#( but instead of hollow bastion he ends up in san fransokyo and fights heartless with hiro!! )

[inhumanistic]

@hamadaxfighter​ said: "No matter how many hits I take, I always find a way to come back."

           He nodded his head in response, admiring the other’s persistence, his ability to fall down then get back up. The Beast had trouble with such a concept himself, while stubborn, he wasn’t always determined — - but give him something to fight for, a reason, and he could become extremely single-minded and just as relentless. This was one of those times. He couldn’t give in now, not with everything on the line. His own world was swallowed by darkness and Belle was stolen by heartless. He would search every world until he found her again, until he could free his castle and his servants. Still unsure how he traveled, by might ? By hatred ? It didn’t matter, he would continue to fight. At least in this world he wasn’t alone.

          He didn’t mind having a partner in Hiro. Fighting alongside someone else was beneficial for both, it meant less time and energy exerted, but attacks still took their toll. The Beast was ready to continue on alone if other needed a break, but his insistent attitude was enough for cursed prince to reconsider.       —- -    ❝  Then we will keep going.  ❞

[memaha19]

Things I Want(ed) From KH3 That Re:Mind is Probably Not Going to Fix

 AKA, a brief interlude from Frozen 2 posting because Kingdom Hearts was on my mind this morning.

AKA, I’m excited for Re:Mind but still...

AKA, KH3 disappointed me and I’m still salty about it almost a year later.

AKA,  there are many “my problems with KH3″ posts/discussions floating out there on the internet and many are probably worded better than mine but, as I said, the game was on my mind this morning.

Just...the worlds. The Disney worlds in KH3 bothered me. There were so few of them but they were so so LONG. Some of them were painfully long. Toy Box felt like the longest experience of my life. Every time I thought that level was coming to an end, BAM, another trek to another area. And Arendelle...though I love Frozen, there’s only so many times I can trek up the mountain only to get thrown off and have to climb back up again. There were so few worlds, only seven, I believe, (because we’re not counting Twilight Town or the 100 Acre Woods, more on those later), that I think they could’ve given us a few more worlds and made the levels a little...shorter? A little more detailed and charming? The levels were huge but empty and devoid of the character that previous Disney worlds had in other games. The previous main games had about 10 or 11 worlds, not including the throwaways (like Atlantica in KH2) or the final worlds (TWTNW and End of the World), so there could’ve been some more! Birth By Sleep had numerous shorter worlds and I vastly prefer that to slogging through the same world for hours. Even the way that KH2 had us revisit each world would’ve been nice.  What’s more, they could’ve taken some of the massive time and space devoted to the empty, excruciatingly long Disney worlds and given us more time in Twilight Town or the Keyblade Graveyard, or put a playable Radiant Garden in the game. Those non-Disney worlds always served as nice interludes in the other games and it’s sorely lacking in this one. (And yes, I have heard that Re:Mind is going to let Scala be a playable world, so I’m excited for that!)

Related, I also wanted some worlds from older Disney films. I know the other games have had worlds from older films, but almost all of KH3′s worlds were so jarringly...current. I would’ve liked to see some of the older Disney film worlds rendered in the beautiful graphics of KH3, but, instead, the oldest film represented was Hercules (1997). Three of the worlds (maybe four, actually, with the Pirates world) were from movies from this decade (Corona, Arendelle, and San Fransokyo).

Related, they did the 100 Acre Woods so dirty. It was disappointing and short. It used to be a fun little interlude between the big worlds in previous games, a time to chill and play a mini-game and not have to fight a big boss fight. This was like “hello, here’s one mini game, goodbye.”

Related: all that Twilight Town exploration we got in the other games and this one gives us the forest and the town square area and that’s it?! We can’t even go to the clock tower or inside the mansion? When we first got to Twilight Town I was like “wow this is gorgeous!” and then quickly disappointed when I realized we couldn’t go anywhere.

Related, I’ve seen others say this and I agree: the Disney worlds seem like they’re just there, oftentimes, to get in your way. They feel like obstacles to the actual plot because they didn’t bother to place much/any relevance to the plot into any of the Disney worlds. Sometimes we get little snippets of the big story, like Marluxia and Larxene hanging around in Corona and Arendelle just to say cryptic things without ever being a real threat (that in itself is weird too, I spent ALL of the Corona level bracing myself for a fight with Marluxia only to fight...Mother Gothel’s heartless?) but it feels like two different games: The KH that wants to still be about Disney worlds and the KH that has gotten so deep in its own world building that it doesn’t have time for anything else.

Related, again: KH3 has an abundance of Disney worlds where Sora being there doesn’t make any difference to the plot. The most fun Disney worlds have always been the ones that have an original story that we’re actually involved in. Corona is just the plot of Tangled with Sora and co. tagging along. Their presence or lack thereof make no difference to the story. Arendelle is the same way.

