#//with 0 dlc because we broke | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thefinalkey16 · 5 years

Text

KH3 Re:Mind spoilers/Reactions

So Xemnas gave the order?? To find the box?? But why??

So did Xigbar actually lose the box? YOU HAD ONE JOB

Oh we’re starting HERE HUH

I forgot how pretty the graphics are

Why is Riku so pretty???

Nomura really went “this DLC is about SOKAI and I’m gonna make sure you KNOW IT.”

Nomura really cares about his ship and I appreciate it so much

LETS GO SAVE OUR GIRL!

Heck yeah REMIND TIME

I love the music in this game so much

YES WE GET MORE MOM

Why does MOM adopt smol children lol

It bothers me that MOM has no actual face behind the hood. It’s like Ansem’s original form

So Xehanort is where Xemnas’s confusion of the heart comes from lol

OH THIS IS PREMASTER XEHANORT

I’m sorry, Xehanort is more powerful than darkness?

I’m sorry MOM is too scared to take off the coat???

MOM is a psychology teacher who gets exasperated by his dumb students

OH THATS JUST RUDE NOMURA

LEMME KNOW HIS NAME

A lost..Master?

Well we know where Xehanort got the hands behind the back walk from

OOO A NEW THEME

OH I LOVE IT

I’m 100% sure that MOM told him his name was “Noneya,” and it took a few decades before he realized what he actually said

DID THEY TELEPORT TO LOOK COOL ON THE ROCKS

I’m sorry they have holograms??

Did they actually call him Riku Replica lol

Wait they were actually nobodies

XEMNAS AND XEHANORT WERE REPLICAS?

“Why we have assembled here,” because Xemnas and Sora destroyed your sick castle

Poor Terra got possessed TWICE?

Demyx! You get Demyx!

I’m sorry 20??

No. I

Oh so they don’t actually remember Xion

Does.. does Xigbar remember Xion?

Wow they got Vexen just to get his daughter in their gang. How rude

Xehanort fell asleep while they chatted I’m cackling

Crazy old man

Now when do I get to save Kairi? :3c

YAY ITS TIME

YAY ITS CHIRITHY TIME

ITS MY SMOL KITTY

“Back so soon?”=you died again?? You’re lame

Chirithy is a mood

Sora you watched your GF get shattered

Oh so that’s why Sora dies

IS SORA SAILOR PLUTO

Oh my god he’s Sailor Pluto

Lose powers? He’s done that so many times 😂

Getting banned from one world? He had a phone and friends with gummi ships lol

ARE WE GONNA SEE EVERONES HEART STATION??

NOOO VEN That still hurts to watch

AWW SORA TRIED TO CATCH HIM

Wow he’s a ghosty ghost

Oh I love Ven’s heart station so much

Wow Vanitas really said that Ven is Baby

YAS GIMME VANITAS

Also wow Vanitas is protecting Ven’s heart and I love that

OH NO NOT THIS GUY

I beat him by using Meow Wow. meow wow is best boy

Oh no oh no it’s this pet

Gotta love Big Bro Lea

I forgot they call him Axel

ITS THE HUG

It’s Donald’s Safrifice ;-;

Donald Really channeled his inner Molly Weasley and said “Not my son you WITCH.”

WASTED

Also aw Sora got to see what Donald did for the first time

AQUA’S STATION IS SO PRETTY

Poor Aqua ;-; this is the moment where everyone hates her for

Also aww she trusts Kairi to protect them

We love Big Sis Aqua

YES WE GET ANTI AQUA FIGHT AGAIN

NAMINEEEEE

I’m literally screaming and I scared my grandma

Oh my god She lost Kairi and she immediately went to Sora cause she knew she’d be safe there ;-;

Namine’s Really here bringing everyone together

Agsisgsjdg I forgot Terra can do the keyblade whip thing lol

AND the cannon

Wow they’re really fighting in the sky

Anyone else getting Star Wars vibes

AWW HE JUST WANTS TO PROTECT HIS FAMILY

I still hate Terra’s pants

Imagine your heart crushing your body. Like really

NO LINGERING WILL

HECK YEAH SORA YOU KICK THEIR BUTT

Wow Sora you’re so cocky

LINGERING WILL NO

OH MY GOD

I forgot that Marluxia is an Ouran Host Club character

Wait, that Mickey finisher was new, wasn’t it?

Okay but I still have no idea what Xemnas did to Luxord

Cards: *Appear*

Sora: PTSD from watching his friends get destroyed from the cards in the manga

Mickey: *is captured*

Sora: PTSD intensifies

I’m really happy that we get to replay all of the Organization battles, they’re so much fun!

I’m so soft for Replinami ;-;

He loves her so much, and all he wants is for her to be safe and happy ;-;

Ven: we aren’t the same. You’re Edgy. I’m Baby

Aqua when Sora appears: TWO Baby’s :0

“If I’m a traitor, then Kairi’s the trump card.” LEA DRINKS RESPECT KAIRI JUICE

Aww Kairi’s so confused. She doesn’t see how she could be a trump card ;-;

HE STRAIGHT UP FLEXED

AWW XION REMEMBERS

Ohhh Isa’s jealous.

YES THW CHAKRAMS

LETS GO

Jealousy mode has been activated in Isa

WHAT WAS THAT RUN

OH MY GOD THAT SCREAM

YES KAIRI GO

PROTEXT YOUR BRO

“Yup” Kairi really just wants this over with so she can go home 😂

The way Kairi’s face lights up at seeing Sora gives me life.

Wow Xemnas was really hurt by Axel’s betrayal. Frankly? I’m shocked.

XION’S HAND IS SMOKING

HER HAND IS BURNING BECAUSE SHES GRABBING THE BLADE

Xemnas does NOT drink Respect Xion juice

ROXAS KEPT XION’S MEMORIES SAFE INSIDE HIM

AND SHE HAS HER FACE BECAUSE HE GAVE THEM BACK TO HER

Lea cares about the small girls he adopted as his little sisters

AWW THE THREE OF THEIR HEARTS ARE CONNECTED

NO XION ISNT ON HIS HEART ANYMORE

YES KAIRI’S HERE TO KICK BUTT

Wow Nomura really got tired of people dissing Kairi so he amped her up with cool stuff

“Oh? Tired of Kairi not doing anything?” Heres her literally overpowering Xemnas and him having to restrain her with a stop spell and magic to stop her

KAIRI IS THE SCARLET WITCH AND XEMNAS IS THANOS

Oh and in case you think she’s weak? Here’s the same thing for Sora too.

God I love Nomura

Oh my god she’s in so much pain because of the darkness

OH MY GOD SHES IN SO MUCH PAIN BECAUSE OF THE DARKENSS

SORA LITERALLY FAINTED AFTER 2 SECONDS BUT KAIRI’S HOLDING ON OH MY GOD THE STRENGTH

OOOOOOOO ROXAS TIME

The MUSIC

THEIR ATTACK IS CALLED “THINKING OF YOU” BECAUSE THEY REMEMBERED XION I CANT

I can not believe i was forced to relive watching Kairi die

SHE WAS CRYSTALLIZED?? SHES NOT DEAD??

I love Donald and Goofy so much ;-;

They aren’t gonna leave their son alone

Also wow Xehanort was just staring there forever

I FORGOT WE GET TO EXPLORE SCALA :D

KAIRI?!?!

Getting KH1 vibes with this

“The heartless that is radiating light” how is that possible??

Okay but this is such a good parallel to the first game, with him saving Kairi ;-;

Except for the fact that HEARTLESS SORA DIDNT GET BEAT UP

Okay so her heart is a thassala shell. Will we have to collect the pieces to make her wayfinder?

