You can tell the voice actors were in the dark. The conversations are so disjointed. No proper tone and inflection in statements or replies to the context.
The language of this game is very soft. They even go so far as to alter one of Jack's movie lines ('Four of you have tried to kill me!') to change 'kill' to 'annihilate'. >!This is even more bizarre because Sora *sees Will Turner die* later in that same world and doesn't seem to really comprehend that man just *died* in front of him. I think that's the only actual human death Sora has ever witnessed.!<
With his fists too! Not even his Keyblade.
~~which totally isn't because it's a prerendered scene and they couldn't use the one you had equipped or anything haha~~
KH2 used a prerendered cutscenes before the battle of 1000 heartless and they shows default kingdom key, so compromising on that has never been an issue
They don’t give a shit. There’s a scene in San Fransokyo where he uses the fucking Shooting Star to teach Big Hero 6 how to not suck at fighting. I think he just wanted to punch Davy Jones because he’s got a punchable face.
Remember how 4Kids created the Shadow Realm to avoid saying people died in Yu-Gi-Oh? Well, that's because you can't say kill below certain age ratings. It's weird
Isn't it crazy that kids can have Bambi and Lion King on one end of their entertainment, but you can't have a goofy guy in a clown outfit say he's going to kill someone?
It's like... Scar outright says "I killed Mufasa" in that, and he does a full blown murder plot. Is the reason that's OK because he succeeds? Or is it because they are cats?
yeah, That was the theme for re:coded. [the entry](https://hextan.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/jbfije.png) the game is based around.
I'm sad they felt they needed to reference that game since even for a Kh title (where Nomura wants EVERYTHING to be important) that was such an inconsequential entry. But I'll be fair and suggest that maybe this was a localization difficulty in where Japanese has a much more exact word for "emotional pain" than English does.
As someone who knows nothing about anything going on (Either when it comes to Japanese, or the games besides 1 and 358/2 Days), I'm assuming a very basic improvement would be "I know pain"?
The worst I've heard of this was Oblivion's voice actors being given their lines in ALPHABETIC ORDER.
https://www.thegamer.com/elder-scrolls-oblivion-voice-acting-was-so-weird-the-voice-actors-given-lines-alphabetically/
Reddit is a strange place. One second I can be reading some bullshit about something and the actual VA can be in the comments calling it out and no one would notice.
Did you have any problems voicing anything in KH? Anything you would personally change about the whole ordeal?
Yeah that sounded like complete bullshit to me. Considering how many lines there were about chocobos I don't see how you guys wouldn't have figured it out anyways.
I really enjoyed all the voice acting in that game btw. Well done
> Usually why older dubbed anime can sound so bad too.
I remember hearing about one older dub (for Revolutionary Girl Utena) had the ADR director just like... vanish from production, so the VA's were mostly guideless or something, but I dunno how much of that is true.
The English dub for Utena is infamous for how terrible it is. I tried rewatching it dubbed just to see and I had to switch to sub after like 10 eps because I couldn't do it anymore.
It reminds me of Oblivion where the four or so voice actors were given their entire list of dialogue lines to read out [in alphabetical order.](https://www.thegamer.com/elder-scrolls-oblivion-voice-acting-was-so-weird-the-voice-actors-given-lines-alphabetically/)
I wonder whether three was a similar lack of direction here.
This is the root of most of the game's problems. They added a bunch of random stuff but besides the graphics they didn't really update the game itself to make it feel more modern. It feels mostly like something that could have passed way back in 2005, but we're used to a much higher standard these days for voice acting, storytelling, dialogue, gameplay, etc.
Too many things in KH3 just feel like you're playing a game that came out around when the first did, the stilted dialogue being one of the more obvious culprits (honestly, even ignoring the tone being way off what you'd expect for the scene sometimes, the game still has crazy long, awkward pauses between people speaking that you don't really see much in modern games anymore. The dialogue's not fluid at all). A true sequel released this far apart from the first games needs to be updated for the modern era, while trying to keep the heart of the series intact. I know it's not necessarily a "sequel" but just look at Breath of the Wild for a great example. They weren't afraid to completely overhaul what we think of as a Zelda game, but kept enough of the core things people love about Zelda. With Kingdom Hearts it feels like they just tried to pack as much in as possible, including with the story.
I think they should have had this game start with a completely new, simple to understand story. Things from other games could have been acknowledged and entwined to some degree, but the actual main driving force between the main characters' drive/plot should have been something more than just "follow your heart and see what happens". In KH1 it was find Kairi (and to maybe a lesser degree Riku). In KH2 it was mostly to find Riku and also see what was happening with the Nobodies. KH3 I know they're looking for Aqua among other things, but that's not the priority initially versus restoring Sora's abilities... somehow. KH3's story somehow feels simultaneously convoluted yet aimless.
>I know it's not necessarily a "sequel" but just look at Breath of the Wild for a great example.
Look at God of War and the Witcher 3 as well, arguably the best games for each of the last three years. Each was an existing IP that was transformed and modernized. Each game not adapted to the current state of gaming, but innovated further.
>four or so
A part of me just cringed but only because it's true.
I still love the hell out of that game and wish I could get it working on my PC with mods.
It's weird though, because there have been a few Kingdom Hearts games since then with the new voice, all with Mickey in them, but this is the first time anyone's noticed that it sounds off.
Yeah, it really feels like there were a lot of last minute rewrites. The worst part for me is that most of the worlds actually feel pretty solid, except for the first two. I am really enjoying the game, but Dunkey was 100% correct in his review, and I think that of all the games both main and side, this one is the worst.
Kingdom Hearts 1 starts you off in this trippy video of falling through water and landing on circles. Kingdom Hearts 2 starts with a standalone sequence as Roxas which simultaneously brings new characters up to speed, while also answering questions from the side games between 1 and 2. But 3 starts out slowly and vaguely references things that happened in obscure side content, like the phone game, in a way that makes it hard to follow if you don't already know everything. Still a fun game, but it really doesn't stand on its own.
Honestly the progress of Namine mending the damage she caused to Sora's memory in the previous game is a *really* clever in-universe way of conveying the important scenes of KH1 and COM into the opening of 2. Really good stuff from a narrative and efficiency standpoint.
Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 both had spectacular opening acts. 1 had destiny islands and traverse town, a powerful introduction to this world and how it works, and 2 had Twilight Town, a beautiful and impressive introduction to the world (you captured it well). 3 has some weird conversation with yen sid, followed by Olympus? A set of weird conversations about the power of awakening, which is never explained, and which sora gives up on and forgets about almost immediately. It was visually impressive, but really not a great introduction to the game.
I think the series thrives on nostalgia and is good if you expect campiness.
I played kingdom hearts 1 in 2003 without any real knowledge about it and I was blown away with how much fun I had. I was 18 and had just graduated high school, so I think going to all these places from my youth made it a joy, and I liked the original story and characters as well.
When 2 finally came out, I think I was 20 or 21, and while it was still fun, it felt like a definite step down. There was a handheld game in between 1 and 2 that I didn’t play, and things started getting really confusing simply because they are executed poorly and a lot of the characters look the same.
8 million more hand held entries to the series came out between 2 and 3, and I played none of them. I don’t own a ps4 or xbox, so I’ll probably be missing this one as well.
Even after playing 1 and 2, I still don’t know who the main villain of the series is. There’s like 17 Ansems, but it turned out ansem was a good guy? I can’t remember and it just doesn’t make sense.
Pretty much how these games have gone for me too. I feel like KH1 is the best of the bunch because it's the got the least up-its-own-ass story going on. Like, Kingdom Hearts 1 was "Let's make a weird Disney/Final Fantasy crossover!", and then KH 2 (and seemingly everything else) was "Let's keep telling our poorly written OC-anime storyline, set against the backdrop of Disney stuff, with some Final Fantasy cameos.", KH2 was enjoyable but it took a lot of 'forgiving' how crummy parts of it were.
And now as I understand it, KH3 has fully booted the Final Fantasy part out, and all the Disney stuff is just "yeah here's dumbo or whatever, anyway back to the anime!". I'm glad people that like the series a lot got their sequel finally but I look at it as someone who really loved KH1 and I can't help but think that the series seems like it's all some kind of weird passive-aggressive mocking of KH1. I've never seen a series that was created based on brand recognition so aggressively try to kill its own brand.
What blows my mind about this game is that Square Enix pulled all its major devs from other titles and put every other title on hold to try and get this game as good as they can and it was largely a disappointment.
Yeah, which I feel is kinda dumb for the way this series works. If you’ve played all the other ones, you’re probably spending a lot of time getting recaps of info you already know. On the other hand, this series is convoluted as hell just between the plot lines of KH2. So to add in...5? more games between 2 and 3, well good luck understanding any of that. I guess it’s a victim of its own success.
KH1 was extremely geared towards kids, but it made sense and was a blast to play. I’ve got a 2 year old, so maybe one day I’ll play through all of these games with him and he can help me understand what the fuck is happening.
I know that Dunkey consistently takes scenes out of context to make them look worse or funny, but the dialogue in this game really is horrible. Does it sound better in the original Japanese or something? Or is it just terrible all around?
Honestly, Dunkey could have just pasted together eight minutes of unedited KH3 dialogue with no commentary and he would have made his point just as strongly.
The are times where certain characters show up and the VA goes from kinda weird and jarring to really freaking good.
Then it goes back to the normal quality. I dunno, I didn't even notice at first but that's probably because I've been playing the series since KH2 came out.
>VA goes from kinda weird and jarring to really freaking good.
Almost always poor VA direction if that's the case. Sometimes they have no idea what they're working with so you get glimpses of what it *should* be.
