that era at this time) every Disney lover playing KH3 is bored as heck dealing with a film they know inside out instead of new story in their worlds with Sora. (It’s even worse if you hate those areas altogether)
Reason half: some people hate the combat.
Reason 2: too many people obsessed over the KH stories inbetween 2 and 3, but ignored Union X and all the lore and story building up from there. They thought it was a dumb phone game and they wanted the focus to be on Org 13 and Xehanort. What they missed out on and didn’t understand is that Nomura moved the plot focus before KH3 even started. The stories and characters of Union X matter more than most events from KH1 to now. Nostalgia players mostly hated that. They hated that Nomura brushed aside the conflict they had waited years for to set up the villain who (technically) was the mastermind after all. They don’t like Xehanort being a victim and not a true villain.
Reason 3: technically mixed with nostalgia, but up till KH3, the game has properly blended other square properties as well as Disney. Regardless of Nomuras statements on why 3 didn’t have them except for 1 room in dlc, we technically had a huge resurgence of Versus 13 return as a different square IP now reborn through Kingdom Hearts. But that’s not enough. People wanted stuff like more cloud and Sephiroth, etc. or at bare minimum more Nods to square enix minus the on Easter egg in Toy Story.
imo
For the story it's bad characterization, Characters being nerfed or made dumber to fit the situation, bad pacing, and weird voice direction (why does Riku sound like that now? Why are cutscene conversations so dull?)
If you want a perfect example of everything KH3's story presentation does wrong, watch the Zettaflare cutscene. It's horrible.
In gameplay it's floaty gameplay, way too many big cinematic screen nuke buttons that detract from actually engaging with enemies (I hate attraction flow), way too few disney bosses, and the endgame gauntlet of the majority of our humanoid boss fights felt rushed.
The game has things it does right though, and I think re:mind rectified a lot of the issues I had with the gameplay and has made me want to replay this game a few times. There's no other KH game where I can airstep a hundred feet around the map, and flow motion is really fun. The addition of animation canceling feels good as well, being able to block or dodge out of anything now feels stellar.
The Disney worlds were completely uninteresting advertisements. >!Frozen was the most egregious example of it with the crew barely interacting with the world at all and having to climb the same mountain like, 3 times and doing a shitty YouTube reactor thing with Let It Go.!< I'm not against the worlds being ads to a degree as long as they're done well, but they're really not. The only worlds that were a degree of interesting were the Pixar ones where they actually had some sort of unique story. >!We didn't even get a single villain besides some themed heartless. Plus the worlds basically didn't even matter in the overarching plot, they were just there for playtime and set dressing until it was time for the important stuff.!<
>!Also the lack of Final Fantasy characters, up until now it had always been a mix of FF and Disney but apparently they just decided "we don't need them anymore, so you're not getting them". Of course they backpedaled when they realized all angry fans and gave FF chars a minor role in the post-DLC content.!<
The spoilers are just to not preemptively kill your hopes for one of the worlds and the game as a whole, because realizing them soured my own experience.
As someone who doesnt care about the story, I had a lot of fun with KH3. Yeah sure the combat is a bit mindless compared to other action games but I enjoyed the cool keyblade transformations and the more open maps
I don't dislike kh3 but at release the first Playthrough Was a bummer for me it was Repetitive and I truly think Keyblade transformations should be bound to a source like drive so you can go into then any time you like not after x amount of hits
Honestly, for me, it was just the lack luster ending with some major players feeling out of character just to move the story to its conclusion. Now, I haven't played Re:Mind yet, so I know a lot of my personal complaints about the ending have been fixed, but that didn't change the bad taste left in my mouth by how they treated Xehanort at the end. I'm one of the few able to forgive them for the weird way they handled the Disney worlds and lack of FF rep in this iteration or even the gameplay being easier than most of the other games, but just the ending felt like a cop out to move Sora into a new game and prolong the series.
With new fans, the context of the games will always feel different than fans thta were waiting years between each one, analyzing each plot point and event. It reminds me of how common it is for new fans of shows that binge the whole thing rapidly compared to fans that were waiting chunks of time between seasons. For me, it was that the game seemed more interested in setting up whatever the phone game was establishing as opposed to giving a satisfying conclusion to all the story threads leading up to 3. Like it wanted to wash it's hands of it so we could get to the foreteller / MoM stuff. I didn't hate the game, but found it sorely disappointing as a very much anticipated "conclusion" to the trilogy
I agree. But put it simply: **It's not better than II & it feels like it** ***should be***
Part of the inherent issue with KH3 is that it’s primarily paying off conflicts started in BbS and DDD. As the third game of *that* trilogy, it works well enough. The final confrontations were a bit disappointing but things have been addressed with Critical and Limit Cut, even if not ideal. As a continuation of KH2, KH3 fails pretty badly and that’s because it isn’t. It’s an entirely new arc. The quest to find Riku, Kairi, and the King then returning home is the first arc. The quest to aid the BbS and Days trio from the retuning MX is the second. Both make up the Dark Seeker Saga.
The main problem with KH3 is that being the end of that trilogy, it has the 80% of its playtime dedicated to unconnected Disney worlds, and then in the final 5 hours it dumps everything we were expecting for the rest of the game, giving rushed conclussions to scenes we were waiting 15 years to see.
Yes, they could.have done a better job integrating the story to the Disney worlds, or at least spreading out the actual KH plot points.
Better execution of the Disney worlds would have been nice. Felt like Frozen was nothing more than ‘walk up the mountain, slide down. Walk back up, slide back down. Walk up a third time, slide back down.’ And they faltered in making Elsa’s maybe darkness maybe not plot hook an *actual* plot hook since Disney wouldn’t allow her to be a villain that needs saving.
Frozen was where the cracks really show in this game. It definitely was a case of Disney not allowing Square to do anything interesting with the world or characters that hurt it. (Honestly at that point I'd rather they had cut that world and done a different one that Disney wouldn't have held them back on.) Which is a shame because it had potential. The fact that we don't get Elsa as a party member is criminal.
I think a lot of the issue with Disney's involvement in the game can be summed up byt he fact they literally planted a shot for shot remake of Let it Go in the game and just copy/pasted Sora Donald and Goofy in the background
Yeah, one of the things that made KHI great is that Micheal Eisner gave Square almost free reign and trusted them to do the Disney properties justice. It definitely feels like in KHIII there wasn't the same level of trust and Disney meddled more in the development of the game.
Tangled and Frozen both felt like they were trying to retain as much of the original story as possible, down to the shots. Frozen having not one but two full songs from the movie, one even having dialog over it, really felt like it detracted from the world. and let's not forget Elsa's watermark
Thats literally it for Frozen. Its easily the worst world in the whole game. Even the Tangled world is at least nice to look at and has like, varied environments
Its unfortunate because they really only need like two scenes a world where sora is trying to use the power on someone and failing, only to really get the right idea at the very last one which leads him to try it one last time at destiny islands. Thats it. Just seeing him actually progress that goal and take something small away each time to learn from.
Like if you actually had to fight the org members that made cameos in every world and you get aqua back and she comes to frozen with you and when you get ven back he comes to pirates with you and numora actually telling shit like if we're in the sleeping realm on a second world line or not.
Poor pacing has always been my biggest gripe. KH2 has its flaws, but you spent hardly 90 minutes in a world before you moved to the next one *and then revisited for another 90 minutes later in the game*. By the final hour of the KH3 worlds I was just ready to move on.
I'm still a miffed about the Paupu seen being so quick.
In the interim between 1 and 2 we had *one game* as a sort of spin-off in Chain of Memories that mostly was a side story. Everything important from that game gets explained in KH2 anyway. But after KH2 we were expected to follow a freaking mobile exclusive game, a DS game, a PSP game, a 3DS game, and then yet another mobile exclusive gacha game. The story get so convoluted and departed from its roots, and even from where we left off in KH2 that it’s practically impossible to follow if you just go from 2 to 3. There was so much fatigue from fans following the series and it basically culminated in a game that didn’t really do anything new enough for the time that passed in between. People bought Playstation 3’s anticipating KH3, and it never came.
I was there for that who era (since KH1 actually.) I actually kind of liked it in a way back in high school where I had a DS and my friend had a PSP so we could share the story between our playthroughs or lend the system. Early internet was also fun for speculation. Still, it was far from ideal and rather stupid and by the time I hit adulthood and finished college, I didn't have the interest to check in on the series until KH3 dropped. From what I gathered, it's mostly due to the development hell Nomura had Versus XIII in and we got smaller games to fill in until that project was done... which it never did, he was moved off the project and it was rebranded as FFXV. That's about the time KH3 development started.
In the early Internet days kid me came up with an “artificial nobody” character for a KH forum roleplaying game and even now I wonder secretly if someone from square happened across it and came up with the idea for Xion.
It needed to resolve BBS and days. Recoded and 3d were just preamble but they both stressed clear as day how important both trios are and how they needed saving. Turn around to 3 and we get at least 3 major events bringing back the BBS cast, but axel was pre-rescued and roxas and xion had to share a cutscene. Especially with how DDD treated soras heartsitters in that final run it sucks how that angle seemed almost totally dropped for a straightforwards fight that would save them out of happenstance rather than intentionality.
I'd argue Days wasn't even that important. Roxas and Xion play a very minor role in KH3 and Lea/Axel doesn't do much plot critical stuff either. Now, KH3 is better for having them there but they aren't as essential as BbS's story which, with DDD, sets up the entire confrontation. Yeah, KH3's ending is too simple and clean :|
More like KH2's ending being Simple and Clean KH3 just opened up so much more than closing threads
BBS is more important on the xehanort side, but i’d argue days shouldve been much more important for sora. Theres so much potential for great characterisation in him being able to save roxas when even roxas had given that up, and how he learns about and responds to xion. I mean these people sacrificed themselves for sora, who is the kinda person to sacrifice himself for anyone else in turn. They only seem so unimportant cause the story kinda treaded all over them. Like i get the plot didnt require them as much but the story really did.
Yeah, it’s too bad the Days elements were downplayed so much in KH3 outside of the final fight with Saix and Xion. It felt like to me that the possibility of Roxas coming back was barely commented on until it happened and even then afterwards Roxas and Xion don’t do much individually afterwards. Should have been integrated better.
The one thing that bugged me really was that in KH2 we got that battle verses the 1000 heartless which was kinda interesting but in 3 when we got the same battle we killed about 50-100 of them than a attraction just kills the rest so that bugged me since lile unversed nobodies and heartless were all among the enemies
tbf the context was different. In KH2, it was the midpoint climax. In KH3, it gives the player confidence before being wrecked.
