#the present would be marked as from dream and punz which is about the moment when punz stops being the responsible one in techno's eyes

[simplepotatofarmer]

holiday gift giving in the aac au would be wild.

techno would jokingly give michael underscore beloved a weapon and then be like 'nah that's crazy who would ever give a baby a weapon?? here's your real present lil' spud' as dream slowly pushes his present under the nearest chair because he got michael a fully enchanted netherite axe because 'you never know!' and ranboo just gives a very weak, questionably charitable, 'well, it's true, i guess you do never know' while phil and niki look on in horror.

[boss-hoody]

A Kingdom Hearts 3: world-by-world review I guess

when I say “Area” I mean parts of the world separated by loading screen OLYMPUS Consisting of 3 areas, Olympus had itself a major upgrade from its past appearances. The Colosseum is nowhere to be seen, (same with the underworld), and has been replaced by a large town and Mount Olympus itself. The third area you visit in Olympus is “realm of the gods”, and the presentation of this area’s entrance was a legitimate “Stop and look at how pretty this is” moment The gameplay in this world was pretty varied, as it served as your tutorial world, teaching you the various forms of movement and combat the game has to offer, as well as showing you early that enemies can have elemental weaknesses. Story wise, Sora is there to ask Herc’s advice on how to regain the power he lost and ends up showing up at the wrong (right?) time as Hades has finally put his 18 year plan into action and released the titans (All four of them this time)

The (very nice) cutscene that brings us into this world is also the one and only mention and appearance of Final Fantasy characters (Cloud and Auron) in the entire game’s story, which is extremely disappointing and a mark against the game as a whole. 4/5

TWILIGHT TOWN I was really looking forward to jumping back into Twilight town, exploring the streets, the tunnels, and all that again. But sadly, Twilight town, while receiving an aesthetic upgrade, only consists of 1 area consisting of Tram common (Now called “the neighbourhood), the forest and mansion, and a single tunnel connecting them (the hole in the wall is gone). There is no exploration of the mansion.

Its also home to the cooking mini game

2/5 (1 point for cooking mini game which is surprisingly fun, and 1 point only because of the atmosphere created by the NPCs and music)

KINGDOM OF CORONA This world is where the game really sines for the first time. Olympus was great, but it was clearly designed as a tutorial area, and Twilight Town lacked anything resembling gameplay content, but Kingdom of Corona makes up for that quickly with a vast forest and a small lively town to explore. Rapunzel constantly wanders off to look at things, which create a number of small character moments and not-quite-mini games you need to do to progress and also helps to make Sora seem more involved. The dancing actual-mini game in the town square was pretty fun once I got the hang of it and realized the symbols on the floor corresponded to buttons based on color, not shape.

Story wise it was a bit janky. The story follows the plot of the movie (Unlike Toy Box, which seems to take place somewhere between Toy story 1 and 2), but Sora becomes separated from Flynn and Punz a couple times, and story progresses without him or us present. At some point Flynn told Rapunzel his real name apparently? And Flynn was knocked out and tied to a boat but we never see it happening. He’s just suddenly tied to a boat an unconscious. Rapunzel’s healing hair comes out of nowhere, as does the song sung to make its magic work. When she rubs her hair on his wound and starts singing as he lay there dying, you might be extremely confused if you hadn’t seen the movie. And by “Might” I mean “WILL”

This world did something interesting with its music that I wish Toy Box had done. When you enter a certain area of the forest, the music (and battle music) change to suit the atmosphere of the area. It was a small touch but it was appreciated and missed once I got to Toy Box...

This is also the first world where we encounter the Nobodies.

4/5. It loses a point for the janky story, but everything else was great

TOY BOX Consisting of two areas, Toy box becomes massive as soon as you leave Andy’s room. It was bizarre running around in a photo realistic suburban street as a tiny toy, (and the fact that you’re a toy in this world is the only reason I like it) and the toy store, Galaxy Toys, is a massive 3 floor area full of toy mechs (seriously they spawn in with regular enemies, you can end up with 5 of them on you very fast).

