May Your Heart Be Your Guiding Key.

[rionaleonhart]

I ask two things of Kingdom Hearts III:

- I want it to be heartfelt. I want it to love its characters, and to be having fun. I want it to feel something.
- I want it to be nonsense. If this game isn't absolute incomprehensible bullshit from start to finish, I'm demanding my money back.

Will this game fulfil my dreams?




It's time to find out.

I've now played through the opening of Kingdom Hearts III, and here are my thoughts so far! No major plot spoilers, but I'm putting these notes under a cut anyway, because I know a lot of you are planning to play this game and I don't want to give anything away. I've just finished the first gummi-ship segment.



First 'I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON': at the loading screen. The game hadn't even started yet. Is this Sora's Instagram feed? Sora has an Instagram feed???

I started up the game in the company of my housemates, and we crowed at the screen at every 'SOMEONE'S FALLING THROUGH SPACE' moment in the opening. (I took bets on how many 'falling through space' scenes there would be. Ginger said three. There were five.)

Rei, whose main priority was 'is this game going to be gay?', was delighted that it started up with a scene of Xehanort and Eraqus clearly flirting over chess.

The game asked me 'what do you desire?' and showed me three pictures and I chose the one of Riku immediately.

When the 'Kingdom Hearts II.9' title screen came up, I made an inhuman noise and had to leave the room for five minutes to recover. I've never seen anything more Square Enix in my life.

This game's really stunning to look at. The series skipped an entire console generation, of course, and it shows; compared to the PS2 games, there's such a difference in the environments and the animations. The environments can be so much larger and more seamless now; they don't have to put a loading screen between every room! They also seem to be incorporating some elements inspired by 2D animation (I really noticed this with Hades' flames), which is pretty cool.

Also, Sora can ride a glittery pirate ship into the enemy's face while yelling 'YES' repeatedly.

I found a statue of Achilles, and attacked the heel, and destroyed it, sending the entire statue crashing through a section of wall. 'Please tell me you meant to do that,' Donald Duck said.

I'M PLAYING AS RIKU

!!!!!

I WAS COMPLETELY UNSPOILED FOR THE FACT THAT THERE WAS PLAYABLE RIKU IN THIS GAME

'Riku discovered some secret research data that Ansem the Wise hid inside you,' Chip just said to Sora. (Rei's response was 'Why is everyone hiding their shit inside Sora? At this point, if I had something I needed to hide, Sora would be the last place I’d put it.')

It took three hours and fifteen minutes for the Kingdom Hearts III title screen to appear, which, to be honest, is not as long as I expected.

Why is everyone wearing gingham? Does gingham protect against the darkness? But Hayner and Olette also have gingham elements in their outfits, and they presumably don't have specially designed darkness-repelling clothes.

I'm very excited by the fact that Hayner, Pence and Olette are helping out with the search for Roxas. Could they and Roxas become friends in the real world? I really hope so.



This game is already fulfilling my dreams, and my drops, and my distances.

Comments

[zabimitsuki]

I swear, that 2.9 nearly killed me! Luckily, my flatmates were nowhere near at the time. XD What really surprised me was how quickly they got into it? Yen Sid was so blunt with his "Well, you fucked up hard, Sora, and now you're pathetic and need to go to talk to Herc. Later!" No hours of set up? Not that I'm complaining, Olympus had been great.

I also noticed the animation quirk with the Disney characters. On the one hand, it's pretty cool, on the other... It's a little weird on stuff like Herc's face? I don't seeing that being an issue when I get to the Pixar worlds though. I also will say that Donald's pissed off expressions give me life. XD

(Also, OMG, such a cute kitty!)

[rionaleonhart]

What really surprised me was how quickly they got into it?

That's a good point! I really wasn't expecting BAM, FIRST WORLD, IT'S A DISNEY ONE, NO WEIRD SETUP IN A DESTINY ISLANDS/TRAVERSE TOWN/TWILIGHT TOWN EQUIVALENT TODAY. (I was going 'Olympus Coliseum again?' and then Kingdom Hearts went 'surprise, it's a part of this world you've never seen before, and it's huge and beautiful!' and I went 'okay, I accept this.')

Donald's expressions are magical.

(She's a very cute kitty! She crawled inside my dressing gown just now to get out of the cold, so she's snuggled up against me as I type.)

[wolfy_writing]

Also, Sora can ride a glittery pirate ship into the enemy's face while yelling 'YES' repeatedly.

Why is everyone wearing gingham? Does gingham protect against the darkness?

I love how weird this game sounds.

[rionaleonhart]

One thing I love about the Kingdom Hearts series is that it's always as weird as it sounds, if not more so.

[marginaliana]

Also, Sora can ride a glittery pirate ship into the enemy's face while yelling 'YES' repeatedly.

I am SUPER looking forward to watching a let's play of this.

Also, kitty!!

[rionaleonhart]

It's a magnificent spectacle. At the end of the move, the entire ship spins bow-over-stern while Sora yells 'OH YEAH, THAT'S IT.' I'm almost certain I am not making this up.

[jecca_mehlota]

I'M NOT GONNA READ THIS ENTRY OR THESE OTHER COMMENTS BECAUSE I AM SO FAR FROM BEING READY TO PLAY THIS GAME I didn't think it was going to come out I didn't review anything oh no BUT THIS FILLS ME WITH JOY AND OPTIMISM:

This game is already fulfilling my dreams, and my drops, and my distances.


edit for copy/paste mishap

[rionaleonhart]

JUST JUMP STRAIGHT IN, IT'S NOT LIKE YOU'LL BE ANY MORE LOST THAN ANYONE ELSE.