Oh my god I see the thing at the top of the screen. We totally are making her wayfinder ;-;

THAT MEANS SHE LITERALLY GAVE HIM HER HEART SO HE COULS RETURN IT TO HER OH MY GOOOOD

Okay so I love the puzzles they have here

XEHANORT?!

I’m sorry you hid her heart? What are you, five?

What do you MEAN almost out of time?!

OH NO KINGDOM HEARTS

Oh no not these guys again

So many keyholes

IM SORRY IS THIS WIZARD OF OZ

Oh my god Lea is so overwhelmed lol

SGAKSSGE ROXAS CAUGHT XION

Okay so for the team ups, I love how all of them were mix and matched from the trio’s

I loved Terra and Riku, the Master and apprentice

I loved Ven, Roxas, and I can’t remember who else was in it. “Thanks Roxas.” “Youre welcome. You’re not too bad yourself.” THAT WAS ADORABLE

Xion, Aqua and Mickey being mages and protecting everyone

Aqua and Lea, him trying to talk and Aqua telling him to shut up and focus

MICKEY’S STRUGGLE TO SAVE HIS FRIENDS BROKE MY HEART

We now present: Kingdom Hearts 3: connect he dots

Connect. Connect the dots. Get it?

KAIRI’S HEART MADE A FLOWER

THE KH2 THING

“SORA :D”

THEIR HUG

HE JUST HOLDS HER CLOSE

TIME FOR PLAYABLE KAIRI BABBYYYYYYY

“I can do this.” YES YOU CAN

I’m sorry you think I want to play as Sora? After waiting my whole life to play Kairi? HA

KAIRI IS THE MOST POWERFUL

Seven wishes saved me in that fight

ONE HEART

THEY HAVE ANGEL WINGS

OKAY YALL HAD YOUR SORIKU ATTACK NOW WE GOT SOKAI :D

Now we just need Rikai and Sorikai and it’ll be complete ^^

AGSKSGSKDGSJS CHIRITHY

“I was trying to give you some privacy” awwww

CHIRITHY IS CRYING

THEYRE GOING ON DATES

Chirithy has my soul and I love it

Every scene with Chirithy adds 7 years to my life

Afsjsgsajg Sora DONT PUSH THE CAT

NAMINE

THEY WERE THERE TO FREE HER HEART

Aaand he’s gone and I’m crying again

LIMITCUT EPISODE TIME BABBYYYY

GAJSGSJDG RIKU AND TERRA ARE TOGETHER

Oh my god Riku and Terra being bro’s are my favorite thing

Wait what are they gonna do

ARE THEY SEALING THE WORLD

OH MY GOD THE ARMOR

HOW DARE THEY NOT SHOW US THE FRONT PARTS

OH they’re going to search for Sora!

IS RIKU IN CHARGE OF THE LAND OF DEPARTURE

ONE YEAR???

Agajsgsjdg MERLINS HOUSE

CLOUD

PRETTY BOY

YUFFFIIEEE

AERIITH

CID

OH MY GOD THE GANGS ALL TOGETHER

THEY WENT TO THE REALM OF DARKNESS WHAT

“The Twilight Town gang” ITS OFFICIAL

OH NO WHAT HAPPENED TO KAIRI

WHY DOES HE LOOK SAD

NO WHATS GOING ON WITH KAIRI

They’re searching her heart?

SHES BEEN ASLEEP FOR A YEAR?!

Riku’s been all ALONE

DATA SORA??

Battalion oh my god lol

I’m mad about Kairi being asleep for a year though

AGSJSGS WE GET TO EXPLORE

Wow. A video game inside of a video game

I spent the rest of the day failing the Data battles and making funny Data Greeting pictures. Hopefully I’ll be better st the battles tomorrow!

#KH3RemindSpoilers #kh3spoilers #KH Re:Mind #kh commentary

9 notes · View notes

thechocobros · 6 years

Note

Wasn't it Nomura's fault Versus 13 never came out in the first place though?

It’s almost 2019 and people still think that what happened to Versus is all Nomura’s fault? Even after all what happened last week in Square Enix? Listen, son. That is probably one of the funniest metropolitan legends going around on the internet. Let me try to be objective and explain you.

EVIDENCE UNDER THE CUT

Let’s start from the basis. What kind of person is Nomura? Is he really such an inconclusive person like most of the Tabata-stans like to think? Hard enough. He’s the creator and director of the Kingdom Hearts saga, which counts at least 10 games/movies/phone games, has a super complex yet completed plot, colloborated with freaking Disney and brought millions of dollars to the Square Enix company. He produced and did the character design for another successful title, The World Ends With You. He did the character design for a BUNCH of Final Fantasy characters, he even directed Advent Children movie, cooperated with Sakaguchi and Kitase for years… i mean, that’s what i call a curriculum. So, think with your own brain: can a person like this really be the single responsible for what happened to Versus?

Of course, Nomura isn’t jesus christ, and he has indeed a weird personality, like most of artists have. For ex, he’s an introvert, he’s very sensitive, he has his complex vision of things, he isn’t really able to endure a lot of pressure and he needs time to figure out things. Also, he doesn’t apparently like to be forced to do what other people say. This type of personality caused him a couple of troubles in the past, since Square Enix liked to have such an artist bringing money to the company, but at the same time kinda hated not being able to control him.

In fact, that’s more or less what happened according to a lot of articles and interviews collected in the last years (and if you can read italian, message me and i’ll give you even more sources):

When Nomura started to work on ff13versus, there were a lot of things going on in Square Enix. Three major games were supposed to form the ambitious Fabula Crystallis saga and Nomura was glad to take the direction of ffxiii versus. He dreamt big about it: since it was not a numbered chapter, he really wanted to make it different, with extremist themes and innovative gameplay. Nomura invested a LOT in the Versus game, especially on the emotional level (if you saw him during the rare interviews of that time,you would know it. Nomura gets extremely vulnerable whenever it comes about his own creations). For this kind of project, he clearly needed a lot of money and staff and Square Enix initially promised it to him.

Was Nomura a naive idealist in dreaming out loud? He certainly was.

Because Square Enix had other priorities. For example, the engines.Play Station 3 offered great opportunities but the research team to work on the new engine was formed only after the Fabula Crystallis saga’s announcement, which lead to a literal race against time from the very start. Nomura admitted immediately that the engine wasn’t ready to stand at the level of what he wanted to do(which was VERY ambitious)but Square Enix wanted anyway to present the next games even if it was very soon. When the engine, named “Crystal Tools” was kinda ready, a huge group of people started to work on FFXIII. When i say huge, i mean huge. Nomura was left alone with few people in his department and of course he did what he can with the staff he had until 2008.As a matter of fact, in 2008, Nomura had already arranged almost everything in the plot and in the concept design and in the trailer that was showed during the same year the chocobros and Stella made their first appearance, but … the game didn’t have basically anything else. Just the plot and the concept. Too many things had to be done, and nobody was ready to make them. In fact, Square Enix was focusing on FFXIV, which was back then a huge flop to be saved. For years Square Enix struggled with this problem, took staff and money away from Nomura in order to save the online game that couldn’t compete with other games of that time. I said this in simple words, but the operations connected to FFXIV had disastrous consequences on Versus. Here we’re talking again about engines, programs, obsolete platform etc etc: all these things mean nothing for most of us fans, but they’re extremely important for games development. Square Enix’s dark time began in 2011 and ended in 2013, with millions of dollars damage. Not only Versus was a victim of the attempts of saving FFXIV, also other titles.

In all this mess, Nomura released again a long Versus trailer, but he said once again that no matter how detailed the trailer looked, the project was far from being started. Nomura even said to “forget about Versus”, because he knew that he had no possibilities to work on it. He was alone with a couple of people, how was he supposed to work on it? No money, no staff. Yeah, what would you have done in his place?