The mech gameplay was surprisingly fleshed out for a one-world wonder. There are three types of mechs, red, blue, and purple, and they seem to work in a rock-paper-scissors type of deal. Purple has an advantage on red, red has an advantage on blue, and blue has an advantage on purple. Each of the mechs has a different amount of health and firing speed to balance them out further.

The world loses points with me however due to the fact that an instrumental version of “You’ve got a friend in me” is playing throughout the whole world. It became grating very fast and its still stuck in my head.

3.5/5

MONSTEROPLOUS  Taking place almost entirely in doors, this world feels a lot like Kingdom Hearts 2 in the worst way (Hallway, arena, hallway), broken up by rail segments. The “arena” sections at least try to keep things interesting though, with one becoming a  “the walls are a hazard” type of deal. This world introduces us to the Unversed and is actually the only world where they appear, so there’s not many of them.

The battle music in this world was also great. I don’t know, there was just something about it that jived with me.

Story wise, this world takes place after the first Monster’s Inc movie. Sully is the CEO, and laugh energy is the new hotness. Randal is back thanks to his new friend and literally wants to make all children suffer chronic depression forever because, while its not as strong as laughter, sadness is a far more abundant form of energy or something.

Other than that, there’s not much to say about this world. Its not bad, but its not great

3/5 (the fact that it has its own story instead of following the plot of the movie earns it an additional point.

ARENDELLE This was the first world where it really felt like “Disney shenanigans”. Sora was just kind of there while the plot of Frozen happened, and like with Tangled, the story progressed without Sora or us present, and again, if you hadn’t seen the movie, you’d be lost. Unlike tangled, it lacked little character interactions to at least make Sora feel connected in some way.

The boss in this world was a combination of amazing cinematic attacks and a rehash of Scar in KH2, and your Disney buddy for this world was a legitimate surprise.

I enjoyed the reindeer Heartless in this world too. Not only do they take huge damage from fire, but it also melts their antlers, preventing them from using their annoying attacks. However Donald the super-genius would often hit them with Blizzard which would give their antlers back...

2/5

THE CARIBBEAN  This world. THIS FUCKING WORLD Its so good. Its perfect. Its like its own game There’s a huge ocean full of little islands to explore, the under water combat WORKS and is FUN. The primary heartless you’ll run into under water is a fish that changes color, and is weak to a different element depending on said color, giving you something to think about while fighting it. You can just wale on it if you want, or you can use magic and work out its weakness to dispatch it quickly.

You get your own pirate ship. SORA FINALLY LIVIN THE DREAM! The pirate ship can be upgraded for more health and canons by finding white crabs (Can’t explain how that works without spoilers), it has its own reaction commands that devastate enemy ships, OH and there are ENEMY SHIPS. SHIP BATTLES. SHIP ON SHIP COMBAT

Again tho, like with Tangled and Frozen, the story likes to progress while Sora is off dicking around. However, the supporting characters do a better job of explaining what happened while Sora was AFK than anyone in Corona or Arendelle did. The fact that Sora is already familiar with most of the cast thanks to KH2 also helps this along a bit tho. Sora doesn’t feel completely tacked on despite being completely tacked on.

This world suffers even more severely from what it suffered from in KH2 tho. That being IT IS EXTREMELY JARRING AND IMMERSION BREAKING TO SEE CARTOON-ASS SORA, DONALD AND GOOFY CHILLING OUT WITH HYPER REALISTIC JOHNNY DEPP AND CO

Despite the negatives, the gameplay of this world makes up for all of it

7.5/5: Too much water

SAN FRANSOKIO The story does what Kingdom Hearts 3 worlds haven proven to do best and does its own thing. Sora arrives in San fransokyo some time after the events of Big Hero 6. Hiro has built a new Baymax but is still torn up about the original his brother built being lost to the void, and now weird robot heartless are attacking (Hint: Bring thunder) Sora makes fast friends with the crew (as he tends to do) and through helping them with the heartless, gives each member ideas on how they can upgrade their gear.

