Current Events > Is there any general interest left for Kingdom Hearts?

(+) Yeah! (+)

After the lukewarm reception of KH3, and the FF7R series essentially overshadowing it, is anyone but myself still looking forward to KH4?

They took too fucking long to make 3.
The series was getting constant "spinoffs" that were integral to the story, so you had to play them if you wanted to understand what was happening. By the time 3 came out, the series was nowhere near as popular as it had been.

I want to know what the identity of the Master of Masters is. Other than that I don't care about the series anymore

Yeah, it still has a big following. There was insane hype when KH4 was revealed, and then nothing for years. That's how it is with every game.

I want the games to come out on Steam, if that counts. I think I've only played 1 and 2 though.

What they need to do is make a remake of the main trilogy with all the bells and whistles possible with today's technology. Top-tier voice acting, musical scores, scenes, gameplay, huge content, challenges, leaderboards, etc.

Of course, I bet if another trailer suddenly came out for kh4 it would be getting views out the ass

People need to stop making series that are designed to go on forever.

Id love to know what the thought process was for making a ton of spin-offs on handheld consoles instead of just making high quality games every few years.

Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts 2 are two of my favorite games, but the spin-offs are mostly not very good. Too gimmicky but not in a fun way.

That said, I did enjoy Kingdom Hearts 3 a lot and Im looking forward to more of course, but they gotta not do the spin-offs anymore. Just focus on good home console games.

I have the spinoffs as part of a package but I have not gotten around to playing the ones I missed.

I also have not played the DLC for KH3.

3 was great and actually renewed my previously dwindling interest

SMAP- posted...

3 was great and actually renewed my previously dwindling interest

3 was fun, da best after 1, 2, BBS

Yes, lots! Believe it or not, there's more people who love the Kingdom Hearts series (casuals) in general than people who hated the third game. Once the trailer comes out for KH4, it will get millions of views with a bunch of people saying they're excited for what's going to happen next game. As someone who hated the third game, I am interested in what direction they're going to go with this series. I just seriously hope they stop with the overly convoluted plot points and go for a simpler story with more character moments or actually having the FF and Disney characters interact with each other or something.

Kingdom Hearts is like the Terminator franchise of the video gaming world; the first one was great, the second one was great, and everything that came after is easily ignored because the second one wrapped things up well enough with a satisfactory conclusion.

I definitely wish that they didn't release so many spinoffs in between 2 and 3. Added too much weird shit to the story.

But I'll still play 4 when it comes out. I probably won't take a week off to play it like I did with 3 though.

Its a good series, but its almost impossible to get the story straight at this point between the spin offs having critical info in them. I wont be getting 4 when it comes out due to this.

spin-offs should add to story, not be mandatory, especially when they are spread across consoles every which way.

don't forget to play kingdom hearts missing link on mobile in order to understand KH4!

texanfan27 posted...

Its a good series, but its almost impossible to get the story straight at this point between the spin offs having critical info in them. I wont be getting 4 when it comes out due to this.

spin-offs should add to story, not be mandatory, especially when they are spread across consoles every which way.

The comeback to this will invariably be 'dude, there's synopsis videos included in the game if you want to catch up.' And that's fine, good on the devs for adding those, it's a genuinely smart and self-aware move. But there are some stories that simply can't be synopsized because they sound fucking stupid as hell unless you've invested enough time and money into them to have your mental faculties worn down to the point where it all suddenly makes sense (I personally call this the Scientology Effect). Like, I've read the bullet points of KH3's plot, and it sounds like a complete waste of time; if I'd actually played through the entire game and experienced its better moments firsthand, I'd almost assuredly have a more favorable opinion of it.

KH simply isn't worth the investment at this point, imo. They clearly chose to go full-throttle into their convoluted plotlines and original-characters-do-not-steal, which were at best a secondary motivation for me to play these Disney-meets-FF crossover games. The FF aspect has been all but completely jettisoned from the series, and I'm convinced that they'd ditch the Disney angle as well if they thought they could get away with it.

For me KH storyline was just an excuse to justify the set pieces and characters being in the same universe. Meaning just a light wrapper of a storyline to exist as some kind of narrative about light vs dark and secretive organizations on either side and some main characters with some basic plot. I did not play KH3 yet though, just the first two and several spin-offs since.

KH storyline never seemed intended to be deeply probed or understood, moreso just appreciated for its themes.