Nomura wasn’t happy about this messy situation. Because of it, he “broke up” with Yoshida, he basically didn’t make any appearance in 2011 and 2012, he basically had a depressive phase. In spite of this, he managed to focus on another important title like Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance (@ KH fans: DDD was written in Nomura’s dark time and this may explain a lot of things lol)

No matter how horrible this impasse was, Nomura still was deeply attached to FFXIII VERSUS. In those years, in a sort of desperation act he considered the possibility of turning the versus game into an action game, or even a musical. Anything, but to renounce to this project.

Then, Play Station 3 reached his death time, and Play Station 4 raised. To say it in simple words, almost all the work they did on Versus had to be thrown away, because Square Enix decided to move the game on the new console.

Back then, Hajime Tabata’s team was the only one free after the release of FF Type-0, so Yoichi Wada decided to integrate Nomura’s team with it. Tabata and Nomura were a good team at the beginning, actually. One was pragmatic, the other visionary, they were supposed to be the perfect combination.

But … in 2012 Square Enix lost 105 millions of euros, Square Enix’s CEO Yoichi Wada resigned and Yosuke Matsuda took over. Square Enix really needed to change things for good and start anew, so in 2013 they quickly announced Kingdom Hearts III and FFXV to try to hype fans again.

FFXIII VERSUS - now FFXV - was presented at the E3 in 2013 with another trailer, but again the trailer was deceptive. because it was realized completely in CGI. In fact, the game would have been completely changed in the next years. In spite of this, Nomura finally seemed to have a good time thanks to it and to Kingdom Hearts III announcement.

But after the E3, Nomura’s presence in the FFXV department started to weaken—

And then, the new CEO Yosuke Matsuda reorganized entirely the Square Enix departments. So after 7 years, Nomura was moved away from the FFXV’s direction and replaced with Tabata before he could even take a breath. It was just the CEO’s decision. Matsuda thought that two other projects needed Nomura the most, aka KINGDOM HEARTS 3 and FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE.

If we want to be honest, though, we are forced to admit that “we take you away from ffxv because kh3 and ffviiremake need you more” was just an excuse to hide something more painful that happened inside the Square Enix’s building walls. For years, Square Enix refused to explain things in detail, Tabata himself said with a cold expression that it was a decision the “high places” took.

All we can notice is that after 2013, Nomura clearly started to reject every FFXV’s mention. He acted all along like Versus was his baby and really was offended when Square Enix took it away from him.

What happened after is history: Tabata completely overturned the game concept, the story needed to be rewritten and some scenes and characters were repurposed or removed. Final Fantasy XV sold well at the beginning (more than 8 milions copies i think?) but mostly because it was advertised for 10 years straight. As a matter of fact, the hype slowly dissapeared update after update, and yes, the DLCs didn’t go well as expected and actually caused a big loss to the Square Enix company, which lead to Tabata’s resignation.

So, long story short.

Whatever was the real reason beyond the change of director in FFXV, point is that Nomura wasn’t fired, he was promoted with even more responsability. So, if his contribute to Square Enix was really so terrible, wouldn’t he be forced to reseign like Yoichi Wada and Hajime Tabata? yeah, that’s something you should think about.

Most of Final Fantasy XV fans who blame Nomura for Versus’ failure don’t even know half of the things i wrote above. They just contribute to spread this stupid rumor, without having any source.

You can like FFXV, you can like Tabata etc, but truth is that this game has been run very wastefully for 12 years by the SQUARE ENIX COMPANY AS A WHOLE.

FFXIII VERSUS, NOMURA, FFXV AND EVEN TABATA… THEY ALL SUFFERED AS A RESULT.

Reblog to stop ignorance.

#final fantasy xv #ffxv #FFXIII versus #Tetsuya Nomura #hajime tabata #square enix #kingdom hearts #Anon #sorry it took me so long to answer this but i wanted to explain things once for all #if you want sources just message me in the private chat

2K notes · View notes

atsushishelteredinmoonlitjasmine · 5 years

Text

KH3 Grievances and Blessings

As of this date, April 8th, 2019, today marks the end of my KH3 journey. I'm recording the date because I know there's DLC for KH3 coming out within the coming months and I don't know whether it'll be plot-related or just gameplay patches/changes (Like Critical Mode). Regardless, I wanted to write down my thoughts and feelings towards KH3 because, like many others, I had been awaiting the release of this game for a long time (Though not as long as others) and, as soon as the game was released in Japan, I blacklisted/muted KH3 tags so as to not be spoiled. It took me over two months since the worldwide release on January 29th to see what KH3 had to offer and, while the main story part ended on April 4th, today was the true end to everything else.

Now I want to make two things clear. First off, I never played KH3. I watched an LP of it, due to money and I didn't wanna wait months for this game. That's also why it took this long for me to write this. Secondly, as of the time writing this, I haven't read the Ultimania outside of some unrelated details since, before April 4th, I made doubly sure to avoid spoilers because I still wanted to be surprised at the ending, despite my predictions of it. If there are some things I bring up in this that are answered in the Ultimania, then link me those.

I'll also be going through practically every aspect of KH3 I can think of, such as the graphics, the gameplay, the story, etc. However, to keep things organized, I'll talk about the main story towards the end of this, since that's where I believe I'll have the most to talk about. Think of it as if the first half was the minor stuff and the second half the major. I'll even mark where it splits off so as to make it easier to know where to skip to.

Listed below are KH3 spoilers, so if you don't want to get spoiled, now's your chance to stop reading. Otherwise, here are my thoughts!

Let's start with the graphics. They are simply gorgeous, sometimes even breathtaking. As many people have pointed out, the in-game graphics are on the same quality level as the old-school FMVs from the older KH games. Even when the cutscenes go to pre-rendered, they are super beautiful. The only complaints I have are, in pre-rendered cutscenes, character models tend to look weird in certain shots. It's a minor complaint but I feel like the characters come off as being... shiny, if that makes sense. I know one of the complaints for 0.2 was that Aqua looked plastic and it seems like, in an attempt to stray away from that end of the spectrum, they made everyone look shiny. Again, that's only in the pre-rendered cutscenes, not in-game itself so... Another complaint was that, in the beginning with Sora and co. heading off to and their visit to Olympus Colosseum, it's easy to tell that they were using the 0.2 graphics because Sora looked exactly plastic. Afterwards, they switched to the current graphics but it's still kinda jarring, in a way. I feel like it may have been to save money, considering the big amount of money they spent on everything else.

Secondly, gameplay. The gameplay, overall, seems solid. It's using the KH2 combat, combined with the BBS shotlocks, Links/Summons, Keyblade transformations, DDD's Flowmotion, and Attractions. However, it also feels overwhelming to have that many gameplay styles/mechanics stuffed into one game. I feel like Nomura was trying to do the same thing that Sakurai (Creator of Smash) did with Smash Ultimate by taking the positive aspects of the previous games' combat and stuffing them into this game, almost as if it were a love letter to the KH fandom. I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, I just think it was clumsily handled.

This leads into a mini-point I had about the difficulty. As I said earlier, Critical Mode, which has been a difficulty setting since KH2 (I believe?), wasn't included in this game, which was considered weird. The LPer I watched KH3 from had played the previous KH games on the hardest difficulty and he believed he'd play KH3 on Critical. Because of this exclusion, he played on Proud Mode and this was absolutely the easiest KH game. It is so easy to overlevel, it is hard to die unless you're purposefully playing terrible or turned on "No Experience", and some gameplay mechanics, I feel, break gameplay. Attractions in particular are ridiculously gamebreaking, due to the insane amounts of invincibility frames and power some of them have. Speaking of it being hard to die, overleveling goes hand-in-hand with that but the fact that you can buy Kupo Coins from the Moogle shops makes Proud Mode a joke. To explain what Kupo Coins are, they are one-use items that basically make it to where it instantly revives you if/when your HP drops to 0 and you can buy many of these coins. They're essentially get-out-of-jail-free coins which, if you're playing on Hard Mode, shouldn't be a thing. There's also a minigame where you can cook all sorts of meals that can grant you any kind of boosts with Remy from Ratatouille. The stat boosts from even the simplest of meals are ridiculous and they also make dying hard to do. I understand that the crew wanted to make KH3 welcoming to newcomers but I feel this is going a little too far in not making the players feel frustrated each time they die in Proud Mode.