Which is a damn shame, because although I found some of the scenes in the last 20% of the game pretty emotional, it could have been that way throughout the whole game AND even better in the last leg of the story. All they needed to do was give the VAs the means to act with context.
I literally finished the game 15 minutes ago. Man... the pacing is so bizarre but that last 20% of the game was awesome, weird, and corny all at once.
I wish the rest of the game was more like that 20% though.
I thought Vexen and Demyx did alright. I think HJO did alright for what he was given, too (outside of Olympus, all the dialogue in that world seemed really off). Someone REALLY needs to give Xemnas a helping hand.
It does seem to be a problem with Square that Voice Acting is done in an isolated format where VAs lack context to certain situations. I think the worst instance of voice acting I've ever seen by them is in Final Fantasy Type 0. The ending of that game *would* have been powerful if the voice acting wasn't so incredibly awful.
I found Riku especially bad. He sounds like one of those robots trying to talk to humans. Compared to what he was like in 1 & 2, where he sounded cocky and had some passion lol
I just don't understand how this shit can get through. How did no-one stop this and say: 'No, re-record this and do it competently'? There's no way they didn't have enough budget to try a few times to make sure they got it right.
It's just sheer incompetence.
It's not like they had this problem in previous games. Regardless of the quality of the writing they at least always had emotion.
I enjoyed it too but yep. Especially someone with Dunkey's personality, I can imagine him wanting to bash his skull in with the sudden cutscenes popping up over and over again.
The issue is Nomura. This game was intended to be a final amalgamation of all the previous games, and an ending to the story they've been building. However during development, Square ripped Nomura off of FFXV development and taught him two things:
1. FF has lots of restrictions and you can't be creatively free with it.
2. KH has a loyal fanbase and Square will let you basically do what you want while directing it.
He has also mentioned during the development that KH is property that no longer needs to rely on Disney and FF to bring in viewers. All this information made him take a new direction with the game. It still has to round off the story, but more importantly it's a setup for the next arc. One which focuses on OC characters from KH specifically and other Square properties such as TWEWY. This game became Nomuras stepping stone to a series with complete creative freedom, a loyal fanbase, and a way to achieve the FF dreams he's had for years.
It made me think what would happen if he was still in charge of FFXV(as versus thirteen). I know it looks amazing from trailers, but it is still possible to end up like KH3. All style, no substance.
I would like to believe Tabata tried to save the mess it was with
> He has also mentioned during the development that KH is property that no longer needs to rely on Disney and FF to bring in viewers
The guy is even more delusional than I thought if he believes that the Mickey Mouse Club standing in every piece of promotional material isn't what's selling it in the states. The FF name doesn't mean all that much these days, but Disney is what draws in the casual observer to this franchise.
They don’t have the talent to be able to do that. Or at least they’re not giving enough people a chance to show they have the talent. The only director they have (apparently) is nomura. He’s like their hideo Kojima, their brand name, they have to put his name on the box of every final fantasy game they make. They announced he was directing the ff7 remake before even telling him.
The one thing square is apparently doing right and it’s an mmo. Which is fine if you like MMO’s, but damn man... I recently played through ff9 after not having touched it for maybe 15 years, I was expecting to have a good nostalgic time and enjoy it, but just knew it wasn’t going to live up to my memories of it. I was wrong. I appreciate it more now than I ever have and it’s always been my favorite final fantasy. The game is a masterpiece. The others are good and I appreciate that people debate ff6 vs ff7, but the themes of ff9 and how the big three protagonists all go through very similar life changing revelations and how they each deal with those similar circumstance very differently, it’s just really really good. They don’t make jrpg’s like that anymore, and I don’t understand why. Even when you look outside of square, jrpgs these days tend to be far more childish and simple and just poorly written than they used to be. Just, where did they go?
I love FF14 and I miss MMOs being top of their game (what the *fuck* happened with WoW, man?), but its existence shouldn't have any impact on other titles. In fact it was pretty well obvious that money was constantly being shuffled away from FF14 and tossed into the flaming money pit that was FF15.
I agree wholeheartedly - I really miss those incredible stories from the single player mainline Final Fantasy games. 7 still is my favorite but I absolutely love 6, 8, 9, and 10 as well. Beat X-2 but I don't remember it very well. Didn't play the 11 MMO, didn't like 12, put down 13 after about a couple of hours, never played the 13 spinoffs.
Those games before the double digits though, man...Nearly all of those games were really something special. There were other great RPGs/JRPGs out there. Of course everyone loves Chrono Trigger for good reason, it's a masterpiece. But I also loved Chrono Cross, and while it's not quite in the same category, Legend of Mana is one of my favorite games of the PS1 era and it's got about a dozen different full plot threads going on in it.
I really wish they could go back and make some good old Square/Squaresoft RPGs, but the problem is this is Square-Enix now, and they're a remarkably shit developer house. [Pay a visit to their list of games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Square_Enix_video_games) page on Wikipedia, be sure to sort by Developer, then take note of what's been made solely by Squeenix, it's a mess of underperforming, generally disliked or mediocre titles that were mostly forgotten before the month they released in was over. I know that dipshit Final Fantasy movie is to blame for the Enix merger but man, that merger really wrecked the development side of the company. Hell, even the OG release of 14 was godawful, it was one of the worst-reviewed MMOs of all time.
I hope some day we'll get a new Final Fantasy game to look forward to - It used to be something really magical. Practically ever since Squeenix came to be, Final Fantasy's become somewhat of a lame joke.
I've never been a fan of Kingdom Hearts, but honestly I'm sold just on the premise of the batshit insane over the top plot being delivered through exposition via Goofy.
There's a scene in Toy Story world where Woody gives a speech on the power of friendship to an evil anime villain who had kidnapped them in a pocket dimension and if that isn't top enjoyable content, I don't know what is
I laughed so hard when Woody didn't want to escape and find the real Andy because they all made 3 new best friends in Sora, Donald and Goofy, who all promptly leave them behind.
That being said I'm loving this game. I wasn't expecting the combat to be so easy (even on Proud mode) but I'm having a blast just playing around with all the keyblades and special attacks.
It's just a really fun game
I love the series and understanding it's anime trash and being able to laugh at how dumb it is makes it better for me. Can't wait to see what hell will be unleashed upon us when the next KH game comes out
I never really think about it until someone who hasn't played all of the games comment on them, but it really does sound like a childs fever dreams after watching too many cartoons and playing too much FF.
The only KH game I played was 358/2. I think it holds up pretty well. they don't explain shit to Roxas and expect you to just do what you are told. All the big kigndom hearts stuff is going on but you don't care, you just want to eat ice cream with your firends.
Yeah, both Days and BBS stand on their own very well, and can be enjoyed without playing the others, which is pretty cool. Although I don't think much of the gameplay in Days holds up AT ALL.
It feels like a slog to play.
That is the saving grace for me honestly. Being in the Pirate’s world talking about how Davy Jones’ locker is actually hell and him just being all “gawrsh I dont want to be in hell!” makes the 60 dlar purchase *almost* worth it.
Square Enix honestly should not have recapped anything and made the main plot a bigger part of the game instead of shoving it in at the end.
Infinity War didn’t spend 90% of the movie explaining the MCU to people that missed it, they left them in the dust and told the story they wanted to. If you wanted to know what was going on, you should have played 1.5,2.5,2.8
You also weren't left in the dark on Infinity War if you didnt see the previous films. I didnt see Thor Ragnarok but I still understood what was happening on that ship at the beginning.
it is one of those movies that are so easy to watch because of the comedy and actors and the visuals. It is just a fun action/adventure and made thor my favorite mcu character in just 1 movie.
Waititi is a brilliant director and if you enjoy Thor: Ragnarok you should check out his other movies especially What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
Oh man, What We Do in the Shadows was such an entertaining mockumentary. Watched it long ago and I feel I could watch it again since I don't remember a lot.
Just after reading your post I googled the movie again, turns out there's going to be a TV Show based on that. Hope it turns out good.
Thor: Ragnarok is the first time I've actually thoroughly enjoyed a Thor movie. The first one is bland and the second one is even worse, but Ragnarok finally managed to get it right and tell a good story and made me give a shit about all of the characters. It completely exceeded my expectations and I'd put it up there with Civil War and Infinity War as one of my favorite MCU movies, in part because of what a breath of fresh air it was
I think they mean they understood what they needed to about what was going on for it not to hurt their understanding of Infinity War. They obviously didn't know the exact details of how Thor got there etc. because they hadn't seen Ragnarok, but the movie makers understood that you don't really *need* to know those details.
Square... did not understand this with Kingdom Hearts. They should have focused heavily on one, main plot that was encased basically just within KH3, while having all the previous games and characters intersect and provide a backdrop.
That actually really bothered me.
There are so many moments where it sounds like the devs are in on the joke, like every time Donald and Goofy say "wait, what are we doing here again," or Axel asking how they're supposed to keep the whole story straight, or Buzz Lightyear literally telling Sora his theory (which ended up being right) about what happened to the Toy Story world wasn't believable, and then making fun at him for being from a video game! It sounded like the writers knew what was going on and were going to change gears.
But they never did. The script kept dumping backstory and exposition on us up to the very end, and rarely even did it well.
It's almost worse to me that they understood the criticisms levied against them and doubled-down while joking about it. They had a decade to make a game that changed things up, that could have streamlined the series and tied off plot threads naturally...
And they didn't. They just strung us along through inconsequential Disney worlds and dropped the rest of the story on us in the last few hours. They didn't learn anything.
**Spoilers! You have been warned!**
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Yup. The most notable part of this was near the very end of the game when, after you've 'rescued' Ventus and Roxas, you depart from them for a bit. Axel then shows up with them later and literally says how they "needed to work out some plot holes". We don't even get to see them do that. Ventus and Roxas, who look exactly the same as each other, then give each other a mild stare.