I didnt mind the side games, but it felt like 3 fell flat with actually utilizing the concepts and characters from those games. Theres an argument that it wasnt actually that dissimilar from 1 and 2 in that regard, or arguably even superior, but it felt like they should have been more relevant than they were, and they werent. Thats the failing compared to 1 and 2 I think. Its even more egregious cause they said they didnt really need FF because of the original cast, but I mean, come on.

Blastia posted...

don't forget to play kingdom hearts missing link on mobile in order to understand KH4!

When's it coming?

Kingdom Hearts 3 should have veered away from the formula for a focused finale.

There's really no fixing the amount of nothing it delivered. Doesn't come anywhere close to those first two installments.

I was in middle school when the first one came out....

How many Kingdom Hearts games were released between 2 and 3? FOCUS.

LordYeezus posted...

When's it coming?

fall 2024, it seems

I've loved it since it first came out and I'm super excited for 4

The sequel formula killed my interest in it for a long time.

No way was I gonna buy a PSP or whatever the hell kind of phone Coded and X released on. And since they were stubbornly insistent on making every single installment absolutely vital to the story, whether it was for PS2 or PSP or HP Officejet, that meant I couldn't just skip some here and there. So I quit completely.

They did eventually release the collections but it tooke a long time to get the motivation back to actually play them. I'm currently finally working on BbS though.

series wore out it's welcome a long time ago.

Nah KH3 sucked.

Kingdom Hearts 3 is the one thing in the history of the universe that probably needed to be more anime.

SMAP- posted...

3 was great and actually renewed my previously dwindling interest

I loved 1, loved 2 more. IMO 3 was just a goddamn slog.

There's definitely still interest among fans, but there's been like nothing from the series in the past 5 years besides gacha shit and that rhythm game recap episode. Meanwhile, KH4 doesn't look like it's gonna come out until late 2025 at the earliest.

There will definitely be lots of hype if they ever bother to reveal a new trailer for it, though.

But if they continue taking almost a decade to release a single main game with hardly anything in between, then it'll eventually kill itself most likely. At least the Xehanort Saga had full side games almost every year to keep people's attention.

rexcrk posted...

Id love to know what the thought process was for making a ton of spin-offs on handheld consoles instead of just making high quality games every few years.

Pretty sure the logic was just "our main team is working on FF stuff, and our side teams keep pitching us ideas for side games on popular handheld consoles, so might as well jump on that until we can get our main team back."

rexcrk posted...

Id love to know what the thought process was for making a ton of spin-offs on handheld consoles instead of just making high quality games every few years.

Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts 2 are two of my favorite games, but the spin-offs are mostly not very good. Too gimmicky but not in a fun way.

That said, I did enjoy Kingdom Hearts 3 a lot and Im looking forward to more of course, but they gotta not do the spin-offs anymore. Just focus on good home console games.

I think the spin offs are fine. The problem was tying their stories into the overarching story, making people fhat stuck to the numbered games confused as to what was going on and who all these other characters wer. Especially when going from 2 to 3.

Rharyx211 posted...

Pretty sure the logic was just "our main team is working on FF stuff, and our side teams keep pitching us ideas for side games on popular handheld consoles, so might as well jump on that until we can get our main team back."

Particularly, on popular handheld consoles only so that we didn't have to update the engine to give the game a graphical update until 3 comes out.

DiScOrDtHeLuNaTiC posted...

I loved 1, loved 2 more. IMO 3 was just a goddamn slog.

I love all 3 but surprisingly 2 always felt the sloggiest to me

I'm less interested in KH4, but it's not because of "the lukewarm reception of KH3, and the FF7R series essentially overshadowing it," for me it's because the story is less interesting now that the Xehanort saga is over. The MoM is an interesting villain, but I'm not looking forward to the Yozora stuff. I'm way less harsh on Nomura than most people here, but I will 100% say I think it's lame to use Kingdom Hearts to revive his cancelled pet project.

SMAP- posted...

I love all 3 but surprisingly 2 always felt the sloggiest to me

2 was a bit weird in this regard. It really sunk in that most of the Disney worlds were just rehashing their respective movies but in an inferior way (particularly true with some of the PotC cutscenes, no matter how amazing the graphics were at the time), so I actually really appreciated the 'second quest' revisits in the latter half of the game because they were actually semi-original plots.

But yeah, it pretty much doubled the amount of time spent in the Disney Worlds, so it would feel pretty darn sloggy if you weren't super into it (a sentiment I too would undoubtedly share if I tried to replay it nowadays).