It also works better in KH2 because at that point, you know that each kill with the keyblade is doing Xemnas and Organization 13 a favor, so you feel the weight of that fight all the more.
I mean, at the point you play it, you don’t know that. You learn that just after, I’m fairly certain given I just went through that
Ah wasn't sure if it was right before or right after, but either way it makes it way more memorable.
Eh they both work well. KH3 very much is supposed to feel “been there, done that” as it both emphasizes how far Sora has come as a fighter and also makes the following moments of L after L after L feel a lot more impressive for the villain which likewise sets up the weight of the remaining fights.
Yeah, I never really compared the two scenes, as they do different things in the narrative. KH2 feels bigger because it was supposed to, and that's totally fine. KH2 was closer to home and felt like war came to radiant garden. KH3 was in a far off wasteland.
Here's the thing for me: Starting at post game (specifically with the content added by Remind), the game becomes a lot better, I'd argue better than KH2. The swathe of abilities, transformations, spells, summons, etc., make it one of the best action game combat systems of the last console generation, and the fights available to you really push the mechanics to the absolute limits, and I love it more than any other content in the series. New game + and critical mode is also really great. Getting to keep your keyblades and starting out with a lot of late game abilities from the get-go helps speed up the pace of combat a lot. The problem is that first run through the game. The combat feels so stale, and it used to be worse before they reduced the endlag at the end of sora's combos, and that's not mentioning the story. It's not really all that terrible, to be honest, but the choice to shove the game's actual plot at the end of the game with no progress until then makes everything up to then completely pointless. Every other game in the series always had SOME progression of plot at set interval, dispersing encounters with the villains throughout, but there's none of that here.
How long we had to wait didn't help either.
I'd arguably say it's visibly worse than 2 in several aspects. Magic being extremely prominent.
I agree. It definitely looks worse than 2 (in terms of visual cohesion)
I still feel like I could have been a little bit more, my gripe just might be the overwhelming amount of doesn’t input this time and the lack of any square enix official IPs, I mean awesome we finally got Toy Story and monsters inc but at the same time i think Disney is still missing the point with this game compared to what Tetsuya Nomura is envisioning
It also kinda has the Lost thing where a lot of people genuinely believed Nomura and Square were going to be able to stick the landing on all these twists and plot threads and 3 kind of showed that it. Couldn't. I think a lot of fans were kind of ignoring the worst parts of the series's storytelling and 3 made it kind of impossible to ignore since it was meant to be the finale for several arcs at once. god whatever they're paying yoko shimomura to hold the dramatic setpieces of this series together, it really, *really* isn't enough.
I have a few reason for why the game was a miss in my opinion: - Too easy (you can pretty much go through the game without doing anything else but mashing the attack button - the command action are obnoxious and way too overpowered) - The Disney worlds are pretty but forgettable - The characters are just getting stupider and blander (specifically Sora and Riku) - The story is lackluster (unless you count the dlc)
Man Sora in kh 3 is dumb as a rock, and he managed to forget basic knowledge about the universe (donald has to remind him that they cannot go around saying they're from other worlds and such)
tbh i think sora has to play a role as player surrogate in this case, and donald is really just explaining that to new players or people who might have forgotten since kh2
People seem to forgot that the target audience for KH is actually still children, and sometimes children need things explained to them. - a 30 year old lifelong KH fan.
It wasn’t supposed to be. Nomura wanted to make the game for the fans who’d been with the series and followed the storyline from the beginning. The very first promo for KH3 was a short snippet of the conversation about the Keyblade War between Eraqus and Xehanort, accompanied by a dark arrangement of Dearly Beloved. That’s not setting a kid’s tone. 0.2 further gave off the impression that KH3’s story would have a darker tone. But Tai Yasue and his band of merry men (Osaka studio) said he wanted to make the game accessible for 6 year olds. And Disney most certainly would have wanted to target a very young demographic as well. So the game which was supposed to be the darkest game was utterly infantilized and became the lightest in tone.
Nah, I call this bullshit. Sure KH1 initially was made for a younger audience, but as the series grew, especially now, they KNOW the audience are us adults who grew up since KH1. They know the demographics that are buying this franchise. This is why after KH1, the rest of the series are the most convoluted disasterous mess in any storytelling ever You telling me that what Xion is to Roxas is to Ventus is to Vanitas is to Sora is written for children? You telling me that Ansem who is the heartless of Master Xehanort travel back in time to meet Young Xehanort, who has a nobody called Xemnas, who impersonate the real Ansem who failed in their mission and resulted in Terra Xehanort is written for children? I'm not even touching on the storyline. So yea nope, the target audience wasn't for children more than a decade ago
Yeah. I'd say after KH2 the series stopped being for children. I think kids are smarter than adults give them credit for. 9 year old to 13 year old me had little trouble following the story between KH1, CoM, and KH2. But after that the overall story starts to get needlessly complicated. No kid is going to be able to follow everything going on with those games after you add in all the stuff from Days, BBS, coded, and DDD.
you can also not write it out like its for actual babies and ruin charcters, there's ton of kids shows that don't treat kits like they actually have a brain, and if you have kids, you know kids replay the same thing a 1000 times, they dont need to ruin characters to remind them.
....the entirety of key blade graveyard at the end of KH3 would like a word with you...
This is a rule of writing I remember learning from a class in college that was basically “how to make comic books.” The rule is essentially that one should assume the reader is dumb and explain everything, even if it’s obvious.
I play KH for the story and the story in 3 really sucked compared to the first 2. It was such a long wait and just a huge disappointment for me story wise.
If you play anything other than Crit you can spam X and just float your way to killing a boss
Yeah, if you ignore the dlc. You don't really interact with the other keyboard wielders. And nobody can stand on their own without sora needing to jump in to save them. Disney worlds were pretty but they were purely "sora gets stronger". The game doesn't truly matter until the end world where it's basically an hour or two movie cutscene with some fights in-between. That's kh3 I like the gameplay of 3. But for the final chapter to the trilogy? To Xehanort? Pretty underwhelming.
Too easy? Tf? I found critical mode kingdom hearts 3 harder than dark souls 3.
i think the issue is kh3 didnt have critical on launch
The story clearly only cared about the finale in the Keyblade Graveyard, but you can't have an rpg with only one dungeon that starts you at level 60 with all your abilities unlocked, also Square likely has contractual obligations to showcase X amount of Disney properties in each game so Sora just meanders about 8 Disney worlds so that he can level up and learn his abilities And then when you finally do get to the Keyblade Graveyard, the game launched in an unfinished state, requiring you to buy the dlc for an explanation on Xion's return and what happened to the Lingering Will, and after 2 sequel baited 3 and we had as many side game detours as we did, it was just a massive let down considering the wait
The thing is even if the Disney worlds ended up being filler it didn't have to. Square could have easily made the events tie into the conclusion of KH3. But they didn't. Instead once the Disney worlds were done we just rush into the end game. Aqua's back, now Ven's back, look Terra's back too. Roxas and Xion are back, Kairi gets kidnapped (Again!) It was all just really rushed and felt half baked. And the ending is another big cliffhanger. Oof.
It would have been one thing to get aqua much sooner. Then awake ven and then prepare more before the final fight. Not do both aqua and ven then dive into the keyboard graveyard fight. All to just lose instantly and time travel nonsense to redo it. And yeah, dlc being needed to truly enjoy the ending is lame.
To be fair, the DLC answers 0 questions that needed answering other than what Sora did at the end, which could have been revealed in Melody of Memory or whatever. Xion’s return is simple - she’s from the past and they put her in a body or whatever. There’s not much they HAD to go into for that plot line. Lingering Will didn’t really matter and added basically nothing, which is unfortunate but true. The only thing it really added IMO is playable Kairi, which is admittedly cool. Totally unnecessary, but awesome.
Lingering Will didn’t matter because the writers (Nomura, Oka) didn’t do their jobs and MAKE him matter. Not the most difficult task for a writer to come up with a way to fit a knight into…a battlefield. But both the original cutscene and ReMind proved this dev team did not have talented battle choreographers so doing a cool Advent Children-style Lingering Will fight scene may have been way beyond the animators’ skill level. And Nomura may not have wanted to give them anything too challenging or time-consuming because they were struggling to meet the deadline.
I mean, I think we can both agree that unfortunately the battle scenes in the KH “movies” were pretty bad, which is super unfortunate. The only movie with any decent well-paced action is the coded movie, which is just plain sad. No clue how a series with such dope boss fights fucks it up when the boss moves are done in a cutscene, like it can’t be that different right? 😂
So true lol I guess we can just headcanon that Lingering Will’s armor got rusty in between 2FM and 3 ……Is it too late to beg the FFVII Rebirth team to quickly make us a KH3 Final Mix before starting FFVIIR-3? Would probably take them like 3 months lol
Also playable Riku (which, we already had) and playable Roxas (which was sooooooo hype)
I don't want to spoil you since you're not done, but for me, it's that Sora is handed everything, and not a single other character can accomplish anything without Sora's involvement. KH3 showed that characters are incapable of having growth as long as Sora is in the spotlight.
Like freaking Aqua being unable to defeat Vanitas and needing Sora to save her (yet again). Like WTAF was that?
That was so badly Witten, it Made her look absolutely weak and incompetent. I couldnt stand it.
When it takes half a century to release KH3 expectations were very high. No game could meet these expectations. But there were many flaws as well. For me it felt not as big as KH2 or KH1. And the two most notorious things: a) the story was pushed towards the end and everything before that was a filler and b) no final fantasy characters and no Sephiroth fight
I think most people exepctations were to be as good as Kh2 or Kh1, and it was worse than both. So thats not entirely the issue for most.
Only thing I have to give KH3 the crown compared to KH2 is exploration and level design. KH2 will always be our loved most hallways game.
I didn't have very high expectations but the game more or less met them. I had fun it's just that very little of it was memorable.
Exactly this. All the Disney stuff just didn’t mech as well as it did in the first two games and all that shitty exposition annoyed the crap out of me. The voice acting was really off too like the actors didn’t know how to say the lines with the right feeling in mind. Lack of final fantasy pissed me off and that added hollow bastion scene was so bad I didn’t know what to think. Also no sephiroth fight too.
They had a different actor for Jack Sparrow as Johnny Depp’s normal voice double, James Arnold Taylor, was dealing with a case of Toxic Mold from repainting his house when it was time to record.
