Poll of the Day > Was KH3 kind of a nothing game? (Spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Or has Kingdom Hearts had its day and was lucky to come out when we were all children?

I just dont see people talk about KH3 the way they talk about KH2, even after the DLC. Have you ever seen such a milquetoast game that sold way too much?

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It was very pretty

the pirates of the Caribbean world was awesome, and the toy story world was pretty cool

Nothing else really memorable. Story kinda trash as always, and even with things being done with it still didn't feel like it had resolution, lol.

I don't think Kingdom Hearts has as many fanatic fans as it does casual detractors. The dumbness of its dialogue and plot are legendary and I think it has a stronger reputation for that than it does for being a worthwhile series. Its been successful enough to have a million offshoot games and whatnot but I think its time has passed.

I think the biggest issue is the focus on newer Disney properties, compared to 1 and 2. Which is related to the age of the original fans of 1 and 2 yes.

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I think there's several factors for that some of which have already been brought up. Adding to the laundry list we have it being called Kingdom Hearts 3 even though its like the 16th game in the series, a very very long waiting time for it to actually have been released, and the simple fact that in order to really understand what's going on people needed to have played the dozen or so other games beforehand.

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I didn't play the DLC but the vanilla game combat wasn't as fun to me as KH2. I don't really care about a majority of the original characters or the overarching plot either. So I just kinda lost interest in the series afterwards

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Nichtcrawler X posted...

I think the biggest issue is the focus on newer Disney properties, compared to 1 and 2. Which is related to the age of the original fans of 1 and 2 yes.

Well, not only that but in the grand scheme of an overarching narrative story, revisiting the original worlds is a big aspect of ensuring that it feels... consistent.

But I feel the real 'killer' issue was the freaking ride summons. They were too many, too frequent, felt like blatant ads, and generally just were annoying. They're why I haven't finished the game.

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Unbridled9 posted...

Well, not only that but in the grand scheme of an overarching narrative story, revisiting the original worlds is a big aspect of ensuring that it feels... consistent.

That too yes. Until Sora visits or at the very least remembers Tarzan, I consider him one of the bigger assholes in gaming. That friend narrative is only a faade...

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It was built upp too much for too long, so it was bound to be underwhelming compared to what people expected/wanted it to be. It did still have its own flaws; overall I'd still rate KH2 higher.

Unbridled9 posted...

But I feel the real 'killer' issue was the freaking ride summons. They were too many, too frequent, felt like blatant ads, and generally just were annoying. They're why I haven't finished the game.

I'm pretty sure you can turn those off. Or just not use them..

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I dont know of any other game series that started off so promising and then was so badly bungled and mismanaged

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the only fun thing about it was the pirates world

other than that, it's pretty mediocre, and i fully blame that on the god awful story, and the fact they had to include all the side games and it's just

it's not good.

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Nichtcrawler X posted...

That too yes. Until Sora visits or at the very least remembers Tarzan, I consider him one of the bigger assholes in gaming. That friend narrative is only a faade...

He legally can't.

Tarzan isn't a property owned by Disney. So including the Tarzan world would require working out an agreement with the current license holders. It wasn't a problem in the first one as their contract was still valid but it had expired by the time of KHII. While the remakes/re-releases are grandfathered in they cannot legally bring it back without working out a whole new contract.

Edit: To clarify: Tarzan and the associated books/franchise are privately owned. While Disney had an active contract to produce the Tarzan movie they are not the license holders and, thusly, cannot include it in new properties.

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Unbridled9 posted...

He legally can't.

I know, but that is the out-of-universe reason.

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PK_Spam posted...

I just dont see people talk about KH3 the way they talk about KH2, even after the DLC.

The problem is that KH1 was a really neat, unique concept, and people loved it. Then KH2 was more of the same released soon afterward. So they were both pretty highly praised when they came out.

But they were both relatively self-contained stories, whereas KH3 effectively requires you to play 47 other games (most of which are only on handhelds) involving tons of backstory no one really gives a fuck about. So KH3 winds up being way more overcomplicated, and all but the most fanatical fans kind of tune it all out (or just skip buying it entirely).

It probably also doesn't help that at least some of the appeal of KH1 and KH2 was seeing Final Fantasy characters interacting with Disney characters - while KH3 has mostly phased the FF characters out entirely in favor of OC DONUT STEEL animu weirdos that the vast majority of people don't even remotely care about.

KH3 might also be hurt by the fact that the game focuses pretty heavily on new IP (mainly Pixar stuff), while the first two games covered decades worth of nostalgia that even older fans could enjoy. So you start to suffer from a bit of "Only 90s kids will get this!" syndrome. Unless you're young enough to have grown up loving Tangled, Frozen, or Big Hero 6, you're going to be less likely to give a shit about the new worlds.