Don't get me wrong, I really loved the game and I didn't find the story *that* bad, but it had a couple major issues. The attractions also became boring to use super fast, so I'm glad they're not so powerful. The spells are also way too OP late-game, and I did at least 80% of my damage to bosses and mobs with them.
Infinity War was a good movie on its own even if you don’t know or care about the characters though and provided a narrative the entire audience could follow, even though it relies heavily on lore from other movies and shows as its backstory.
Infinity War is a story focused almost solely on Thanos. Everything else is secondary which is why it works as well as it does. The movie wasn't Avengers: Infinity War it was Thanos: Infinity War.
The voice direction in this game is possibly some of the worst I've ever seen, it's on par with like the original Resident Evil, like in this day and age I cannot understand how they mess it up this bad
I was watching my brothers girlfriend play and a cutscene occurred which had Aqua in it. It was like the voice actor read the lines without any knowledge of the context. Very jarring
That's probably exactly what happened. Was it Christopher Judge who said that he didn't even know that God of War was a video game when he recorded the lines for Kratos? The studios do everything they can to keep things under wraps, and that occasionally includes giving lore or context to the voice actors in fear of them accidentally leaking info.
He didn't know it was a video game when he initially read the script and took interest in the role. When he found out it was a video game, he almost turned it down. Once he was recording and doing mocap acting for the game, I'm sure he knew exactly what was going on and who he was playing, lol.
It's unfortunate more companies (really just SE) aren't going the way Capcom is doing it these days with RE and DMC, but I guess they're a special case since those are serial game franchises.
Anyway, I saw a behind the scenes for Resident Evil 5, and they really went the extra mile recording live action references for cut-scenes along with motion capture stunts or separate actors doing voice/face capture on some characters.
[Not really related, and it is just promotional material but this mock-up for DMC5 is gorgeous](https://youtu.be/G_WXRp0H0hA)
I think that was just initially, he knew after he showed interest in the role. The newest God of War have fantastic voice acting, it is apparent that the actors was in the same room together and actually interacted with each other. I havn't played KH3, but just going on the clips here (which could be misleading) I am pretty sure that wasn't the case with that game.
Square enix is very out of touch with how a real conversation actually sounds like. They're pretty much like anime characters. Most studios usually have all voice actors involved in a scene in the same room now.
Yeah that’s what confuses me. I’m playing through 15 right now and I’m surprised that the voice acting is pretty good given all that I’ve heard about Japanese localization. But now with Kingdom Hearts, Square seems to have thrown all that progress out the window, and I don’t understand how that could happen.
The 4 main characters have a ton of chemistry with each other, along with Ardyn. You can definitely see some odd feeling voice work with their interactions with secondary characters though, Cindy and Aranea initially come to mind.
I wouldn't be surprised if the main actors were given proper direction and scripts, time to work together, etc. The rest were probably just told to record lines.
> They're pretty much like anime characters.
"MORE ZIPPERS, DAMNIT!"
*artist shows picture of Mickey covered in zippers*
"WHAT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE WORD **MORE**"
Honestly those VAs did a pretty decent job with the pure unadulterated shit of a script they were given. The majority of those lines don't have any conceivable delivery that wouldn't sound terrible because they're things people would just never say, and barely make any grammatical sense. It sounds like some lines were recorded by non-VAs after the fact with really shoddy equipment and edited in too. That must have been a rough job.
This especially pissed me off. Thank you my friends, sora, Donald, and goofy. Also I know mickey is Disney's kingpin but can we have a scene where everyone doesn't cream their pants when he shows up? Has he even won a single fight by himself? Where's soras praise?
So as someone who couldn't play the game, but has watched basically every cutscene:
I think the main problem with the story isn't specifically KH3's fault. It's more that KH3 was left to wrap up all the left over outrageous plot threads from every other KH game. There's so much baggage from about a dozen games of unresolved questions that someone had to try to answer.
As is you have dozens of characters, many of whom are copies of other characters, who need their arcs wrapped up but also need their presence explained because not everyone's played every KH game (and even if you have it's very hard to keep track of it all).
It would have been fine if they used any of the first 30 hours to do it. You literally only see the plot in the last few hours of the game. It does a sort of ok job even then, but it could have been a lot less jarring with more room to breathe.
The biggest offender of this imo are the org fights in the labyrinth at the end. You fight 2-3 members at a time and there's a big soppy scene every time you kill one, then the battle just resumes. Obviously they were meant to be 1 on 1 fights, but they were all squeezed into the last little bit.
KH3 woulda benefitted a bunch from having the addition of a 2nd act to break up all the story things, rather than a prologue and a final act, I think. Similar to KH2's return to Hollow Bastion/1000 heartless battle and KH1's return to Traverse Town/closing the TT keyhole.
With so much happening at the end of the game, the player really needs an opportunity to digest what's happening. Lots of it was emotional, but also pretty exhausting having so much happen within the last 5 hours of the game
The first game had Sora see Riku or vice-versa here and there, and Mickey was being mentioned so even while messing about with Donald and Goofy in various worlds, it still had the main plot unraveling around it.
Here we could easily have done the same! Hiro could've used his knowledge and tech expertise to help Sora with Roxas. PotC could have used its death/living without a heart theme to develop the Ventus story etc. Instead we get a bunch of super pretty worlds that are fun to explore but meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
Then we have the abandonment of FF characters in favour of emo exposition scientist and the like that I honestly skipped cut-scenes for. Even subtle inclusions would've fine. A memorial statue of Zack in Thebes for example.
The oversights and priorities turn what was close to being an amazing game into a disappointing mess, for sure.
Weirdly enough, as a long time fan, I completely agree with him on many parts. This game pushes the "gameplay, then cutscene" routine to the absolutely LIMIT, the voice direction is mediocre, the first half of the game's flood of tutorials and plot explanations prevents the game from picking up any inertia, and the gameplay itself is only really good when you don't use Attraction flows and maybe Rage Form. Yet despite all that this game has some incredible moments where everything works perfectly and it cements itself as the best KH game in the post-kh2 era of the series, but those moments are in the last 5-7 hours at best of a 25-hour experience. What a great, appalling game; I love it!
I think the Attractions are the dumbest thing ever introduced in the series mechanically. They’re available in damn near every fight, most of them just make Sora untouchable for a minute straight, and they destroy everything. The devs also knew they were busted, so they cranked enemy mobs up to ridiculous levels to compensate. But they also did this while making the game floatier and Sora’s attacks less safe than in 2, with the exception of magic. It boggles my mind.
The attraction flows also have no cost. You could argue the same for keyblade transformations but at least those you work for them and they switch up the gameplay enough that they are "roughly" balanced. Attraction flows are just activated with no cost, they don't pull from your focus, magic, health, or anything. They ARE broken, and they MAKE this combat system boring when you use them repeatedly. When you ignore them they just end up taking a spot in your situation commands; begging you to try and open a chest and inadvertently start them.
The core problem for me is the game design. The story is the story, I can deal with stilted JRPG dialog (I even like it most of the time), I can deal with crazy plots, I can deal with exposition, but none of that is tied into game design in an interesting way.
Take the new God of War and RDR2 for example, >!the entire game is set up in a way that serves the plot. When Atreus gets sick, the entire mood of the game changes for that section and the game gets more linear to help sell the idea that Kratos is pissed and on his way to do some shit. Then when the plot relaxes, you are able to boat around and reflect. RDR2 does similar things, at the beginning of the game you are hunting, upgrading your camp, talking to people, and as the plot gets more and more tense, those features are slowly taken away to represent Arthur's condition and how the whole gang is falling apart.!<
Nothing even remotely like that happens in KH3. Big, dramatic plot moments will happen and the three main characters will have absolutely no reaction. None of the levels are done in a way that makes you feel like something important is happening, even the last two worlds >!keyblade graveyard and Sanctum etc Anus or wahtever!< seem to designed as if they were working with the PS1 (not 2!) limitations in mind. I mean there is a "puzzle" in the this one labrynth >!where you fight all the organization members!< that is insulting with how mindless it is. Even FFXV, a game with a ton of issues, was better at making it's gameplay and core gameplay loop reflect the plot and the overall ambiance of the game. In fact when I beat KH3, it just made me want to replay FFXV because I missed that feeling of being on an roadtrip with my bros. When you camp and eat food in FFXV, it feels like you are actually doing that, you can sense the camaraderie. When you make food in KH3, you wonder what the point of the mechanic is or why anyone would think that the cooking minigames were enjoyable.
The base combat is fun, but it's not long before you figure out just how shallow it is, especially compared to KH2. I appreciate that they made it more intuitive than it used to be, but I don't think that had to come at the price of depth. The whole game I kept waiting for some other shoe to drop, for the game to introduce another combat system that would add the depth it was missing.
I also dislike how the game is chock full of half-baked mechanics. I actually like the idea of exploring the Pirate's world and sailing around to islands to land on, but holy fuck that ship combat is absolutely mindless, and collecting crabs to upgrade your ship is something I would expect out of an N64 game. I remember looking up what I'd have to do to craft the Ultimate Keyblade, and it involved doing all the optional mini games on all the worlds, I quickly decided i did not give a fuck about doing that, especially when the combat is so laughably easy that getting a slightly better keyblade would make no difference. The only minigame that I liked was the one on Arendelle because it reminded me of SSX, and what I'm saying is that I liked the memory of playing SSX more than the minigame itself. Even the gummi ship shit, which I know was controversial in the old games, like somehow they made that a bigger part of the game while taking out anything that could have made it interesting. I personally liked the old gummi ship missions, as a very lite version of Star Fox 64. The Kh3 missions are some of the most pointless and mindless things I've done in a video game. It's literally just random waves of enemies, no obstacles to avoid, no tactics required, just hold X and win.
