Demyx's KH3 Review

[DemyxIsBest 367]

Will be talking about spoilers in this review so it'll be under the spoiler banner, view at your discretion. 

pls read and discuss this review in the comments and with me it took me ages to write it lol

sorry for the lack of structure in some of my thoughts btw this was incredibly stream of consciousness and not at all planned

Spoiler

So the way I will talk about this game will be as follows; i'll break the game down into Big/Small positives and Big/Small Negatives, then give it a final verdict and rank it amongst other KH games. We'll start with the

BIG POSITIVES

It's fun to play: Ultimately, what the vast majority of gamers will look for in a game is the quality of its gameplay, and in my opinion it's a big thing the game got right. I had a blast playing this and even though there are A LOT of issues I had with the game, it is a game I definitely feel that I would play again - an opinion bolstered by the anticipation of DLC and perhaps a Final Mix cut.

Graphics: The game is gorgeous and I think this is something that will almost be unanimously agreed upon. I was stunned by the beauty of a lot of the worlds and Disney properties such as PotC that looked really weird in KH2 I actually thought looked amazing here, so big props to the Osaka team for that. They also did a great job with the framerate and for all the wonderful cinematics (an aspect of the game I especially loved) that take place it runs very well, a point which I was very impressed with because a lot of games  that are pictorially ambitious suffer from frame problems.

Disney Worlds: The Disney worlds are the probably best they have ever been, and I was mightily impressed with how well designed and implemented they all were. ToyBox was hyped up a lot and I must say I think it's my favourite Disney World of all time in the KH series, everything about it felt so genuine and real that I could actually get behind the idea that it is canon, I did like the mix between original Disney stories and actual film storylines. While I was slightly disappointed by how Sora was integrated in the Frozen world particularly, I felt like on the whole Square did an excellent job.

SDG: I'm so glad that we got to see the Sora-Donald-Goofy dynamic again, and I think it's the best it has been in any KH game. I wasn't the biggest fan of the writing in this game (i'll come onto that) but I think they executed the SDG interactions perfectly, which for me was so important because it is a big part of what made me fall in love with the first KH game when I bought it on-sale back in 2004.

Emotion: A big part of why I love KH games is that they have a good balance of cheese and candid emotion. There were definitely a lot of emotionally powerful scenes in the game and a lot of them were executed very well. I especially loved Aqua's return and the reunification of the Sea-salt trio in the Keyblade Graveyard, I don't cry at all really but seeing Axel weep actually got my tear ducts going.

Keyblade Graveyard: Second visit, i'll talk about the first visit a little later. But oh my god if that's not some of the best 90 mins of gameplay i've ever experienced then I must be in Nirvana. The boss rush was AMAZING and the YX/Ansem/Xemnas fight is probably my Top 5 favourite bosses in any video game with how well done it was.

Gummi ships: The best they've ever been, really fun, I loved how open it felt although I got so addicted I did the big boss pretty early in the game so hopefully there's slightly more content for it in the future!

Xigbar: Him being Luxu. Bloody love it. 

SMALL POSITIVES

A satisfying conclusion to the saga: FOR THE MOST PART (which is why I didn't include it in the Big P's). I feel like they wrapped up everything pretty well and while it was kinda fan-servicey I didn't mind that at all, and I really liked the way Roxas' group was handled. Honestly, I feel like I was one of the few people who actually really liked the concept of Sora sacrificing himself for Kairi at the end, however I think it was undermined by 1) the Paopu Fruit scene [implies they'll always be together so for me a lot of the shock was removed by the disappearance], 2) the way Kairi was treated in this game. I think Nomura had the right idea in that I feel he was going for a removal and a change of the KH conventions that we have been subjected to, but whether my hypothesis is correct remains to be seen.