The fact that KH2 came out only 3 years after KH1, but KH3 is coming out 14 years later might also have put a damper on the excitement of a lot of people who never really cared about the flood of handheld releases. Any enthusiasm you built up after playing KH2 for the first time has long since cooled.

Plus there's probably one other problem...



PK_Spam posted...

Have you ever seen such a milquetoast game that sold way too much?

To be brutally honest, this is pretty much the standard life-cycle of any massively hyped game these days. People spend months (if not years) constantly hyping the game up, building up ridiculously unachievable expectations for what it's actually going to be, getting their pre-orders in weeks in advance, and then it releases and either it's good (in which case people are excited for about the first week or so, after which point everyone's mostly beaten it), or it's bad (in which case people spend about two weeks relentlessly shitting on it for disappointing them and ruining their childhood innocence and joy). Then everyone gets bored and moves on to obsessing over the next major title.

Major releases these days are basically a fart in the wind - a huge stink at first, then quickly gone forever.



PK_Spam posted...

Or has Kingdom Hearts had its day and was lucky to come out when we were all children?

I was 25 when the first KH game came out and I loved it. Then I was 28 when KH2 came out, and I loved that one as well.

I don't think your love for KH1&2 and apathy for KH3 has anything to do with how old you were when you first played it. I think it depends on how old you were when you first saw the nostalgia-bait each game is built on.

In KH1, you're running into FF7 and FF8 characters (easily the most popular FF games at the time, and arguably still the most popular FF games ever today - for a lot of people, the franchise has been slowly dying since at least FFX). You're also running into Disney characters and worlds that span almost 70 years, with strong emphasis on late 80s/early 90s "Disney Renaissance" films - that's a LOT of mainstream appeal that even the most casual of fans can latch on to. With KH3, there's almost no casual or mainstream appeal unless you were a kid in the last decade or so - and even then, the rest of the game is so dense it's almost certainly going to turn most of the casual and mainstream audience off. You may love Frozen, but if you have to wade through an ocean of fanfic-level wankery and weird BS to get to hanging out with Elsa, you might not want to bother.

I don't think the problem is that you're too old for KH, I think the problem is that KH is now so far up its own ass that it can see esophagus.
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From a gameplay standpoint it was pretty solid

The story....not so much but that's to be expected since it nearly took 15 years after the second one to release this one and with all the filler in between (and after) there is no way they could tie it all up in one go

You can tell it's convoluted when Nomura doesn't even understand what's going on

Honestly they should've kept it simple like the first game

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I played the demo and it was neat, but right off the bat it felt a lot more floaty and loose compared to KH2.

KH2 can get floaty too but it felt pretty solid on both ground and air combat.

KH2 is also the only game where ive skipped every single cutscene cuz fuck that. I would absolutely do that to 3 if I actually got it
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owpv7wYB_NM
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PK_Spam posted...

Or has Kingdom Hearts had its day and was lucky to come out when we were all children?

I was a teen when the series came out. The biggest factor in who likes what Kingdom Hearts game is mostly nostalgia though. I enjoyed Kingdom Hearts 3 and found it to be a good end to the Xehanort saga but it wasn't my favourite in the series. The first game will always be my favourite due to it being something completely new at the time and nostalgia for all the Disney stuff. The plot was simple too. However everyone has there own preference.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

But they were both relatively self-contained stories, whereas KH3 effectively requires you to play 47 other games (most of which are only on handhelds) involving tons of backstory no one really gives a fuck about. So KH3 winds up being way more overcomplicated, and all but the most fanatical fans kind of tune it all out (or just skip buying it entirely).

Actually before Kingdom Hearts 3 came out Square put out many collections to help fix this problem. One called "the story so far" has all you need to know in one collection on one platform. The story from the "side games" was actually neat for at least one of those games and that is Birth by Sleep for me. If people couldn't be bothered to pick up these collections/collection or even look online and jumped right into Kingdom Hearts 3 after playing 2 years ago then that's on them if they are completely lost when options are available. Hell Kingdom Hearts 3 inself has a little catch up section although I'd recommend picking up the story so far collection as it's great value for money and does the job.

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Kingdom Hearts was always eh, it relied on your enjoyment of the characters over the game itself, like Marvel movies leaning on comic references.
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wwinterj25 posted...

Actually before Kingdom Hearts 3 came out Square put out many collections to help fix this problem.

Except that's not a solution, because the average person doesn't want to have to do homework before playing their game about Disney characters.

Nor does it really help the fact that most of that backstory is absolute buckets of shit.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Except that's not a solution, because the average person doesn't want to have to do homework before playing their game about Disney characters.