Thirdly, the non-original worlds. It's hard to decide whether or not I like them. On the one hand, they're the largest they've ever been, they're expansive, and the crew were able to successfully capture the look of each movie they adapted. On the other, the stories can be hit or miss, they throw tons of enemies at you (which absolutely contributes to the overleveling I mentioned), and they don't serve much of a purpose in the main story outside of fanservice. Some of the worlds were an absolute delight, such as the Tangled and Monsters Inc worlds, while others were a slog to get through, such as the Frozen and Big Hero 6 worlds. This is merely my opinion so don't take it too seriously. The way they decided to go about the stories within each world was to either: 1, be a Cliffnotes version of that world, or 2, create an original story set after the events of the movie. The first way was not a good decision because, out of all the new worlds they revealed for this game, I only watched Hercules, Toy Story, Monsters Inc, and Tangled, so when the LPer I watched headed to the other worlds that weren't mentioned, I was thoroughly confused. The second way could be pretty hit or miss, because I remember getting tired of the Toy Story world towards the end but I enjoyed the story of the Monsters Inc, due to how cute it was. Going back to what I mean by these worlds not serving a purpose, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility to say these were meant for the express purpose of padding. The reason given for exploring these worlds is so Sora can learn the Power of Waking and, if he doesn't learn it in that world, he'll go to the next and rinse, repeat. I won't go into detail in this section but I'll explain more about it when I get to the story section.

Fourthly, the music. This is probably the one of the few aspects that stayed consistently good. Although I could tell there were more pieces of music that I had heard in other games, Yoko Shimomura still made it fresh by reorechestrating those. I'll give her some slack with those because I can imagine that, with how far into the series KH is and how many themes to keep track of, it was probably easier to remix existing songs than make an entirely new soundtrack. Still, there were some new pieces of music (Most of which from the aforementioned worlds) that I liked. The Toy Story fight music is an absolute bop and the Monsters Inc world music is so whimsical and fun. There were some really nice mashups as well, such as the Other Promise/Vector to the Heavens mashup and Oscuritia de Xehanort. I haven't had a chance to listen to all of the soundtrack yet so these were just the ones from the top of my head.

Fifthly, the voice acting. This is just a personal thing for me, since I want to become a voice actor someday and I like to observe/take mental notes whenever voice acting is involved. The voice acting in of itself is good. Sora was his absolute best in this game, especially in that one scene we ALL know from the trailer and it broke my heart hearing that in-game. Mostly everyone was good, too, aside from some weird line deliveries and voices not fitting some characters. However, I have to point out how... weird the voice-acting is with Terra, Aqua, and Xehanort. Xehanort was probably the weirdest because I'm so used to Leonard Nimoy's Xehanort that this one was kinda jarring. Rutger Hauer is the new VA and... I know he doesn't have the same raspy, gravelly voice Leonard Nimoy had but I feel his Xehanort just doesn't fit the character as much, especially since I noticed Xehanort sounded like he had a very slight Irish accent in this game. Rutger Hauer is Dutch so I don't know how I heard Irish but I'm gonna chalk that up to never hearing a Dutch person speak before. Terra's definitely the best acting out of these three but compared to the other two, it's not much. While it's not bad, I still prefer his 0.2 performance since it seemed like he put effort into that. Terra seems to share the same problem I have with Aqua in that he never raises his voice up above being low. It's hard to tell if he does because they only got Jason Dohring in for two scenes (the Wayfinder Trio reunion and the stupid Xehanort redemption scene), despite being a main character. Aqua was in more than two scenes but her voice acting was kinda the worst, which kills me because she's my queen. For some reason, her voice never goes up above low talking and I don't know if it's just me but she constantly sounds as if she's being cut off. Like, the sound mixing for Aqua makes it sound as if she's cut out at the end for each of her sentences. This was a problem that was present in 0.2 but I brushed that off since I figured 0.2 was not considered a full game by itself. I don't know whether or not it's Willa Holland herself or the voice director for both games but Aqua can be allowed to be emotional other than angry, raise her voice, and not be cut off.

Oh boy, the sixth point. Let me start off by saying this is merely a personal gripe I have and it's fine if people disagree with me or even don't see what I'm saying. I'm just stating this because I talked about this issue on my Livetweet Thread and I want to bring this up. Now... there are instances in this game where Sora express self-doubt or have other characters express worry for Sora (and Aqua for one time) to Donald, Goofy, and Mickey. Each time this was brought up, we had them saying the answer of "they're strong so they're okay". Normally, I wouldn't really be offended at this if it was for one or two times. KH3, however, has this happen several times and... let's just say I got a little testy. The characters this answer was said to or about were Aqua, Sora, and Elsa (as far as I can remember), all of whom I can safely say have issues with their mental health. Sora's the only one I can't definitively say (outside of headcanon territory) but even then... Sora has problems with his self-worth and his sense of strength, Aqua, for all we know, probably has depression and POSSIBLY PTSD, and Elsa definitely has depression and self-image issues. To the Disney characters, any time these issues are brought up, they somehow correlate physical strength with mental fortitude and think that answer is perfectly okay to say. I'm probably reading way too much into this but the way I take it, each time they say that answer, it comes off as Sora/Aqua/Elsa are being weak and need to get over it. The first example I'll bring up of this is when Riku and Mickey are in the RoD trying to save Aqua the first time and Riku expresses worry for Aqua, who's been in this hellhole for 11 years at this point. Mickey just says she'll be fine because she's strong, which baffles me because how does he not remember how Aqua was the last time they met? She was straight up about to succumb to the darkness when he saved her the first time and when she said to him she wasn't sure how much longer she'd be able to ward off the darkness, he just said she'll be okay. Like, she has been stuck in this hell for over a decade, being tormented and having to fight for her life constantly, all the while losing hope she may get out. The one time she's finally close enough to get out, it's snatched away from her. No wonder she was pissed off at Mickey for leaving her when they met again! The second example is any time Sora was expressing doubt in himself over being strong enough and he had Donald and Goofy say he'd be fine. This, to me, made it seem like they were placing such high expectations on Sora to be strong that he wasn't allowed to have moments of emotional vulnerability which I wouldn't be surprised contributed to the worsening of the self-doubt and the culmination of that despair scene. Again, I know it seems like I'm reading too much into this but this was something that legit made me angry. As someone who relates to Sora's self-worth issues and Aqua's depression, I don't think someone telling me that I'll be fine because I was strong constantly would make me feel better. If anything, I'd probably feel worse because I'd be too afraid to appear being weak around that person lest I betray their expectation of me being strong that I keep my feelings of weakness to myself until I eventually broke down. To give benefit to the Disney characters, I believe they were genuinely saying what they thought was best in those kinds of situations. Hell, maybe they even thought that, by saying that, the character would believe them and think they were silly for thinking they were worthless. But I don't believe the Disney characters are good role models for the importance of mental health, given their track record. Still, this was a personal gripe of mine and everyone is free to disagree with me on this. I don't even know if I made any sense in this but I tried.

