My Thoughts on the KH3 Demo

Thoughts on The KH3 demo at PAX Aus

I played both the Olympus Coliseum demo and the Toy Story demo (which only went up until the end of the giant mech fight). First thing I will say the game looks beautiful aesthetically.

The Olympus Coliseum demo showed a lot of wall running which felt annoying because it was almost entirely four directional. This just made me feel kind of restricted in how I moved, you can still move left and right while going up but only minimal movements that can suddenly turn into running directly in that direction.

As for combat, the combos were cool but I was constantly getting hit out of things that just felt like I shouldn’t be able to get hit out of, particularly the air combos made me feel locked into this long drawn out animation that left me very vulnerable in a mob fight.

Magic is fun and I noticed that it again works in combos with magic finishers (other than the reaction command ones) and can be intermingled with physical hits.

Second form is also quite a lot if fun. You’re moves become a mix of kh1 sora’s and limit form’s and as you build hits your finisher (reaction command one) goes from stun impact to sonic blade to ars arcanum (not sure if it goes to ragnarok after that).

I tried the shotlocks and the one big complaint I have about them is that the targeting is controlled with the left stick. All of a sudden you switch the camera controls to the stick that is used for movement and if you were already moving its a huge throw off. This just feels awkward and unnatural but to be honest I can’t remember which stick they used in BBS and 0.2.

Donald and goofy’s reaction commands are cool, but they definitely shouldn’t be compared with limits as they are purely cinematic.

As for the content there was only one mob fight versus heartless and that was followed by the rock titan fight. I personally wasn’t a fan of this boss. During the first phase fighting his feet it just felt like i was whacking a wall for a while which wasn’t very entertaining (I understand he was like this in kh1, but he wasn’t a very interesting boss in that game either). Also when the feet attacked the screen felt like it was completely taken up by the enemy attack animations and I could barely see what was going on.

Once he was done i found the platform on his heads clunky, but it was a slightly more interesting wall to whack. Once the train command appeared I was disappointed because all you do is aim and mash right trigger until you want to use the finisher. You don’t control the train and when sora does a super awesome animation where he jumps out to dodge an attack it wasn’t because i did it, it was a cinematic, i feel like this is just a slight missed opportunity but not a big loss. In general i felt like sora was doing a lot of cool stuff, but it wasn’t cause i made him which was a little disappointing.

Now toy story was a much better demo, if you get the chance play this one. I skipped all the cutscenes because i will watch them when the game is actually released. The combat was a lot more of flashy stuff and there were way more enemies than I’ve ever seen in a room, kinda felt like final rest in every room. What i did discover is that any combo can be cancelled mid combo with a dodge roll. This I really like as it adds a new layer of skill and can lead to some interesting combo ideas. It is similar to games like DMC and Bayonetta in this regard. This at least left me feeling more comfortable with the flashy combos as i wasn’t as locked in as I initially thought.

The keyblade switching isn’t as fluid as i hoped they might be. It cannot be switched mid combo but to be honest that’s not really necessary anyway i think. The ability to change them in the middle of combat is still awesome!

The Tea Cups are a bit random, it feels kinda awkward to control but still cool. Although the reaction command to get them seemed way to quick and easy to trigger which may just be for the demo.

The Pirate Ship is boring. Straight up just Square, X, Square, X.... Triangle. Stationary and not very interesting.

The keyblade transformations for the Toy Story, Monsters Inc., and Tangled keyblades were all really cool, although Tangled has to be my favourite as it puts you into a wisdom form-like mode.

The Wreck-It Ralph summon was ok but I still don’t really understand it. I forgot to use the Ariel summon so big rip.

Flowmotion I was scared about cause I thought there’d be just infinite jumping to get to high places than actually going through the level. However, it was changed so you can only use the jump once then you have to land and restart flowmotion, which I think is better it promotes the level design.

I noticed you can guard in the air which is really cool!

The camera in the demo was stuck on manual which made mob fights a pain.

The rocket command is horrible to try to control and feels kind of boring since you just mash X until you feel like doing the finisher.

Now the mech fight in galaxy toys. I hate this fight it’s awful. I tried doing this fight both in and out of the mech suit. Inside, the fight is easy, you just mash punch while holding shoot. Outside it’s extremely difficult, kinda making it feel like the mech suit was the only really viable option. New ones can spawn out of nowhere and they are very hard to keep track of. The enemies only stagger to very large hits like transformed keyblade finishers. I understand it makes sense an enemy so large shouldn’t stagger to basic hits but it just feels like you are punching a wall again and the combo takes so long to get to a finisher you are almost guaranteed to get hit out of it, you can air dash out but you still aren’t getting to those stagger moves.

I got to use the water ride during this fight and that did a tonne of damage and then the finisher makes you go along the path that you create beforehand dealing damage which I think is really cool.

The only thing that felt “floaty” to me was the Air Dash, but only because the move has some frames at the end which keep sora at the same height before he starts falling. While this kinda sucks the move has always been like this and personally i think if it is used as it should then you’ve already dodged the enemy’s attack with it, but we’ll have to see more combat and enemy design to see how this ability interacts and how viable it is as an aerial dodging move.

While the aerial combos are still long and flashy animations you still fall as soon as you stop using it. I know that in previous games you fall throughout the duration of your air combo (KH1) but consider aerial dive and aerial finish (KH2) these moves put you in the air and you begin falling as soon as they finish. I personally felt like the KH3 air combos are similar to the above mentioned KH2 moves.

I’m open minded about the game. I think it can be really good. Some things were underwhelming but they will surely have their place of usefulness somewhere in the game. As in previous games not everything is effective everywhere (I say this with mostly KH1 and KH2 in mind, as I personally think BBS and DDD are poor examples of good combat design and KH3 is mechanically completely different to Days, CoM and Re:Coded).

One thing that stands out to me is the size of mob fights. They are significantly larger and much harder to keep track of everything going on. As I mentioned earlier it feels like final rest every time. However, i think the addition of combo cancelling with dodges is a good way to address this as it gives us options to avoid the higher frequency of enemy attacks. I think tracking the enemy’s moves will just take time and some getting used to as this is a new scale which we haven’t really experienced before.

So those are my thoughts after playing the KH3 demo, some positives, some negatives but overall I’m still keeping an open and hopeful mind. I look forward to discussing these points with others and getting other people’s impressions again after now having my own experience with the demo!