Playing games in a series you're interested enough in to buy the latest game is doing "homework"? That's a odd take. However yes, yes that is a solution. "But i don't want too catch up with the series!" and then complaining about the latest game is juvenile at best. It's like reading the last Harry Potter book and then complaining you don't know what's going on because you didn't read the others. Playing or even watching the end of a saga without playing or even watching the rest is just asking for trouble so it's no surprise some folk are lost with KH 3.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Nor does it really help the fact that most of that backstory is absolute buckets of shit.

That's subjective. Although I am curious how you know it's "buckets of shit" if you never played those games after Kingdom Hearts 2.

Edit: I'll just post this here....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LbW-LnA4RY

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I think, for me, that KHIII just came out too late. It certainly wasnt a bad game, but I think I would have liked it more if it came out around when I was in high school like the first two.

I absolutely love the first two games but I do think a lot of that is nostalgia. No matter how good KHIII turned out, theres no way it couldve measured up. Its dumb, but, hey, at least I admit it lol.

Still better than the handhelds though.

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I had fun with it. It didn't hit me in the feels th same way the earlier games did when I was a teenager, but I still enjoyed the experience.

I've played every game up to and including III's DLC (and I watched the new cutscenes from Melody of Memory but have no intention of playing it). My recommendation to anyone playing Kingdom Hearts for the story: play KH, CoM, KHII and then stop. II is about as close to a satisfying ending as this series will ever achieve. Disney and Square will milk the series until it's dry and then keep going, so expecting an actual "ending" at this point is naive. I mean, a whole staple of the series is earning the secret bonus video that hints at the next game, and that's been part of EVERY game. This series won't end. The story will only get more and more ridiculous and convoluted. It's already far past the point of being nonsensical.

If you're not playing for the story, or at least know to expect convoluted nonsense with no payoff that never ends in the story, then there series has plenty more to offer. I've always enjoyed whacking classic Disney villains with a giant key, so I'll likely still pickup whatever the next game is (minus the rhythm game).

I hope that one day they'll be able to recapture the magic of the earlier games, since it's inevitabile that it will continue, but I'm not holding my breath.

JigsawTDC posted...

If you're not playing for the story, or at least know to expect convoluted nonsense with no payoff that never ends in the story, then there series has plenty more to offer. I've always enjoyed whacking classic Disney villains with a giant key, so I'll likely still pickup whatever the next game (minus the rhythm game).

Birth By Sleep is good though. I do agree though at this point the series has gone down a rabbit hole(pun intended) due to the fucking mobile games.


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wwinterj25 posted...

Birth By Sleep is good though. I do agree though at this point the series has gone down a rabbit hole(pun intended) due to the fucking mobile games.

I definitely agree Birth by Sleep is good, and is by far the standout spin-off. All of the spin-offs have had important story relevant details, but Birth by Sleep is probably the most important one. Should probably really just be considered "Kingdom Hearts 0". But the reason I didn't include that in my story recommendation is because Birth by Sleep is largely separate from the first two games, the ending is super tragic, and all the emotional catharsis for it is in III. The ending to Birth by Sleep is kind of fucked up for all three routes if you don't continue the story in III. Not to say it isn't good, personally I think that's the last time Kingdom Hearts had its shit together storywise, but the idea of ending with II was to leave cliffhangers at a minimum.

JigsawTDC posted...

But the reason I didn't include that in my story recommendation is because Birth by Sleep is largely separate from the first two games, the ending is super tragic, and all the emotional catharsis for it is in III.

I recall the tease at the end of KH 2 for Birth By Sleep. I didn't have a PSP so that title alluded me until I picked up a PSP. That title set the stage for KH 3 including KH 1 and 2. Much more was added in KH 3 too with the mobile stuff and time travel but it is convoluted due to Tetsuya Nomura. Don't get me started on Verum Rex only because Nomura get let go of the project that was Final Fantasy versus XIII.

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With as convoluted as Kingdom Hearts is and as butthurt as Nomura is about Versus XIII, I would not be surprised if Verum Rex is the next Kingdom Hearts game and it's just beat for beat Nomura's original version of Versus XIII and then at the end you redo the super secret boss battle from III's DLC, but from the other perspective (as in, fighting Sora).

My idea here is way better and more straightforward than whatever they're actually going to do.

JigsawTDC posted...

My idea here is way better and more straightforward than whatever they're actually going to do.

Sadly I agree. This is why I love Kingdom Hearts the most out of the series. It was so simple and clean.....


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Another "issue" is that there are a lot of good games being released now. Some that even take inspiration from KH. When they don't stand out in some way, good or bad, people quickly forget about them.

Whether you loved or hated The Last of Us II, it's still brought up in casual gaming conversation from time to time because of it's polarizing story.

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