Game Review: Kingdom Hearts III | A mess

I typed this post after the first couple hours of playing Kingdom Hearts III, with the intent of posting it the next morning. But then I kept playing it more and more, and this post just became a near diary of my thoughts of Kingdom Hearts III. So, what was supposed to be my First impressions, became more like my first, second, third, forth, fifteenth impressions. Basically a su-

Fuck it. It’s a damn review.

As if anybody gives a damn.

This post isn’t that spoilerific. But there are definitely spoilers. So if you’ve not played through Kingdom Hearts III yet, then go stream “Don’t Think Twice” by Hikaru Utada on Spotify.

Not even an hour into Kingdom Hearts III and I had ‘thoughts’. But I figured that it’s still early days. And if there’s one thing to be said about Square Enix games, it’s that they often have ropey starts and take a while to get into their groove. But by the end of Kingdom Hearts III, I not only retained those thoughts, but found they were joined by many others. All amounting to feelings of unfulfillment and dissatisfaction. I couldn’t quite believe that after well over a decade and two console generations, that THIS was all I’d gotten. This isn’t to disregard how much hard work went into this game. But I expected more. Even from a company who has made a habit of delivering patchy ass games over the past 10 years.

There’s a level of complacency that Kingdom Hearts III has about it, because there isn’t much of a jump from Kingdom Hearts II and there really needed to be. I liked Kingdom Hearts II and felt that it was a massive step up from the first game. It was everything that I expected from a sequel. It was flawed as hell, but still a great sequel and game overall. Kingdom Hearts III is in this odd place of clinging to its own tropes and traditions for the sheer sake of it, because somebody decided it wouldn’t be Kingdom Hearts without them. But this sums up Square Enix in a nutshell - often too unwilling to change or pull from their own traditions. Kingdom Hearts set a precedent and a template for itself and every game that would fall under the KH umbrella. Kingdom Hearts III adheres to this to a fault. Case in point: The Gummi ship. Who the fuck cares about that shit!? And why interrupt the gameplay with it? Just gimme a glorified loading screen with a scene of the Gummi ship going into lightspeed. Don’t force me to fly through that ugly, broken ass mess. And this was how I felt playing Kingdom Hearts III the entire time. That I was making my way through something that was a bit of a broken ass mess.

Kingdom Hearts does make attempts to serve up newness, but it comes without any real conviction or care concerning the impact it will have on the game or the experience as a whole. A lot of the new stuff just feels like new stuff for the sake of new stuff. And in this regard, Kingdom Hearts III often tries to do too much. After every major battle or meeting a new character, some new gameplay mechanic unlocks and it’s thrown at you via PowerPoint slides. The game never teaches you these mechanics through gameplay in the same way that say the Metal Gear Solid and Legend of Zelda series do. There are a bunch of features and mechanics at your disposal that you probably won’t use, because you don’t need to and they serve no real purpose. Which begs the question; why include them in the first place? Kingdom Hearts III bolts a lot onto itself, but so little of it feels meaningful or of value, because Square Enix do nothing to make them so. I haven’t used the Link system once. And Flowmotion? Nope. I was forced to use it once to defeat an enemy 20 hours and 5 worlds after learning it. And there was no prompt to let me know that I had to use it, and no explanation as to why this was the only way to beat an enemy, instead of just bashing it to death with a keyblade. Which leads into my next point...

Mickey don’t know shit | Kingdom Hearts III

The story isn’t the thing that makes the least sense.

There isn’t much of a sense of logic or control in the world of Kingdom Hearts. From a narrative perspective we just about get the rules. The Disney worlds are self-contained and aren’t aware of each other. Sora, Donald, Goofy and select others are the only ones who can traverse between them and know of their existences, but they can’t mention the existence of things happening outside of the world they’re in, because they need to maintain the order. The world of Kingdom Hearts is clear-ish. But the mechanics of it from a gameplay perspective aren’t always as clear. Sora can run up some walls, but not all of them. Sora can jump over some obstacles, but not all of them. Invisible walls are a thing in some areas and not others. It’s difficult trying to understand the laws of the game when there is no consistency to them. There are also instances where the game will throw certain things at you that the game mechanics don’t lend themselves well to. Using gusts of wind to scale the mountains of Arendelle is OH-SO MUCH FUN when you have no way to slow your descent or mark your landing; causing you to overshoot and fall all the way back down to the bottom. Doing an obstacle course in San Fransokyo IS A JOY with the ropey mechanics. Kingdom Hearts III is filled with moments like these. It’s a far cry from Breath of the Wild. A world where established logic, mechanics, controls and physics made sense and were consistent, which also impacted the gameplay and how you went about making your way through the game.

