Current Events > Kingdom Hearts 3 really was a wet fart

(+) Yeah! (+)

only KH1 was good. Tighter story with better characters and worlds had more exploration

Nothing really important in KH1 happens outside of the KH original worlds, like nearly all KH games. Its gameplay has also aged like milk

Rharyx211 posted...

That's not how that works.

I've played all the games since middle school, and I "understand" the story, but that doesn't mean it's always told in a way that's super easy to follow. Especially when it has the habit of backtracking and/or rewriting bits of its own lore to accommodate new story beats, and including important information in supplementary guidebooks and interviews.

Edit damn thing sent early hang on

Except it really is because the very nature of certain storytelling is a build up. And a lot of the reworked stuff still works in terms of the story telling beats since a decent amount of it goes back to specific moments in the story no one really thinks too much about.

Blue_Inigo posted...

Nothing really important in KH1 happens outside of the KH original worlds, like nearly all KH games. Its gameplay has also aged like milk

I mean, a lot of Riku's arc takes place in the Disney worlds, and the story revolves around the princesses. That's already much more than any other games' Disney worlds have to offer.

Rharyx211 posted...

The gameplay is fun, but being given almost your entire toolkit in the prologue section makes the rest of the game feel repetitive at times,

It's not about getting your toolkit early, its that your toolkit is extremely limited.

Everything in KH2 layers and layers upon itself to create an amazing web of utility, while in KH3 everything is segmented and broken off. Nothing works well together and everything blends in

Example 1: Sora's keyblade combos without the ReMind patch are atrocious. Their damage isn't great, they have some terrible animations and just generally lack utility

Example 2: All summons and some limits in KH2 let you maintain full control of Sora to do whatever you want. You could mix and match certain for certain situations where they fit and reap a lot of reward. You were encouraged to experiment and maximise your tools. In 3 Team Attacks and Links are all separate minigames that can't be mixed with any of Sora's regular moves. You press a button to do the thing and get a big explosion of damage and no more thought is required.

Example 3: Everything has the same function. Pretty much everything in the game is just a big explosion with no utility, and the few things with utility are horrible. In KH2 every spell had a unique function that had their own strengths and weaknesses. The 4 shortcut limitation really hurts because every spell often finds a place to shine throughout the game. In KH3 Fire Water and Blizzard are all just the same idea of shooting an exploding projectile just with Water and Blizzard having gimmicks that are really bad and finnicky. Aero might've been useful but its made completely awful by forcing you in the clunky flowmotion state as opposed to KH2 magnet that let you take advantage of the sucked in enemies however you wished. Every link and every team attack amount to "do big aoe damage" whereas KH2 had several of its summons and limits offer additional utility like flight, magnet effects, recovery, you name it. The same applies to regular keyblade combos, where in KH2 many combo modifiers had unique properties like lots of parry frame or some being specifically focused on single enemies while others were preffered during mob scenarios. In KH3 the fkrm changes are just different flavours of damage explosions.

Example 4: The resource system is complete whack. In 2, every resource worked synergistically with your kit. Limits take all your MP, but because of this you can use magic until you're almost out and then finish it off with a limit. Drive Forms fully restore your MP, and if your MP is recharging you gain a boost to your Drive gauge recharge. Resources aren't infinite and you can't spam things willy nilly, but you still have plenty of flexibility and have a great feedback loop of maximising your resources. KH3 throws all of that out the window. Links use up all your MP, but unlike Limits they require full MP, if you use even one spell you're locked out of Links until you can restore your MP. Not only is Magic lacking damn near all the utility that made it so useful in KH2, it's at complete odds with Links which effectively serve as a mob fight auto win and can do massive damage to bosses. There's also no equivalent to Drive Forms restoring MP, you'll have to pop an ether, which you very rarely have to do in KH2 if you juggle your tools well. Focus is used for Shotlocks... and that's it. Focus and Shotlocks don't interact with any other resource, and all you can do with max focus is do 1-2 full charged shotlocks and then just hope enemies drop Focus prizes. Literally zero thought is required, you just use shotlocks whenever because there's no opportunity cost.

Example 5: Like half your kit is gated behind situation commands, often randomly. The pay-off for Magic over links is Grand Magic, but you have to build a full situation gauge for them, and there's still no guarantee you'll get one. Form Changes can at least be guaranteed with Critical Converter. But that still has two issues. A) You don't have access to some of the strongest parts of your kit when you want. KH2 had a lot of freedom that let you use pretty much anything whenever you wanted. If a situation calls for a limit, so long as you have the MP, you can use it and get rewarded for it. Like I said earlier, the game really encourages utilizing your whole kit to its full potential. Everything is at a moments grasp, and its up to you to maximise. Meanwhile, in KH3, if you really want a team attack during a fight, well, hope you get lucky. B) Situation builds up quite slowly. Critical cuts your Situation build by like half, and it means it takes like 3-4 full combos to build up one form gauge. It creates this constant feeling of being held back and having to go through a bunch of hoops just to use the fun stuff. You can aort of get around it thanks to Critical Recharge which lets you build situation quicker while in MP Charge and Cure Converter which gives you a bunch of situation when using Cure. But this just trades the problem of situation being too slow for the problem of making MP, Links and Magic almost a complete non-factor. You constantly have these barriers on your kit whereas KH2 just gave you a bunch of fun tools and let you experiment with them as you wished.

Its really exemplified in the Data fights, which are tons of fun but offer almost no room for moveset experimentation. The KH2 datas frequently reward the player heavily for using their tools to the fullest. It you know what you're doing you can shred some health bars and get openings you're not supposed to get purely through your own skill and the freeflow of your kit. Meanwhile KH3's fights force a Simon Says dynamic where fights can feel a tad scripted.

KH3 was awesome and is the second best game in the franchise