Now we move on to the major stuff. This next half will mainly include my opinions on the story, the characters, how they were handled, etc. and everyone is free to disagree with me on any of those. I should also warn that any of the next sections may be lengthy, though it wouldn't be me if they weren't. There may also be some instances where I talk about how I would've rewritten some scenes, since there were some that desperately needed to be rewritten or re-edited or whatever else (which will be marked with *). However, I'll write those up in a separate thing because this entire post is mainly for my thoughts on KH3 as a whole and not just certain scenes. Besides, I don't want to bog this post down even further so...

Where to start? Well, I think it may be good to start with the plot and its loose threads. KH3 seems to have a problem with introducing plot threads and then dropping them off with no resolution, meaning they'll either be answered in the upcoming DLC or in the next game (Release dates unknown on both options). We have Maleficent and Pete looking for a black box (A significant thing in KHX, if you've watched Back Cover), the complete drop-off of Vexen and Demyx, the new seven Princesses of Heart, Subject X, the reveal that some of the New Organization members were Keyblade Wielders from the past, the whole thing of the heroes coming back after dying, and possibly other threads I cannot remember for the life of me. Again, I understand that these threads may be picked up in either the DLC or the next game but we don't know when either of those will be released. In a game that's supposed to bring answers to the many questions that were brought up in previous games, we still end up with many other questions that haven't been answered.

Let's go back to my mention of the non-original worlds serving no purpose other than fanservice. As stated in the beginning, Sora needs to learn the Power of Waking so that he can find and save Aqua in the RoD and, later on, awaken Ventus's heart so it'll return to his body sleeping in Castle Oblivion/Land of Departure. However, every time he reaches the end of a world, he still hasn't learned the Power of Waking and so goes to another world to see if he'll learn it there and rinse, repeat. In the newly-returned Land of Departure, it's stated that Sora had the Power of Waking in him all along, which made the trips to the worlds completely pointless. As someone pointed out in their review of KH3, while the Disney worlds in previous games served little more than fanservice, they at least had a goal in which the protagonists needed to fulfill, such as locking and unlocking the worlds, finding lost friends, and defeating those that pose a threat. In KH3, while the goal has been to learn the Power of Waking, it ultimately becomes meaningless upon revealing that Sora had the power within him all along.

Speaking of which, this leads into another thing that legitimately made me angry. We are never told what the Power of Waking is or what it does, only that it is essential to saving Aqua and Ventus. I had to learn from the comments section on YouTube what the Power of Waking was and it still wasn't fully explained what it was. Whenever Sora would be in Yen Sid's tower, Yen Sid would keep telling him that he needed the Power of Waking to venture into the RoD and everyone chastising Sora for being too impulsive and I'm just sitting there like "If you probably told him what the fucking power was, he'd probably have an easier time trying to learn it". It's one of those things where, if Sora were under my writing control, I'd have him slowly getting more and more frustrated over being told to learn something he doesn't understand and isn't being told on what it is that he'd eventually snap. I have some personal experience with that so maybe it's my bias talking.

Next thing I wanted to bring up was my thoughts and feelings towards the third act and the ending. I'll start from the Anti-Aqua stuff to the scenes right before the ending first. Anti-Aqua, while one of the best fights in KH3 (if you're not overleveled and using Attractions), is very quick. I mean, you do battle her a bit as Riku then switch over to Sora to full-on fight her and then she's saved but that sequence doesn't last long. It goes from Aqua calling out Mickey for abandoning her to fighting her to saving her then going off to save Ventus. Even the way she succumbed to darkness wasn't very... climatic. Earlier in the game, Ansem SoD surprises Ansem the Wise and Aqua as they're sitting on the Dark Beach from Blank Points and, after a pretty pitiful fight between Aqua and Ansem SoD (Totally understandable, though), she gets hit with a Dark Ball and falls into the dark ocean as the darkness consumes her. When I first watched the trailer revealing Anti-Aqua, I had a different idea in mind for how Aqua succumbed to the darkness* and the canon kinda disappointed me with how quick it came and went. Moving on, Sora, Aqua, and Disney (Dolan and Gooby) arrive at Castle Oblivion/Land of Departure to save Ventus and then Vanitas shows up. Aqua's only playable during the fight with Vanitas and she's taken out of the action as soon as he threatens Ven. Cue Sora learning the Power of Waking, saving Ven, Ven about ready to kick Vani's ass, and Sora and Ven meet for the first time. Then we move to Yen Sid's tower where everyone has a little chat and prepare for the fight tomorrow. Nice little scenes ensue (Riku meeting with Repliku, Sora and Kairi FINALLY becoming a couple, Aqua and Ven talking about how they'll save Terra, Lea and Saix eating atop the clocktower) then it's off to the Keyblade Graveyard! After an awesome fight with 10000 Heartless and shit, everyone fucking dies. You think it's a joke, no, everyone straight up dies! Terranort manages to take out Ven, Lea, and almost Kairi as well before Dolan pulls out the Zettaflare and vanquishes his ass. A Demon Tide comes into the mix and after becoming a cyclone, kills everyone except Sora and Riku because they were hit with the Stick of Incompetence. Sora and Riku join soon after and we meet with Chirithy in Purgatory! Sora abuses the Power of Waking to bring everyone back from the dead with Kairi's help (BTW, that's the only useful thing she does in this game) and somehow they forget that they died then proceed to almost die again immediately afterwards! Lingering Will shows up with next to no reason why, keeps Terranort busy while everyone fights the Demon Tide again until the power of Union Cross defeats it once and for all. Many New Organization fights later and Kairi getting the Damsel in Distress treatment YET AGAIN to only die later and Sora finally fights Xehanort. Even then, Xehanort manages to corrupt Kingdom Hearts but he's then used as a time portal for Sora and Disney to go to Scala ad Caelum to fight him there. Xehanort manages to forge the X-blade and actually kills Sora before he revives again with the power of friendship to defeat his wrinkly, veiny old ass. Xehanort then gets hit with a dose of Creator's Pet syndrome, which causes him to somehow be fucking redeemed as he goes to the KH equivalent of Heaven with good ol' brother Eraqus. Sora then decides to abuse the Power of Waking once more to save Kairi and, after he successfully brings her back, gets hit with the Thanos snap and disappears. In Secret Endings, the Foretellers come back, Xigbar is revealed to be Luxu, and Sora and Riku are in Shibuya and Shinjuku respectively, probably about ready to play the Reapers Game! If I missed anything, feel free to disagree!

I may have gone jokey after the Anti-Aqua fight but let me break the last paragraph and a half down. The Land of Departure sequence is nice, except for the part Vani one-shots Aqua in order to get to Ven. She doesn't throw up a barrier or try to deflect the magic with her Keyblade, she just tanks the hit which, if anyone's ever played Aqua in BBS, she ain't like Terra or Ven. It's only because Sora was able to awaken Ven that Aqua didn't get skewered on Vani's Keyblade. Aqua's a Keyblade Master who's fought and won against Vani twice, why the hell did she lose to him here? That, however, is NOTHING compared to her treatment in the Keyblade Graveyard. After Ven and Lea are taken out and Dolan annihilates Terranort, a Demon Tide becomes a Demon Cyclone and, after she, Sora, and Riku decide to fight it, she suddenly gives up and lets the Demon Cyclone kill her*. WHAT THE FUCK?! You mean to tell me that Aqua, a Keyblade Master who's spent 11 years in the RoD fighting for her life and was FINALLY brought back to the RoL, took one look at the Demon Cyclone, which is just a bigger version of the Demon Tides she's fought before, and decided to do suicide by cop? People from the comments section on YouTube try to justify this by saying she had PTSD and/or she was mourning the loss of Ven but I can't see her basically committing suicide over either of these reasons. I'm normally all for Aqua having PTSD because I can imagine that being in a stressful environment with everything trying to kill you on a daily basis isn't good for your mental health but she doesn't show any of the signs for PTSD and she doesn't give up on living the second time the Demon Cyclone shows up. As for her mourning the loss of Ven, I can MAYBE see that but I feel like Ven's death would give her more motivation to defeat the Demon Cyclone because one of the reasons why she fought so hard to get out of the RoD just died in front of her and she'd probably be pissed the fuck off. It may be my love for my oceanic queen coming through but she got hit with the Stick of Incompetence in KH3, along with many other characters.

