KH3 Critical Mode Knee-Jerk Thoughts

Updated 5/2/19

CRITICAL MODE CHANGES:
-HP & MP is halved
-You intake more damage than Proud
-Mode starts with Soldier's Earring equipped on Sora (+3Str/+1Mag)
-Start with 3 new abilities
  Critical Counter: Guarding right before an attack hits deals buffed damage with a Reprisal
  Critical Recharge: Fills Situation gauge faster during MP Charge
  Critical Converter: Disable most Attractions but always get a Formchange when filling Situation Gauge
-Situation Commands build up slower
-Attractions show up less frequently (unsure if only on Crit)
-You start with Combo Master, Aerial Recovery (thank you), Air Slide Max, Superslide Max, all 3 Counters, Most Combo Modifiers
-Start with extra AP (not sure how much)
-Links don't restore full HP now (half I believe)
-Kupo Coin only restores half HP, also does not touch MP

BASIC THOUGHTS:
-HP is fine, like normal Crit across series
-MP is horrid, ruins mage routes, okay with MP nerf but this is too much, even with food on it's bad
-Link spam is the way to go unfortunately, their damage is untouched and mechanics, except HP heal
-Designed for NG+ more than not most likely
-LV1 still requires food & keyblade upgrades to not do chip damage outside of Forms, and/or using perma stat boosts on Sora
-Mob fights get opened up a bit for being quite rough with lack of crowd control due to nerfed MP

AI CHANGES:
-Hands in Monsters Boss go into center now, can move around (mess with Ralph strats)
-Fish boss in Pirates has clear wind up animation for bite attack, easier to dodge on reaction now
-Lich ice move comes out slower now to allow reaction dodging mid combo
-Saix teleporting near Sora more now if you fire spam him (to prevent camping?)

IN DEPTH THOUGHTS:
Critical Mode is objectively difficult. And not all of it is fake difficulty, which is nice. Being proficient at LV1 Proud already helped me not struggle on many fights that normally seem worse than they are. It's hard to fully analyze it currently, since I've only played it once and on LV1. There are many different ways to make this mode play out differently. You can do things like pick Guardian route to get LV4 Withstand Combo (Once More) and help a ton with multi hit attacks that land. You can also utilize food, which is really simple to have it make a decent impact without actually having to cook. You can also keyblade upgrade or use perma stat boosts. Choosing not to grind on optional enemies also will change the experience, much like other games. Due to many different possibilities, it's hard to come to concrete opinions on difficulty, because players will all be having different experiences.

That being said, I think the lack of game balancing hurt Crit a bit. For example, Links are still ridiculous if you know how to use them. And with the bad MP bar in this mode, you have more incentive than ever to spam Links. No reason to use 6 fires or 3 Thunders when you nuke bars of HP with Links. If you don't know what I mean by game balance, my KH3 Good & Bad video lays it out completely.

Being on LV1, damage was chippy except when in Forms due to Hidden Potential or using Links/Shotlock. This was a bit of a problem for me to enjoy Crit as much due to how hard now it is to get into Forms. The Situation Gauge was fine the way it was imo. The problem was mostly too many Attractions cluttering up the Situation Commands that prompted people to complain there were always too many. But now you need to do like 5 full combos to get a Form, and it's pretty bland to me. The other thing that sometimes caused too many Situation Command was that if you hit multiple enemies at once with the same attack, it gave a ton of Situation Gauge. I think their solution to this wasn't the right one, Crit would be fine (and more fun) with getting into your Forms faster, or even getting Grand Magic faster too.

I will say it's awesome that they brought back starting abilities for Crit. I'd say I wish there was an MP Hastera like in 2FM Crit especially for that tiny MP bar, but it's great we can start with Aerial Recovery. Combo Master and Air Slide/Superslide were nice as well. I think they also gave you Solider's Earring on Sora to avoid early game chip damage.

The new Crit abilities are pretty neat. The new Critical Guard is awesome as it rewards you for precise timing. I had a hard time making it worth it on LV1 in normal play with the risk of getting OHKO'd, but perhaps I need to look more into it. Critical Recharge was nice due to getting to Forms faster during MP Charge, so you'd want to do magic spam or Link then do physical combos during MP cooldown. Critical Converter was nice for people who don't want to use Attractions at all and always get a Form Change instead of it sometimes not showing up. For my LV1 playthrough, I preferred the Attractions, as they're pretty well balanced on LV1, and they also toned down the frequency of Attractions.

More importantly, though, it's a good thing to see them bringing back the idea of giving you more abilities/starting abilities on Crit again, instead of what 0.2 did. This was definitely an "on the right track" choice for KH3.

There's a whole debate going on about how food/upgrading/stat boosts should be handled for Crit. I think the main issue, as I've said earlier, is that it's not fun doing chip damage without relying on boosting stats. I think 2FM did it just fine so that if you're underleveled in any way, fights don't take 8 years, especially end game fights. That way LV1 purists can still have fun fights that aren't really long. If you enjoy long fights, then you won't dislike this issue, but I believe many were content with how it worked in 2FM. I've also always been content with food/upgrading being options, as well as even stat boosts. A player can choose to use them for help, but I feel KH3 punishes you too hard for ignoring them in terms of damage output alone for Crit.

In 2FM, you can choose to not use stat boosts, or even not equip any Accessories, Armor, or weak keyblades. But yet you still can get by without having really long boring fights. I wish for KH3 to follow this route. I understand when people say "you should level up to do more damage." But that doesn't mean not leveling up should be chip damage. 2FM did it amazingly well on Crit where if you choose to level up or use good equipment and such, you get rewarded for more damage output. But if you choose to challenge yourself with base stats, the whole playthrough isn't terrible chip damage. Some people will always argue that you should HAVE to level up, but the way I see it is 2FM did it just fine. If they have a good damage floor calculation, then you can apply Cooking/Upgrades/Stat Boost on top of the minimum damage floor so that all types of play can have a good time but still choose how challenging they want it.

As a side note, it's a bit foolish to jump to enemy design complaints on Crit without putting in the effort to actually learn the fights. If we knee-jerk reacted to 2FM Crit this way, it would be about the same issue. People who play 2FM Crit for the first time struggle with fights such as Demyx, Xaldin, etc. But when you learn your options, how to be defensive, and how enemies are, you end up learning that it's not as rough as you originally thought. KH3 is pretty similar to this. KH3 Crit is still hard, but I see a lot of people trashing completely perfectly fine or at least decent fights just from not knowing the enemies or their options. So keep that in mind if you plan to play Crit.

Lastly, they need to give you more MP back. 2FM was fine on Crit with the amount of MP you had. I believe they nerfed MP because magic spam is broken in the game. But as mentioned earlier, without proper magic balancing, this isn't a good solution. You use a few magic attacks and suddenly you're in MP charge for quite a while. All it does is prompt you to Link spam instead. I sincerely hope they revisit their magic design and bring back some MP instead as 2FM did.

SUMMARY:
Crit is still pretty fun, but since they didn't properly balance the game first, it falls a bit short of being really fun. If they fix the balance, it probably would be really fun. Since I've already done LV1, I'll try playing some regular Crit playthroughs to see how things go. I really appreciate some of the things they did, such as half HP, Link half health heal, starting abilities, new abilities. I think if they fix general game balance and fix up getting Forms faster and have a decent minimum damage floor it'd be incredibly better. I'd also nitpick the Org design on Crit of how easy your party members die and suddenly you have 2-3 bosses coming at you at once, but I need to look into that more first (yea, I know you can revive them to help, but then RIP items or MP). Either way, you want a challenge, you have Critical Mode.