#figuring out the gameplay mechanics has been kinda tricky but also fun. learning about the lore too

[viulus]

So... I finally started playing Disco Elysium

[solidandsound]

I have a whole essay of thoughts on KH3. Let’s see if I can be remotely coherent.

Gameplay is fun. Movement feels good, and so does combat. Keyblade switching is neat, although it would be better if there were some cooler keyblades to use. I’d take Oblivion, Oathkeeper, etc over some of the silly stuff we got. Grand magic is cool. The only new mechanic I don’t like is the attractions. They aren’t fun to use, they don’t feel good, they’re just flashy. But you can mostly ignore them, so overall combat is fun. The real problem is that it’s too easy, even on Proud mode. There were a couple of tricky spots for me early on while Sora’s HP was low, but they really throw those HP upgrades at you and enemy damage doesn’t scale fast enough to continue to be a threat. Even the last boss was basically doing chip damage to me while I took out half a bar of health per fire spell. There was nothing like the Riku fight in KH1 or the final boss sequences for 1 or 2. Other KH games have fights leaving me pumped with adrenaline because they’re so good at keeping you on your toes, but KH3 never got me that worked up. Some folks cite all the powerful finishers, attractions, etc, but I think it could have still been challenging with those things if the damage scaling was better.

Exploration is fun, and I like the different approaches each world took to it, with some being large open spaces and others being more linear. It does make searching for treasure and emblems more difficult, though, and some sort of tool to help with that late game would have been nice.

The worlds themselves and how they play out have their ups and downs. You never really fight any big bads in them, so none of them feel like they have the stakes of KH2 worlds, but they don’t all need to. Olympus was a very solid world, and a pretty good setup for what Sora’s trying to do in KH3 (which unfortunately falls flat later, but in Olympus it feels good). It also sets up some intrigue with Maleficent looking for the box (which goes even more poorly later, but again, here it feels good). It’s a big, pretty playground to experiment with all the new stuff in the game. My only real gripe is Phil’s awkward silence. If you want him to show up, Square, give him at least one line. If you can’t give him any lines, don’t have him show up! This was awkward later with Aeleus and Dilan later as well. They make for such clear time/budget cuts, it breaks immersion something terrible.

Twilight Town was a huge disappointment. While it’s nice that it’s so populated (and that goes for many other worlds as well), only having a small part of what we know to exist available to explore is pretty sad. The story there sets things up so that Pence has to do some research which takes time, so I figured we could come back and go up the hill later, but of course that never happens.

Toy Box was fun. It was nice to have a world where almost all of it is just one big open area with lots of vertical space. The Gigases here were some of the only enemies in the game to pose a threat, but only because you need to also use the Gigases, which makes them and the whole world easy. The idea that the organization is doing research on inanimate objects acquiring hearts is interesting, but never amounts to anything, and the main conflict here goes unresolved until the end credits where it’s maybe kinda resolved without our input.

The Tangled world was interesting. It’s probably the most faithful adaptation of a Disney movie’s plot in a KH world in the series, down to specific scene setups, lines, framing, etc. I thought it was bizarre at first, but exploring the world with Rapunzel, which she’s seeing for the first time, and seeing her reactions to it made me feel like I was playing the game of the movie, in a good way. And of course this world had some gorgeous greenery. It also introduces the New Seven Hearts, which is interesting in theory but ends up being irrelevant and underutilized, especially since it could have fixed a problem that’s present for the entire game.

The bad guys want Sora and co to gather the seven lights. By rescuing Aqua, etc, they are playing into Xehanort’s plan. There should be some conflict about this. As it stands, there’s no tension. We’re not really doing anything to stop their plan. Of course Sora wants to save everyone, but maybe they could wonder if they can just not fight, or hide some people away, or something. But, it’s mentioned that if Sora fails to gather the seven lights, the new princesses can be used instead. That makes them leverage: if Sora and his allies fail to show up to the final battle, then these innocent princesses will be used, which of course forces Sora to move forward with the original plan. There’s conflict and tension there, where currently, in the game, there is none.