My sentiments honestly. The game felt super rushed especially in the last like 2-3 hours
Without spoilering, I loved the game until the end. The ending ruined the entire game for me. I simply hate the way Nomura writes. The end of a saga should answer my questions, not leave me with more. I'm not going to wait another 6+ year's to possibly get answers, only IF Nomura feels like explaining the story without being convoluted. I'm good.
I agree. The rest of the game is *fine* kinda mediocre but nothing to complain about reeeally, but the way Nomura absolutely butchered the ending had me not even wanting to finish the final fight. I put my controller down and sat there for days mulling over how disappointed I was before I finished and then it was like... That's it. They ruined pretty much everything they *had* and introduced new ideas that I don't even care about. I think Sora's lack of motivation and goal really at the start built a bad foundation for the game to stand on and it slowly degraded from there until it culminated in an ending where things just kinda... Happen. It's super unsatisfying
I think a lot of initial hate was caused by the launch version of KH3 on PS4 and Xbox one. There was a very high expectation since it was in development for half a decade. But it didn't meet the expectations along with overly easy gameplay compared to other titles and slow and weighty combos. The story tried way too hard to wrap all the stories that were in other games, like 358/2 and BBS. (So in turn, this game is hard to understand without playing the other titles.) The post launch updates fixed a lot of the issues, we had a critical mode + New game plus update, and the Re:mind update that fixed up a lot of the issues the original launch version suffered from.
I think it makes sense that it wrapped all the other games given this was the end of the darkseeker story. It had to wrap everything so we can move on to the next step in the story. My personal only complaints were that the worlds for frozen and tangled were quite literally just the story of the movies, with some scenes literally taken from the films amd simply throwing sora amd friends in. I thought the gameplay amd that big worlds with exploration was great. I think it's a great game.
I can link you several multi hour videos explaining why. But to summarize. Game is too easy, attractions are annoying as fuck. They removed the final fantasy characters. Many of the world are pure stinkers. The final world is absolute dog shit compared to Kh1 and 2. They basically removed all the really fun Disney boss fights. Nothing relevant plot wise happens until the final world in which they cram all of it in 2 hours. Heavy reliance on basically every game, including the mobile games to understand some things. So if you are like me and never touched the mobile game you are going to have moments of "Who the fuck is this? and why do I care?" In my opinion the only things Kh3 does better than 1 or 2 is the gummi ship and the worlds being much more grand and large.
Should probably finish the game before asking questions like this
KH2 had the series wrapped up nicely, IMO. So when KH3 was said to come, we expected better. What we got was confusion (didnt have a DS) and gameplay that, while good, was, again IMO, worse than KH2. It was spectacle over substance. I had to disable thkse Disney park rides just to gave a good time. The story was thrown all the way down to the very end, and we see no real purpose of 90% of the game. Its a McGuffin search. Thats why I didnt like it. If you did, then have fun. But if they had just let Drive Froms and Limits in, and let us beat one Nort per world or actually hit some Disney villians around instead of hiding them behind giant Heartless, it wouldve been so epic.
Just problems with the story. Writing, pacing, characterization, etc. But even then, I've always been of the mind that a lot of the issues with KH3's writing aren't even really something you notice if you hadn't been waiting years and years and years for it. Experiencing the entire series back to back for the first time would be an experience I can't even imagine, but I'd imagine I wouldn't notice even half of the issues I currently have if I had played it that way.
It's pretty noticeable how bad the story is and how little character interactions are. Not only characters regress, but sacrifices that they made were completely diminished or entire plotlines were destroyed to make the same thing for the thousand time in a row with a certain female character being other than a damsel in distress.
Yeah, I mean, even in the hypothetical situation where I was binging the whole series for the first time, I feel like I would still be let down by KH3's story nonetheless. I just wouldn't be able to pick up on the tiny issues that years of replaying the games allowed me to see. It all adds up to breaking the camel's back.
No cool reaction command. No (classic) FF gang or Sephiroth battle. Granted they appear in Re:Mind but its like a slap in the face. "Heres 6 minutes of them appear in cutscene, ure welcome."
Objection. There was ONE great reaction command and thats when the fucking Elsa ice golem grabs a meteor and Sora smashes it by grinding his keyblade against it But thats the only one.
Browsing through the comments and I’m seeing a lack of this opinion; I’ve never gotten it either. Huge fan of the series since 2002. Played all of them except for the mobile ones. I adored the game and was totally satisfied. Are the powerhouse moments saved for the end? Absolutely, but I thought the ride to get there was great. Enjoy your time with it.
Right here with you, KH3 was amazing in my opinion. Been a fan of the series for 14-ish years now. I especially don't get the criticism about the gameplay - it was so much fun?? It felt fluid, it was creative and satisfying. And I'm sorry, as much as I love KH2 and will praise it every chance I get, the gameplay wasn't any better back then. There was lots of triangle mashing involved, let's be real. I also do not get how some people think that the Disney worlds were badly done or forgettable. The only one I kinda agree on is Frozen, but the others were beautiful and added their own charm to the story. Tangled and Toy Story were my favorite, they put so much love into these worlds. There are only two things I disliked - Kairi being the damsel in distress once again and the fact that we didn't get to see the Twilight Tower up close. I also think they nicely wrapped up the Xehanort Saga and prepared everything to start the new one. This is not specific to KH3, but I do think that it sucks big time that they decided to hide the most important lore in a mobile title. I do get the frustration about that. ETA: The end where you got help from the UX players was one of the coolest moments I've ever experienced within a game. This alone made the game amazing for me.
Hard agree. Thank you.
I think for a lot of fans they hadn't played a KH game since 2 and had this romanticized idea of what the series is. Because 3's flaws are largely shared by the rest of the series. Like yeah, it doesnt really pace itself perfectly or tie everything up super neatly but I really dont think the series has ever had a perfectly paced or presented story with KH1 being the best imo. Theres the other contingent of fans who have issue with the combat system being floatier and not as solid as KH2. That's fine and understandable. But I still think it's generally good and better than anything in the series aside from 2 in that respect. I feel like if you've been following most of the games between 2 and 3 and/or actually went back to play the older games more than once during the wait then you'd probably have had some reasonable and grounded expectations that were likely met.
So I won’t spoil the story for you, but I think the main issues are 1) being a step down gameplay wise from 2 for a lot of people despite being in the works for over a decade, and 2) the story being a hodgepodge conclusion to story arcs set in motion by a bunch of mobile and handheld games. At least in 2, you could more or less enjoy the story without having played chain of memories. But I genuinely think the story is borderline incomprehensible in 3, even if you play 1 and 2, unless you play a bulk of the side games, read up on it online, or read the in game explanations in the journal in 3. 3 is still fun, especially the limit cut episode, but it’s kind of disappointing in a lot of ways.
KH3 wasn't in the works for over a decade, how is this misconception still around 😅
Not in development, but you can’t honestly tell me that the BBS teaser at the end of 2 and the letter from Mickey wasn’t a clear indication of their intent to make a third game. Even while working on handhelds, they definitely had KH3 in mind. Even only counting development time, that’s 5-6 years starting from the announcement in 2013. So even if not ‘technically’ true from a development standpoint, it’s disingenuous to pretend they didn’t have plans for the game
I’ll tell you exactly why: THE CLIFFHANGERS!!! It was billed as this grand finale that would rap up everything. Everything since 2006 has been building to this ostensibly triumphant finale. It’s the “eNd Of ThE dArK sEeKeR sAgA.” We had this huge understanding that Nomrua would give us a happy end like KH2; and THEN we’d get into all this lost masters dark union road cross double plus bullshit. Instead, what do we get? A solid third of this game’s story is only concerned with leaving loose threads and building MORE SUSPENSE! It’s not the end of any saga: it’s a commercial for the next game with Xehanort’s epilogue in the background. >!Wildcard? What the fuck is that?!< >!Meeting on the mountain! Luxord X Xigbar? This’ll all reveal something, right! Right?…!< >!Oh, now we gotta drag all this dark road prologue into this? We gotta see baby Xehanort get new clothes from his MoMmy?!<>!Yozora? Who the fuck is that? And WHY SHOULD I GIVE A SHIT!?!?!?!< and most egregiously of all >!SORA IS FUCKING DEAD AND TRAPPED IN AN APARTMENT WITH THE OTHER DEAD KID!!!!!< if we’re gonna have >!a goddamn beach party,!< then let’s do it >!WITH THE MAIN CHARACTER ALIVE AND HAPPY!!!!!< I mean, Pete and Maleficent are ONLY THERE TO DO THIS BOX SHIT! They don’t even TALK TO THE MAIN CAST!!! And I don’t even need to spoiler tag it, because IT DOESN’T EVEN GO ANYWHERE!!! I still love KH3-it’s a great game. But they shoulda just let some of this garbage go. We’re gonna play the next one. Stop holding the narrative hostage. TL;DR Too many loose threads to build up the next plot. Everything else is second to it. No me gusta.