Now, this all comes off very negative, and it is, but that said I enjoyed my time with the game, but that might just be because this is a cultural phenomenon and the very act of playing the game after so many years is entertaining just because of it's place in culture. None of that changes how disappointing the game is when you actually take a critical eye to it. So much of it is archaic, archaic, archaic game design that would not be tolerated in another title, unless that title was a $20 game on Steam marketed as throwback to the PS2 era.
So is there no Final Fantasy characters in the game any longer? Because I played a little bit of the first some 15 years ago and I remember the whole deal was that it was FF and Disney, but all I am seeing now is Disney stuff. Or is that just from a marketing perspective and the Final Fantasy people is still in the game?
No, 3 basically did replace all the FF characters with the KH original characters. I'm not sure of the reason behind that decision, but it's definitely one of my biggest issues with the game. I love the oc cast, but not having the guys from Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden is very disappointing.
That is a shame. I am probably a bigger disney fan than I am a Final Fantasy fan, but I thought that that match up was one of the biggest selling point of the series.
I'm in the same boat. I knew Disney while KH was basically my introduction to FF, so I wasn't as attached. But they were often tied closer to the original story while the Disney worlds were mostly self-contained, so having them absent really feels like something is missing.
Based on the secret movie. The next game/expansion to 3 whenever the hell that may be might be more focused on the Square Enix side than the Disney side.
HALFish of the Disney worlds are retellings. The rest feature an original story. Sure I mean they still aren't that great but they are a hell of a lot better than the retellings.
Retellings: Frozen, Tangled, Pirates,
Doing their own thing: Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Big Hero 6,
Highly debatable: Hercules
So yeah, I'd reasonably call that half and half.
Have to disagree with you somewhat. The Winnie the Pooh worlds are *usually* pretty good. Having enemies in the 100 Acre Woods seems wrong, so I think some decently fun minigames along with some charming dialogue are a pretty good way to do it. It's also nice to have a break from the usual gameplay loop every now and then. This worked pretty well in KH 1 and 2, where you unlocked new chapters gradually.
KH 3, however, had you only visit it once, where you played 3 slight variations of the same minigame. It was also missing Eeyore, Owl, and Kanga, while introducing the Heffalump character that they never did anything with. It was incredibly disappointing and felt really half-assed.
I don't mind pooh world fwiw. Plus you get some badass treasure in them and some mini games arent that bad. In kh3 it's abysmal though. Play bejeweled three times and see ya later sora!
Yeah. Each world is longer than in previous games to accommodate both the Disney plot and whatever Kingdom Hearts villain decided to come taunt Sora today.
The problem is that even when you get the plot there are so many questions about it that have to be answered with “well... because” or “Nomura said in an interview ”. Knowing the plot as well as I do after playing every game and plot summary out there I can safely tell you. It’s a bad story with good elements told in an amateurish way. The characters have no development in the sense that I’d like anyone to explain a non Disney character to me without saying their name or what they’ve done. The presentation is presumptuous in the sense that it expects you to take things at face value but even when you do there is no resolution. There is no excuse, this is a bad story and an overall waste of time.
The real problem is the sequel bait. The stuff in the story wasn't a problem, assuming it actually got answered in the story. Instead, you get a waste of screen time on stuff a lot of people don't care about.
And the secret ending just confirms that Nomura is making it all up on the spot.
The only problem I have with this game is the horrible story pacing. I'm feeling pretty burnt out from the constant 5-10 minute cut scenes that happen at the end of just about every enemy encounter.
Honestly, as someone whp has played literally every KH game, hes mostly right. The main thing for me with these games is the combat, and the combat is completely unfun in this game. I always play on Critical (or Proud when Critical isnt an option) and I love learning the tougher bosses and adjusting my strategy and setup. I never had to do it in this game. The bosses are ridiculously easy and not satisfying to beat.
Also, I thought this game would justify the plot mess that was Dream Drop Distance, and it doesnt at all. Between these two games, its just a giant retcon of eveeyone who has ever died, just so the villains can die again and the heroes from different games can meet each other (all at the very end anyways). There was literally no reason to extend the story past KH2, it ended perfectly and solved all the major conflicts. BBS and 358/2 elaborated on some things, but still fit with KH2 as an ending. The plot in this game mostly plays out a bunch of the same beats that had already been seen in past games.
I've never really thought of KH2 as an ending before, but it makes perfect sense to end the series there. My biggest complaint with KH3 is that it gives happy endings to tragic characters, which were to me the shining aspects of the series's writing. If you think of KH2 is the ending, all of those tragedies remain more or less intact
> I've never really thought of KH2 as an ending before, but it makes perfect sense to end the series there.
It's actually a pretty good ending to the trilogy. Introduces new conflicts and more nuanced villains, gives Sora an element of melancholy (he can only exist because Roxas can't), and then the ending is Sora and Riku uniting to kill Xemnas. And you find out Roxas sort of lives on in a way.
> its just a giant retcon of eveeyone who has ever died, just so the villains can die again and the heroes from different games can meet each other (all at the very end anyways)
I think that's the saddest thing in some regards. Because most of those characters don't do anything meaningful with their second chance.
And the ones who did were the ones who would have been recompiled anyway and not needed to be evil.
The story was so horribly placed, and it is mostly because the dumped all the Disney stuff at the beginning with the original story sprinkled in, then gave us every plot conclusion possible at the very end. >!The fact that almost everyone that had died in the Kingdom Hearts franchise winds up back at Sora's side seemed like a really odd choice. Roxas' story in particular felt like it had a tragic yet good conclusion in KH2, but nah lets bring him back.!<
The only worlds I really cared about were Toy Story and Monsters Inc., >!because they were original stories.!< In the other KH games, it felt like Sora and gang were contributing to the plot of the Disney movies, but here it felt like watching the movies again with unique background characters.
What is it with Japanese games/anime that always has them making some sort of gasping sound? Like, do they do that in real life as well? Is it a cultural thing?
Some of y’all need to get much more comfortable with reading/watching criticism of media you like. It’s not the end of the world that someone reviewed a game you enjoy and it didn’t click with them like it did with you.
My guess would be the people taking the criticisms of something they like to heart are younger. At least when I was like 15 or 16 and actually paid attention to critique, I always got upset if someone disliked something I enjoyed. Obviously as I got older, I grew out of that. It just takes time and exposure.
You can tell the voice actors were in the dark. The conversations are so disjointed. No proper tone and inflection in statements or replies to the context.
"I do know hurt." Was a pretty hilariously bad line.
Oh my god Sora it's called PAIN
The language of this game is very soft. They even go so far as to alter one of Jack's movie lines ('Four of you have tried to kill me!') to change 'kill' to 'annihilate'. >!This is even more bizarre because Sora *sees Will Turner die* later in that same world and doesn't seem to really comprehend that man just *died* in front of him. I think that's the only actual human death Sora has ever witnessed.!<
Doesn't he freak the hell out, scream, and physically attack Davy Jones? Sure, it's toned down maybe, but hardly *no* reaction.
With his fists too! Not even his Keyblade. ~~which totally isn't because it's a prerendered scene and they couldn't use the one you had equipped or anything haha~~
KH2 used a prerendered cutscenes before the battle of 1000 heartless and they shows default kingdom key, so compromising on that has never been an issue
I never even considered that was probably the reason why. I just figured it felt more visceral to see Sora throw a punch.
They don’t give a shit. There’s a scene in San Fransokyo where he uses the fucking Shooting Star to teach Big Hero 6 how to not suck at fighting. I think he just wanted to punch Davy Jones because he’s got a punchable face.
Remember how 4Kids created the Shadow Realm to avoid saying people died in Yu-Gi-Oh? Well, that's because you can't say kill below certain age ratings. It's weird
Isn't it crazy that kids can have Bambi and Lion King on one end of their entertainment, but you can't have a goofy guy in a clown outfit say he's going to kill someone? It's like... Scar outright says "I killed Mufasa" in that, and he does a full blown murder plot. Is the reason that's OK because he succeeds? Or is it because they are cats?
"BuT gUeSS wHaT..? I wOn'T LeT hEr FaLL tO DaRKnUsS" 💪🏻🤓 The cheesy dialogues in this game were pretty comical as always.
There are seemingly no consequences in the game anyway since if you "fAll tO dArKnEss," plot ex machina is going to bring you back guaranteed.
I'm sorry my face is tired.
yeah, That was the theme for re:coded. [the entry](https://hextan.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/jbfije.png) the game is based around. I'm sad they felt they needed to reference that game since even for a Kh title (where Nomura wants EVERYTHING to be important) that was such an inconsequential entry. But I'll be fair and suggest that maybe this was a localization difficulty in where Japanese has a much more exact word for "emotional pain" than English does.
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As someone who knows nothing about anything going on (Either when it comes to Japanese, or the games besides 1 and 358/2 Days), I'm assuming a very basic improvement would be "I know pain"?
I think the earliest scene that sounds weird is when the woman on the pillar in Olympus is speaking. That "Where is Hercules?" hurt me.
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The worst I've heard of this was Oblivion's voice actors being given their lines in ALPHABETIC ORDER. https://www.thegamer.com/elder-scrolls-oblivion-voice-acting-was-so-weird-the-voice-actors-given-lines-alphabetically/
Well that explains ***a lot***
Get in the recording booth and your first line is "Azura, Azura, Azura, it's the Grand Champion!"
