And by Thursday, when I had finally wrapped up the original game, I was content with how they had handled the game. But I was thinking strictly from a gameplay and visuals perspective. A notion that I still hold. The game plays and looks absolutely stunning. I was at first worried when I played Fragmentary Passage (AKA the gameplay demo for KH III included in the 2.8 HD collection) that I wouldn't like how the game looked or played, as I was used to the original character designs. But I have come to respect this new design for the game and was definitely praising the visuals for the game.
Then I had to move. And I got myself into a new apartment. And while we set everything up to get cable, I still had my Gaming Systems and my VHS collection to entertain me, so I plopped Kingdom Hearts III into my PS4 again and pressed play. And I went through the game again. And the story sat wrong with me. Very wrong. To the point where I was wondering if I actually hated this game. I went through the levels I had thought were beautiful and found the flaws other people had seen in the game. There truly was no real reason for Organization XIII to harass Sora as much in this game as there was in previous games. They cited their intentions on making Sora one of them, but then gave up on that plan as Sora left Twilight Town. Also, if Sora lost all of his powers after the events of Dream Drop Distance (as Yen Sid pointed out), how did simply running through Olympus manage to unlock all of them again except for the one that they needed to advance the plot (the power of waking)? How did Xehanort manage to manipulate events that were fated to be so easily when the laws of time and space decried that he could not have possibly given up his body to move as deeply through time as he did? Why is Maleficent so keen on finding the Black Box during the events leading up to the Keyblade War, when she knows she would be up against both Xehanort and Sora if they knew the truth? How did the Land of Departure just fix itself after Xehanort tore the land apart in Birth By Sleep? Why did the Princesses of Heart (all except Kairi for some reason) have to give up their powers for these new Princesses? How did Sora and co. manage to go back in time after Xehanort obliterated the Guardians of Light during the...you know what? I'm getting ahead of myself. I should make this more out to be in line with my film reviews. Because that's just what Kingdom Hearts III is. An interactive movie experience.
SPOILERS BECAUSE DUH!!!!!!
Plot: With the Keyblade War on the horizon, hero of the Keyblade Sora is dispatched by Master Yen Sid (sorcerer from Fantasia) to regain his powers after nearly succumbing to the darkness in the previous game in the series. Together with Donald Duck and Goofy, Sora heads to his old stomping grounds in Olympus and aids Hercules in his quest to save the Realm of the Gods from the ambitions of Hades and the Titans, all the while slowly regaining his powers back, including magic, flowmotion, transformations and even shotlock attacks. After succeeding in driving off Hades, Sora and his friends are sent out into the world to protect them from the ambitions of Xehanort and his Organization of Brainwashed followers and past, present and future forms of himself. Along the way, Sora visits old friends in the 100 Acre Wood, Twilight Town and the Caribbean, while also exploring new worlds such as the Kingdom of Corona, Arendelle, Monstropolis, San Fransokyo and the Toy Box. While Sora was seeking to prevent the fall of these worlds, he was also tasked with seeking out the whereabouts of Terra, a fallen Keyblade Wielder his friends believed would help, all while also learning that the Organization was targeting the likes of Rapunzel, Elsa and Anna as the next generation of the Princesses of Heart. While in Twilight Town, Sora gets the idea of reviving Roxas from him, but learns from his enemies that the only way to do that (that they wanted him to know) was for Sora to give into the darkness in his heart and become a Heartless, thus allowing the Organization to use his Heartless as one of their Thirteen Seekers of Darkness and Roxas to join the ranks of the Guardians of Light.
Meanwhile, with Sora occupied defending the Realm of Light and Kairi and Lea (Axel) training in the solitude of a mysterious plane of existence, Riku and King Mickey Mouse head into the Realm of Darkness to find Aqua, another Keyblade Wielder thought lost to time, who has been sinking into her despair in the darkness. Riku and Mickey are ultimately quelled by Aqua after the darkness takes over her, but the timely arrival of Sora manages to both save his friends and rescue Aqua from the darkness. With Aqua saved, Sora takes her to Castle Oblivion (AKA The Land of Departure) to awaken Ventus, the third in their trio of Keyblade Wielders who had fought Xehanort. After they succeed and regroup, the Guardians of Light seem set for battle with Xehanort, all while their allies at Hollow Bastion (I will never call it Radiant Garden) use the plans of Ansem the Wise and the newly recruited members from the Organization Vexen and Demyx to somehow bring Roxas from out of Sora's heart.