The boss battles in the worlds were...lame. I understand that it maybe doesn’t make sense to fight someone like Mother Gothel, who never shows any physical fighting power in Tangled, but we can’t fight Zurg? We’re in a literal toy store and we can’t fight Zurg as the boss? We have to fight a weird doll and 800 robots? We have to fight Hans’ heartless? Not Hans? We fight Mother Gothel’s heartless? Not Marluxia, who’s been harassing us all level long? I understand that they held the KH characters back because of the whole “assembling 13 pieces of darkness for a big final battle” thing, but we had to fight Xemnas like ten times in previous games, they could let us fight Marluxia twice.  I feel like the other games were a lot better at having us face a combo of heartless/nobodies/unversed AND Disney bosses. But, as the game has really zero interest in making the Disney worlds a part of the plot, they throw these cheap (and endless) unversed/heartless bosses at us and they’re all so EASY. They could have, and probably should have, let us fight the Organization at the end of each world and then let us fight them again in the Keyblade Graveyard, similar to the way Chain of Memories had us fight each Organization member a couple times.   

When you finally do get through the Disney worlds, the ending is like “here’s all these characters that have been missing from the rest of the game” and the Keyblade Graveyard flings boss battle after boss battle at your face without much rhyme or reason. And while some of them are fun, some of them feel like “let’s just pair these characters together and make you fight them at the same time so we can save some time because we didn’t bother to put any of these fights into an earlier part of the game”. I’m looking at the Luxord/Marluxia/Larxene fight in particular. I would’ve understood pairing the last two together, but then Luxord is also there like they didn’t have any other place to put him.

This game is too easy. I’m not great at video games. I’m good-ish. I’m into stories more than anything so I hate when a game’s difficulty keeps me from completing it and keeps me from seeing more of the story. But I still like a little challenge. I have not-so-fond memories of yelling at the TV as I died time and time again fighting Ansem/Riku at Hollow Bastion in KH1, but I also have fond memories of finally beating him and what a rush it was! I didn’t get any of that in KH3. I’m not sure I died more than once or twice, if that.

The way they just let the Organization members hang out in the worlds and do nothing has always seemed weird to me. They’re big parts of the overall plot but now they just stand around and verbally harass Sora? As I said above, I spent all of Corona thinking I was going to have to face Marluxia at the end. Instead, they stand around in the worlds and then they stand around in the Keyblade Graveyard in the cutscenes and just talk. Also, okay, maybe I get the reasoning behind why Luxord was in the pirates world and why Vanitas was in Monstropolis, but Marluxia seemed like he was shoehorned into Corona solely because of the connection between the magic flower and his powers, which was stupid. And Larxene had zero connection to anything going on in Arendelle.

All the characters we’ve been waiting for (Ventus, Aqua, etc.) don’t appear until the very very end, which is a problem with the story pacing. They tease us, very early, with Riku and Mickey trying to find Aqua and then immediately drop that plot point to give us some empty Disney worlds. (Side note: this 100% tricked me into thinking we’d be switching back and forth between what Sora was up to and what Riku was up to and I was sorely disappointed as I played and realized it wasn’t true.) They dither in this “Sora needs the power of waking” to avoid giving us Ventus until the very end.

Just...the story pacing in general, which kind of ties into everything else.  This game has a beginning, because it had to, and something they wanted to end with but they weren’t really sure how to fill the space in the middle. You spend most of the game just chilling in the Disney worlds with very low stakes. This big battle waiting at the end is always there in the background but, partially because the Disney worlds feel like distractions that don’t add to the story, the middle of the game never really feels like it’s building toward the ending, or anything. And then, when you do get through the Disney worlds, about 75% of the plot is thrown at you in the last hour or two of the game. It reminds me (a lot of this game reminds me, actually) of FFXV. I love FFXV dearly, I’ve poured A TON of hours into gathering ingredients and taking photos and doing side quests, but it has the same plot issue. The majority of FFXV is a light-hearted journey about four bros on a roadtrip, only for everything to take a VERY dramatic tonal shift about 3/4 of the way through the game and then stay very very SAD for the rest of the game. KH3 does something similar, with the way we spend most of the game traveling through Disney worlds and cooking food with Remy, only for the game to suddenly remember at the 11th hour that it’s supposed to be wrapping up this big 10+ year long story and thrust you into battle after battle and plot-heavy cutscene after plot-heavy cutscene.