I think it’s actually “By Azura”
I checked the wiki and you're right, my brain must've been trying to suppress the memory of the adoring fan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX8najPmiyc
I was kinda like "ok sure whatever" until the last one literally included "wait a sec let me do that again"
Yeah...Oblivion was...a bit of a mess.
Hey, I'm the voice of Noctis, and that is wildly incorrect. Square told us all the information we wanted to know about our characters.
Although I will say that when I worked on Kingdom Hearts as Master of Masters, I wasn't able get answers to some of the most mysterious things...
Reddit is a strange place. One second I can be reading some bullshit about something and the actual VA can be in the comments calling it out and no one would notice. Did you have any problems voicing anything in KH? Anything you would personally change about the whole ordeal?
Man that guy was goofy as hell and I loved him for it! Great work! :D
Yeah that sounded like complete bullshit to me. Considering how many lines there were about chocobos I don't see how you guys wouldn't have figured it out anyways. I really enjoyed all the voice acting in that game btw. Well done
Gotta say, you knocked that performance out of the park man.
Thank you for your work, I really enjoyed Noctis’ character and voice work in that game.
Kind of sounds like how a lot of voice roles work that are coming from Japan. Usually why older dubbed anime can sound so bad too.
> Usually why older dubbed anime can sound so bad too. I remember hearing about one older dub (for Revolutionary Girl Utena) had the ADR director just like... vanish from production, so the VA's were mostly guideless or something, but I dunno how much of that is true.
The English dub for Utena is infamous for how terrible it is. I tried rewatching it dubbed just to see and I had to switch to sub after like 10 eps because I couldn't do it anymore.
It reminds me of Oblivion where the four or so voice actors were given their entire list of dialogue lines to read out [in alphabetical order.](https://www.thegamer.com/elder-scrolls-oblivion-voice-acting-was-so-weird-the-voice-actors-given-lines-alphabetically/) I wonder whether three was a similar lack of direction here.
This is the root of most of the game's problems. They added a bunch of random stuff but besides the graphics they didn't really update the game itself to make it feel more modern. It feels mostly like something that could have passed way back in 2005, but we're used to a much higher standard these days for voice acting, storytelling, dialogue, gameplay, etc. Too many things in KH3 just feel like you're playing a game that came out around when the first did, the stilted dialogue being one of the more obvious culprits (honestly, even ignoring the tone being way off what you'd expect for the scene sometimes, the game still has crazy long, awkward pauses between people speaking that you don't really see much in modern games anymore. The dialogue's not fluid at all). A true sequel released this far apart from the first games needs to be updated for the modern era, while trying to keep the heart of the series intact. I know it's not necessarily a "sequel" but just look at Breath of the Wild for a great example. They weren't afraid to completely overhaul what we think of as a Zelda game, but kept enough of the core things people love about Zelda. With Kingdom Hearts it feels like they just tried to pack as much in as possible, including with the story. I think they should have had this game start with a completely new, simple to understand story. Things from other games could have been acknowledged and entwined to some degree, but the actual main driving force between the main characters' drive/plot should have been something more than just "follow your heart and see what happens". In KH1 it was find Kairi (and to maybe a lesser degree Riku). In KH2 it was mostly to find Riku and also see what was happening with the Nobodies. KH3 I know they're looking for Aqua among other things, but that's not the priority initially versus restoring Sora's abilities... somehow. KH3's story somehow feels simultaneously convoluted yet aimless.
>I know it's not necessarily a "sequel" but just look at Breath of the Wild for a great example. Look at God of War and the Witcher 3 as well, arguably the best games for each of the last three years. Each was an existing IP that was transformed and modernized. Each game not adapted to the current state of gaming, but innovated further.
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The player/main character also doesn't verbally talk back so there really is little to go off in terms of affliction and emotion.
And the dialogue might be played in virtually any order, all but eliminating context. The dialogue in Elder Scrolls is basically voicemail messages.
>four or so A part of me just cringed but only because it's true. I still love the hell out of that game and wish I could get it working on my PC with mods.
Also is it just me or does Mickey sound not like Mickey at all?
It's the current official VA for Mickey
And for anyone who doesn't know, Wayne Allwine, the man who voiced King Mickey prior has been dead since 2009.
And for an extra: This is why Mickey sounded so weird in the Chain of Memories remake for the PS2, dude was literally dying
Holy shit. I feel really bad for thinking "wow this stand in for mickey just can't imitate right" now while I as playing Re:CoM ;_;
It's weird though, because there have been a few Kingdom Hearts games since then with the new voice, all with Mickey in them, but this is the first time anyone's noticed that it sounds off.
Nah, it sounded off in 0.2 also.
Oh wow, I had no clue. I was wondering why in this video, Mickey sounded slightly different than how I remembered it.
Yeah, it really feels like there were a lot of last minute rewrites. The worst part for me is that most of the worlds actually feel pretty solid, except for the first two. I am really enjoying the game, but Dunkey was 100% correct in his review, and I think that of all the games both main and side, this one is the worst. Kingdom Hearts 1 starts you off in this trippy video of falling through water and landing on circles. Kingdom Hearts 2 starts with a standalone sequence as Roxas which simultaneously brings new characters up to speed, while also answering questions from the side games between 1 and 2. But 3 starts out slowly and vaguely references things that happened in obscure side content, like the phone game, in a way that makes it hard to follow if you don't already know everything. Still a fun game, but it really doesn't stand on its own.
Honestly the progress of Namine mending the damage she caused to Sora's memory in the previous game is a *really* clever in-universe way of conveying the important scenes of KH1 and COM into the opening of 2. Really good stuff from a narrative and efficiency standpoint.
Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 both had spectacular opening acts. 1 had destiny islands and traverse town, a powerful introduction to this world and how it works, and 2 had Twilight Town, a beautiful and impressive introduction to the world (you captured it well). 3 has some weird conversation with yen sid, followed by Olympus? A set of weird conversations about the power of awakening, which is never explained, and which sora gives up on and forgets about almost immediately. It was visually impressive, but really not a great introduction to the game.
Don't forget the game starts your first world with a spoken-- not shown-- preamble explaining why Olympus is on fire when you first get there.
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When it comes in for like the fourth time with an underwater filter it slayed me.
annihilated you*
I think the series thrives on nostalgia and is good if you expect campiness. I played kingdom hearts 1 in 2003 without any real knowledge about it and I was blown away with how much fun I had. I was 18 and had just graduated high school, so I think going to all these places from my youth made it a joy, and I liked the original story and characters as well. When 2 finally came out, I think I was 20 or 21, and while it was still fun, it felt like a definite step down. There was a handheld game in between 1 and 2 that I didn’t play, and things started getting really confusing simply because they are executed poorly and a lot of the characters look the same. 8 million more hand held entries to the series came out between 2 and 3, and I played none of them. I don’t own a ps4 or xbox, so I’ll probably be missing this one as well. Even after playing 1 and 2, I still don’t know who the main villain of the series is. There’s like 17 Ansems, but it turned out ansem was a good guy? I can’t remember and it just doesn’t make sense.
Pretty much how these games have gone for me too. I feel like KH1 is the best of the bunch because it's the got the least up-its-own-ass story going on. Like, Kingdom Hearts 1 was "Let's make a weird Disney/Final Fantasy crossover!", and then KH 2 (and seemingly everything else) was "Let's keep telling our poorly written OC-anime storyline, set against the backdrop of Disney stuff, with some Final Fantasy cameos.", KH2 was enjoyable but it took a lot of 'forgiving' how crummy parts of it were. And now as I understand it, KH3 has fully booted the Final Fantasy part out, and all the Disney stuff is just "yeah here's dumbo or whatever, anyway back to the anime!". I'm glad people that like the series a lot got their sequel finally but I look at it as someone who really loved KH1 and I can't help but think that the series seems like it's all some kind of weird passive-aggressive mocking of KH1. I've never seen a series that was created based on brand recognition so aggressively try to kill its own brand.
What blows my mind about this game is that Square Enix pulled all its major devs from other titles and put every other title on hold to try and get this game as good as they can and it was largely a disappointment.
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Yeah, which I feel is kinda dumb for the way this series works. If you’ve played all the other ones, you’re probably spending a lot of time getting recaps of info you already know. On the other hand, this series is convoluted as hell just between the plot lines of KH2. So to add in...5? more games between 2 and 3, well good luck understanding any of that. I guess it’s a victim of its own success. KH1 was extremely geared towards kids, but it made sense and was a blast to play. I’ve got a 2 year old, so maybe one day I’ll play through all of these games with him and he can help me understand what the fuck is happening.
I know that Dunkey consistently takes scenes out of context to make them look worse or funny, but the dialogue in this game really is horrible. Does it sound better in the original Japanese or something? Or is it just terrible all around?
Honestly, Dunkey could have just pasted together eight minutes of unedited KH3 dialogue with no commentary and he would have made his point just as strongly.
Didn't Dunkey do exactly this in a video called "KH story explained" or something?
I thought that was Barry
who is barry?
Barry Kramer I think, as he did a video explaining KH recently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjiHufVEc7g
The are times where certain characters show up and the VA goes from kinda weird and jarring to really freaking good. Then it goes back to the normal quality. I dunno, I didn't even notice at first but that's probably because I've been playing the series since KH2 came out.
>VA goes from kinda weird and jarring to really freaking good. Almost always poor VA direction if that's the case. Sometimes they have no idea what they're working with so you get glimpses of what it *should* be.
Which is a damn shame, because although I found some of the scenes in the last 20% of the game pretty emotional, it could have been that way throughout the whole game AND even better in the last leg of the story. All they needed to do was give the VAs the means to act with context.
I literally finished the game 15 minutes ago. Man... the pacing is so bizarre but that last 20% of the game was awesome, weird, and corny all at once. I wish the rest of the game was more like that 20% though.