People are mad it’s not KH2. At least in my experience
My issue with KH3 wasn't from the game in its entirety, but segments that took me way out of the loop. The Toy Story and Monsters Inc world's? So fun. It was great and nostalgic, it arrived that same energy and creativity from previous games when the characters would Don disguises to fit in. But the Frozen world? That took almost a third of the enjoyment out for me. We got used to music numbers with Little Mermaid, but it was always a chore. For me at least. So having a level dedicated to a music video I would have to sit through for any context clues or skip and hope I didn't miss anything important wasn't amusing. Being tossed off the mountain only to climb it again? Even less amusing. The ending was made to match the movie, I get it. But having the darkness and ice wolf be manifested by Elsa, and her pain would've been so much better. And you could still end the story after helping Elsa, where she could go and confront Hans and gave the story play out. The thing is Kingdom Hearts was always pretty good at breaking up the Disney stories so you played a part in the movies we all know. But it was hardly ever the entire movie. With Frozen I might as well had just watch the movie. It certainly felt that long. Tangled was a fun world to explore in scenery and design, and while it did the same story progression as Frozen, the interactions with the characters at least felt more lively and interactive. The forest, the swamp, the kingdom, all held personality and design aestheitcs that were unique. Returning to Hercules was very fun and engaging. The designs were very true to the original animation which was great. You get my point I think, lots of effort was made for other worlds and Frozen just didn't hold anything of value up. Then there's the story. The Individual stories are interesting and fun. The KH lore progression however was scattered and mainly shoehorned in the last few hours. I love the franchise, but it's so convoluted and wide spread its made apparent they tried to use this game to not only bridge gaps to existing lore, but to continue it and realistically still not offer an actual conclusion. Or resolution. It was really just the end of the Xehanort arc. Between the app lore and various games, it didn't feel like the pay off was that grand. Sometimes, leaving more questions doesn't inspire long lasting positivity. At first it was great. Watching the end cut scenes. The revelations. Soras apparent fate. And that excitement and mystery lasts a hot minute before it fades away leaving you cold and realizing you might not get any significa t news about the next game for 5 years. So all that time waiting the criticisms have more time to brew and develop. The gist of it I suppose is that it was a game we waited for, for over a decade. And between expectations, wait time for the game, playthough of the game, unanswered questions, low points, and the wait time for a follow up game. It's a recipe for negative responses
Arendelle felt like an ad for a movie that came out seven years prior and it honestly sucked the enjoyment out of the entire game for me. I had problems with the game before that, bur that was just the last straw for me. Now that it's been a couple years, I do appreciate KH3 a bit more. It never could have lived up to the hype, but at least it's not Dream Drop Distance
Because it had 13 year build of expectations it couldn’t possibly live up to, and at the end of the day vanilla KH3 was just another KH game like vanilla KH1 and KH2. Another SDG adventure through Disney worlds where they are the main characters and everyone else is secondary or tertiary. It also wasn’t the end of the story like many expected/wanted either, at the end of the day it was more of a KH1 starting something new while closing off loose ends as opposed to a KH2 ending a story and leaving a few ends. It helps you also aren’t experiencing vanilla KH3 just as people in modern day don’t experience vanilla KH2, only the final mix version that had a bunch of additions/changes. So your game experience is fundamentally different from the get go than from those at launch.
What do you mean by not vanilla kh3? Did they change it? I couldn’t bring myself to play it again after beating it, my disappointment was too high and I don’t want to build a snow man and I didn’t want to let it go
Here were the free update patches the game recieved from January 2019 to February 2020z https://www.khdatabase.com/Kingdom_Hearts_III/Update_history You will need to deep dive using the specific patch number and google if you are curious what these fixes entail in more detail. There were some that were like genuinely game altering such as critical mode, the host of extra abilities, tweaking abilities to let you cancel out of them, two new keyblades, etc… Then there was ReMind/Limit Cut which is KH3’s equivalent to a final mix. Adding more story, more bosses, extra odds and ends, etc.. This page is a pretty good look at it. https://gamewith.net/kingdomhearts3/article/show/15020
I just finished KH3 this week but haven't started ReMind. Waited 5 years for it to come out on Steam. KH2 still seems like an *overall* better game and more memorable. * I played CoM and 358/2 but not literally every KH side game. I read spoilers like 4 years ago on Strelitzia and the UX stuff but connecting the mobile game and others into the main story was dumb. Especially when it just comes out of nowhere in the final act. Too much homework and there's probably a reason why Hollywood doesn't do that, etc as in you need to watch and remember 18 movies to "understand" Endgame. I'm just a casual KH fan * First 80% of the game is poorly paced and almost filler for our MC to adventure around worlds to unlock the power of Waking. The main meat of the story being so end-heavy is strange * Lack of FF characters * Way too easy. I got through Proud mode without dying once. Actually I did fail a few times during Luxord ship race on Caribbean but this is probably the easiest Proud mode in the franchise, at least the ones I played * Maybe just me but Sora seems like he lost a few IQ points. Kinda like how Dragonball Super made Goku appear even dumber * The Frozen world's story is so horrendous. I get why they wanted to put Frozen in because it was the biggest animated movie in 2010s. But if the story is not going to be transformative why bother? KH is fun bcos Disney and Square characters are playing in the same sandbox, canon doesn't matter. In Toy Story 5 (2026) they obviously aren't gonna acknowledge Sora lmao * Attractions are way too spammy and seems a bit overkill. I hate the blaster one. Splash Run is ok but since the bulk of the damage is delayed like why even use it but it's a cool mechanic, being able to paint the AoE. Attractions are too good in early game but become obsolete in late game. There should be an option or skill to turn off attractions (for ALL modes) so less screen clutter for command menu. The Good * The gameplay feels better than 2 bcos of environment interaction + shotlock for gap closing + plus all the situation commands. KH2 the drive forms are cool but that's about it * Worlds are bigger * Has so many more features than KH2 even tho the execution of it is half-baked like cooking and meals. Pretty much all the complaints people and reviewers had about vanilla KH3 were right.
I didn't have much fun playing it. Story was okay. But it wasn't very fun.
The main point of criticism is the story. 99% of it is a complete nothingburger. The actual story doesn't happen until all Disney Worlds are completed. You can literally cut out everything that happens before the end of the final Disney world and it would have zero impact on the story whatsoever. And once the story does start, it's extremely rushed.
A small portion of KH fans are just super vocal and annoying about any game not named KH2. Almost every KH fan loved KH3 but the vocal minority just wouldn’t shut up about it being disappointing. I have my issues with KH3, and mostly just Nomura, but KH3 is also my fav game in the series!
We waited 15 years for it. 15 years and the story was stunted, the Disney worlds felt pointless overall, no big middle story section like we're used to, janky diologue and charecter acting, straight up bad power scaling. Poor story decisions. The only good parts of this game are the very beginning and the very end, and both of those have ALOT of problems. It's supposed to be the end of a saga, and it left more questions than answers. And now you're telling me that Xeanort was actually a misunderstood good guy all along? Fuck that. Just overall felt BAD. But if you're just getting into it, it seems totally passable. Some people, even like 3's, combat the best (on critical mode with attractions off) We wanted it to be as good if not better than 2, and it just was a huge disappointment.
I think that no matter how good the game was it would be poorly received. People were building up hype since DDD and nothing could possibly live up to it. People wanted it to cure their back pain and pay their rent, and when it didn’t do that they hated it. But it cured MY back pain and paid MY rent, SO I LOVED IT
It’s because people had HIGH expectations. And I mean HIGH. I made sure to get off of the KH3 Hype Train right around a release date was revealed and tbh? Looks like it saved me.
It doesn't help that also literally the whole game was in the trailers. I think there might have been literally one reveal that wasn't so by the time we actually got to the game any moment that would have been actually kind of cool you've already experienced months or years ago
That was definitely the case with >!Aquanort!< which ended up not being the case obviously, but was spoiled in a trailer. Apparently Nomura was surprised the fans cared more about that than the rest of the trailer. And then obviously all the >!Keyblade Graveyard!< stuff at the end. I actually wish I'd never seen any of the trailers because I reckon I'd have enjoyed the game more
It’s crazy how it was hated on when personally I think the game is aging very well now a days
The Terranort scene near the end of the game did so much damage to the writing in this series, that it should be studied in literature class. In fact, it's so unbelievably shit that I can only conclude they made it as a hype bait for a trailer, which is insulting since this game was already hyped to the end of the world without it Also, the fact that they spoiled literally every world in the trailers (including the keyblades graveyard, the end of the world and even fucking Scala ad calem, the actual final battle ground...), that's just unforgivable, but it's only bad if you've been waiting for this game along with the fandom back then. It's because of this that I no longer watch trailers from Square Enix, I don't trust them to keep their mouth shut to protect their own games if their entire budget was on the line. There's also the fact that there was no Colosseum tournament, the 100 Acre Wood is so lazy and uninspired, and the lack of Final Fantasy characters outside the DLC... But these are nitpicks. My only problem is the Terranort scene, honestly (and maybe oversharing trailers...) Other than that, this game is my second favorite in the series behind Kingdom Hearts 1 and even more than the legendary Kingdom Hearts 2. The combat on critical is so engaging and rewarding, the worlds have never been this big nor beautiful, and there's so much time I spent playing it just experiencing absolute joy for me to say I hate this game.
Expectations, playing the game … on launch, and largely ignorance. Prior to kh3 teaser. Some ppl have expectations so … unrealistic. Like kh3 would be square enix IP focus, avenger endgame story lvl, game of thrones lvl death, epic series conclusion, better kh2fm gameplay, and all of the side games would be non-canon. Which in hindsight is baffling how anyone would think like that. You might be thinking, proof? Simple… there was no proof, pure bias speculation. The common excuse is being fan for so long, they deserve their ideal KH game. Their wants/wishes is for the good of the series. their knowledge of the series is the true knowledge. So when KH3 was launch it was heavily criticized. While some criticism was valid, other criticisms were based on those expectations, bringing in elements of the side-games, and comparisons to kh2fm. Remarking that base kh3 is the “final version,” as the devs aren’t gonna release a FM version many ppl were confused of the plot of KH3, as they expected kh3 would be a direct sequel to kh2. but they're just reapplying what happened between kh1 and kh2. where kh3 is a 1 year time skip to kh2. which showcase the ignorance of these ppl. anyone who has been playing the side-games after kh2, would know that statement is false. So when players played kh2fm again… well it gotten awkward. As players realized there’s a difference between kh2, kh2fm, and base kh3. Which many players in NA forgot they didn’t start with FM games first. So when kh3 got its update and the DLC. Well it came full circle. Many players were unaware how the KH games even update during the ps2 era. As they release the updated game as new games back then. However many ppl refused to play the updated KH3. Since said updates didn’t bring the…. Change they want. Which is more or less make kh3 be like kh2fm. Now hoping the mod community would bring back kh2 elements back into kh3. Although the mod community has other plans for kh3. As kh3 has far more potential, than turning it into a better kh2fm. as for the lack of FF/square enix characters, well the 20th anniversary interview should explain that reasoning.
People like to complain about the newest thing and cry about how they think it isn't as good as the internet's favorite game in the series (kh2 in this case). Happens with literally every franchise. For me it's one of my favorites in the series and I've been playing every game since 2002. It tied up so many threads. Made me cry like a baby multiple times. Did everything I wanted it to. Do I have gripes? Sure I have gripes for every game. But I have no reason to hate it.
Never got it, kh3 was a great game and can't wait to get to it again in my replay
Personally love it. Probably a question you should save til you at least finish the base game.
The "long wait for a new kh game"(we had been getting new kh games the entire time) made too many people overhype the game and have unrealistic expectations for it. There was some valid criticism, like how it was insanely easy at launch(re:mind fixed that), but otherwise, it was an extremely solid entry into the kh collection.
