KH3 Thoughts

Spoiler-free section:

Overall I though the game was really fun and albeit along with a few balancing flaws (I didn't notice them during my playthrough but upon watching others), I very much enjoyed combat and realy enjoyed the variety within the disney worlds. As for the main plot I feel it resolved everything well with minor nitpicks but kept me wanting more. Overall I'd say it's my second favourite game in the series (that's after honeymoon phase as some people coin that term) and hope that NG+/Crit get patched in so that I can have a bit more of a balanced challenge.











Spoiler section:

I absolutely loved the disney worlds in this game, each world felt like I was living out the world as if I was a part of the movie itself. Square really went all out on the presentation and the feel of the game. The characters feel correct and the interactions feel like they've just continued off from 2, with fun banter here and there and happy interactions between the varying casts. Straight away when I got to Olympus, you could tell the jump in quality, with the Team Rocket-esque blast away, but also keeping the encounters with the organization feeling kind of organic and less forced like it was within DDD previously. This leads to one of the biggest differences in 3 and one that I think is absolutely crucial to this series: Character Interaction. Since BBS, we have experienced a few games with seemingly high levels of monologuing throughout, with Young Xehanort in DDD being such a perfect example. Here throughout it's always back and forth in conversations making it feel alive and not as if I'm hearing the same thing over and over.

As for other disney worlds, I really enjoyed Toybox more than I thought I would considering I dislike Toy Story but it was real fun to see the random shenanigans throughout and you could tell that it felt fun to make (and Nomura is salty about V13), with varying gameplay and differing locations. However this was the one world where I kept getting lost and i blame the signs, but that's a nitpick.

Kingdom of Corona was magnificent, i feel the most invested in a disney world compared to any previous and felt it integrated the KH lore (aka organization) aspects really well without being obnoxious and taking away from the world, with the Rapunzel gameplay being reasonably paced and not overstaying its welcome.

Monsters Inc., this world is kinda mixed to me. One hand I adore some details such as the door rail chase and the situation command and the characterization but this world felt a bit lacking and was the first time where I pretty much wanted the world over with. Props to Sulley for yeeting Vanitas to kingdom come.

Frozen was a pleasant surprise, as I was indifferent about the movie. After the colourful adventures of the previous disney worlds it's a nice change of scenery to go through loads of snow and have lots of vertical platforming. The minigames were charming but felt a bit interuptive and can see the issues with this world being very much repetitive in its structure.

Next up, I loved the Caribbean. Not only did they go all out making it feel like a pirate adventure, I did not expect the open world aspect to appear and spent a good few hours just messing about and made me hope that we can have more wild adventures like this in future. Ship combat was alright and did the trick for what it was in basically mimicing AC4 but it was enjoyable to whoop Davy Jones into the abyss as well as see the facial expressions on Sparrow's face just make me laugh.

100 Acre Wood and Twilight Town were disappointing, not because of what we got but because they felt like downgrades compared to what we had previously in 2. However the character interactions were great and it was quite warming to see the old gang after so so long.

Finally, BH6 world was quite cool albeit empty. I had a blast just messing about with the story stuff but it felt a bit of a come down to just go onto the collectibles.

As for the rest of the game, I absolutely loved the Anti Aqua and LoD section, it was fantastic to see payoff for years upon years of waiting, only to be capped off by the almost nut worthy fight with Vanitas when you realise he actually staggers after so many fights in BBS. From here on out to the end I was very much satisfied with the plot and it covered that which it needed to without going completely overboard (until the secret ending that is, I'm absolutely calling Demyx being MoM, don't @ me) with minor nitpicks being the Final World aspect, which is interesting as it shows us the answer to where Sora has been going at the start of games, but ends up being pointless alongside the death bait to the demon tide before Sora time travels back. My other minor gripe would be the end of Xehanort where he confesses to doing everything because he wanted to rid darkness as it was corrupting this world. I was okay with the slight recovery of making Xehanort more redeemable but it felt partially rushed. That said, it was quite sad to finally say goodbye to some of my favourite villains from the series, going out with a bang, then a tearful regret. As for the treatment of Kairi in 3, I wasn't particularly upset as I did feel she was one of the weaker Keyblade Wielders on the light side despite being a Princess of Heart, so her becoming a victim does seem logical, but I can understand why some people are upset, particularly those craving a Kairi moment to advance her character. With the ending being that Sora "doesn't feel so good", it likely will be that Kairi will have a character arc involving taking responsibility for Sora's condition, leading to development that hopefully would satisfy big fans of the character. As for Luxu, I think having a character fully established being the link between this current saga and the new one is a good one as it provides us questions to keep us wanting more but also slowly ease the new characters in next time without it being gigantically thrown in at us in a very awkward manner like some sequels can tend to do.

From a gameplay standpoint, whilst not quite the standard set by 2 in terms of balancing and how tight combat is, it was still extremely fun and there were so many options, to the point where I was experimenting loads out of curiousity, something my Kingdom Key-only enthusiast would never even budge on in the past. I absolutely loved how crazy magic was (albeit with the ga-tier spells being a bit too powerful in terms of damage) and the attraction flows were less interuptive and more fun than i expected. Keyblade wise, i felt that they were all unique (bar honey keyblade and starlight) and that made me want to use them, with Second Form giving me an answer to what KH2 combat abilities would be like in this engine, to swinging damn Yo-Yo's at Xehanort or creating clones with Mirage Staff to go absolutely crazy. Situation commands were always something I came into the game with a negative view upon, as I loved RC's in 2 and didn't really want them to move away from that as it would take away memorable parts from bosses such as the Building RC vs Xemnas 1 in KH2/2FM or the Laser Dome. Despite this, I managed to enjoy most of the situation commands but always had a minor thought that I still missed the true RCs and hoped they would return one day.

Boss wise I thought most were pretty good if not incredible boss fights. The smaller bosses had good amount of stagger and openings, whilst big bosses had good openings. My only complaint would be that in the lategame when you fight multiple bosses at once, it's easy to get knocked out of a combo by an unexpected assault from another competitor. Even with that, I never felt at a true disadvantage because of all the options I had.

I have to give a slight mention to the ost at least. It was a very good ost, with many awesome remixes and new themes. I didn't really pick out any particular ones within my playthrough but that is a tendancy of mine so I hopefully will on later playthroughs/

Overall, I had a blast playing this (as my god damn 52 hours tell me) and there were many memorable moments that I look forward to coming back and replaying over and over. However, I can't go without saying that I do feel that the game did feel a bit lacking in its postgame, lacking cups that were in the previous main games as well as a few more superbosses. KH3 was great and a huge step forward in the right direction for the series having gone through the decade of handheld content. I am looking forward to see if this series can push on from here, since it's going to be quite rough with the UX lore if it doesn't.

9/10 game imo (dont judge pls)