To the pacing point: yes, I’m aware these games have always had slightly funny/back-loaded pacing. However, a main thing the other games had that KH3 lacks is that Radiant Garden/Twilight Town/Traverse Town interlude world that helps push the plot along. Without that in KH3, we get a ton of long Disney worlds where we’re like “when is the story going to happen?” and then the Keyblade Graveyard where suddenly ALL of the story is happening. Previous games have let us experience the Disney worlds for awhile before bringing us to an interlude world which furthers the plot, a la the big Radiant Garden section in KH2 that happens midway through the game.

Anyway, I think Kingdom Hearts 3 was a gorgeous game, graphics-wise, and I’ll still be shelling out money for Re:Mind come January, but after waiting for 14 years for a continuation of the main story line, this game just feels like, after everything, Nomura still wasn’t sure how to end it? It feels rushed and underwhelming and incomplete as hell. 

TL;DR: I have all these thoughts about KH3 that I’ve waited 11 months to express.

[beyondmistland]

“May your heart be your guiding key” (Full thoughts on Kingdom Hearts III below!)

Graphics:

Ø  The game is bloody gorgeous, which helps mitigate the long and frequent cutscenes

Ø  The lip-syncing rarely fails

Music:

Ø  The new remixes are awesome and the brand-new tracks don't disappoint either

Ø  What does though is the actual audio mixing:

More often than not I struggled to hear the music over the sound effects during gameplay and the voiceovers during cutscenes

Ranking the Worlds:

Ø  #1: Corona: The world is huge, with varied terrain and a kick-ass final boss

Ø  #2 Olympus: The sheer scale and scope of the world took my breath away, plus we (finally!) get to fight all four titans

Ø  #3 The Caribbean: Assassin's Creed IV meets Kingdom Hearts, what's not to like

Ø  #4 Monstropolis: While not as eye-catching as some of the other worlds the way it intersects with the broader KH lore is really neat and the final cutscene was a delight in that it averts the Disney characters being useless when dealing with the original KH villains, on top of which its straightforward design is a nice change of pace, my only complaint is that there are only four types of Unversed

Ø  #5 San Fransokyo: The story is surprisingly short, which means you don't really get the chance to explore the environment, which sucks because the verticality and day/night cycle are awesome, plus there are a number of memorable boss fights

Ø  #6 Twilight Town: If it had been fully recreated based off the KH2 version the world would be much higher on my list but despite how small it is I love the liveliness, not to mention how peaceful it is in comparison to the other worlds, the same can be said for Hundred Acre Wood

Ø  #7 Keyblade Graveyard + Final World + Scala Ad Caelum: Though jaw-dropping in terms of visuals and audio they're not fully realized worlds, the same can be said for Dark World

Ø  #8 Toy Box: I loved the final boss as well as how the story tied into the larger plot of the game and I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy exploring Andy's room while "You have a friend in me" played in the background

Why then is Toy Box so far down on my list, world design

Even with endgame stats (LV40-45) the Gigas are tough to take down and as a result they come off as gimmicky in the worst sense of the word, beyond that the fact that the majority of the world is set in Galaxy Toys made me feel constrained and claustrophobic, which could have been partially alleviated if we'd been allowed to make our way through the parking lot outside, finally, the story kind of got repetitive with the backtracking whenever the characters were about to leave because "someone went missing yet again"

Ø  #9 Arrendelle: Though it has one of the best final bosses in the game along with Corona there is so much wrong with this world that I wonder if it's less Square Enix's fault and more Disney placing an insane amount of red tape on their favorite cash-cow:

1) Elsa does not become a party member even after you beat the world

2) You do not get to explore the city or the ice palace despite the latter being fully rendered on the map

3) Larxene, a lightning-based character, randomly traps you in an ice labyrinth when that would have made a lot more sense both logically and thematically if it had been Elsa

4) Speaking of Larxene, she does practically nothing the whole time you're there unlike Marluxia and Luxord, who are at least semi-active

5) You climb a mountain and get knocked off of it so many times that even Sora gets fed up

6) The bloody minigame where you have to find Olaf's body parts

7) Forcing us to watch the entire "Let it go" sequence and then having "Do you want to build a snowman" play over Anna's voice as she's explaining herself to Sora

8) So much of the story is excised that you have little clue as to what's going on to the point Hans appears for all of five minutes, doesn't say any lines, and isn't even named when it would have been cool, not to mention, just plain better, if he had started off as a guest member of your party

9) As a result of #8 Sora, Donald, and Goofy's presence feels like even more of an afterthought than usual in the sense that them not being there wouldn't have changed anything at all apart from Hans' Heartless then having no one to defeat it which can be seen by the fact that when they leave no one tells them goodbye unlike in every other world