Music: All of Yoko Shimomura's stuff was INCREDIBLE. Absolutely incredible, the Other Promise Vector to the Heavens Mix is an actual masterpiece. Ishimoto I felt, was lacking slightly. I wasn't that impressed with the MX battle themes, thought they were slightly lazy in their mixing and felt an original piece would have been more fitting. However, on the whole, the music was very nicely done.

Dialogue: For the most part, the dialogue was very well done, slightly inconsistent in parts but I thought in comparison to 3D for example, the exposition was done a lot better; in particular the Xemnas - Marluxia/Larxene/Demyx/Luxord scene, and the death scenes that occurred in Keyblade Graveyard.

Voice Acting: On the whole very good, and probably the best it has been in the series. I felt like a lot of the Disney actors did a great job, big shout out to the Mike and Sully VAs as well as the Jack Sparrow actor, all incredibly impressive! Props to HJO, thought he was excellent as Sora. Felt like David Gallagher and Mickey's VA were lacking slightly, some of their scenes, especially in the RoD seemed quite oddly enunciated to me. Don't like Marluxia's VA much, Willa Holland was a bit inconsistent too. Donald also gets more incomprehensible as the series continues.

SMALL NEGATIVES

Lack of Keyblades: Says it all really. A disappointing number compared to other mainline titles, I can understand the omittance of Oblivion and Oathkeeper because Roxas had them but it didn't stop Nomura at any point from designing new ones. Underwhelming.

Twilight Town: Why oh why did they downsize it so?! You can tell me it was for story purposes but Nomura writes the story, he can literally write in the other areas of Twilight Town so they're relevant, don't care about the disc size excuse either, FF15 was massive data-wise. 

Lack of Original Worlds: This one speaks for itself, world numbers and the SE originals both really disappointing.

No FF Characters: This one has been debated to death, but i'm slightly upset about it.

Linearity of worlds: Sometimes the Disney worlds would force you to go a certain way, which I thought hurt the idea of exploration to a certain extent. Only a minor gripe, though.

Character interactions: Some character interactions should've been much better than they were, i.e. Roxas and Ventus but this was because of the...

BIG NEGATIVES

Pacing: Found it bizarre honestly that they left all the big reveals to the Keyblade Graveyard, it just felt exactly like 3D (which is very bad) in that you sort of had to sift your way through 25+ hours of Disney World gameplay to actually get into anything meaningful in terms of the story. So much could have been done earlier in the game, the Aqua fight for instance could've been pushed up much earlier, Namine stuff, Roxas stuff, Ventus stuff. I don't understand why Square couldn't have spend a little more brain power thinking of a way to more efficiently spread out crucial plot elements.

Character writing: Seriously some of the writing in this game is bizarre, literally everybody but Sora jobbed so hard, don't get me started on Kairi and Namine Nomura treated them disgracefully lol. Sora's sacrifice at the end would've meant so much more if Kairi actually did something other than be a vegetable most of the game. It just seemed like everybody was a side piece to Sora in this game when it should have been so much more evenly spread out, Nomura made Riku in particular seem really weak when I believe it's implied in the events of 3D and particularly with the way his arc has progressed that he's actually stronger than Sora is. I really am fuming about Kairi though, she actually did less than she did in KH2 and she was basically a  re-skinned Princess Peach in that game.

Filler content: A lot of resources in this game were dedicated to content that nobody really cared about. Classic Kingdom in my opinion was a complete waste of money and effort. I guarantee that if it was never announced, people would have never wondered 'why doesn't Sora star in a Game & Watch Minigame collection that we can gradually collect along our journey?' You know why? Because it's completely pointless and I would much rather have had those resources pooled into more Twilight Town areas that could've been used for more interesting minigames like a Struggle tournament.

Secret Boss: It wasn't Sephiroth or another cameo character, it was a KH1 Inferno re-skin and it was complete rubbish.