Kingdom Hearts III doesn’t seem to shy from its shortcomings or technical faux pas. In fact, Square Enix seem almost oblivious to them. They sometimes show a lack of awareness of the laws of their own game. Or they figure something looks cool, so that supersedes practicality and solid implementation, and just leave it at that.

There have been so many games which have managed to get its own laws of world right (i.e Horizon, Breath of the Wild, Persona 5, Spider-Man) that Kingdom Hearts III’s odd attempt at it or flat out disregard of it feels backwards in 2019.

The camera chile | Kingdom Hearts

Now, you can’t talk about Kingdom Hearts without discussing its story. I’m not going to go into the details of the story, because bitch...I don’t have it in me. But a widespread criticism of Kingdom Hearts from game II onward has been that its story is far too convoluted. Convoluted stories have become common with the Final Fantasy series too, so it’s pretty much a Square Enix trait at this point. But what I’d realised as I played through Kingdom Hearts III, is that the story wasn’t the main issue. It was the narrative and the way in which the story was told. Do not get me wrong. Kingdom Hearts III’s story is a complete and utter mess. But it could have been made less so if Square Enix had told it better.

A lot is said, many characters are named, Sora is given a lot to do, and you are made to traverse a bunch of Disney worlds, because...that’s what Sora, Donald and Goofy do. Hopping from Disney themed world to Disney themed world is nice for the sake of gameplay and showcasing all da Disney. But it serves no real purpose to the story itself, because nothing really happens the whole time you’re doing it. So the Disney worlds are just branded fluff and filler. Take them out, and the story would reach its conclusion in its final world in more or less the same way.

The narrative is hella wonky, and the order of which things happen feels out of sequence to me.

The sequencing issue didn’t become apparent to me until the tail end of the game, where literally EV-ER-EE-THING happens in a very cluttered and condensed manner. It’s almost as though SquEnix got well into development and had the realisation ‘Oh shit! We forgot about ACTUALLY having the story play out throughout the game. Looks like we’re gonna have to shove it ALL into the final world. LMAO.’ It's clear that nobody mapped out the story or the narrative from the start, because they jump all over the place, and not as a stylised choice. There are things that happen at the end of the game that should have happened at the start and intermittently within each Disney world.

If I were to re-jig the events of Kingdom Hearts III, I’d have the story begin at the Keyblade graveyard and then work itself back.

Men. | Kingdom Hearts III

The game starts with Sora having lost the power to wake people up...or some shit. So he has to embark on an adventure to reawaken this ability. But there are no clear or obvious signs to anything in particular which could help Sora regain this ability at any point. He just...gets it back. Square Enix could have done something really simple like have Sora travel to Disney worlds to discover memories and moments that trigger his heart; which would there-in trigger memories of Roxas and Ventus, who may have experienced what Sora experienced. Kinda like Link collecting pendants, medallions etc. in the Legend of Zelda games. Or Noctis collecting Royal arms in Final Fantasy XV. Clear representations of acquisitions of power for the sake of progression which push the narrative forward, as indicated by a scene of Sora having moments of re-awakening this ability.

There are a couple of instances where something similar occurs, but they don’t always happen once you've reached the end of a Disney world, and they’re thrown in randomly.

Benched bitches | Kingdom Hearts III

There are a lot of themes and plot points which never seem to intersect or run parallel, despite it making sense for them to. And there are also many instances of the story which are covered off through overlong cut scenes and conversations, which should have been told through actual gameplay. Kingdom Hearts III has many events happening perpendicular to one another. Whilst Sora, Donald and Goofy are traversing worlds, Riku and Mickey are trying to find Aqua in the world of darkness. But we never get to see much of the world of darkness, and it never feels as threatening as you’ve been led to believe. In fact, it looks kinda nice. The story jumps to Riku and Mickey every now and then and we hear them talk about stuff and then it’s back to Sora and co. Controlling Riku or Mickey as they traverse the world of darkness and letting you wield all of their power would have been far more fun than just watching a cut scene of them just talking, or standing in front of Yen Sid and recapping it all. You get to fight as Riku on a couple of occasions, but that’s it.