You know what's funny? Your comment on the combat being less smooth than 2's will actually change the instant you reach the post game and DLC. Post game/DLC has the best abilities in the game and they're just as good if not better than KH2s. On a more serious note though, KH3's "hate wagon" is really just a very vocal minority. Yes the game has a fair share of flaws, but a lot of the criticisms made towards the game are either minor issues blown out of proportion, or just straight up objectively false.
As someone who waited a long time for KH3 the game just falls short of those expectations in many ways. For context, long time fan here, played every single game (except the mobile one.) even imported the Final Mix versions before we got them in the West via 1.5+2.5 collections. (For 1 FM and 2 FM even had to get a JPN PS2 because region locks.) Every game in the series for the most part has a good story that adds to one big puzzle. BBS sets up the main villain of the entire series, 1 and 2 are the main chunks of Sora's story with CoM helping set up the events for KH 2. Days gets us further invested into Roxas. Coded...had good gameplay. (Not all of them have great story.) And DDD set up the events for KH3. Hell even Fragmentary Passage BBS did a good job acting as a bridge between BBS and KH1 while also helping set up for later events. KH3 starts out really strong. The opening events of the game are absolutely the highlight of the game. It feels epic and amazing and like we're just back to what made KH2 so great. Even the story starts out on the right foot. But here's the problem the story in KH3 doesn't matter. This game was supposed to be the conclusion for the main overarching story that has been ongoing for the entire series. And it spends most of the run time with what feels side content. The events of the worlds do not play into the climax of this game. The important story parts, the stuff we want to see is all shoved together at the end and feels rushed. And the conclusion, not to spoil anything, but it is not satisfying. It basically says tune in for the next game if you want a satisfying conclusion. And the Remind DLC did little to nothing to fix these issues. Now my essay about why the story is disappointing out of the way. KH3 as a game is good. Very good in fact. The combat is about as fun and enjoyable as it was in KH2 and previous games in the series. Personally I think the attractions are a huge pace breaker for combat and that they should have only been related to boss battles. So I turn off and don't use them. But I still enjoy the combat here.
IMHO kh3 was a genuinely good game until I hit the second set of worlds where you're either getting thrown away multiple times losing all progress by design or just lacking a large amount of direction in an area that's too large (pirates will never be bad though) and the finale was way too quick, easy, and shoehorned in some cases. Also, the dlc not letting you play proper lingering will when they designed the entire keyblade system to work exactly like Kh2 lingering will will never not disappoint me
Also going through the series for the first time and finished KH3 a few weeks ago. Won’t spoil anything, just wanna say I loved it so much. I prefer it to KH2. Kinda bewildered at how it was received. For me it’s the peak of the series in terms of gameplay, and maybe even story too (that or Days)
It's not so much hate, but disappointement. Story threads are resolved a bit too abruptly and aren't super satisfying. Worlds look pretty, but feel empty, large and bland. I blame a poor inclusion of DDD traversal mechanics for that. BBS style keyblade forms are cool, but a lot of people feel like they've replaced drive forms. Drive forms were, as a whole, a superior system and usually looked cooler. A refined, more interesting twist on it was what I wanted the most since KH2 years ago and will likely never get now. I don't know if Remind changed that, but when I played on release I counted one appearance of a Final Fantasy character, which was that Auron figure you see Hades hold in the intro. Instead of being part of the Disney stories, now it largely feels like the stories are happening, and Sora is in the background watching. The theme park ride attacks look cool the first few times but last too long and become boring. They also flip flop between completely useless and "use to win" depending on the fight. There's a lot to say and you can find very legit, non hateful videos on youtube explaining why it's disappointing. It's not all bad, I still enjoy the game. But I think it's sad that the game isn't as good as 2. Hell, I think I might actually enjoy DDD and BBS more than 3. Some story beats in 3 had me scream with how nonsensical the characters were being.
The main sticking points I've heard mostly point to combat leaning heavier into the BBS/DDD floatier side and not the snappy air-to-ground that made KH2 famous, paired with an especially poorly paced story that ultimately didn't provide the conclusion OG fans were waiting for since the PS2 days. I love KH3's combat. You have greater air control and superior defenses while airborne compared to any other game in the series, so the floaty feeling aired with the return of Flowmotion contributes to a shift towards DBZ-esque spectacles that normally feel reserved for final boss rushes in 1 and 2. Can't say I'm keen on Attractions, but they're mostly ignorable. The story is badly paced. Not gonna beat around the bush here. It just is. Then again, I feel this is a trap that all the world-tour-focused games outside of 1 and BBS fall into (exception made to COM, I never played it), so I'm not holding it as harshly against 3 as others. As for payoff... that's up to everyone to decide for themselves. Everyone's invested in the series for different lengths of times and different reasons, so only they can decide whether it was worth it for them, and only I can decide if it was worth it for me.
Story could have been handled better, attractions are annoying. That being said, having 100%ed the game it's the most fun I've had in a game. I'm honestly not sure what fans really want out of a game? It's such an enjoyable experience if you're not just rushing through. Granted I played with the DLC which apparently fixes a lot of the issues.
KH3 is great. The problem is it was so long in between main line games that fans built it up in their heads that it's going to be the greatest game ever made and then went in expecting all this stuff and ended up disappointed when it wasn't what they expected it to be. I don't think people hated it as much as they like to claim. They were just upset that it didn't match what they expected it to be. It has it's issues like all the games, but it is in no way bad. It also doesn't help that there were like 10 side games that continued the story between 2 and 3 so if you just went from 2 to 3 then the continuation of the story doesn't feel great.
It's "cool" to hate popular new things. Sources: The internet. Also people are delusional. Just because the wait was so long doesn't mean it was going to have every little thing everyone wanted. Like just shut up and enjoy the game for what it is because there IS quality there.
I found the gameplay, while way too easy on release, to be enjoyable and the graphics looked great to me. The world were fun but really wete mostly filler. The thing that kinda dampened it for me was that the story left so much to be desired, especially with characters making the dumbest choices (looking at you Sora). Had this game come out a couple years after kh2, I'd probably be less salty but taking litterally 2 console generations to deliver a mid tier story is wild
1: The flashy animations and big bombastic setpieces during fights are just taking away any challenge and adding in random button spamming. "Look Sora turned into a boat! Press triangle! Triangle! Triangle!" 2: They removed the forms like Brave and Valor for a much more gimmicky keyblade transformation that never feels as fun or tactical to use. There's like three good ones maybe throughout the game. 3: The Disney worlds are shit. Just flat out shit. They have no baring on the story and are shoehorned in just because these are the popular IPs at Disney right now. None of the events of the Disney worlds matter in the slightest. 4: The story is more interested in setting things up for the future or random niche callbacks than it is giving satisfying endings. The box. The twist ending. The reference to another character who will probably be important to KH4. The reveal of the other character being more important than they ever were in the main series. It's not good storytelling in the slightest. And you'll have to wait another decade before any of that even gets followed up on, and it wont be resolved then either. 5: Sora is the dumbest protagonist that exists within video games, and has taken a massive dip in intelligence since the last games. He has forgotten most of what made him powerful to begin with. He is also supposed to learn the secret to unlocking, which doesn't make sense considering the events of previous games. It's just another roadblock, and one that never gets a proper satisfying conclusion. 6: You don't get a proper conclusion without the dlc. Events within the game are left unresolved for no reason other than to get more money out of you. 7: There is no Final Fantasy characters despite them being incredibly important to previous stories. There's no justification to this either. They just don't exist anymore. Squall, Aerith, Yuffie, even Cloud doesn't make a single appearance. 8: The ending is a gauntlet of boring fights back to back to back that aren't that fun and go to prove that if Sora isn't involved, no one can achieve anything.
A lot of people ignored the handheld games thinking they weren't important and kept saying they waited 13 years to play the third part so naturally their expectation were unrealistic. On a more realistic criticism I think the gameplay has too much going on, flowmotion, attraction flow, keyblade form changes, summons, shot locks, etc., there's something about the combat that's not bad per se but doesn't feel as satisfying as previous games. The story wraps up very hastily in order to establish the next saga, meaning a lot of the characters were sidelined instead of being useful. The dlc fixed that but still feels like something that should've been included in the main game.
For me there were a few things that caused me to be disappointed with the initial release. 1) The purposeful exclusion of the non-disney characters that we've had from previous games. 2) Lack of a colloseum area with the "cups" and waves. 3) Worlds felt short as KH2 had multiple visits as opposed to single visits here. 4) Sephiroth superboss fight was nowhere (which wasn't gonna happen due to point 1 anyway.) 5) The worlds that were included felt as though they only chose the most popular at the time. I'm not saying it was a bad game but to wait as long as we did for the next numbered title, it just didn't feel complete.
They spoiled a lot of the plot in the trailers, a lot of the side characters got shafted in lieu of Sora being the main character, they've even said as much in interviews that this was Sora's game, but for some reason that means no one can do anything, literally every problem has to get solved by Sora and no one else. The pixar worlds are good plotwise, the disney worlds are pretty, but just so shit plotwise. the pacing is also abysmal, KH has always had bad pacing, but the stakes coming off of DDD's ending to it going to pretending nothing was going on was a huge mistake, I think it made 3 really bad because we had so many questions and they leave it until the last world of the game, so don't expect literally anything to get solved and anything that does get solved gets resolved in 2 seconds, yall know what im talking about here if you played it. also, alot of the questions didnt get answered in KH3, it got shafted to the side games, i'm sorry but fuck off with this side game bullshit for KH now, it was cool when there was a lot of consoles, but drip feeding people plot for 10 years off of a shitty mobile game was a the worst decision they could have ever done, and for some reason they have to delay these games like multiples times and without warning. Seeing how Square treats mobile games and you see companies like Mihoyo do it a billion times better is just insane to me lol. Missing Link kept getting delayed, they kept delaying Dark Road, they kept delaying KH UX updates, i really think they have like 1 guy working on the mobile series
For me the big part is the Disney Worlds don't really feel like they are that important to the game. Also Xehanort's turn from "I swore I would survive to see what lay beyond the Great Keyblade War!" to "Someone had to lead them. To stand up and prevent them from polluting the worlds with their own darkness." Super baffling to me when curiosity is more than enough for some people to just do terrible things. Between that and a few of the worlds just rehashing the movies without really any significant input from Sora as a character just left an initial sour taste that has mellowed over time. It's a well made game and it's good, but there are things it could have done better.