The one character that was practically killed with it was Kairi. She easily became one of the most disappointing things from KH3 in that she was given the Damsel in Distress treatment yet again and was only killed to give Sora more angst/development. People were expecting her to do something and make herself useful and were instead given shit on a dirty platter. Yes, I know it's stupid to expect Kairi to fight on the level of a Keyblade Master. I don't think anyone was expecting that of her, considering how she literally started training with Lea days, or even weeks, before the final battle. However, we don't see her fighting at all, outside of the battle with Saix and Xion before she gets kidnapped again by Xemnas. She doesn't try to fight back against him and just lets herself be taken, not to mention how she just stares at Terranort after he takes out Lea, not even trying to defend herself*. This girl seems to have no survival instincts, whatsoever. The only useful thing she does in this game is bring Sora back from the brink of death so that he can save everyone else and that's it. While it's a good thing she did that, it's not really explained how she did that, other than 'Princess of Heart' BS.

I'm starting to believe that Nomura genuinely has no idea on what to do with Kairi. To me, he doesn't know what to do on making her stand out from the rest of the cast and has to keep turning her into a faux fighter. In terms of fighting, he doesn't know what to make her as. In my mind, Aqua and Xion (the only female fighters, since Namine is a non-combatant) have two different fighting styles. Aqua's more focused on magic and staying a distance away from her enemy while Xion's more focused on brute strength and getting up in her enemy's face. Kairi then should be the balance between the two, using both magic and strength to her advantage to keep her enemies on their toes. I should stress that I myself am not good at defining fights in general so I may be completely wrong on this but this is merely my interpretation/suggestion. There's a lot more I want to talk about with Kairi but these last two paragraphs pretty much summarize my point. I want to stress that I'm not blaming Kairi for her shitty writing. I'm blaming Nomura because he doesn't know how the fuck to write her as.

Which leads me to my next point of how I feel Sora got hit with a dose of Creator's Pet syndrome in this game. This is probably a point that people will think "Of course it's like that, Airi. He's the main character", which I agree with to an extent but... I'm probably the only one who thinks this but I feel like Sora was made out to be too... important, if that makes sense. In terms of reconnecting lost friends and defeating Xehanort, that's fine. However, also being the one to solve everything by either defeating the enemy or saying stuff from a typical stock shounen series kinda rubbed me the wrong way. It's hard for me to explain in a way that doesn't make it seem as if I don't understand a main character's importance but I'm trying. Here's how I see it: while it's been stated time and again that Sora is the one to connect everyone (Memory's fuzzy on that part) and I know he has to fulfill that purpose in some way, KH3 puts so much emphasis on that, it downplays the other characters' importance or even ruins any chance of development they could've gotten. Sora has to have the spotlight no matter what, even at the cost of characters who need it more. The biggest example of this is Xehanort killing Kairi so it gives Sora more motivation to beat him. Sora was given more development at the cost of Kairi's own. As I said before with Kairi, I'm not blaming Sora for this, I'm blaming Nomura because he decided to give Sora more development than he needed/should've had and sacrificing the other characters in order to boost the already massive value his role has. Hopefully, the DLC will give the others the much-needed development they need.

Speaking of which, it's not only the heroes who got mishandled in this game. Three specific villains (Young Xehanort, Vanitas, and Luxord) come to mind and it somehow got worse down the line. In the Toy Story world, Young Xehanort gets verbally beat down by Woody. In the Monsters Inc. world, Vanitas get yeeted through several doors by Mike and Sulley. In the Caribbean world, Luxord faints because Jack Sparrow had bad breath. These are villains we're supposed to be intimidated by/motivated to defeat and they're made into a complete joke in the world they're antagonizing. Young Xehanort got off easy compared to Vanitas and Luxord, since all he had to deal with was Woody giving him a scolding and brushing it off like nothing. As much as I like the Yeetus Vanitas joke, you mean to tell me that Vanitas, the darkness gremlin himself, didn't sense Sulley sneaking up on him or even try stopping himself from being yeeted through more doors after the first few? What about the Gambler of Fate? He faints because Jack had a little rum in his breath after he got to play pirate again? If that scene was meant to be funny, it accomplished its purpose, just not in the way it was intended to, because how the fuck am I supposed to be intimidated by Luxord when he gets taken out due to someone's bad fucking breath? The way the New Organization's written as is anywhere between being inexplicably strong and able to kill everyone (with the exception of Sora after a despair-induced death and revival) to being laughable and weak enough to be yeeted through doors and taken down by bad breath. That's totally good writing!

Getting back to the story, let's move on to the abso-fucking-lutely stupid Xehanort redemption scene. In the game proper, after he's been defeated once and for all by Sora with the power of friendship, it's revealed that the reason why Xehanort went on this crusade to control Kingdom Hearts was to restore balance and essentially reset the world. He's basically portrayed as this person who, in his pursuit of restoring balance to the world, resorted to extreme methods that almost achieved the opposite of what he wanted. To be fair, that in of itself isn't bad and probably would've made Xehanort an interesting antagonist. However, this completely contradicts what we know about Xehanort before this point! If he really wanted balance, he shouldn't have been spreading darkness to every world he and his incarnations have been to! Even disregarding that point, he's manipulated, controlled, and ruined so many lives. He took control of Terra's body after spending the entirety of his story manipulating him, almost killed Ventus with creating Vanitas if not for Sora's timely intervention, manipulated and controlled Riku, manipulated all of Organization XIII while using them for empty heart tanks, and killed both Eraqus and Kairi! If we're supposed to feel sympathetic for him, why not show him regretting doing all that, hesitating, anything to make us think he didn't WANT to do that but had to in order to accomplish his goal? Then there's the fact Eraqus decides to just forgive him for all he's done, as if he forgot that Xehanort's the reason why he's dead in the first place and almost ruined his pupils' lives, who he saw as his own kids. I get that they once saw each other as brothers but you'd think that relationship would've soured once Xehanort scarred him and dumped a nearly comatose Ven on him. I know Eraqus got a lot of shit from the fandom because of how he acted in BBS but he was at least sympathetic. While he was ultimately wrong in how he treated Terra and Ven, he only decided to kill Ven because he didn't want the X-blade to be forged and cause another Keyblade War and he admitted to Terra he regretted his actions towards him and Ven, all the while crying. THAT’S how you write a character who's majorly fucked up but regrets it and is sympathetic. Not whatever the fuck we were supposed to get from Xehanort. For the third time in this post, I'm not blaming Xehanort for the BS way he was written, I'm blaming Nomura, which is funny since he stated that Xehanort was his favorite character, leading me to think he'd actually try writing him decently.