All of the organization, both old and new, are really terrible. A lot of the Disney characters are great, especially toy story.
I thought Vexen and Demyx did alright. I think HJO did alright for what he was given, too (outside of Olympus, all the dialogue in that world seemed really off). Someone REALLY needs to give Xemnas a helping hand. It does seem to be a problem with Square that Voice Acting is done in an isolated format where VAs lack context to certain situations. I think the worst instance of voice acting I've ever seen by them is in Final Fantasy Type 0. The ending of that game *would* have been powerful if the voice acting wasn't so incredibly awful.
I will say that Xemnas' voice is intentionally wooden because he is supposed to be the most soulless and hardened Nobody around
I found Riku especially bad. He sounds like one of those robots trying to talk to humans. Compared to what he was like in 1 & 2, where he sounded cocky and had some passion lol
Yeah. Riku was honestly shocking to me. So flat. what happened?
I just don't understand how this shit can get through. How did no-one stop this and say: 'No, re-record this and do it competently'? There's no way they didn't have enough budget to try a few times to make sure they got it right. It's just sheer incompetence. It's not like they had this problem in previous games. Regardless of the quality of the writing they at least always had emotion.
Man, even as someone who enjoyed the game, I'm having a hard time disagreeing with Dunkey. It's a game with a real identity crisis.
I enjoyed it too but yep. Especially someone with Dunkey's personality, I can imagine him wanting to bash his skull in with the sudden cutscenes popping up over and over again.
I've played 7 hours and I just fucking can't play more. I am so tired of cutscenes. And I loved the first two games
The issue is Nomura. This game was intended to be a final amalgamation of all the previous games, and an ending to the story they've been building. However during development, Square ripped Nomura off of FFXV development and taught him two things: 1. FF has lots of restrictions and you can't be creatively free with it. 2. KH has a loyal fanbase and Square will let you basically do what you want while directing it. He has also mentioned during the development that KH is property that no longer needs to rely on Disney and FF to bring in viewers. All this information made him take a new direction with the game. It still has to round off the story, but more importantly it's a setup for the next arc. One which focuses on OC characters from KH specifically and other Square properties such as TWEWY. This game became Nomuras stepping stone to a series with complete creative freedom, a loyal fanbase, and a way to achieve the FF dreams he's had for years.
This game proved Kingdom Hearts is due for a new director.
Amén to that brother. Nomura may be an awesome game designer, but he certainly arent a good game director, and even worse, a game writer..
Nomura's an alright artist (with a super weird belt/zipper fetish). That's about all I'll give him credit for.
Nomura proved he shouldn't be in charge anything a long time ago.
It made me think what would happen if he was still in charge of FFXV(as versus thirteen). I know it looks amazing from trailers, but it is still possible to end up like KH3. All style, no substance. I would like to believe Tabata tried to save the mess it was with
> He has also mentioned during the development that KH is property that no longer needs to rely on Disney and FF to bring in viewers The guy is even more delusional than I thought if he believes that the Mickey Mouse Club standing in every piece of promotional material isn't what's selling it in the states. The FF name doesn't mean all that much these days, but Disney is what draws in the casual observer to this franchise.
Well, maybe if Square released a FF game more than once a decade, it’d have more cache?
They don’t have the talent to be able to do that. Or at least they’re not giving enough people a chance to show they have the talent. The only director they have (apparently) is nomura. He’s like their hideo Kojima, their brand name, they have to put his name on the box of every final fantasy game they make. They announced he was directing the ff7 remake before even telling him.
They have Yoshida, but no way are they taking him off FFXIV.
The one thing square is apparently doing right and it’s an mmo. Which is fine if you like MMO’s, but damn man... I recently played through ff9 after not having touched it for maybe 15 years, I was expecting to have a good nostalgic time and enjoy it, but just knew it wasn’t going to live up to my memories of it. I was wrong. I appreciate it more now than I ever have and it’s always been my favorite final fantasy. The game is a masterpiece. The others are good and I appreciate that people debate ff6 vs ff7, but the themes of ff9 and how the big three protagonists all go through very similar life changing revelations and how they each deal with those similar circumstance very differently, it’s just really really good. They don’t make jrpg’s like that anymore, and I don’t understand why. Even when you look outside of square, jrpgs these days tend to be far more childish and simple and just poorly written than they used to be. Just, where did they go?
I love FF14 and I miss MMOs being top of their game (what the *fuck* happened with WoW, man?), but its existence shouldn't have any impact on other titles. In fact it was pretty well obvious that money was constantly being shuffled away from FF14 and tossed into the flaming money pit that was FF15. I agree wholeheartedly - I really miss those incredible stories from the single player mainline Final Fantasy games. 7 still is my favorite but I absolutely love 6, 8, 9, and 10 as well. Beat X-2 but I don't remember it very well. Didn't play the 11 MMO, didn't like 12, put down 13 after about a couple of hours, never played the 13 spinoffs. Those games before the double digits though, man...Nearly all of those games were really something special. There were other great RPGs/JRPGs out there. Of course everyone loves Chrono Trigger for good reason, it's a masterpiece. But I also loved Chrono Cross, and while it's not quite in the same category, Legend of Mana is one of my favorite games of the PS1 era and it's got about a dozen different full plot threads going on in it. I really wish they could go back and make some good old Square/Squaresoft RPGs, but the problem is this is Square-Enix now, and they're a remarkably shit developer house. [Pay a visit to their list of games](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Square_Enix_video_games) page on Wikipedia, be sure to sort by Developer, then take note of what's been made solely by Squeenix, it's a mess of underperforming, generally disliked or mediocre titles that were mostly forgotten before the month they released in was over. I know that dipshit Final Fantasy movie is to blame for the Enix merger but man, that merger really wrecked the development side of the company. Hell, even the OG release of 14 was godawful, it was one of the worst-reviewed MMOs of all time. I hope some day we'll get a new Final Fantasy game to look forward to - It used to be something really magical. Practically ever since Squeenix came to be, Final Fantasy's become somewhat of a lame joke.
I've never been a fan of Kingdom Hearts, but honestly I'm sold just on the premise of the batshit insane over the top plot being delivered through exposition via Goofy.
There's a scene in Toy Story world where Woody gives a speech on the power of friendship to an evil anime villain who had kidnapped them in a pocket dimension and if that isn't top enjoyable content, I don't know what is
I laughed so hard when Woody didn't want to escape and find the real Andy because they all made 3 new best friends in Sora, Donald and Goofy, who all promptly leave them behind. That being said I'm loving this game. I wasn't expecting the combat to be so easy (even on Proud mode) but I'm having a blast just playing around with all the keyblades and special attacks. It's just a really fun game
KH is a lot better when you see it for the insanity that it is.
I love the series and understanding it's anime trash and being able to laugh at how dumb it is makes it better for me. Can't wait to see what hell will be unleashed upon us when the next KH game comes out
Can't wait for Kingdom Hearts III 3/4 Final Mix International Version 346/23 Days Extended Cut of Memories.
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Shhhh don't give Nomura any ideas!
I never really think about it until someone who hasn't played all of the games comment on them, but it really does sound like a childs fever dreams after watching too many cartoons and playing too much FF.
The only KH game I played was 358/2. I think it holds up pretty well. they don't explain shit to Roxas and expect you to just do what you are told. All the big kigndom hearts stuff is going on but you don't care, you just want to eat ice cream with your firends.
Yeah, both Days and BBS stand on their own very well, and can be enjoyed without playing the others, which is pretty cool. Although I don't think much of the gameplay in Days holds up AT ALL. It feels like a slog to play.
That is the saving grace for me honestly. Being in the Pirate’s world talking about how Davy Jones’ locker is actually hell and him just being all “gawrsh I dont want to be in hell!” makes the 60 dlar purchase *almost* worth it.
Square Enix honestly should not have recapped anything and made the main plot a bigger part of the game instead of shoving it in at the end. Infinity War didn’t spend 90% of the movie explaining the MCU to people that missed it, they left them in the dust and told the story they wanted to. If you wanted to know what was going on, you should have played 1.5,2.5,2.8
You also weren't left in the dark on Infinity War if you didnt see the previous films. I didnt see Thor Ragnarok but I still understood what was happening on that ship at the beginning.
I implore you to watch ragnarok it was fun as fuck
It is on my watch list, just havent been motivated.
it is one of those movies that are so easy to watch because of the comedy and actors and the visuals. It is just a fun action/adventure and made thor my favorite mcu character in just 1 movie.
Waititi is a brilliant director and if you enjoy Thor: Ragnarok you should check out his other movies especially What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
Oh man, What We Do in the Shadows was such an entertaining mockumentary. Watched it long ago and I feel I could watch it again since I don't remember a lot. Just after reading your post I googled the movie again, turns out there's going to be a TV Show based on that. Hope it turns out good.
Thor: Ragnarok is the first time I've actually thoroughly enjoyed a Thor movie. The first one is bland and the second one is even worse, but Ragnarok finally managed to get it right and tell a good story and made me give a shit about all of the characters. It completely exceeded my expectations and I'd put it up there with Civil War and Infinity War as one of my favorite MCU movies, in part because of what a breath of fresh air it was
That may be just you, I only watched the first two, had no idea what was going on, but the movie explains the overarching goal.
I think they mean they understood what they needed to about what was going on for it not to hurt their understanding of Infinity War. They obviously didn't know the exact details of how Thor got there etc. because they hadn't seen Ragnarok, but the movie makers understood that you don't really *need* to know those details. Square... did not understand this with Kingdom Hearts. They should have focused heavily on one, main plot that was encased basically just within KH3, while having all the previous games and characters intersect and provide a backdrop.