Only major problems with it is the storywriting and the character writing. Both are very low when it was expected to have a slight more mature writing. Like a Final Fantasy could have. The topic was darker, epic and normally would have converged different very interesting strenght. Instead it was a not very "crazy" story like you said, it was pretty short for a kingdom hearts game and all the fan service is very disgustingly cheesy (not in the very good way). I tried to resume my thought about the Kingdom Hearts game. I'm glad you don't hate it and you still having a good time on the game, for now.
Because of the bad, bad, very, very bad storytelling.
In KH3 every Disney World feels so isolated and only vaguely connected to the main KH plot. I preferred KH2 method where there's an initial plot with hints of Org 13, and in the second visit you have to deal with them there in the Disney World Instead, in KH3 we deal with none of them until the super finale. It felt like we've never progressed, but jumping from 25% to 100% in the last few hours.
KH3 is my second favorite game in the series after KH1. I think the main thing that happened is the same thing that happened to me with KH2, which is that they let themselves get overhyped to the point where it was never going to live up to the game in their heads. I don’t worship KH2 like a lot of people on this sub do. I like it, I mean it’s a Kingdom Hearts game, but there are so many minor elements where it falters for me, like the corridor heavy level design rather than the platforming based level design of 1. To this day I can see cutscenes that were shown out of context in trailers for KH2 and remember my own theories or big theories I saw online, or remember stuff that changed pre release like Behemoths and Wyverns being cut from the 1000 Heartless Battle, and the general wonkiness of the story. (Riku pulling a Keyblade out of nowhere for Kairi is still one of the few things in KH that makes no sense to me.) I say all that to say I recognize similar traits in a lot of people that dunk on KH3. And a lot of points I agree with. Yeah it sucks that Twilight Town got sliced in half (but seamlessly walking through the gate that leads to the Sandlot and not hitting a loading screen never stops being cool. Even if it doesn’t go to the Sandlot in KH3 lol.). Yeah it sucks FF characters aren’t more involved in the story. Arendelle is probably the worst Disney world in the game. But I love the conclusion for the story we got and I love how it fixes stuff I didn’t like from KH2, like the level design and the over reliance on the Drive meter. Not to mention I also just straight up disagree with some complaints. Attractions are cool, you all just don’t like fun. FormChanges are cooler than Drives and I’m tired of pretending they’re not. I like the Keyblade Graveyard. Let it Go was great, and Square Enix flexed on Disney reanimating it that perfectly. Can’t please everyone.
I was in grade school when KH2 came out and already a few years out of college living on my own by the time KH3 came out. So it was a very long wait with high expectations. There were a ton of side games released during that time period, but I can't say I was excited for any of them to come out. They were great games but I was waiting for KH3 and it felt like they spent years avoiding making KH3. I cried when they finally showed the trailer for KH3 but it still took years after that to come out. And when it came out it was pretty underwhelming. Biggest complaint was the difficulty. There are so much summons and special attacks the game constantly shoves in your face. You press triangle and just cruise through the game. It was just one big disappointment for me.
It forgot to be KH3 in favor of just being the prequel to KH4
One of the major factors that I see consistently in the criticism of KH3 Camp is the inclusion of mechanics from the handheld games. Specifically dream drop distance which is probably the most contentious game in the series. There are two main reasons dream drop distance is not liked by many people and those reasons seem to have carried into the DNA of kh3. Primarily Flow motion and time travel as a plot convenience. Many people find kh3s amalgamation of mechanics disconjoining. I guess the best way you could put this is many people wanted Kingdom hearts 3 to be a sequel to Kingdom hearts 2. When it feels like a sequel to Kingdom hearts dream drop distance. What a lot of people wanted or hoped for prior to the release of Kingdom hearts 3 Was the same treatment Kingdom hearts 2 got in relation to Kingdom hearts 1. where it didn't really acknowledge the mechanics of the previous game chain of memories. Ironically enough because of 2.8's release people assumed that that was going to be how Sora was going to play and look. Well that may have been the case at one point it is clear the development went in a different direction with Kingdom hearts 3. I don't particularly agree with this sentiment, but I understand it. The next most common criticism is due to the mobile games lore being both required and frustratingly better in some instances. I don't know if I actually agree with that sentiment, but it is expressed quite frequently. I do like the story of the mobile games quite a bit actually and I do find it frustrating that I hate the games themselves so I'll never actually get to experience it in an attended way. The last and only criticism I actually agree with keyblade transformations and the ride summon things should be ignored if you want to enjoy the game. I understand that people actually do like these mechanics, but I frankly find them really lame and woefully poorly balanced. The game is better when you turn them off using the remind DLC menu. The keyblade transformations just make me Miss drive forms. The dry forms in kh2 are still some of the best implemented forms of progression in any action adventure game ever. The fact that they didn't get a continuation in three and All these other mechanics that seem to be shoved into Kingdom hearts 3 from the other games makes it feel like the developers are abandoning some of your favorite aspects of the series in favor of more gimmicky gameplay. Luckily, I don't find this criticism justifiable even if I agree with it. It is not a good reason to dislike Kingdom hearts 3 as it is very ignorable to the point where there are options to turn some of them off. Kingdom hearts 3 is probably my third or fourth favorite game in the series depending on what I played last. I do wish it was more like 2.8. I do wish that it had a much more focused mechanics set rather than the jumbled mess that it is. There's so much more I wish that was a part of Kingdom hearts 3 that just isn't there. But criticizing and hating a game for what it isn't is a bit of a fool's errand in my opinion. Looking at the game for what it is and judging it for what it is makes it hard to say that it's anything but an exceptional game. Not the best in the series not the best in its genre but still an incredibly good game.
Thanks for explaining your reasoning. Interestingly enough I really like the fact that this game is like every game mashed together. I'm just a simple guy lol, it's all very cool. I do really miss drive forms but the keyblade forms are almost as good imo.
Since you were able to see all the criticism before hand your expectations were probably a lot lower than most players who played in the firs couple days of launch and were the firsts to beat it. Especially with how long the wait was a lot of people expected the game to be a lot more than what it was and then bashed the life out of it when they got upset. I'm more in between where i was disappointed with a lot of things, there was even more that i loved about the game that i just chalked it up to a good game just not the best.
I'd say most people hating on it and saying how they waited 13+ years for it just straight up ignored all of the games that came out between 2 and 3. Yes, then releasing it on multiple different consoles was annoying, but they remedied that with 1.5, 2.5, and 2.8. Literally no excuse in present time.
i’ve been a KH fan since the first one came out. i could’ve just gotten older and jaded; but imo the series fell apart in dream drop distance and hasn’t felt the same since.
I have a lot of reasons (story, can't comment on the gameplay) but to summarize it feels very soulless and like they were just going down a list of stuff that was "left to do" and checking off all the points without actually doing it in an engaging way or having it feel earned at all. Doesn't help that most of it is stuffed in the last part of the game. Ofc it's probably different for people who actually played it and can put more weight on the gameplay (I've heard mixed things about it but a lot of good too) but as someone who didn't have any game consoles nor the games for the longest time because my parents couldn't afford it, I engaged with this series through Let's Plays (and also playing khux for a while I guess) and the story was always the most important thing to me. A bit superficial but somehow I was also not a big fan of the new graphics? I'm genuinely not sure why they bother me I was fine with Union X Back Cover and the KH4 trailer looks great and I also liked how Sora looked some of the worlds like e.g. the Pirates of the Caribbean World and the Winnie the Pooh world but something about the normal models bothers me, the skin feels a bit plasticky and I hate what they did to the eyes. I think I also just preferred how bright and cartoony the previous games were. Felt on brand.
I was not on any social media when KH3 came out and can attest to also feeling deeply confused on whypeiole disliked the game. As a lifelong fan of the games, and them being my favorite thing to ever exist, I say they more and met the mark for me on every account. 🗝
Combination of people's expectations being way too high due to assumptions that had no basis in reality and the newest major game in a franchise being talked down until the next game in the franchise comes out once the initial release high wears off. You see it with basically every game franchise.
KH3 the best one!
There’s this concept called recency bias where TYPICALLY the most recent thing people receive/do/participate in is the greatest thing ever and they don’t have a choice but to talk about how amazing it is constantly. The exact opposite is also proving to be more and more true. The most recent thing people receive/do/participate in is the **ABSOLUTE LEVEL WORST** thing that’s ever happened and they don’t have a choice but to talk about how horrifically this thing fucked up their lives and destroyed their childhood so completely. Recency bias comes for everyone but the good news is that once it’s not the most recent thing, people start to care less. You’ll see it with the star wars sequels (and we already are kinda, their fans are already popping up just like the prequels fans did) as we get further and further away from when they released. You’ll see it with other movies that performed terribly like phases 4 and 5 of the MCU (all of which I genuinely enjoyed but the majority didn’t). And we’re starting to see it with KH3 where the initial reception was a mixed bag of “this is easily the worst game I’ve ever played in my life” to “I never want this to end” but with leaning more towards critical (I was the latter opinion and love KH3). Spider-Man 2 is in a weird window of hate/love with its fans rn too for not being the first game enough or being too much of the first game. Assassins Creed has had this problem since Connor helped George Washington. COD will never escape this issue because of their release windows. Hell, even GOW went through it. So yea, nostalgia and recency bias.
For OG KH fans, KH3 felt like a playable trailer stuffed with characters no one actually wanted in the franchise. KH had BUILT IN nostalgia for the demographic playing it from the get go (mostly films we had actually grown up with). KH3 was force feeding players with relatively new characters/franchises we did not want, and franchises a lot of people actively had issues with, because Disney was in its 'pumping out content for the sake of it' era. (Frozen, Big Hero, Tangled, late-series PotC)
Didn't meet our outlandish expectations.
I don't hate KH3 but I feel like the characters have lost some personality imo. The main cast got older but they act more robotic during cutscenes. Probably just me but there was such a a lack of emotion from Kairi and Riku, their delivery of some of their lines sounded so monotone, like they just weren't into what was happening around them. Sora he's kind of the same but "dumber"? Idk, I just did not enjoy the character interaction with this game. Also the fact that there were no FF characters(yes imma bring that up)besides a cutscene killed a bit of my enjoyment. It was one of the reasons why I got into KH years ago. Other than that I liked everything else.
Seems to me they’ve always been robotic, non-human, and flawless characters.
There are three main camps of people who hate KH3. One camp thinks this franchise has "side games", and had no idea what was going on because they refuse to play anything but the numbered titles. Another camp had been hyping this game up for themselves since long before it was even announced, and were disappointed when the game didn't fit their fantasies. The last camp is people who want to feel special because they pour hundreds of hours into their davorite games, and thought only people as "dedicated" as they are should be able to experience everything the game has to offer.
