Kingdom Hearts III Secret Game Report Part III - I waited this long for THAT?!

Uff. Slowly but surely, I feel the disillusion, if not to say sheer disappointment. Kingdom Hearts III had to meet the immeasurable expectations of countless fans over the years. It was clear that this would never work, but I would not have expected that it would fail on such an epic scale.

Let's proceed chronologically. I have completed the Big Hero Six world, just as I have freed the lady up there from the darkness. I just want to get rid of some thoughts about the latter event.



Yoraiko's secret game report 5


- The Big Hero 6 world feels like a bad joke. That is unbelievable. I never thought that Frozen could be topped its insolence and laziness. This world just bored and frustrated me. And by world I naturally mean the five inches room ... I’ll chronologically write down my impressions.

 
- So first to the size. Right from the start, I was afraid that Team pipe was responsible again, and that's probably how it was. You have to compare that: This world is literally just Hiro's room. The GTA San Fransokyo City, which I only thought to be an open world, is only entered in fights or mini-games, and as far as I experienced it, is also extremely empty and lifeless, the bad E-L of level design. Aside from that there’s only the bridge. To call this world the peak of insolence in level design would be polite to say the least. I mean, even Frozen had the better world when it comes down to the cold facts. This is especially aggravating because that certainly was the last Disney World - that's it?! All Disney worlds were known before? The only world that I really found almost unreservedly good was Tangled, mainly because it suited Kingdom Hearts so well with its medieval, forest-like magic fantasy setting. Pirates of the Caribbean was also very convincing in terms of gameplay, but the story was patchwork-content and the rest of the worlds were mediocre to catastrophic. This is a score not reached by many games. In addition, Corona(oh god the timeliness ...) had the only mini-game in the whole game that was really fun.(Dancing)

- The Disney bosses are completely forgettable, maybe with the exception of the Frozen one. Half of them were actually forgotten by me.

What frustrates me above all is that half of Kingdom Hearts 3 has good worlds, at least in theory, namely the open world ones. The pipe worlds, however, pull the whole game down. I wonder how this design is possible at all. Why do you let a second team work on the world's when they obviously do a much worse job than the first? If all worlds were like Corona, it would be a completely different game. It is always the saddest when potential is there but it’s not used.

- The chat feature with Hiro in the fights was a nice idea with little meaningful use. It was similar with the skyscraper wall fights: A great idea that could have been fun, but fails entirely because the controls are so tricky: I can neither use magic when standing on a wall nor can I change my keyblade - why?! Has nobody in the staff considered that? That's why I soon started to just pass the enemies.

- And the old soundtrack. I've mentioned it a few times before, but here again it was particularly noticeable. How many years and money has Square Enix spent on this game? Didn't it occur to them to contribute more than five new compositions for the franchise finale? Instead, they consistently rest on the previous soundtrack. Yes, it's still good. Yes, it still works. But that doesn't justify using it lazily again and again. For example Sinister Shadows aka the 1000 Heartless Battle Theme: In Kingdom Hearts 2 the hymn of an epic and dramaturgical climax and iconic battle, here it starts to play when Sora & Co. come into town to pursue the data heart and it plays the whole time during the quiet cutscene, the moderate dialogue, and as Sora & Co. start chasing it in a relaxed walking pace(!!!). And after that you just walk around utterly lost because you don't know what to do. What an orchestrating. And the theme is used again in the data heart-battle. Classic KHIII.

- The fact boss fights end in black screens by now tells you a lot ...

- I'm not sure whether I should find the 358/2-days reminiscence at the end of Big Hero Six good or inappropriate. It was unexpected and kind of a cool idea, but terribly out of place in the context.
- But the crowning glory was that Rescue game. Here was the first time in KHIII that I was about to rage quit after the second death. First I run around for 20 minutes without any idea what to do before I find the red ball and die shortly afterwards because of the time. Then I free 2 of the BH6 just to come to Fred (Oh Fred!) And dawdle another 20 minutes trying everything to free him. I am dying again. Then I read what I should do on the Internet and spend another 20 minutes applying it until it finally works. All the time accompanied by this wonderful music. How I love Kingdom Hearts mini-games where you don't know what to do and lose because NPCs die. For this mini-game, I would actually have liked to throw Kingdom Hearts III into the trashcan and not get it out again. 

- The Baymax-Boss wasn’t, apart from the fact that he was on the border to ‘Unfaircountry’ with his difficulty, particularly fun either. Fly around, hit, hit, heal, dodge and pray until the healing is complete, repeat.