10) The visual design was bland and tiresome after a while

11) The world's gimmick was uninspired to say the least

12) Fighting alongside a giant snowman (AKA Marshmallow) was awesome and in terms of pure gameplay the labyrinth was actually quite fun

Story Pros:

Ø  Master Xehanort's new voice actor is good but after hearing Leonard Nimoy's voice for the past couple of games the change is a bit jarring

Ø  The way previous games are referenced and tied together is a nice way of bringing new players into the fold while also setting up the finale's resolutions

Ø  The game has a better sense of humor than previous installments

Ø  Sora is more like his KH2 self than the bland caricature we saw in 3D and quite a few characters display some degree of genre-savviness

Ø  Master Yen Sid gets out of his chair to lend a hand for once

Ø  Donald Duck is the most powerful mage in Square Enix canon (and I am not making that up)

Gameplay Pros:

Ø  Being able to switch between different save points in the same world is a welcome addition

Ø  The secondary ability of all shotlocks to airstep is ingenious

Ø  You can have more than two party members finally!

Ø  The secret ending isn't too hard to unlock

Ø  You can upgrade your Keyblades, which means older ones aren't automatically relegated to redundancy

Ø  Donald and Goofy are useful again after being nerfed into uselessness in KH2

Ø  Towns and cities are actually populated by fully-voiced NPCs!

Ø  Cutscenes in Theater Mode are unlocked after completing each world rather than after beating the game

Ø  I never tried the Classic Kingdom minigames but the cooking one with Remy was a nice break from the normal gameplay (I suck at the egg-cracking one though)

Ø  The camera doesn't get in the way like it infamously did in KH1

Ø  I like the new main menu design (Feel free to disagree though)

Ø  The Gummi Ship is entirely optional outside of a few mandatory boss battles

Ø  Moogle Tickets are a nice way of giving players a second chance during difficult encounters (I do wish they didn’t activate so quickly though) 

Gameplay Cons:

Ø  The game never once tells you that you can switch between Situation Commands using L2

Ø  The game never once tells you that you keep all your lower-tier magic (Fire, Fira for example) and that your shortcuts don't automatically update to include the higher-tier version of whatever magic you have equipped

Ø  There's no real incentive to switch between Keyblades (That being said, my favorites are Wheel of Fate, Nano Arms, and Happy Gear/Ever After)

Ø  Attractions lose their charm quickly and completely ruin the flow of combat

Ø  Summons aren't too big of a deal since I only ever ended up using them once and even then it was by accident

Ø  Donald still heals you at the wrong time more often than not

Ø  Even on Proud Mode the game is way too easy for the most part (Apparently Critical Mode addresses this but I can't confirm that)

Ø  There is a lack of sidequests and post-game content that contributes to the feeling Square & Disney gave us half a game (For example, there is only one secret boss, said secret boss has a generic design, no ties to the story, and can be defeated at LV40 on your first attempt)

Ø  Hollow Bastion, Mysterious Tower, and Destiny Islands are not playable

Ø  The parkour from 3D has been nerfed too much in terms of distance to actually be useful

Story Cons:

Ø  Nomura fridged Kairi and he worfed almost everyone the first time you arrive at the Keyblade Graveyard!

Ø  The wrapping up of plot points and character arcs from prior entries was a little too nice and neat for me

Ø  The out-of-nowhere introduction of Subject X

Ø  Pete and Maleficent do literally nothing the whole damn game

Ø  The pacing is awful:

Almost all of the game's resolution is held back until after you've beaten the last Disney world

Ø  There are two important cutscenes in the Final World that you can accidentally miss because for some reason they are optional

Ø  We don't get to see what happened to Lingering Will, which also means we don't get any more insight into the third aspect of being (AKA the soul)

Ø  There are no Final Fantasy characters in the game, not even Sephiroth!

Ø  What happened to Demyx?

Ø  Master Eraqus has absolutely nothing to do with Terra’s restoration

Changes I’d make:

Ø  Require us to go through the Disney worlds a second time like in KH2

Ø  Have Aqua and Ven be saved halfway through the game instead of at the end, they could then spend the second half of the game resting or join you on one of the Disney worlds to refresh themselves

Ø  Have Lea and Kairi join you on one of the Disney worlds to get practical experience

Ø  Make the Keyblade Graveyard sequence be a series of one/two/three-on one battles so that members of Organization XIII can use their full arsenal of attacks from previous games

Ø  Let us play the second battle between Lingering Will and Terra-Xehanort

Ø  Speaking of Terra-Xehanort, we should have fought him alongside the Guardian Heartless

Ø  Have us explore Scala Ad Caelum while hunting down the individual replicas before then making us fight all of them in a boss battle

DLC

Ø  The presence of it says a lot about the game and not in a good way

Final Score

Ø  7/10-8/10