[jecca_mehlota]

THIS IS AN EXTREMELYCOMPELLING ARGUMENT

[alwaysbeenasmiler]

I hope that Donald is a better healer in this game.. if he is healer after all.

I will get around to III, once I actually clear the massive backlog I already have :(

We'll see how that happens!

But I do recognize that a million people's dreams came true with the release of Kingdom Hearts III and I'm so totally happy for them and you! <3

[rionaleonhart]

You can tweak Donald's AI if you like; one of the first things I did was switch his healing behaviour from 'Use in emergencies' to 'Use as needed'.

I hope you enjoy this game, when you have a chance to play it!

[(Anonymous)]

So, to explain my angle with Kingdom Hearts 3, I’m going to put out my Kingdom Hearts Credentials ™

Played:

Kingdom Hearts
Kingdom Hearts 2
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep

Have Some Familiarity With:

Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories
…I watched the segments of Dream Drop Distance that contained TWEWY characters? I know Sora failed his Mark of Mastery exam but Riku didn’t.

I deliberately ignored all the STUFF YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE KINGDOM HEARTS 3 stuff because, really, I can’t see it helping. Kingdom Hearts is meant to be baffling.

I let the ‘don’t touch the play button’ trailer playthrough once and was baffled by the chess game and assumed it must be from a game I had missed. Then the actual intro happened and I learned it was just presumably new canon. Okay.

Also I wish Kingdom Hearts didn’t have so many silver haired characters. It’s hard to tell them apart. To be fair I should probably just assume that 90% of them are Xehanort.

I chose the balanced/attack options! I always used to go with the sword, so figured I would follow tradition.

I thought it was cool to get to explore the parts of Olympus that aren’t the Coliseum: actually made it feel like a new world for the most part (Phil having no speaking lines may have also contributed, since often lots of Phil).

More Riku and Mickey hanging out is always fun. This is also another case of “ah, here is plot I missed” since Riku knows about Aqua.

Also hell the combat is so much more complicated now. Not bad complicated, but it’s systems from like every other KH game ever. I am terrible at flow motion and will probably never use it unless necessary. (Note to self: come back to this at end of game and see hoe accurate it was.) Also that air dive thing up the rubble was really hard to pull off.

The main thing I’ve noticed about the far sharper, cleaner graphics are that Sora looks so THIN. EAT SOME FOOD, SORA. I’m collecting ingredients; clearly the reason for this is to make food and thus make Sora look less like a breeze would bowl him over.

The part where you play as Riku really brings home that Sora has lost all his power again, and here’s Riku flinging around thundaga and curaga.

Remember when Sora was super special as the only person who could wield the keyblade? (Well, there was the Riku situation, but just those 2.) (Originally I typoed keyblade as keyboard. Naturally I corrected it, but it’s funny enough that I added this note.)

I think there must be actual Sora/Riku shippers on staff. There’s no way they don’t know how every piece of dialogue about eachother sounds.

Yen Sid is such a downer. I BLAME THE BAD THINGS IN THIS SERIES ON YOU, MASTER YEN SID.

Meanwhile, Riku and Mickey replay Birth by Sleep. WHO WILL WIN AT FRUIT BALL? TRULY THE IMPORTANT QUESTION OF THIS GAME.

Sora has a mobile phone! AND JIMINY CRICKET HAS GONE TO MOBILE JOURNALING. The world has truly ended. I guess this explains Sora’s bizarre hashtag loadscreen posts. How does everyone have Sora’s mobile number anyway? Sora didn’t even know he had a mobile.

Ah yes, I did miss the bit of game where they presumably gave some form of explanation for some of the Org 13 crew now being back to who they were before the whole Heartless/Nobody thing. …Actually, it’s Kingdom Hearts. Maybe they just didn’t give an explanation beyond “PEOPLE LIKE THESE GUYS, HERE YA GO”. But I missed Sora and Roxas interactions? Must… root out…

I hope there is a third part to this story where Kairi is following Namine’s heart, but just ends up at like art college or something. Damnit, Namine, be more involved in the main plot, and less with art!

And now I’m up to the same point as you, I think, so I shall hold this post here.

I found the gummi ship thing incredibly disorienting… then I realised it was because it had separate controls. I would like developers who give inverted horizontal control options to just carry that across new settings that also require the same sticks. Surely I’m not going to use normal controls in one area and inverted in another? I get really turned around without inverted controls lol.

(PS: Had a few issues getting Life is Strange 2 to update, though it’s done now. Put that one on the backburner til after KH3, but I’ll come back to it and comment/stat share/all that fun.)

-timydamonkey

[rionaleonhart]

Also I wish Kingdom Hearts didn’t have so many silver haired characters. It’s hard to tell them apart. To be fair I should probably just assume that 90% of them are Xehanort.

Definitely a solid assumption. Even Riku was Xehanort for a while.

I am terrible at flow motion and will probably never use it unless necessary.

Me too! Which is weird, because I loved it in Dream Drop Distance! They've made it much less comfortable to use.

I never liked Yen Sid either. YOUR SCENES ARE NEVER FUN.

But I missed Sora and Roxas interactions?

They had one very brief exchange at the end of Dream Drop Distance, and Data-Roxas showed up to antagonise Data-Sora in the Castle Oblivion of Re:coded (although regular Sora won't remember that). I'd look the scenes up for you, but I can't because I'm terrified of spoilers!

I'm looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts!

(If you're playing Life Is Strange 2 on the PS4, there's a bug that's deleted some people's saves, so it might be safest to wait until that's confirmed to have been fixed before you play the new episode!)