Monstropolis is interesting because it serves as a sequel to Monsters Inc, developing the lore of the Disney property in an interesting way. The factory’s a little bland but it has some fun sequences. Boo gets some cute moments. What’s annoying is that a Vanitas fight is teased here, and then ripped away from us. By this point I was dying for a good old classic KH person v. person hardcore showdown, because those are always the best fights, but alas. And of course nothing here ends up being super relevant to the main plot.

The Frozen world was fairly faithful to the movie, similar to the Tangled world, except with Sora mostly doing his own thing while the plot of the movie happened elsewhere. I actually thought this world set up an interesting theme that could have been explored more, which is Sora’s hero complex. He sees Elsa hurting and wants to help her, but it’s not something he can help with, so he has to learn to let her work through it on her own instead of coming to the rescue. Unfortunately they don’t do much with it, but it’s an interesting angle. And the New Seven Hearts come up again, which continues to be a waste of potential. The one thing that stood out as a peculiar choice to me was reanimating the entirety of the Let It Go scene. It was so bizarre I was laughing the whole time. I like the song, but what point did that serve? I actually heard a streamer mention that Elsa sings all of Let It Go when I watched some prerelease streams, but I assumed he was joking.

The Pirates world is the only one in this game based on a movie I haven’t seen, so I was a little lost as to the larger plot, but it gave some good characterization for Luxord. It’s nice that he seems to come to this world just because he likes it. I enjoyed the ship exploration and island setup, but I always do (see also: Wind Waker, Suikoden IV). Underwater movement and combat feel much better in this game than Atlantica worlds in earlier games. Ship battles got a little repetitive after a while.

San Fransokyo was one of my favourite worlds. The GTA-esque open city setup is fun, although a little small, and I love that we can see it during the day and at night, although having some chests and emblems only appear at certain times was a bit annoying. The music is excellent here. I like Big Hero 6 a lot, and the story of the world was a very interesting way to build off of the movie. I would love to watch a full BH6 sequel that’s basically the KH3 plot. It’s also a cool and interesting way to reintroduce Dark Riku as a member of the organization. Even though none of the Disney worlds really advance the plot directly, I’m okay with it because they serve another purpose, which is to slowly reveal organization members, keeping us guessing as to who the full 13 will be. Of course, it would be better if we didn’t see almost everyone in trailers, but it was fun to guess at the ones we didn’t know. What is disappointing about the Disney worlds is that Sora is supposed to be learning how to use the power of waking, but it’s obvious early on that it’s going to work when it needs to and he’s not going to figure it out before then, so that entire quest feels pointless.

In between these we get cutscenes of other plot points, and briefly play Riku in the world of darkness. I don’t like that so much of the cool plot stuff happens elsewhere. To me, that’s all the interesting stuff, the stuff I’m playing KH3 for, and I wanted to be involved in it instead of it happening elsewhere or hearing about it over the gummiphone. I did like that we get to play as Riku, as one of the things I’ve come to love about the series is seeing the different keyblade wielders’ combat styles. I also liked that, after we save Aqua, we get a fight as her. I was pumped to see my favourite keyblade master and the most badass character in the series in action again, but after the fight she gets inexplicably knocked out so that she can be rescued, which was both disappointing and out of character.

And then we go to the Keyblade Graveyard, which is where things really fall apart. First of all, the KG is a disappointing final world. It’s somewhere we’ve been before, and it’s nothing like the big, mysterious final worlds of previous games. The End of the World and the World That Never Was are two of my favourite worlds in the series, and the KG here fails to stack up. The labyrinth is a cool concept, but sorely underutilized. But before we even get there we get a very poorly explained time loop thing, and another moment where Aqua doesn’t seem nearly as capable as we know her to be, not to mention all the other great keyblade wielders with them at that point. We get some sort of afterlife, which complicates the life and death mythos of Kingdom Hearts even further, and we get an optional scene there that really should have been mandatory.