With that out of the way, we can FINALLY get to the ending. As I said before, Sora decides to abuse the Power of Waking once more to bring Kairi back to life and, after successfully doing that, fades away as if he got hit with the Thanos snap. I'm surprisingly okay with this ending, if only because I know there's going to be more KH games coming out with the confirmation that Sora will still be the protagonist in those games. Normally, I'm against endings where the protagonist dies (unless under special circumstances and even those have to be pretty special) because I like to see stories where the protag, who's gone through a journey full of pain and emotions and any other number of issues, finally gets their happy ending. To me, who writes to escape from the dark and sometimes painful aspects of life, happy endings give characters who've fought so hard for them or characters who were previously unable to achieve them the rest and happiness they deserve (Like the Wayfinder and Clocktower Trios staying together after being reunited). It's hard for me to explain but this isn't the place to talk about that. As I was saying, I'm okay with Sora 'dying' because it showed the consequences of him abusing the Power of Waking too much. From my interpretation of it, the Power of Waking could be used to resurrect the dead, rewrite reality as we know it, etc., but its main purpose is to 'awaken sleeping hearts'. Riku used it properly in DDD to wake Sora up and Sora used it properly in this game to wake Ventus up. The PoW, to me, is the equivalent to playing God, which REALLY goes against my beliefs. I don't know whether it's due to my (loose) Christian faith, my beliefs towards death that I've formed over the years, or because I watched FMA, that mortals messing with things they shouldn't (I.E. Sora bringing the dead back to life) scares me. While the reasoning behind Sora abusing the PoW is understandable (and I'm giving him a pass on what I'm about to say next due to this), he's still a mortal playing God, which HAS to have consequences, no matter what. Just because I say this, however, doesn't mean people aren't allowed to say the ending sucked. Hell, even I think the ending kinda sucks, despite me being okay with it. The only way this ending couldn't have come about is if Sora didn't abuse the PoW and the only way Sora wouldn't have abused the PoW is if no one died and the only way no one could've died is if Nomura could've written something better. The best we can hope for with Sora is that he's given a happy ending down the line and NO ONE DIES OR TAKES HIS PLACE! NO MORE OF THIS BITTERSWEET NONSENSE, ALL RIGHT?!

So what do I think of the story overall? Well, it's... something. It's not the worst thing I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing but it's also not that good. The pacing seems to only have two settings; it's either too slow to the point of it being padded for extra time or too fast to really know what's going on in favor of getting to the next goalpost. I wouldn't be surprised if it's because of the pacing that I don't know where the halfway point of KH3 is. I thought it'd be like the first half being the Disney fanservice and the second half the actual plot but it's not like that here. The first half got WAY more time dedicated to it than the second half did and it REALLY shows with how sloppily written the plot towards the end was. The way I see it, Nomura had the major plotpoints planned and figured out but the details surrounding those plotpoints were left as an afterthought. He had goalposts set up but he got stuck figuring out how to get Sora and co. from point A to point B. I think if he had just finetuned those details or rewritten scenes to make more sense or even asked for help, the story could've been a lot better. Granted, there were probably a lot of factors at work during KH3's production so I won't place all of the blame on solely Nomura, especially with all the news articles lately about game studios overworking their employees to the point of exhaustion/illness/death/eventual breakdown of the company. While I mainly talked about the negatives concerning the story, there were also some positives about it. Sora was at his absolute adorableness in this game. Like, there were so many moments where I just died from how cute he was (which I noted many times in my Livetweet thread) that helped to highlight how Sora's still just a kid who unfortunately carries the fate of the world on his shoulders. The reunions of both the Wayfinder and Clocktower trios just killed me because they had suffered so much up to this point and to see them crying from happiness at being reunited with their friends again and staying together this time had me tearing up. Although she didn't appear much in KH3, Namine being able to exist outside of Kairi was also a sweet moment, especially with her being treated like a princess when she first wakes up and Riku taking her by the hand to the Destiny Islands like a prince. I don't care if it's considered ship tease, that shit was goddamn cute, all right? The scene of Aqua crying after she finally realizes she's in the RoL again hit me in the feels so much, especially after Sora told her she was home. Now thinking about it, I wonder if that's sort of a parallel to KH2's ending with Sora taking on the role of Kairi from that scene. The relationship between Kairi and Lea (What little we saw of it), the ending of everyone on the Destiny Islands, and the occasional Disney stuff I did enjoy were all good. It just sucks that there's so little of the stuff I mentioned featured that I wish more time was spent developing those.

So what is my overall opinion on KH3? It's not my favorite of the series, that honor still goes to both KH2 and BBS. Without running the risk of repeating myself, I won't go into detail about the gameplay or the story because you can just read all the points I've mentioned above. I still enjoyed KH3 but some of my expectations fell through and I felt a bit underwhelmed by everything. In some ways, the wait was worth it but I think I would've been fine with waiting more if it meant some aspects were developed more. In regards to this game being a good entryway for newcomers, I think it is, if only because you're provided with recaps of the previous games right at the main menu so that anyone who hasn't played at least one KH game won't be completely lost playing KH3. I feel like everything I've mentioned in this post may be discredited or even disregarded as an actual review of KH3 because I didn't play the game, I watched an LP of it, but keep in mind these are merely my observations and the conclusions I've reached using those observations. The experience may be completely different to those who actually played it but I won't know until this is posted so...

Where do we go from here? Well, we still have the DLC to look forward to but, as I stated earlier, we have no idea when those are coming out and it's the same with any upcoming games. I'm hoping the DLC will answer some questions while also giving some much-needed development to the characters who aren't Sora. The only thing left to say is, may the DLC guide our wandering hearts.

#kingdom hearts 3 #kingdom hearts 3 spoilers #kh3 #kh3 spoilers

4 notes · View notes

6blackfilin9 · 7 years

Note

Are there any characters or ships that you can't stand in the outlast games? (all three) Asking out of curiosity.

Well... about relationships I don't like yaoi/femslash pairings For the future: I do not like yaoi/femslash relationships. No, no, I am not homophobe, I do not hate gays a d others, I just don't like relationships with them, sorry, bros :/ I have my own reasons to But I need to say, that if such relationship is CANON, I will tolerate it. If it is not canon... we are not on the same wavelength AgainI AM NOT HOMOPHOBIC I DO NOT HATE GAYS, LESBIANS AND BISEXUALS I DO NOT HATE THEMWellThe characters (Now it's time for my bad English '0') I think, that Outlast2 has the most deep characters in whole Outlast universe (except for Trager. Trager is cool). In first and DLC characters (antagonists) had no goals, they were just crazy people. They did something because of their madness. Except for Murkoff corporation. In second part such characters have their own goals: the goal for Knoth and his folk is to kill the antichrist and the "devil", for heretics: to save the antichrist. And f🐧ck everyone. So.. I can't say that I hate some character. Some of characters are similar, some of them are made just to be antagonists and for nothing else. But anyway I don't understand why people love Gluskin and Val. Yea, both of them have their own drama, Val, more then, has his own reasons to do the things that he does. (Everything what is connected with hating Knoth) But imao Gluskin is better than Val. Yes, he is just mad, just crazy, he has his own drama, but it doesn't make him very deep character. His motives are... simple. In this topic Val is deeper, yes. He has motivation, he has drama, but he is weak. He was Knoth's right hand, he knew about the things that the cult will do, but he wasn't enough strong to take it. Yes, killing babies is disgusting, but everyone in Temple Gate knew that in one day they will kill minimum one 'wrong' child which is not the antichrist, isn't it? Anyway, if it wasn't, they knew that some children will be killed. Val knew what he was supposed to do. But he broke down, because he loved children a lot, as some heretics. He betrayed his 'brothers' and 'sisters', and the person who trusted him. Yes, he suffered, but not as much as some other characters. It's just my opinion. If someone took offence- it is not my problem. Well, thank you for asking :)

9 notes · View notes

zaggitz · 7 years

Text

VIDEO GAMES 2017: ONE MILLION GAMES ENTER, TEN GAMES LEAVE.

Well that sure was the best year in video games since probably 1998, wasn’t it? Nintendo put out a new console and 3 major franchise entries, basically every anticipated game of the early 10′s finally frickin’ came out, we got 4 new English Falcom games, 3 of which with good locs, and they made a new Nier? What???

What a time to be alive.

Let’s not waste any time getting to the list, lord knows VIDEO GAMES 2017 has already sucked out enough time from me for a lifetime.