- I'm curious to see what stupid explanation this new riku brings with him. But it's classic Kingdom Hearts here again: He and Sora are having a serious discussion, and weeeeeeeeeeeeeeell, Donald and Goofy swoop in and crash everything. It will be most likely just the same in the end when Xehanort wants to say something important before he is atomized by the power of friendship.

After KHIII almost had me on its side again last time, it has now irrevocably lost me. I fear what will happen as soon as I leave this world. But maybe now the original content will be presented and you will get the salvation of a certain character that you have been waiting for 10+ years in a double sense, appropriately presented emotionally. But I don't believe in it anymore.

 Yoraiko's Secret Game Report 6

I recently turned on Kingdom Hearts 3, left the Big Hero 6 world and turned the console off again shortly afterwards. I needed some time to process all of this first. Now I just want to write some thoughts about Aqua. I don't know where to start. So probably at the beginning.

 
+ Dark-Aqua was great in terms of design and the underlying theme, and only consistent and foreseeable when you consider that this woman has wandered lonely and alone through the darkness for 10 years. I liked the dialogues at this point.


- And we fight, for the five hundredth time, against the creative great heartless swarm boss with the same music. Oh, the excitement.

+- Am I wrong or is the music in the battle against Aqua new? That’s unbelievable. WELL, that took only a while. It's not bad either. The fight is not bad with Aqua's lines and was really, really difficult for me, but it is much too short and would have deserved several phases. You fight against Aqua here , the Aqua, which is obsessed with darkness, and all we get is this blow exchange. It doesn't do her justice, and this brings me to my biggest problem with the whole rescue operation.



- In this whole episode, I terribly miss the emotions. I can’t remember how many years fans and players of birth by sleep have been waiting for poor Aqua to finally be freed and finally to be happy by now. She even has her own FRANCHISE-PART dedicated only to her, for hearts sake! We hear all the time how difficult it is for her, how difficult it is to escape the darkness and how terribly she suffers. When her dark form appears, she accuses Micky(justified?) that he left her alone, that she suffered and all of that, but instead of making anything out of these emotional conflicts or Aqua's tragedy, let aside taking responsibility, it simply comes down to beating all the darkness and sadness out of her with the keyblade and everything is fine again.

Really, Square Enix?
 
When Aqua shows up, Micky feels bad, but after that everything is forgotten, the last ten years have not existed and Aqua falls into the arms of people of whom half she hardly knows at all. Actually, her reaction should have been "Who the motherloving f*ck are you ...?!" and not this single tear, does Sora look like a double fucking rainbow to her?! I repeat myself, this moment should be a dramatic climax of Kingdom Hearts 3 that has been awaited for years, but BigSmileLetsCookSomeEgss-Sora knocks her out and the world is back in full color. This would have offered so much potential for a few good, more serious dialogues that deal with the crux, to fight the darkness alone for a decade and to survive. But of course it's easier to pretend that nothing has happened. Aqua should hardly be able to speak. And then the game cuts immediately to the next scene, the whole thing looks like a small intersection, not like the liberation of the probably most powerful keyblade master of all. What the hell.

Much too rushed, careless and dull. Now I know what to expect from the further course and the finale. Because Aqua's liberation was what I was really looking forward to, my personal zenith with KHIII is already over ...
- Far too many scenes at once and in a row. I don't like it when I am forced to go into a story tube (after leaving the BH6 world) and then get endless rows of scenes, even though I have to process that FIVE FUCKING SECONDS AGO AQUA WAS LIBERATED FROM THE DARKNESS AFTER TEN YEARS OF IOSOLATION!

 


+ Demyx-Time is still everything I ever wanted.


 



+ In the cutscene in front of the castle, I noted again how exorbitantly beautiful the graphics can be. It feels like Aqua becomes more mesmerizing with every scene, her hair looked shockingly good in this sequence. Damn. Even if you have to ignore that her hair color changes depending on the technical context. And if only the story would feel accordingly good ... I expect a short hug from Ventus-Aqua and then the day goes on, maybe we cook a few dishes.

- Of course you can not control Aqua, why WOULD you, you have already made her player model completely, but hey it’s much more fun to only play Sora. Kingdom Hearts 3, you're an adornment of the video game industry!!

I am extremely frustrated and disappointed, and also a little bit sad. But I can now continue after I wrote that off my chest. My expectations are even deeper in the dark than Aqua was.

Next time little Ven will be saved.

- Yoraiko