Then we go into the final showdown stuff. What was most exciting leading up to KH3 to me was this promised showdown, the 7 lights vs the 13 darknesses, all the keyblade wielders fighting together against overwhelming odds and kicking butt because they’re all great. Instead, what we get is Sora going through and systematically rescuing every one of his allies. It’s not the 7 lights vs the 13 darknesses, it’s Sora vs the 13 darknesses. What’s the point of having everyone there if Sora does everything in the end anyway? It’s especially grating to have extremely capable people like Aqua have to be rescued again. There’s also the matter of Kairi and Axel, who I was most excited to see finally fight with their keyblades. Instead they get trounced immediately and we don’t get any Kairi action at all, and then she gets fucking kidnapped. I’d understand her being less skilled than the others, but what was all that training for? And Axel may be new to the keyblade, but he’s a great fighter, much better than we see here. It’s all so disappointing. The entire section completely fails to live up to the promise of the big group showdown. We have Riku and Aqua programmed as playable characters, so even if they had been playable for their fights that would have made things feel a lot better, although it doesn’t fix everything. The Kairi issue is the biggest bummer for me.

This is where a lot of the important character stuff is resolved, too, and it’s all done quickly and sloppily. The ‘fight, stop for a cutscene, continue the fight, get another cutscene’ format is lazy and immersion breaking. Xion shows up with very little explanation. The whole struggle with her is that no one remembers her, and yet that’s brushed aside without ever really being addressed. And no one really gets the time they need to live in these moments of being reunited with the people they care about. I wanted to see more of them interacting, and more characters interacting who never have before but have clear links to each other. The way everything was quickly resolved, and the way things are set up for the future, makes me think Nomura was getting bored of these characters and wanted to get them out of the way as quickly as possible to move on to his current infatuation, which is the mobile game garbage.

It’s not as if I dislike everything the mobile game has to offer in terms of story and lore additions, but too much of that stuff bled into KH3. The thing where Sora summons the power of all the past keyblade wielders was fine, although I don’t like the 4th wall breaking of including everyone’s usernames. Still, it’s innocent enough. Making the epilogue all about the mobile game, tying the motivations of characters from earlier games to stuff from the mobile game, and introducing new mysteries that are clearly tied to the mobile game but never get resolved here lessened the quality of KH3. I expect some new mysteries and elements to be introduced each game to tease sequels. But in most games, those aspects were relegated to the secret endings and secret reports. That way you get a full game, leaving you feeling satisfied as you watch the ending, and then getting a teaser for another satisfying experience to come. For KH3, as I watched the ending I wasn’t satisfied. There was still too much left unresolved, or poorly resolved, things I needed from the game that I didn’t get. I was still looking for those things when I got to the secret ending, and of course it offered no closure. It made this entire game feel like sequel bait, when this is the game the previous games were supposed to be sequel bait for. I feel like I’m being strung along by the developers and taken advantage of.

There are some things I like about the ending. Although I don’t like the way it was shown so briefly and vaguely, I like the idea that Sora sacrificed himself to save Kairi. In multiple worlds in this game, we see characters try to sacrifice themselves for their loved ones, so when Sora does it, it makes for an interesting thematic link between the Disney content and main story content. I also like that the game seems to imply a switching of roles for Sora and Kairi, in the way the shots are framed so that Kairi is where Sora normally would be. This is the one thing that made me excited for future games: the thought that maybe Kairi could be the protagonist and go on her own journey to save Sora, that she could finally fucking do something other than be the damsel and love interest. Both KH2 and DDD suggested that she would have a more active role as well, though, and look how that turned out. So, I don’t trust it, especially with the secret ending showing Sora and Riku.

Speaking of which… Yozora. He’s clearly a Versus XIII reference, and I thought it was rightfully petty and hilarious when I saw the Toy Box scene, like Nomura was showing off how much cooler his game would have been than FFXV. Seeing Yozora in the secret ending makes me worry, though. Is he so petty that he would use a future KH game as a vehicle for the characters and ideas that didn’t come to fruition with Versus? With this and all the mobile game stuff, not to mention the general quality of KH3, I’m seriously worried about future games. For over a decade I’ve been thrilled every time a new KH game was announced. Now, though, I feel I’m going to have to be more cautious. It’s not a good feeling to have. Kingdom Hearts has never been perfect, but KH3 makes me feel like Nomura has forgotten what it is that made Kingdom Hearts great in the first place.