The world consists of 2 areas. Hiro’s garage, and downtown San Fransokyo, which is basically mini spider-man PS4. While in Hero’s garage, you can choose to explore the city during the day or night. Heartless do not appear during the day, so if you just wanna run around and explore, find treasure and hidden mickey’s, hit the town during the day. But if you’re looking to level up (and this is the final world with enemy spawns so you will be) then you should hit the town at night.

While the downtown area is small (especially just coming off the open seas of the pirates world), it makes up for it in both verticality and density.

4/5 (Extra point added for the presence of Thigh queen Go Go Tomago)

100 ACRE WOOD Its a single area with 3 almost identical mini games, it’ll take you about 20 minutes to get through, there’s a keyblade at the end, 0/5

KEYBLADE GRAVEYARD This is the final world of the game and serves as the site for the final battles with the organization. Its basically a series of arena matches where Sora teams up with one or more of his friends to take on multiple members of the organization at once. It dominoes into the final conflict with the 3 main Norts. Young, Heartless, and Nobody all at once while Old man watches and throws Keyblades at you occasionally. 

Gameplay is all boss combat. Story is all PLOT

5/5 on both counts

THE FINAL WORLD Okay no THIS is the final world. Literally. Its entirely main plot based so I won’t go into any actual detail. It consists of a single room which is a giant cube puzzle (Not like the movie “Cube”, like you’re standing on a big cube thing). Which would be SUPER cool if it weren’t for the fact that Sora’s flow motion abilities completely break it.

Plot wise 5/5 Gameplay wise 1/5

SCALA AD CAELUM OKAY NO THIS IS THE REAL FINAL WORLD FOR REAL A city located in the past, this is the site of the true final battle with Xehanort and his 12 selves. you go up against the 12 all at once (they seem to share a health bar tho so its not that bad) as they utilize their own weapons (Xigbar’s guns, Marluxia’s scythe, etc, etc) to just honestly beat the hell out of you. A small section of town serves as your arena, making this perhaps the most geographically diverse fighting arena in the game’s history.

Once those naughty bois are shut down, Xehanort is like “Wanna see something cool?” and tosses you into a legitimately disorientating arena for the beginning of the final showdown between peace boy and naughty grandpa

There’s no gameplay here outside of combat and plot but its a 5/5 none the less

FINAL THOUGHTS This game was at its best when it wasn’t rehashing the plots of the worlds it visited (Tangled, Frozen, Pirates), but either doing its own thing (you know, the Kingdom Hearts plot?), creating new plots set in the worlds visited (Big Hero 6, toy Story, Monsters Inc.) or somehow doing a combo of the 3 (Hercules)

I found it EXTREMELY disappointing that all traces of original Square Enix characters are just gone. We get a single mention of Cloud and Auron in an exposition dump at the beginning of Olympus and thats it. And before you mention the main Nomura OC cast: they’re owned by Disney, not Square.

The game wrapped up pretty much all the major plot points and answered a lot of long standing questions, but also didn’t answer one question in particular that I’m sure has driven a lot of us into the depth of insanity. It also posses a couple new questions, such as “Who?” and “How?” and “What the fuck?” 

Overall, this game is at its best when its focusing on the main plot, with everything in between feeling more like filler... So a standard Kingdom Hearts game.

In the end, despite the lack of FF, and the falling into disney shenanigans, this was a great game and an excellent ending to the dark seeker saga. Going forward, I hope the future games (and there definitely will be future games, this is by no means the end of Kingdom Hearts) don’t do what this saga did and spread the plot over 200 games on 200 different consoles over 200 god damn years. If thats the case I think KH3 will be my jumping-off point. However, if they’ve come to their senses and choose to release the next saga of games like normal human beings instead of depraved madmen, I am 100% on board. However, seeing as Nomura is a depraved madman (see FFXV development for details) I am extremely cautious in my optimism.

Final score from me is 4.5/5: WHATS IN THE BOX?!