Kingdom Hearts III Deluxe Edition

Kingdom Hearts III is how I imagine Kingdom Hearts haters talking about the series. Boring and brain-dead combat that has basically no nuance with most of the game's runtime being really dull cutscenes.

Makes me appreciate the other entries in the series much more.

this game's awesome idc about the criticism

hollup... let him cook

i can't really blame people for not good-faith engaging with a lot of the themes of the story OR the actual gameplay itself, given that the base game didn't really bother to challenge the player in either regard, but it is really sad to see a lot of people write off the combat as brain dead or say the story is silly.

there are no doubt silly moments, 80% of the game involves running around in disney worlds (it should be expected at this point), but there's a lot of really subtle, beautiful moments. i love how aqua is portrayed at the start of keyblade graveyard for instance; i think the writers did a good job of showing her trauma from years of being trapped in the realm of darkness. ironically, i remember a lot of people saying it was stupid and "unrealistic" for her to freeze up as she sees her friends get swept up by the darkness, which is why i don't think many of the people criticizing this are doing it in good-faith. the biggest criticism that i wholeheartedly agree with, with regards to the story, is that the pacing is off. there are story beats that happen between worlds, but since the player doesn't actually have any involvement in them (à la hollow bastion in kh2), it feels entirely disconnected from what you're doing. however, this is pretty common in kingdom hearts games. i struggle to see how kh1 or bbs have better pacing than kh3. kh2 is just the golden child that did a lot of things right.

the combat leaves a lot to be desired only if you are intent on not trying to make the most out of it, which is a fair criticism, but there is a lot of depth and nuance that comes out if you play the game with restrictions and on higher difficulties. the skill ceiling is insanely high with a lot of hidden tech, but the only bosses that require you to genuinely engage with this are the DLC bosses. however, using those tools in the base game makes it a hell of a lot more fun, in my experience. most people that may have heard of revenge value probably don't even know about stagger endurance or how it works (since the game doesn't tell you and all the bosses that have it are really easy on any difficulty other than critical lvl1). most people probably don't realize that if two enemies stunned by thunder run into each other they take a lot of damage! there's a lot of really interesting stuff that's only really useful if you decide to ignore most of the advertised game mechanics (attraction flow, keyblade transformations) and substitute it with base sora's kit. i don't think the player should have to "make the game fun" for themselves but it happens in plenty of other games, anyways. i've heard some people say that certain dark souls games become more fun on level 1 because the restrictions force you to really understand and get good at the game. i feel like kh3 is in a similar position where it becomes more fun the more you take away it's flashy mechanics.

i could go on forever but i really do think this is game is misunderstood in a lot of ways. it's by no means perfect but it is one of the best games released in recent years imo, particularly the dlc which has the best content in any kh game bar none. osaka team has improved tremendously, not just from bbs to kh3, but from kh3 to re:mind. i think a lot of the adamant detractors probably have never played re:mind because they found the base game boring but it really is worth it if you've ever enjoyed kingdom hearts in the past or like really fun bosses. it might change ur mind!

hollup let him cook [2]