Then you have Axel and Kairi, who are training to be Keyblade warriors. Having a chapter where Axel is filled with anxiety over Roxas, and Kairi is concerned about bringing back Naminé, with the two of them deciding to venture out on their own would have been far more fun and relevant than watching Axel cry, suck on ice lollies and listen to Kairi’s slow ass talk about how she’s gonna write a letter. Axel is one of the few cool original characters who was of genuine importance in Kingdom Hearts II. So to have him be benched with Kairi is a complete waste. And to make a thing out of Kairi training to wield a keyblade to be useful and yet be so damn useless...I cannot. Aqua and Xion would never.

Disorganization XIII | Kingdom Hearts

Then there is Organization XIII. A bunch of characters who seem intrinsic to everything, yet somehow manage to feel disconnected from everything. Each Disney world has a different Organization member who turns up and decides they’re just going to fuck some shit up. But the crazy thing is, that you don’t fight any of them until the very end of the game. ONE. AFTER. THE OTHER. When you step foot into a Disney world, within 10 minutes an Organization member turns up, talks about hearts, tells you that you’re rubbish and then disappears through some purple swirl. Then about 2 hours later they turn up again to tell you that you’re still rubbish and then leave you to fight some black blob with tentacles. You feel absolutely NO connection to the Organization members or any of the bosses that you fight in the Disney worlds, because they have little connection to the world that you’ve spent the past few hours mucking through. It would have made far more sense to have fought the Organization member that fucked up your visit in the first place, a Disney character, or both of them together.

Organization members are also oddly matched to the worlds. Each member of Organization XIII has a specific power and each Disney world is, of course, themed. So Square Enix very easily could have had matched Organization members to Disney worlds based on their powers. But nope. Larxene’s power is lightning. But she turns up in the Frozen world instead of Vexen, whose power is ice. When Larxene could have turned up in the Pirates of the Caribbean world and engaged you in a boss fight where she summons lightning on the seas. But instead, the Pirates world gets Luxord, who would have been a better fit for the Toy Story world, because his whole thing is playing with decks of cards.

Also, I don’t get why Organization XIII can come in and out of Disney worlds without their appearances changing to fit it, whilst Sora, Donald and Goofy’s do. Weren’t no Organization members looking like toys in the Toy story world and weren’t none of them looking like bug eyed creatures when they turned up in the Monsters Inc. world.

Things that should have fit and been made to make sense, just...don’t. Even the simplest and most obvious of things.

Oh, Andy... | Kingdom Hearts

Kingdom Hearts III feels like it was developed in a bubble, with no consideration of games which had been released over the past 10 years, or even internally within Square Enix. There isn’t a great deal of evolution from the last Kingdom Hearts title or any of the other series’ that Square Enix and Tetsuya Nomura had also worked on, such as Final Fantasy XV. There are absolutely no learnings taken from Final Fantasy XV or even Final Fantasy XIII. Issues which were prevalent in both of these games are very much in Kingdom Hearts III. From unnecessarily convoluted stories and excessive lore pulled out of nowhere. To battles where the enemy you’re fighting the hardest against is the damn camera. To most of the worlds being nothing more than corridor simulators. There are two Disney worlds which are a bit more open, but these come so late in the game. And both of these worlds feature some gameplay mechanics and concepts that would have worked wonders if they were leveraged across the whole game.

Square Enix threw a lot of ideas into Kingdom Hearts III without really taking into account how they would actually work in practicality, committing them to work consistently, and ensuring they have value. In the Legend of Zelda (with the exception of Twilight Princess and that fucking spinny thing) every item has its use throughout your adventure. Every fundamental mechanic will need to be used until the very end. Kingdom Hearts gives Sora all of these different attacks and abilities, but not all of them feel like they’re of value, and you can complete the game without using the majority of them.

It’s one thing to give players options. But it’s another to give a player a whole ass toolbox that they have no need to ever dip into.

Square Enix threw ideas into this game, without considering how the gameplay mechanics would accommodate them. So, we get style over actual substance, and instances where the gameplay is effectively broken as a result.

Bosses are big, huge and bound around the environment. But it turns boss battles into tests of endurance and tried patience between their cheap attacks, the awful camera, you not having a move that can zip you across the battle field quickly (Warp Strike from FFXV. Hello!?) and their heavily stocked life gauges.

The crazy Disney ride attacks look cool, but there’s not a great deal of strategy to using them, and sometimes they cause more problems than they’re worth. This is Kingdom Hearts III all over. So much of what seemed good on paper, just don’t work when they’re thrown into the game, because the mechanics and play style don’t support them in the best way. But rather than refine these things so that they do work better, or just take them out; Square Enix seemed to go ‘Cool! Okay!’ and just keep it in for the sheer sake of it, because its something new - even though it amounts to nothing, and in most instances, impede the game.