Before we begin, here’s my lists for 2015 and 2016.

Honorable Mentions:

Persona 5:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaIo82uT0qs

It’s insane that this game isn’t in my top ten, hell, it’s insane that it isn’t in my top five. It’s less a commentary on Persona 5′s quality and more that the games that did make the list resonated with me a whole lot more. VG2017 truly was too powerful.

P5 is mired with stiff localization problems, but even without the loc in consideration, the thematic through-line of the game gets muddled and becomes a toothless version of the promising rebellious first ten hours the game provides by the time you reach the finish line, which also just happens to come 20 hours too late, in my opinion.

What a great looking and feeling game though.

Tales of Berseria:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYXwD2CfxOs

On the flipside we have this game, the first Tales game I’ve enjoyed since Tales of Vesperia back in 2008. This game has an amazing story and great characters with a thematic backbone that sticks to your ribs after you finish it.

Now if I didn’t hate the act of actually playing it and having to scour its way too big boring empty dungeons and crappily designed world, it’d be a list maker for sure.

OKAY NOW IT’S TIME FOR THE CERTIFIED BANGERS:

10. Metroid: Samus Returns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhQWJG-_Oco

Somehow my least favorite Metroid game got two remakes that both made my list two years in a row?? This game is pretty great in it’s own right though it has a few control scheme imperfections and I could see a switch port easily being the definitive version to get.

The reason this game really makes the list though is because of how it lives up to its title. Finally an official Nintendo Metroid game that comes out and undoes Sakamoto’s vile character assassination of Samus back in Other M. .

The queen is back, and she has been missed.

9. Horizon: Zero Dawn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD0DByDxJBA

An engrossing open world, great stealth/hunting/gathering systems AND robot dinosaurs are just a part of what makes this first outing for what seems like an extremely promising series great.

No, what really sets this game apart from its contemporaries is how it fleshes out its backstory, culminating in the creation of what might actually be the most despicable piece of shit villain ever put to writing for a video game. And he’s been dead for a thousand years so you can’t do shit to him.

Fuck you, Ted Faro.

8. Night in the Woods

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2UUFFMGcgY

This game hit extremely close to home for me. Forced to come back home to a small, dying town full of people clinging to the good old days instead of doing anything for the generation after them, having this game to play and have it be said out loud that yeah, other people are living this nightmare too, was insanely refreshing.

For as much as we all need a bit of direction sometimes, sometimes what we also need to know being a directionless 20-something asshole trying their best is okay too.

Also Gregg rulz ok.

7. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNgph1g422Q

Great gameplay, great music, fun characters, one of the most fun to explore worlds in an action adventure game. This game truly nails the sense of pure adventure Ys is known for.

It’s a shame then that it’s plagued with one of the most laughable translation efforts in the industry, much of the games personality comes from the fact that even a bad localization job can’t overwrite some character quirks, but this still leaves the rest of the script feeling extremely stiff at best and incomprehensible at worst.

I hope the re-translation patch is good. Until then, Fuck NISA and have a good day.

6. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiU65nQdZE8

I would describe this game as a great first step in evolving the Zelda formula. That’s not even really that accurate, the real first step was in Link Between World’s item rental/no dungeon order systems.

Nevertheless, BOTW amazes with a sense of scope and exploration no game has ever really come close to, and achieves it almost effortlessly by simply giving you the ability to climb anything.

More music, more proper dungeons, a deeper story and a few durability tweaks are basically all you need to make the next Zelda game the easy best in series.

5. Yakuza 0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYB-D9qEwzI

This isn’t the best game this year, but it is easily, no question, the MOST video game this year. 110 hours in and only 60% complete, Yakuza 0 is the game that keeps on giving, with an enthralling true crime story that reshapes what we know about its protagonists. It’s pretty much a non stop emotional thrill ride to the finish line.

It effortlessly incorporates the best side story aspects from the many games in the series to come out before it, and utilizes them with a fantastical glee that keeps you with a smile on your face for the whole run. This is easily the funniest game I’ve played this year. Thank you SEGA.

4. Hollow Knight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1unm0LS10ao

God I can’t wait for this game to get ported to consoles. I bought a new laptop basically just to play this game and the absolutely enthralling metroidvania world design, hand drawn and animated aesthetic, and fantastic npc characters blew me away.

The encounter designs are tough but fair(except maybe the Colisseum) and the DLC so far has been great. I can’t wait for all the post release content to come out so I can play through it all again on Switch and probably PS4.

It’s insane only 3 people made this game.

3. Super Mario Odyssey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhciLj5VzOk

Nothing to say here that hasn’t been said by hundreds of others. SMO is pure joy distilled into video game form.

I can’t wait for Odyssey 2 to come out and somehow blow this one out of the water like Galaxy 2 did for Galaxy.

2. Nier: Automata

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKOM3lNFajE

An amazing contemplation on what it means to be alive, and a thoroughly satisfying conclusion to a story that, for me at least, has been told since Drakengard in 2003. Game after game of sad tragic stories with bad endings and characters fighting an imperfect world imperfectly and only making things worse while temporarily making things better for themselves.

And really even in those cases there’s caveats.

Caviats???? Anyway.

Ending E of this game finally brings some semblance of peace for this fucked up world where a deranged killer and his dragon fell through the sky and made things the worst for everyone for literally tens of thousands of years. Finally Devola and Popola can sleep. All is well.

1. The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wld2q4mLhYM

Another year, another Trails game at number 1. I’ll be real with you, I’m about to drop a bunch of personal rambly stuff about what this entire trilogy means to me so if you don’t wanna read that, that’s fine.

This game is basically a perfect epilogue to a game that means a whole lot to me and serves as an amazing capper to an amazing jrpg trilogy.

When I first played Trails in the Sky First Chapter, it was the PC version in 2014. Now in 2014 I was coming off being in college for about 6 years, switching majors a few times and not really being into what I was doing but, yknow, you gotta major in something and then you gotta get a job, that’s kind of what getting started as an adult is.

So I played this weird little jrpg that was, fundamentally, about a country and the people in it trying to move on from a tragic war years prior, hiding their still fresh wounds in plain sight and just trying to go on with their lives.

It was an extremely interesting game, for how plot-light it was in the early goings, you got to really feel the struggle of these people and the unseemly past they were trying to run away from or avoid repeating. This underlying conflict builds and builds until we can’t ignore it anymore.

When I played Second Chapter a year later, I had been laid off from a job I got right out of College and had no employment prospects. I hated the fact that I’d spent basically my entire adult life up to that point doing something I wasn’t passionate about and then got let down by the system.

At the same time, the shame of my situation lead me to close up and not tell anyone about the problems I had, I was broke, I owed two months rent, on the verge of getting evicted, I felt extremely alone.

All this to get to the point that Second Chapter was ultimately a game about pulling out the dark shit we don’t like talking about and saying “it’s okay to talk about this stuff, there’s always someone who will listen.” It got me to get over myself somewhat and actually reach out for help, and I’m really thankful for it not letting me hit rock bottom.

Two years later still, I’m in a much better place, I finally feel happy about where my life is and what I’m doing and oh boy here comes Trails in the Sky the 3rd.

Completing the journey I started back in 2014, I found myself playing a game all about how it’s okay to acknowledge the bad things that happened to us, so long as we learn and move on from them accordingly.

This trilogy has so much heart, and so many memorable characters, and so much to say. It’s so, so special to me, and I was openly weeping when all the characters I’ve come to know and love over 4 years finally parted ways.

Thank you Falcom for making these games, and thank you Xseed for bringing these games to us.

TL;DR

#game of the year #trails in the sky #nier automata #night in the woods #ys #metroid #mario oddysey #hollow knight #yakuza 0 #zelda breath of the wild #horizon zero dawn

3 notes · View notes