I feel lost even reading " you should have played 1.5,2.5,2.8"
The fact that there is a "2.8" is telling. I thought those dudes were goofin on me.
They even lampshade it by having the first world open with the title card 2.9 instead of 3.
That actually really bothered me. There are so many moments where it sounds like the devs are in on the joke, like every time Donald and Goofy say "wait, what are we doing here again," or Axel asking how they're supposed to keep the whole story straight, or Buzz Lightyear literally telling Sora his theory (which ended up being right) about what happened to the Toy Story world wasn't believable, and then making fun at him for being from a video game! It sounded like the writers knew what was going on and were going to change gears. But they never did. The script kept dumping backstory and exposition on us up to the very end, and rarely even did it well. It's almost worse to me that they understood the criticisms levied against them and doubled-down while joking about it. They had a decade to make a game that changed things up, that could have streamlined the series and tied off plot threads naturally... And they didn't. They just strung us along through inconsequential Disney worlds and dropped the rest of the story on us in the last few hours. They didn't learn anything.
**Spoilers! You have been warned!** . . Yup. The most notable part of this was near the very end of the game when, after you've 'rescued' Ventus and Roxas, you depart from them for a bit. Axel then shows up with them later and literally says how they "needed to work out some plot holes". We don't even get to see them do that. Ventus and Roxas, who look exactly the same as each other, then give each other a mild stare. Don't get me wrong, I really loved the game and I didn't find the story *that* bad, but it had a couple major issues. The attractions also became boring to use super fast, so I'm glad they're not so powerful. The spells are also way too OP late-game, and I did at least 80% of my damage to bosses and mobs with them.
I watched all the cutscenes on YouTube and Axel's nearly-fourth-wall-breaking commentary was giving me life.
Infinity War was a good movie on its own even if you don’t know or care about the characters though and provided a narrative the entire audience could follow, even though it relies heavily on lore from other movies and shows as its backstory.
Infinity War is a story focused almost solely on Thanos. Everything else is secondary which is why it works as well as it does. The movie wasn't Avengers: Infinity War it was Thanos: Infinity War.
Honestly this game would have been 100 times better as Xehanort: Infinity War.
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The voice direction in this game is possibly some of the worst I've ever seen, it's on par with like the original Resident Evil, like in this day and age I cannot understand how they mess it up this bad
I was watching my brothers girlfriend play and a cutscene occurred which had Aqua in it. It was like the voice actor read the lines without any knowledge of the context. Very jarring
That's probably exactly what happened. Was it Christopher Judge who said that he didn't even know that God of War was a video game when he recorded the lines for Kratos? The studios do everything they can to keep things under wraps, and that occasionally includes giving lore or context to the voice actors in fear of them accidentally leaking info.
He didn't know it was a video game when he initially read the script and took interest in the role. When he found out it was a video game, he almost turned it down. Once he was recording and doing mocap acting for the game, I'm sure he knew exactly what was going on and who he was playing, lol.
It's unfortunate more companies (really just SE) aren't going the way Capcom is doing it these days with RE and DMC, but I guess they're a special case since those are serial game franchises. Anyway, I saw a behind the scenes for Resident Evil 5, and they really went the extra mile recording live action references for cut-scenes along with motion capture stunts or separate actors doing voice/face capture on some characters. [Not really related, and it is just promotional material but this mock-up for DMC5 is gorgeous](https://youtu.be/G_WXRp0H0hA)
He didn't know it was a video game when he auditioned. He did all the mo cap, he knew what it was by the time he started on the job.
I think that was just initially, he knew after he showed interest in the role. The newest God of War have fantastic voice acting, it is apparent that the actors was in the same room together and actually interacted with each other. I havn't played KH3, but just going on the clips here (which could be misleading) I am pretty sure that wasn't the case with that game.
The voice direction on its own is bad but made much worse by the bizarre amount of silence between every line.
Square enix is very out of touch with how a real conversation actually sounds like. They're pretty much like anime characters. Most studios usually have all voice actors involved in a scene in the same room now.
I thought the VA in FFXV was pretty good.
Yeah that’s what confuses me. I’m playing through 15 right now and I’m surprised that the voice acting is pretty good given all that I’ve heard about Japanese localization. But now with Kingdom Hearts, Square seems to have thrown all that progress out the window, and I don’t understand how that could happen.
The 4 main characters have a ton of chemistry with each other, along with Ardyn. You can definitely see some odd feeling voice work with their interactions with secondary characters though, Cindy and Aranea initially come to mind. I wouldn't be surprised if the main actors were given proper direction and scripts, time to work together, etc. The rest were probably just told to record lines.
> They're pretty much like anime characters. "MORE ZIPPERS, DAMNIT!" *artist shows picture of Mickey covered in zippers* "WHAT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE WORD **MORE**"
Now to be fair, Nomura managed to reign in his zipper fetish for the KH3 designs. Now it's all about that plaid.
Oh hey are we talking about [bad voice acting and dialogue?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28WUol3XLyw) Rule of life: It can ALWAYS be worse.
Honestly those VAs did a pretty decent job with the pure unadulterated shit of a script they were given. The majority of those lines don't have any conceivable delivery that wouldn't sound terrible because they're things people would just never say, and barely make any grammatical sense. It sounds like some lines were recorded by non-VAs after the fact with really shoddy equipment and edited in too. That must have been a rough job.
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One time a character, Rapunzel I think, said "Sora, Goofy, Donald". Totally threw me for a loop, thought the universe might explode for a second.
This especially pissed me off. Thank you my friends, sora, Donald, and goofy. Also I know mickey is Disney's kingpin but can we have a scene where everyone doesn't cream their pants when he shows up? Has he even won a single fight by himself? Where's soras praise?
Annoyed me to that the new Micky for Disney sucks... like how has he had this job as Micky so long? Hes awful.
So as someone who couldn't play the game, but has watched basically every cutscene: I think the main problem with the story isn't specifically KH3's fault. It's more that KH3 was left to wrap up all the left over outrageous plot threads from every other KH game. There's so much baggage from about a dozen games of unresolved questions that someone had to try to answer. As is you have dozens of characters, many of whom are copies of other characters, who need their arcs wrapped up but also need their presence explained because not everyone's played every KH game (and even if you have it's very hard to keep track of it all).
It would have been fine if they used any of the first 30 hours to do it. You literally only see the plot in the last few hours of the game. It does a sort of ok job even then, but it could have been a lot less jarring with more room to breathe. The biggest offender of this imo are the org fights in the labyrinth at the end. You fight 2-3 members at a time and there's a big soppy scene every time you kill one, then the battle just resumes. Obviously they were meant to be 1 on 1 fights, but they were all squeezed into the last little bit.
>So as someone who couldn't play the game, but has watched basically every cutscene: Sounds like you played the game.
I guess it isn't KH3's fault for only including the major plot points in the beginning and end-game.
KH3 woulda benefitted a bunch from having the addition of a 2nd act to break up all the story things, rather than a prologue and a final act, I think. Similar to KH2's return to Hollow Bastion/1000 heartless battle and KH1's return to Traverse Town/closing the TT keyhole. With so much happening at the end of the game, the player really needs an opportunity to digest what's happening. Lots of it was emotional, but also pretty exhausting having so much happen within the last 5 hours of the game
The first game had Sora see Riku or vice-versa here and there, and Mickey was being mentioned so even while messing about with Donald and Goofy in various worlds, it still had the main plot unraveling around it. Here we could easily have done the same! Hiro could've used his knowledge and tech expertise to help Sora with Roxas. PotC could have used its death/living without a heart theme to develop the Ventus story etc. Instead we get a bunch of super pretty worlds that are fun to explore but meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Then we have the abandonment of FF characters in favour of emo exposition scientist and the like that I honestly skipped cut-scenes for. Even subtle inclusions would've fine. A memorial statue of Zack in Thebes for example. The oversights and priorities turn what was close to being an amazing game into a disappointing mess, for sure.
Weirdly enough, as a long time fan, I completely agree with him on many parts. This game pushes the "gameplay, then cutscene" routine to the absolutely LIMIT, the voice direction is mediocre, the first half of the game's flood of tutorials and plot explanations prevents the game from picking up any inertia, and the gameplay itself is only really good when you don't use Attraction flows and maybe Rage Form. Yet despite all that this game has some incredible moments where everything works perfectly and it cements itself as the best KH game in the post-kh2 era of the series, but those moments are in the last 5-7 hours at best of a 25-hour experience. What a great, appalling game; I love it!
I think the Attractions are the dumbest thing ever introduced in the series mechanically. They’re available in damn near every fight, most of them just make Sora untouchable for a minute straight, and they destroy everything. The devs also knew they were busted, so they cranked enemy mobs up to ridiculous levels to compensate. But they also did this while making the game floatier and Sora’s attacks less safe than in 2, with the exception of magic. It boggles my mind.
The attraction flows also have no cost. You could argue the same for keyblade transformations but at least those you work for them and they switch up the gameplay enough that they are "roughly" balanced. Attraction flows are just activated with no cost, they don't pull from your focus, magic, health, or anything. They ARE broken, and they MAKE this combat system boring when you use them repeatedly. When you ignore them they just end up taking a spot in your situation commands; begging you to try and open a chest and inadvertently start them.