Gurl, go let it go someplace else | Kingdom Hearts III

And then there is Disney. I’m not sure of the extent of access that Square Enix had to all things Disney. But for them to have done what they did here, it must have been a-fucking-lot. But even so, I wish Square Enix had exercised it more. From Kingdom Hearts II, Square Enix went full throttle to build out Kingdom Hearts’ cast of original characters. Whether this was to set the series up to exist without known Disney characters and franchises (which I believe it could). Or it was purely a production choice so that Square Enix didn’t have to worry about sign-off from Disney - I do not know. But more Disney characters was the way that this should have gone.

It would have made more sense for the main bad guy to have been a Disney villain. For Organization XIII to have had some Disney characters in it. Ansem should have been replaced with a character like Geppetto. The same can be said for the worlds of this game too. I feel that the selection may have been down to Disney. But it would have been nice to have seen an Incredibles world to teach Sora about the love that exists between family. A Moana world to teach Sora that you should follow your heart, even if it goes against the rules of those you love. An Inside Out world where you have to travel into Aqua to help her reconnect with hope. Not just because I really like these particular movies, but their stories would have tied in perfectly with the overall theme of Kingdom Hearts. A theme of which started out really simple, but got bogged down with all this shit about time travel, Nobodies, Somebodies. Replicas, Unversed, Pulse l’Disney, Fal’Pixar. Then again, even when Square Enix were given worlds and stories that were perfect for Kingdom Hearts, they managed to fuck them up.

Both the Tangled and Frozen worlds follow the same plots as the films, albeit in truncated forms. However, the stories are cut down so badly, that key moments have no impact. Rapunzel and Flynn fall in love out of nowhere. And Elsa running away from home and Anna’s thawing out have no real weight, because what led up to both of those moments is completely omitted. Even when Square Enix are given a clear and perfect narrative, THEY STILL fuck it up.

Generally speaking, Kingdom Hearts III just doesn’t feel tight or refined. It features lots of moving parts, but none of them move smoothly or move together. The battle system can be fun, but it’s very repetitive and there’s little in the way of actual skill. There’s absolutely no incentive for you to do anything but just hammer the attack button and occasionally dodge. The team AI is okay, but would have benefited from a form of Gambit system, as per Final Fantasy XII, for you to really tailor Donald and Goofy’s behaviour in battles - something which would have had more value if the game were more of a challenge and required a level of intricacy and skill. The voice acting is inconsistent. When dialogue is exchanged between Disney characters, it sounds fine and as you’d expect. It’s Disney for fucks sake. They ain’t gonna skimp on that shit. The voice work is as good as it is in their movies. But when Organization XIII members are talking, it’s the worst. Larxene and Demyx are the only members who speak with some life and whose voice actors don’t sound like they’re reciting lines on Tylenol. The dialogue between Sora, Donald and Goofy is hit and miss. But Haley Joel Osment does a fantastic job as Sora overall. Anybody who has heard Haley’s natural speaking voice over the past 5 years will know that he REALLY has to switch his voice up for Sora, and he does a great job - even when the dialogue is clumsy.

Gay rights | Kingdom Hearts III

Kingdom Hearts III’s story gets in its own way...a lot. When it focuses on the simple and universal themes of friendship and compassion, the story is a joy. Seeing the level of trust that Sora, Donald and Goofy have in one another is touching, and you really feel the weight of the journeys that they’ve had together. The same goes for Aqua, Ventus and Terra. I’ve not played Birth by Sleep. But the level of responsibility these three feel towards one another comes through in spades, and the sense of history they have along with it. But the moment Kingdom Hearts III starts going into this shit about black boxes and creating hearts out of data, it becomes a mess.

The game also makes it difficult for you to feel that anybody is in any mortal peril. Sora seems so overpowered that he never feels like he’s ever in any danger. He’s lost his heart HOW many times now!? Riku is still too deadpan for my liking. Mickey is just useless. And don’t get me started on Kairi.

Square Enix have shown that they can convey love and closeness between characters. We see it with Sora, Donald and Goofy. We see it with Axel and Roxas. We see it with Aqua, Ventus and Terra. I mean, shit - we even saw it with Sora and Kairi in the first Kingdom Hearts. That fucking ending made me cry! And yet, I don’t feel a damn thing for Kairi in this game, because she doesn’t do anything and her voice acting is so bad. Kairi is nothing more than a typical damsel in distress, which is disappointing from not only a company who has developed games with great, strong female characters; but within a game which has strong female characters in it. In comparison to Aqua, Xion and the Disney boss bitches that we get in each world, Kairi really ain’t shit.