Sora, Aqua, Riku, Kairi, Ventus, Lea, Mickey, Donald Duck and Goofy head to the Keyblade Graveyard for their showdown with Xehanort and his army of...well, himself. They succeed in driving off a huge wave of Heartless, Nobodies and Unversed, but are soon picked off by the powers of darkness and Terra (who is revealed to have been possessed by Xehanort). Even Sora sinks into the darkness, but finds himself somehow on the cusp of life and death. While in the Final World, Sora begins to piece himself back together despite feeling as if he would be fading into darkness, even reuniting with Kairi's Nobody form Namine there. Sora eventually pieces himself together and saves the souls of his friends, despite warnings from Xehanort that he would be giving up his existence for them. Sora and Kairi are reunited and both reaffirm their pledge to keep the other safe, with Kairi insisting she was the one who refused to let Sora fade and all return to a point just before Terra had attacked them. Events do not play out the same as Namine succeeded in dispatching Lingering Will (Terra's Soul) to the battlefield to drive off the possessed Terra and Sora and co finally make it to where the battles would take place. One by one, Sora and his friends manage to take out the Organization's members (Dark Riku, Xigbar, Marluxia, Larxene and Luxord) before Sora makes it to where Kairi and Lea fight off Saix and another mysterious being. Sora soon uncovers that the mystery being was the puppet Xion, whom Xemnas and the Organization had once recruited to siphon Sora's memories as she developed a life of her own. Xion manages to rebel against Xemnas, prompting Roxas's timely arrival. Realizing the battle was lost, Xemnas takes Kairi hostage and flees, allowing Sora to finish off Saix, Vanitas and Terra's possessed being before confronting Xemnas, Young Xehanort and Ansem in battle.
Despite coming out victorious, Sora is unable to prevent Master Xehanort from killing Kairi and causing the opening of Kingdom Hearts. Sora laments their failure, but is compelled by his friends to keep going and takes the fight to the very heavens themselves (Scala Ad Caelum translates to Stairway to Heaven) and fights to destroy Xehanort once and for all. Xehanort succeeds and reveals he intended to be the one who destroyed the darkness all along, but is compelled by his enemies and old friend Eraqus to give the mythical X-Blade to Sora and passes along into the afterlife. Sora refuses to end his journey there and leaves to find a way to save Kairi, ultimately succeeding in bringing her back, but at the cost of his own existence, getting to spend only a short while with her before vanishing into nothingness.
What's Wrong?: Kingdom Hearts has had a storyline issue since roughly Dream Drop Distance in 2012. Anytime you introduce time travel into a story, it gets a little convoluted, no matter how much you explain or show off the rules. And this game series is no exception. If Xehanort simply had clairvoyance or something like that, it would be somewhat believable. But to have Xehanort doing all of these shenanigans just to go back in time to tell himself what he needed to do to essentially rule the worlds, I not only laughed out loud at how dumb this was, but also how ridiculous the premise was at all. Clairvoyance could have been fine enough without the ridiculous time traveling gimmick. And this game is no different in it's stupid and unexplained time traveling method, where Sora has to go back to the point where he and his friends fell to the Heartless and the possessed Terra just to save his friends from the darkness when he could have hypothetically gone back to the point before that just to avoid his friend's hearts sinking into darkness, especially if he was going to just rewrite history all the same. The only thing that happened in this moment was Sora having to use the Power of Waking more than his body would allow and thus leaving him on the edge of the abyss around the time he was heading out to find Kairi. You could have made it much easier than that if your ending had to be Sora giving up his life for Kairi. I don't like to think my ideas are flawless, but one of the concepts I had expected the game to take was a Sailor Moon type approach where the closer Sora gets to Xehanort, the more of his friends fall. And that when the X-Blade was to be formed, he would have to use the power of waking to save his friends before he confronted Xehanort, with the two heroes of light and darkness ultimately fading into oblivion after their clash, which would then propel Kairi and Riku to begin their search of their respective love interest and best friend. But of course, the game took an illogical route to try and make Sora's disappearance not as inevitable. Come on, guys. This is a video game franchise that has shown no signs of ending anytime soon. Why would Sora's story have ended here with him and Kairi together living a happily ever after? They're going to prolong it as long as the games are making money or if there are more Disney properties to add into the lore.
There's also the matter of a little personal issue I have with the game in it's world choices. While in development, Tetsuya Nomura had gone on the record saying that there would be less worlds in this game, but the worlds would be bigger and more expansive. Only in a handful of cases, however, is this truly a thing that's relevant. A lot of the time in this game, the plot has Sora and co. being flung from one place in the map to the other by means of magic or other reasons. It was funny in Olympus because it was plot relevant to get Sora and Co. to where Hercules was and away from Mt. Olympus to let Hades take over the Realm of the Gods. But by the time you're scaling the North Mountain back to Elsa's ice palace for the 3rd time, it's getting extremely annoying. This isn't just in Arendelle, I should point out. You're in a toy store called Galaxy Toys in the Toy Box and you have to go up and around the entire store almost two or three times with Woody and Buzz Lightyear. You're also forced to navigate the Door Vault in Monstropolis for the majority of the time you're there. If you were going to make half the time you're in most of these worlds just going back and forth throughout admittedly large areas of the worlds, why not use that time to add a few more worlds into the game. You didn't have to completely abandon the other Princess of Heart worlds or other classic Disney Worlds. The oldest Disney Property with a fully fleshed out world (100 Acre Wood does not count) that you explore in this game is the Toy Story world. No Agrabah, Pride Lands, Beast's Castle, Halloween Town or Tron World. I admit going back to those worlds might seem tedious, but why no other Disney worlds? Why not Pocahontas? Black Cauldron? Jungle Book? Why did this game have to focus on so many contemporary worlds at the expense of the classic ones?