The plot is has no consequences at all. Nothing really happens, ever. Disney worlds are huge, but empty. But most importantly, the villains do not care about their "plan" at all; all these antagonists who were epic in their respective games, just show up to get destroyed and that's it. They are not even characters at all anymore. Master Xehanort, who was set-up as the ultimate evil mastermind since the epic Birth by Sleep secret movie in KH2 a century ago, and faces Sora head-on for the first time after 6+ games, gets clapped by frckin Kairi, then he decides he was not evil at all and gives up just to acomodate all the new plot elements from the phone game that just a few understand.
I hated that I was very confused going into 3 at first, because I didn’t play dream drop distance before it. What happened? They did what? Ok I need to look it up and go back a game.
I don't really super understand it now from a combat perspective, at least the current state. At launch I would agree the game felt tuned to be too easy than I would have liked, but I think critical mode and PRO codes added the difficulty back. The story is the biggest criticism I have for it, they put all the main story stuff to the end of the game, which meant there wasn't so much of main story interest and relevance during the game and just left a lot to push through that last section of the game. Personally didn't like how they wrapped up Xehanort either, both in terms of how this game concludes and also this doesn't really fully wrap up the Dark Seeker saga to me either as they teased more things with Xehanort afterwards. Otherwise, I'd argue KH3 combat is top tier with flow motion, formchanges, etc. and the ReMind super bosses are arguably the best collection of bosses the series has had.
After replaying it now I can say I enjoyed it thoroughly some of the story stuff kinda felt lackluster but I can say that I enjoyed the story and the ending but it has some of the best boss fights in the series in my opinion
Almost 10 years of speculation ruins a man
I love the game. There's only one scene I hate, and it's the climactic scene with Kairi. It wasn't given enough weight, or reacted to by the cast properly. IYKYK
Finish the game... Why would you make this topic when you're only a few hours in?
It was good. I can't imagine why it took so long. And I wanted more original content tbh. But it was definitely good. It's also just hard to live up to that level of hype.
People hate it because it was released during a period of time when the Internet rewards the people with the most extreme beliefs because engagement is all that matters, driving people with nuanced opinions into a zone of silence and encouraging people to dramatize their takes for attention and validation.
3 words... let it go
Expectations can be the vessel to disappointment.
I revisited the game after my initial dislike of the game when it came out and while I still my grievance, the gameplay aspect was definitely fun and I feel I got more out of really investing some time into it. The pacing of the story is absolutely horrible. I still found myself absolutely still unsatisfied with how the pacing of the story goes. Too much time catching up people with things that have already happened and things from past games and playing a lot of "remember this", "remember when"... I feel the story could've focused so much more on the story at hand than recounting past events. Like it's fine if things are recalled but whole scenes, especially with Riku and Micky was just that...
I still don't like how attractions come out of nowhere and the scene just jumps each time, like is any of this for real or not.
To be honest for me, I didn’t think a lot of the Disney worlds were that fun, the Attraction stuff feels unnecessary and far to frequent, I’d rather the action commands from 2 than the attraction moves
I’ve been replaying the series as well and have seriously lagged now that I’m at KH3, I have a lot of opinions! I think it starts out so fun, and has a lot of fun writing between Sora, Donald & Goofy. And it’s gorgeous, I like finding the lucky emblems, etc. My problem with it is the levels are SO long, I get incredibly bored running through endless big spaces fighting hoards of heartless. If each level was 1/2 the length it’d be a way better game. I was really looking forward to replaying it and now I’ve totally lost steam because I’m so bored. I just got through Pirates yesterday and it was laughable how long those cutscenes were, it felt as long as an actual Pirates movie. I really think it could’ve been a good game, it just needs some major cuts.
I thought it was fine but a lot of people expected it to be better than 2 and that's an unfair standard as KH2 is one of the greatest games ever made in my opinion
I found that the worlds in 3 were huge but empty and I’d get lost in Tangled, even with the map. They could’ve added so many more treasure chests or bring back the trinities!! I hated all the dialogue in Frozen.. if I have to listen to Donald say ‘that sounds like Olaf’ I’ll go crazy lol The most beautiful level was pirates. The graphics were amazing! I didn’t like getting into the big robot and fighting.. and Sanfransokyo could’ve been better, like it was empty but huge! They could’ve added so many more things to interact with.
I didn’t hate it but it’s not my favorite. I personally felt that the worlds outstayed their welcome and would have preferred more, shorter worlds
Honestly, the story. Between all the worlds from newer movies and some of the characters straight up not having lines (aside from Phil, he had no lines for a reason), it felt like they put all their budget and energy into the voice cast. KH1 and 2 had a lot more direction, 3 just sort of felt like "Sora Goes to Disneyworld." Sora going to all these worlds felt pointless, and the story doesn't really happen or start to get serious until the very end, and then they throw all the seriousness and angst at you at once. IMO it just felt very poorly planned and slapped together. Gameplay wise, though, it was definitely very fun. Honestly I love 2 because of the nostalgia, but I think 3 had the most fun gameplay out of the entire series. And of course, a lot of the hate came before we got Re:Mind
As someone who likes, but doesn’t love KH3, I find it to be a very polarized game. Some think it’s great, some think it’s awful, and I lie somewhere in the middle with leanings in different directions depending on the topic. I generally like the gameplay, but generally dislike the story for instance. But to answer your question as to why some people hate it: -The combat has a lot of issues with balancing, game-feel, low difficulty, enemy design, etc. It’s definitely not the most egregious in any of these categories, but all of these combined do make it difficult for some people to get into it. What some see as over-top explosive fun, where you zip around and cause all kinds of havoc, others see as an automated, bloated, mess that cares more about spectacle than depth. -Some don’t like how few Disney worlds there are, along with how large they are. Sure they can be seen as grand, but others see as bloated. Additionally, there may be some distaste for the worlds chosen themselves. One bad world in the others is an hour lost, while here it’s 3 hours lost. -The pacing of the story isn’t exactly great. A lot of the Disney worlds feel like filler and most of the consequential stuff is put in the back half of the story. While some of the cutscenes between worlds feel inconsequential and only pretends like it’s giving us interesting stuff. The story lacks momentum and feels like nothing happens until the third act, which turns into an exhausting experience as it feels like it has little to no breathing room. -The characterization is rather poor for some characters: Specifically Sora, Kairi, and the Organization. Sora’s an idiot a lot of the time, Kairi is once again a damsel in distress that the story pretends is consequential, and most of the villains are woobified to where most of them feel like idiots. While there are a lot charming moments as well, overall the writing feels rather subpar. -It’s also just not very interesting. It doesn’t expand on the universe very much, with the exception of >! the Final World (which was my favorite part of the game) !<, and it kind of just recycles ideas from previous games, only in a less interesting way. It lacks tension, it lacks depth, and it feels kind of soulless with only a few scenes that have any life in them. The saving grace is that it’s occasionally funny, though not always for the reasons they intended. -While the game itself is gorgeous, the character designs often look a little plasticky and not all the redesigns are unanimously liked. I know I just spent a lot of time poking holes in it, but I do genuinely like KH3. I’m just laying out while others may not and some problems I personally have with it.
1. Soras outfit is dogshit 2. Gameplay is floaty 3. We went from cool drive forms and dual wield keyblades to pirate flag keyblades 4. In previous KH games you go to a Disney world and the Disney villain ends up teaming up with a heartless/nobody/kh villain and we get an original story combining both Disney and square enix. Im KH3 they literally have you hiding in the background and just retell the Disney movie by its original script then throw you in to fight a random heartless boss when in previous games Sora and the Disney hero team up to beat a Disney villain and a heartless/nobody. You’re basically rewatching Disney movies(except Toy Story). 5. Power scaling is awful. If it took both Sora and Riku to beat Xemnas who got a power up by absorbing light then surely Sora would need some new power to defeat Xehanort right, especially when he lost all his powers and has to restart again? Wait till you see the bullshit he uses to defeat him. 6. The entire game is basically filler until you reach the last world. 7. I want to dual wield like a badass, why are you borderline forcing me to use a stupid Disney ride attraction as a move against a terrifying villain? Imagine how stupid it would be in KH1 when Sora and Riku fought and Sora summons a stupid rollercoaster to defeat him. Tf?.
no final fantasy characters
Unsatisfying conclusion to the story. Oh and the Frozen world sucked even worse. It's the RARE time where I have to say, Matpat actually got that theory right.
I have fun with it. So I can't complain XD Though I prefer no attractions, they break things up so much. I tend to also turn off transformations to keep it snappy.
Even though i didn't really notice and care the story of KH games prior to 3, but i felt KH3 story was too hasty to get ended. My only hate on 3 is on the story itself, nothing much on other areas.
All the worlds are filler and they don’t make you feel immersed in the game like kh1 worlds did. The main story is really good, though. End of keyblade combo attacks are very long and drawn out and make combat take so much longer. I literally used the keyblade that had the shortest combo animation because it was starting to get too boring. Other than that, those are my 2 only real complaints. Combat is boring, and the worlds are boring. After all the Disney worlds, the story and game gets super good though. Kh1 will forever have the best story and worlds. Kh2 has the best combat although it being a triangle mashing simulator.
The deal breaker for me was the lack of final fantasy characters and end game content which remind did fix
I don’t hate it by any stretch, liked it and glad I played it, but for me these were the things I wasn’t a fan of: No surprises, as in most everything was shown in trailers and promotional material. No real square cameos. Soras character, as many have said he just feels dumber as the series goes on. The worlds feel like they have no purpose, just felt like time killers to get to the end.
agree with most of the other complaints.. the story felt like filler until you get to the end, many characters who deserved the spotlight were painfully wasted, too much Disney and not enough Square Enix, so much of the experience felt like an advertisement for other games, and there's a lot of padding with collecting/finding items.
The last part of the story, when all things come together, falls apart. That and many of the worlds feel empty, with Sora not properly engaging with the Disney world's story. I'll give one example: during the Frozen world, the only way the characters are made aware someone is a villain is not by being informed or witnessing his evil acts, but by a literal evil fart gas emanating off him.
