Because I had a busy week, I spent 95% of the time that I dedicated to playing Video Games to play Kingdom Hearts III. Fortunately, I was able to finish the game by the end of the week and it was one heck of an experience.
Last week, I wrote that I hope there were more Kingdom Hearts plot in between the Disney worlds. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Most of the Kingdom Hearts plot that I was expecting was jammed into the final third of the game after I finished the last Disney world. I think that it would have been better if Square spread out the plot of finding the last of the seven lights in between the worlds or even show more of Axel and Kairi’s training to keep the Kingdom Hearts part fresh.
Besides the pacing, I thought that the story overall was very satisfying especially knowing the plots of the previous entries in the series. I felt that the game did a good job in explaining why you went to each Disney world and, without going into any spoilers, wrapping up the current saga in a way that made sense. Although I found most of the interactions between Disney characters and the Organization members hilarious out of context, the game has a lot of good scenes that almost made me cry a bit.
With the gameplay, I felt like that it was too easy. Despite playing in Proud mode, I rarely died in fights, although the last few fights were challenging. In only those final fights I felt like I needed to be strategic and know when to dodge and when to attack. In other games in the series, I felt that I couldn’t get away with spamming attacks without dodging and died many times.
This game is the most accessible to newcomers gameplay-wise. However, without knowing about the plot of the series, it would be hard to follow what happens in the last third of the game.
Out of the last Disney worlds I played this week, I didn’t enjoy the Pirates of the Caribbean world. There was one part where you had to search for 300 white crabs throughout Port Royal, which took a while to finish. For most of your time in the world, you are on a ship and you have to battle with them. The controls aren’t bad, it’s just that I wish that there were fewer mandatory battles on the ship. The World was the worst in terms of finding lucky emblems since the world is big and there are a lot of small islands.
On the other hand, I thought that the Big Hero 6 world was great. The plot was simple, and it didn’t take a long time to complete the world. Most of the action in the world mostly took place in one open area in San Fransokyo, which made easy to navigate.
I enjoyed the lucky emblems as this game’s main collectible. Because the worlds in the game are more open, finding emblems made exploring each world more rewarding, especially the emblems that are more of a visual illusion. I also like that this was taken from the old Disney movies on DVDs. I remember there was a game where you had to point out where in the movie is the hidden Mickey symbol and it was fun to do.
With each game in the series, the gummi ship sections keep on getting better and better. I thought that the open world aspect of traveling in your gummi ship was brilliant, although I miss the Star Fox-like gauntlet sections from Kingdom Hearts II. I also liked that I didn’t need to upgrade my gummi ship in order to progress with the game, since I am bad with designing my own ship. My only problem that I had with these sections was that I couldn’t change the directional controls separately in the 3D flying section and the 2D fight sequences.
Personally, I enjoyed my time playing Kingdom Hearts III. I liked how Sora controlled both in battle and when exploring the worlds, more than any other game in the series. The music is high quality as it usually is with the whole series, and the story does a satisfying job to wrap up the Xehanort saga. However, I probably wouldn’t like it as much if I didn’t understand the messy plot of the Kingdom Hearts series. I would give this game an 8.5/10 from a personal standpoint, but if I am going to rank the game if I was an average gamer, then I would give it a 7.5/10.
Now that I am done with Kingdom Hearts III, I will probably transition back to Tales of Vesperia, unless Nintendo holds a Direct and stealth releases a game right after it…
J Chang Gaming 