Bosses in general: They felt pretty lacklustre and unsatisfying to be honest, none of them presented much of a challenge and apart from the Wolf in the Frozen world I found them rather bland with their moveset and design. I was rather disappointed with the lack of Disney bosses as I would've have loved to have fought Randall or Hans. The Titans in Olympus were pretty underwhelming with how powerful they're made out to be, and I found it funny that the Rock Titan was more of a challenge than the other 3 put together. MX bossfights were OK at best, I found the instant appearance of his minions in Scala Ad Caelum rather bizarre as it felt like there was some exploration to do it and his forms did not feel final. When I finished the game I was like those were 2 MEH forms, didn't blow me away like the final Xemnas form did, and there was no ridiculous transformation mode that I have got so accustomed to seeing. 

Master Xehanort: Found him a very underwhelming villain in the end, wasn't helped by Rutger Hauer's rather uneven portrayal, I thought Nomura's redemption arc at the end for him was utter BS, especially considered what he had done in the past and he had just killed Kairi. Felt like a complete kick in the gut and a removal of the satisfaction we were supposed to feel by finally defeating the big evil of the arc. 

Attraction Flow: Utterly Abominable addition, spent so much time and money on a tacky, clunky and quite frankly just not fun feature of the game, the fact you can constantly chain these things infuriates me, when the Keyblade transformations were so much more of an interesting concept, yet it still feels like in a way Nomura pulled his punches with that one, especially with the repetition of Second Form and lack of Keyblade variety. 

Difficulty: OH MY GOD THIS GAME IS SO EASY. I DIED TWICE THE WHOLE TIME ON PROUD MODE AND THAT WAS BECAUSE OF MX'S WEIRD SHADOW FORM THINGY ON THE FINAL BATTLE. The lack of a challenge takes away from SO many aspects of the game, a lot of the challenges you face in terms of Heartless just feel like a formality to move onto the next cutscene rather than a genuine, tense battle to save Boo's life for instance, the lack of difficulty takes away from the grandeur of the game so much, softens the impact of everything. There's so many ways to circumvent dying it genuinely baffles me what the team thought their target audience was. KH3 IS CLEARLY FOR THE SEASONED PLAYERS, NOT FOR NEW FANS, MANY WHO HAVE COMPLETED THE GAME ON CRITICAL MODE MULTIPLE TIMES. This frustrated me so much and perhaps also skewered my view on the bosses because I never really felt like I was in genuine danger.

Demon Tide: Why was this thing even made? And why is it copy and pasted so many times?

Kupo Coin: ...........

Rushed: Honestly, this game does feel like there are parts missing to it. I thought the whole Scala Ad Caelum segment was so bizarre, and Twilight Town did not feel as nearly as fleshed out as a hub world as say, Traverse Town did in KH1, we never really revisited anywhere which I felt ruined the pacing of the game so much. There were multiple reports that Nomura was actually more concerned with what came after KH3 than 3 itself, it seemed he had tired of this saga and honestly, with all the KHUX content, it really does feel like that..

Secret Ending: Clearly Nomura used this as a partial FU to Square about the whole Versus XIII saga, and say what you want about the similarities but they are 100% there, I am really not happy with how he has basically gone to war with Square by using Kingdom Hearts as his proxy, this is such a departure from the game I fell in love with all those years ago.

Keyblade Graveyard first visit: Just terrible writing all round, I refuse to believe realistically that Sora has to mess himself up and change time because ALL SEVEN GUARDIANS couldn't handle a bit of armour and another damn Demon Tide. Really, honestly, just terrible writing, the whole thing. Sigh.

No Critical Mode: >:(, I don't care about the final mix comparisons, KH2 is a game from the PS2 era, the FM version should not outcontent a PS4 game!

FINAL VERDICT: 

This game is a weak to middle 7. I can't say I was disappointed because I went into spoilers to temper my expectations but I come out more frustrated with the sheer naivety of some of the design decisions made in this game. Despite all my complaints, it is definitely a good game, just not a great one. Fin.

 hope u enjoyed xox

Edited March 8, 2019 by DemyxIsBest