Also, there are just several characters that do nothing in this game. And I don't just mean characters that serve menial purposes like Demyx or Merlin. I'm talking characters like Maleficent and Pete, who used to be some of the more engaging and ruthless semi-antagonists in the series, being relegated to less than 10 minutes of total screen time in this game. No boss fights, no secret objectives. It's all the same thing in their pursuit of this Black Box (which contains something explained in one of the side movies). Kairi also took a huge step backwards in her character arc, as she takes some of Princess Peach's medication and resorts to being a Damsel in Distress by the end once again, despite her training in wielding a Keyblade. I really thought they would do something with her character instead of nothing at all.
What's Good?: The gameplay and the graphics of this game are literally some of the most gorgeous things I've ever seen. I always hate when games try to become too realistic out of fear that the games will look dated by the time a handful of years come to pass. Many games use this approach instead of going for a more timeless approach to their design. And when KH III was announced that it would be taking things up to the Unreal Engine, I was alarmed that the games were going to look extremely dated in a few years like so many realistic looking games do. But I have to give Square credit here. They put in the effort to make the game actually look like it's a combination of those remasters of Crash Bandicoot and Spyro while also taking a direct page from both Pixar and Disney with the designs of their movies. It makes sense to go with this more stylized approach with the majority of movies from this game being either 3D Animated films or in Pirates of the Caribbean's case, live action. It wouldn't have made much sense to have these kinds of designs in one of the hand drawn worlds that isn't deeply stylized. Hercules passes the test, because it's always been oen of the best designed movies. But the best sign of improvement from Square and Disney has been how seriously dated Fragmentary Passage looks in 2017. The game was supposed to display the graphical upgrades of their new gaming engine. And it made Kingdom Hearts look like so many other prototypical RPGs of the same time. Aqua's model still looks weird, as do Mickeys. They made some steep improvements from 2017 to 2019 and I could not be happier with those changes. The models are believable and don't move like a game's first beta testing. The characters aren't rigid looking and only in the 100 Acre Wood do they even look slightly jarring, but I think that was the point for them to be more storybook-like instead of in the same vein as characters like Olaf, Hades or Baymax.
The Gameplay is also very good. It's a combination of II, Birth By Sleep and Dream Drop Distance's command styles, with heavy emphasis on hack and slash, shotlock commands, group attacks and flowmotion. I was afraid it was going to be as rigid as Fragmentary Passage's gameplay looked and felt, with Aqua being a little too floaty to use, but the game manages to use different Keyblade Styles to give Sora some added weight and girth to his attacks. For example, the Toy Story world's Keyblade allows Sora to smash his way through opponents, but has a very bad stagger that makes it a cost to being so recklessly offensive. The Monsters Inc. Keyblade also lets you get into ridiculous combos while you're transformed, but prevents you from being able to block properly. Arendelle's Keyblade grants you slower but precise damage. Corona's grants you greatly enhanced magic, etc. The game is certainly not a rehash of any of the previously mentioned games, where the Keyblade became less of a unique weapon and more of a magic sword. The Keyblade's transformations are so wonderfully animated that I cannot help but marvel at them whenever I trigger the commands.
And for the first time since Kingdom Hearts II, there is some legitimate character development for Sora. Sure, it's minimal and is more geared towards future games than this one, but at least we get a side of Sora we haven't seen before. He knowingly sacrifices himself, all too clear of the price to pay if he performed the Power of Waking one last time, which he did to save Kairi. Hopefully we go into Kingdom Hearts IV with a more mature Sora now that he's likely engaged in some darker storylines and games and that Riku and Kairi now are going to head out to save him,
Overall: Seeing as how you all knew I was expecting Kingdom Hearts II on steroids to be this game, I cannot say that the pros outweigh the cons for this one. It's a superbly designed game, that's for sure. But the story issues it suffers from make the game a slog for me to have to go through. I am not looking forward to when I have to LP this game, as you all know I prefer to LP games where I have some bit of joy coming out of it. Otherwise, we get playthroughs like my Kingdom Hearts Coded LP or my Pokemon Black LPs. Hopefully my opinion of the game improves when I buy the DLC as the LP approaches.
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