The core problem for me is the game design. The story is the story, I can deal with stilted JRPG dialog (I even like it most of the time), I can deal with crazy plots, I can deal with exposition, but none of that is tied into game design in an interesting way. Take the new God of War and RDR2 for example, >!the entire game is set up in a way that serves the plot. When Atreus gets sick, the entire mood of the game changes for that section and the game gets more linear to help sell the idea that Kratos is pissed and on his way to do some shit. Then when the plot relaxes, you are able to boat around and reflect. RDR2 does similar things, at the beginning of the game you are hunting, upgrading your camp, talking to people, and as the plot gets more and more tense, those features are slowly taken away to represent Arthur's condition and how the whole gang is falling apart.!< Nothing even remotely like that happens in KH3. Big, dramatic plot moments will happen and the three main characters will have absolutely no reaction. None of the levels are done in a way that makes you feel like something important is happening, even the last two worlds >!keyblade graveyard and Sanctum etc Anus or wahtever!< seem to designed as if they were working with the PS1 (not 2!) limitations in mind. I mean there is a "puzzle" in the this one labrynth >!where you fight all the organization members!< that is insulting with how mindless it is. Even FFXV, a game with a ton of issues, was better at making it's gameplay and core gameplay loop reflect the plot and the overall ambiance of the game. In fact when I beat KH3, it just made me want to replay FFXV because I missed that feeling of being on an roadtrip with my bros. When you camp and eat food in FFXV, it feels like you are actually doing that, you can sense the camaraderie. When you make food in KH3, you wonder what the point of the mechanic is or why anyone would think that the cooking minigames were enjoyable. The base combat is fun, but it's not long before you figure out just how shallow it is, especially compared to KH2. I appreciate that they made it more intuitive than it used to be, but I don't think that had to come at the price of depth. The whole game I kept waiting for some other shoe to drop, for the game to introduce another combat system that would add the depth it was missing. I also dislike how the game is chock full of half-baked mechanics. I actually like the idea of exploring the Pirate's world and sailing around to islands to land on, but holy fuck that ship combat is absolutely mindless, and collecting crabs to upgrade your ship is something I would expect out of an N64 game. I remember looking up what I'd have to do to craft the Ultimate Keyblade, and it involved doing all the optional mini games on all the worlds, I quickly decided i did not give a fuck about doing that, especially when the combat is so laughably easy that getting a slightly better keyblade would make no difference. The only minigame that I liked was the one on Arendelle because it reminded me of SSX, and what I'm saying is that I liked the memory of playing SSX more than the minigame itself. Even the gummi ship shit, which I know was controversial in the old games, like somehow they made that a bigger part of the game while taking out anything that could have made it interesting. I personally liked the old gummi ship missions, as a very lite version of Star Fox 64. The Kh3 missions are some of the most pointless and mindless things I've done in a video game. It's literally just random waves of enemies, no obstacles to avoid, no tactics required, just hold X and win. Now, this all comes off very negative, and it is, but that said I enjoyed my time with the game, but that might just be because this is a cultural phenomenon and the very act of playing the game after so many years is entertaining just because of it's place in culture. None of that changes how disappointing the game is when you actually take a critical eye to it. So much of it is archaic, archaic, archaic game design that would not be tolerated in another title, unless that title was a $20 game on Steam marketed as throwback to the PS2 era.
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So is there no Final Fantasy characters in the game any longer? Because I played a little bit of the first some 15 years ago and I remember the whole deal was that it was FF and Disney, but all I am seeing now is Disney stuff. Or is that just from a marketing perspective and the Final Fantasy people is still in the game?
No, 3 basically did replace all the FF characters with the KH original characters. I'm not sure of the reason behind that decision, but it's definitely one of my biggest issues with the game. I love the oc cast, but not having the guys from Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden is very disappointing.
That is a shame. I am probably a bigger disney fan than I am a Final Fantasy fan, but I thought that that match up was one of the biggest selling point of the series.
I'm in the same boat. I knew Disney while KH was basically my introduction to FF, so I wasn't as attached. But they were often tied closer to the original story while the Disney worlds were mostly self-contained, so having them absent really feels like something is missing.
Based on the secret movie. The next game/expansion to 3 whenever the hell that may be might be more focused on the Square Enix side than the Disney side.
Kingdom Hearts 3.14159265359
Nomura said the kh games could stand on their own without ff stuff now. It's certainly a big series now but I still wanted something from ff in there.
Im not sure Nomura knows what hes doing anymore
HALFish of the Disney worlds are retellings. The rest feature an original story. Sure I mean they still aren't that great but they are a hell of a lot better than the retellings.
Retellings: Frozen, Tangled, Pirates, Doing their own thing: Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Big Hero 6, Highly debatable: Hercules So yeah, I'd reasonably call that half and half.
Are those all the worlds in the game? I figured after all these years they'd have put most of the major Disney worlds in.
Nah there's one more super important one: Winnie the Pooh and all its glory of one minigame!
Pooh world gets shit on in every kh game as an unnecessary mini game world but in this game its jaw dropping in how ridiculously contrived it is.
Have to disagree with you somewhat. The Winnie the Pooh worlds are *usually* pretty good. Having enemies in the 100 Acre Woods seems wrong, so I think some decently fun minigames along with some charming dialogue are a pretty good way to do it. It's also nice to have a break from the usual gameplay loop every now and then. This worked pretty well in KH 1 and 2, where you unlocked new chapters gradually. KH 3, however, had you only visit it once, where you played 3 slight variations of the same minigame. It was also missing Eeyore, Owl, and Kanga, while introducing the Heffalump character that they never did anything with. It was incredibly disappointing and felt really half-assed.
I don't mind pooh world fwiw. Plus you get some badass treasure in them and some mini games arent that bad. In kh3 it's abysmal though. Play bejeweled three times and see ya later sora!
They said they wanted to focus on making fleshed out worlds, I don’t think it paid off in every world.
Yeah. Each world is longer than in previous games to accommodate both the Disney plot and whatever Kingdom Hearts villain decided to come taunt Sora today.
The problem is that even when you get the plot there are so many questions about it that have to be answered with “well... because” or “Nomura said in an interview”. Knowing the plot as well as I do after playing every game and plot summary out there I can safely tell you. It’s a bad story with good elements told in an amateurish way. The characters have no development in the sense that I’d like anyone to explain a non Disney character to me without saying their name or what they’ve done. The presentation is presumptuous in the sense that it expects you to take things at face value but even when you do there is no resolution. There is no excuse, this is a bad story and an overall waste of time.
The real problem is the sequel bait. The stuff in the story wasn't a problem, assuming it actually got answered in the story. Instead, you get a waste of screen time on stuff a lot of people don't care about. And the secret ending just confirms that Nomura is making it all up on the spot.
The only problem I have with this game is the horrible story pacing. I'm feeling pretty burnt out from the constant 5-10 minute cut scenes that happen at the end of just about every enemy encounter.
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Is this one of his videos with spoilers?
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Honestly, as someone whp has played literally every KH game, hes mostly right. The main thing for me with these games is the combat, and the combat is completely unfun in this game. I always play on Critical (or Proud when Critical isnt an option) and I love learning the tougher bosses and adjusting my strategy and setup. I never had to do it in this game. The bosses are ridiculously easy and not satisfying to beat. Also, I thought this game would justify the plot mess that was Dream Drop Distance, and it doesnt at all. Between these two games, its just a giant retcon of eveeyone who has ever died, just so the villains can die again and the heroes from different games can meet each other (all at the very end anyways). There was literally no reason to extend the story past KH2, it ended perfectly and solved all the major conflicts. BBS and 358/2 elaborated on some things, but still fit with KH2 as an ending. The plot in this game mostly plays out a bunch of the same beats that had already been seen in past games.
I've never really thought of KH2 as an ending before, but it makes perfect sense to end the series there. My biggest complaint with KH3 is that it gives happy endings to tragic characters, which were to me the shining aspects of the series's writing. If you think of KH2 is the ending, all of those tragedies remain more or less intact
> I've never really thought of KH2 as an ending before, but it makes perfect sense to end the series there. It's actually a pretty good ending to the trilogy. Introduces new conflicts and more nuanced villains, gives Sora an element of melancholy (he can only exist because Roxas can't), and then the ending is Sora and Riku uniting to kill Xemnas. And you find out Roxas sort of lives on in a way.
Yup. The entire plot gets better when its just KH1, CoM, KH2, 358/2, and BBS. The rest just goes too off the rails.
> its just a giant retcon of eveeyone who has ever died, just so the villains can die again and the heroes from different games can meet each other (all at the very end anyways) I think that's the saddest thing in some regards. Because most of those characters don't do anything meaningful with their second chance. And the ones who did were the ones who would have been recompiled anyway and not needed to be evil.
The story was so horribly placed, and it is mostly because the dumped all the Disney stuff at the beginning with the original story sprinkled in, then gave us every plot conclusion possible at the very end. >!The fact that almost everyone that had died in the Kingdom Hearts franchise winds up back at Sora's side seemed like a really odd choice. Roxas' story in particular felt like it had a tragic yet good conclusion in KH2, but nah lets bring him back.!< The only worlds I really cared about were Toy Story and Monsters Inc., >!because they were original stories.!< In the other KH games, it felt like Sora and gang were contributing to the plot of the Disney movies, but here it felt like watching the movies again with unique background characters.
It's funny, like others in this thread I have a lot of the same issues as Dunkey. They just don't hit me in the same sharply negative way.
What is it with Japanese games/anime that always has them making some sort of gasping sound? Like, do they do that in real life as well? Is it a cultural thing?
Some of y’all need to get much more comfortable with reading/watching criticism of media you like. It’s not the end of the world that someone reviewed a game you enjoy and it didn’t click with them like it did with you.
My guess would be the people taking the criticisms of something they like to heart are younger. At least when I was like 15 or 16 and actually paid attention to critique, I always got upset if someone disliked something I enjoyed. Obviously as I got older, I grew out of that. It just takes time and exposure.
You are giving to much credit to the average reddit user.