It’s giving leptospirosis | Kingdom Hearts III

The gameplay of Kingdom Hearts III also feels unfocused. Whenever Kingdom Hearts deviates and breaks its own formula it’s a hoot. The Ratatouille mini-game is incredibly fun. But you don’t have to do it. At all. It’s like Final Fantasy XV’s cooking shit all over again. Let’s create a really cool thing and go to all this trouble to model ridiculously realistic food, just to make the whole shebang completely optional. Unlike Breath of the wild, where your ass HAD to cook.

The mission based play style of the Big Hero 6 world with objective markers and time limits is fun and provides focus. The roaming style of the Pirates of the Caribbean world breaks up the linearity. Having these moments woven into the fabric of the game as a whole would have worked wonders for it.

Just as Square Enix threw in bad ideas with no awareness of how it negatively impacts the game; they also threw in amazing ideas, with no awareness of how they positively impacted the game, but didn’t act upon or expand any of them.

The Kingstagram loading screens. So much could have been done with that given that Sora gets a smartphone in the game. But no connection is made to it. It’s just a loading screen. Square Enix could have developed a real in-game network which aggregates everybody’s photos and hashtags in a really cool way in-game; giving the gummiphone more of a purpose than just taking pictures of Mickey emblems.

Men. | Kingdom Hearts III

Then there is how Kingdom Hearts III feels overall as the final chapter in this particular tale. The stakes don’t really hit until the very end. There’s no sense of urgency at any point of this game. So much happens at the tail end, that you don’t even have a chance to feel the impact of what happens, because SO much is happening, and seemingly out of nowhere. And in the midst of this you have a wonky narrative and equally wonky filler style gameplay wedged in too. You’re just so busy doing shit and trying to understand shit and keep on top of shit, that you’re not even able to digest any of it.

And then there’s the ending, which is your typical Square Enix ending; a happy ending with a cost. The final moments of the ending will tug at the heart strings in a similar way that Kingdom Hearts I did. But as aforementioned, the weight of it is lessened because you know that nothing is absolute. Because we know that Square Enix can’t leave shit alone and always have to have a [Roman numeral]-2 or a [Character] Returns in the pipeline. They seem to have a real issue with approaches to death and not allowing them to be final. There’s always some caveat or some scene that’s shown to allow for interpretation.

Kingdom Hearts III spreads itself too thin as a result of trying to do too much and shows very little conviction.

There are some great ideas and moments in this game, but they feel sparing and layered beneath so much nonsense that they aren’t the aspects of the game that stick with me the most. The only part of Kingdom Hearts III that I can’t talk smack about is the soundtrack. The Queen that is Yoko Shimomura did a brilliant job. You know Yoko is about to give it to you the moment you hear “Dearly Beloved” on the title screen. One of the most beautiful takes on the classic Kingdom Hearts theme that we’ve gotten so far, and we’ve had some truly amazing takes on it over the years.

I know I’ve gone on and on picking this game apart. It’s not because I enjoy hating things. It’s because I can see the potential Kingdom Hearts III had to be something truly amazing. But the issues that I have with the game all compounded as I was playing it, resulting in me not enjoying it. I really wanted to come out of the other side of Kingdom Hearts III loving everything about it. Especially after being so won over by Kingdom Hearts II. So I hate that I didn’t like it.

Under different circumstances, I probably would have been pissed at the secret ending to this game insinuating that Kingdom Hearts will continue. But I’m actually looking forward to seeing where it all goes. It gives Square Enix a chance to actually deliver, without the weight of expectation that hung over Kingdom Hearts III. And with one chapter of the saga closed, they can enter a new one with fresh ideas and takes on what Kingdom Hearts had built on for the past 17 years. I just wish that it wasn’t Sora. I like the guy and I want Haley Joel Osment to keep getting that Square Enix money. But how many times is this dude gonna be allowed to ‘die’? Game and story logic y’all. Watch Square throw it straight out of the window. Again.

👍🏾 Great graphics
👍🏾 Amazing soundtrack

👎🏾 Boring to play
👎🏾 Gameplay is a mess and in some cases, flat-out broken
👎🏾 The plot is convoluted beyond belief
👎🏾 Doesn’t take the strides that the KH franchise desperately needed to take

Verdict: Simple and clean is not the way this game is making me feel tonight