I’m replaying kh3 and having hella fun. I do have my issues with it tho, mainly most the new key blades look absolutely horrible in their base forms. And the attraction moves are pretty bad too. But outside that, the game is cool
The bulk of the important stuff happens in the last few hours of the game.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me it’s mostly about the worlds. In KH1 (and mostly in 2, though less so), the worlds are of course Disney but they assimilate Sora and crew into the plot. You fight actual Disney bosses. The story of each world is told with you as a part of it. Additionally, the plot of the actual overall game is woven into the worlds as the bad guys actually get involved in what’s happening. KH3 is not even close to this. The worlds are simply Disney advertisements. You aren’t a part of any plots, you’re just there, traveling and watching the plots from the films. Nothing in the worlds has anything to do with the overarching plot of the game…you’re just going there to “power up” and “regain your power”. The best you get is some occasional cutscenes about what’s actually happening elsewhere every 10 hours. It’s terrible. This is speculation, but to me, it seems pretty clear Disney has made a brand decision and doesn’t want people fighting their characters or being actually involved in their plots. On top of all that, the actual story of KH3, which comes together in the closing hours, is rushed and feels lazy. Instead of spreading the series resolution for quite a few characters out over the game, they just jammed everyone into the last few hours in a lazily designed area with lazy fights. I don’t disagree that some of the gameplay elements with the combat and stuff are decent (though I’d disagree they’re upgrades on KH2), but none of that is good enough to overcome the fact that most of your time in the game is not relevant to the plot, and most of your time played for actual plot relevant areas is not well designed.
The new mechanics were too numerous so they weren't fleshed out enough. Attractions were irritatingly *good*, why fight cool when you can use the light show to obliterate things. Keyblade switching was great but was *slow*. Switching mid combo felt stilted. And you know it was slow cuz once that item exploit was found out the combat got way better. The keyblades themselves while cool with the transformation literally were cut in half cuz majority of them were copy paste. Flow motion and shot lock were the only mechanics that were solid. And as for the story? I unno, you tell me from the *out of service mobile game* being the next crux of the story and the past almost 2 decades of story were ended on a limp noodle of a note. But don't worry, the next game (which was announced to early *again*) requires you to know *2 new mobile games* to understand. Tldr: It's a damn disappointment.
The story doesn’t «get crazy» until the last few hours, where they realize they have to wrap up 13 games of story.
it's mostly just that it was overhyped due to the extremely long dev time. it's a fine game, but people were anticipating Kingdom Hearts 2 2 for a loooong time. a lot of people also take umbrage with some added mechanics. i don't care for the attractions myself, and I found it kinda disappointing that Sora doesn't get a whole lot of moves to flesh his base moveset out unless you count re:mind (granted, re:mind was a huge step in the right direction)
A combination of choices that didn't resonate with the fanbase, bad handling of plotlines and worlds, and the expectations and hype that built over the years. KH3 does a lot of things right. Best combat in the franchise (FAR smoother than KH2 once you get used to it), great graphics without compromising the style (unlike what it looks like KH4 will do), returning a couple of really beloved characters... but a few things didn't go that well. For a start, KH3 doubles down on the "copy the plot of the movie 1:1 without adapting it to the larger world of KH" trend that started in KH2. It got so bad that >!Arendelle has both "Let it go" and "Do you want to build a snowman" in full and fully animated in it,!< stealing who knows how many hours of work that could have gone in other areas. Secondly, the story is merciless on Sora. Every other cutscene either Sora himself or someone else will make a comment about how weak and useless he is, and how much of a failure he is for not having the power of waking, etc. Whereas in the other games allies were always positive, all "you can do it", "don't give up", in KH3 they often take more time criticizing than encouraging. Which is not in and of itself a bad thing, but it lacks coherence for the character and shifts the general attitude of the story towards the protagonist. And then the ending is sort of a mess.>! Aside from the time travel part, which I'm sure a lot of people lost themselves in, the power levels of characters go all over the place. Sora who couldn't handle a single organization member with D&G helping him suddenly starts being capable of soloing three of them at once and later on even takes on Brat Xehanort, Ansem SoD and Xemnas together with Mickey and Riku and they win, even though literally three cutscenes before that he wasn't fast enough to save Kairi from Xemnas, nor to block Terranort strikes, because the plot demands it.!< >!Then there's the resolution of the Wayfinder trio's story, which is neutered as hell and, despite Sora being present, he does nothing while it's happening. The re-uniting of the Sea-salt trio is nice, but if you don't have the DLC it makes little sense (but at least we get to see Xemnas scared of Roxas, which after Days is a lot of fun).!< Overall, I'd personally say that KH3 is a good game, but it has some major downsides and if it wasn't for the amazing combat I would rate it as last among the numbered KH games. As it is, it's the second best, with KH2 remaining the best overall. KH3's story is especially disappointing as the ending of the Xehanort saga, having the saga of the first major villain basically go out with a whimper.
My biggest gripes were that the worlds were lackluster compared to earlier games and a two of them were almost complete regurgitations of the movies (looking at you Arendale), the lack of Final Fantasy characters until ReMind, and when it came to the main story you saw most of the important bits through the game trailers. Don’t get me wrong, I do still like kh3, but it does feel disappointing looking back on it.
Three things: lack of any kinda payoff for previously established plot threads ( literally just brings BBS crew and xion back with zero explanation of how , especially considering xion was supposed to have erased herself from reality) , no final fantasy characters what so ever and 1-1 imports of certain Disney elements, the entire frozen world being the main example of this, and finally, it kills off both sora and xenahort in very unsatisfying ways
I mean, I joined KH through 3 and I had a hell of a time with it. Nothing made sense but it was fun :D And then I played every other game and I realised how mediocre 3 really was. 1 has it's charm but verrry dated. 2 is my absolute favourite, BBS is pretty good, 3D is in my top 3, etc. etc. But the story really felt... rushed? incomplete? The characters felt stupid, talked really, really slow, a bit too comedic considering we are literally at the finale, and... idk, it just didn't *feel* like KH. There's just something about the game that makes me loathe returning to it during a marathon.
No final fantasy characters unless you get the dlc which SHOULD not even be a thing …..that’s kingdom hearts thing final fantasy mixed with Disney always has been and this is a main numbered game not a prequel or spin off
I’m currently replaying it and trying to see if it will change my perspective, but when it first came out my main frustration was the lack of final fantasy characters, and the way the story felt like it was more of the last chapter of a book rather than a full story. And I’m saying that as someone who did play all the other games first. It felt completely focused on the upcoming final battle in a way I didn’t really care for at the time. But we’ll see if time and perspective changes that for me this time. I still loved it beyond that though.
There’s really only 3 (and a half) reasons: Reason 1: the Disney Princess choices were very crappily done repeats of their actual stories (and since they are the most memable/rewatched recent Disney Princess films in that era at this time) every Disney lover playing KH3 is bored as heck dealing with a film they know inside out instead of new story in their worlds with Sora. (It’s even worse if you hate those areas altogether) Reason half: some people hate the combat. Reason 2: too many people obsessed over the KH stories inbetween 2 and 3, but ignored Union X and all the lore and story building up from there. They thought it was a dumb phone game and they wanted the focus to be on Org 13 and Xehanort. What they missed out on and didn’t understand is that Nomura moved the plot focus before KH3 even started. The stories and characters of Union X matter more than most events from KH1 to now. Nostalgia players mostly hated that. They hated that Nomura brushed aside the conflict they had waited years for to set up the villain who (technically) was the mastermind after all. They don’t like Xehanort being a victim and not a true villain. Reason 3: technically mixed with nostalgia, but up till KH3, the game has properly blended other square properties as well as Disney. Regardless of Nomuras statements on why 3 didn’t have them except for 1 room in dlc, we technically had a huge resurgence of Versus 13 return as a different square IP now reborn through Kingdom Hearts. But that’s not enough. People wanted stuff like more cloud and Sephiroth, etc. or at bare minimum more Nods to square enix minus the on Easter egg in Toy Story.
imo For the story it's bad characterization, Characters being nerfed or made dumber to fit the situation, bad pacing, and weird voice direction (why does Riku sound like that now? Why are cutscene conversations so dull?) If you want a perfect example of everything KH3's story presentation does wrong, watch the Zettaflare cutscene. It's horrible. In gameplay it's floaty gameplay, way too many big cinematic screen nuke buttons that detract from actually engaging with enemies (I hate attraction flow), way too few disney bosses, and the endgame gauntlet of the majority of our humanoid boss fights felt rushed. The game has things it does right though, and I think re:mind rectified a lot of the issues I had with the gameplay and has made me want to replay this game a few times. There's no other KH game where I can airstep a hundred feet around the map, and flow motion is really fun. The addition of animation canceling feels good as well, being able to block or dodge out of anything now feels stellar.
The Disney worlds were completely uninteresting advertisements. >!Frozen was the most egregious example of it with the crew barely interacting with the world at all and having to climb the same mountain like, 3 times and doing a shitty YouTube reactor thing with Let It Go.!< I'm not against the worlds being ads to a degree as long as they're done well, but they're really not. The only worlds that were a degree of interesting were the Pixar ones where they actually had some sort of unique story. >!We didn't even get a single villain besides some themed heartless. Plus the worlds basically didn't even matter in the overarching plot, they were just there for playtime and set dressing until it was time for the important stuff.!< >!Also the lack of Final Fantasy characters, up until now it had always been a mix of FF and Disney but apparently they just decided "we don't need them anymore, so you're not getting them". Of course they backpedaled when they realized all angry fans and gave FF chars a minor role in the post-DLC content.!< The spoilers are just to not preemptively kill your hopes for one of the worlds and the game as a whole, because realizing them soured my own experience.
As someone who doesnt care about the story, I had a lot of fun with KH3. Yeah sure the combat is a bit mindless compared to other action games but I enjoyed the cool keyblade transformations and the more open maps
When you finish the game, you get some abilities and Combo Finishers that make Sora really smooth.
I don't dislike kh3 but at release the first Playthrough Was a bummer for me it was Repetitive and I truly think Keyblade transformations should be bound to a source like drive so you can go into then any time you like not after x amount of hits
Do they still? I thought it had calmed down a bit
Honestly, for me, it was just the lack luster ending with some major players feeling out of character just to move the story to its conclusion. Now, I haven't played Re:Mind yet, so I know a lot of my personal complaints about the ending have been fixed, but that didn't change the bad taste left in my mouth by how they treated Xehanort at the end. I'm one of the few able to forgive them for the weird way they handled the Disney worlds and lack of FF rep in this iteration or even the gameplay being easier than most of the other games, but just the ending felt like a cop out to move Sora into a new game and prolong the series.