And so, with Kingdom Hearts 3 coming out this week, it's time to look at the game that's closely tied to the events of it, including pulling another Chain of Memories and justifying why Sora's back to Level 1. Kingdom Hearts 3D, the only Kingdom Hearts game on the 3DS, and lost the whole 3D thing when it went to PS4... which would make this Kingdom Hearts 3? It makes more sense then Nomura talking about it like it's 2.6 at least. Welcome to a review of that one game where two guys overdose on sleeping tablets and played Nintendogs a lot (or Pokemon Amie, your choice).
Before I explain what all of that meant, a little story context. In as simple of a way as possible, it's Birth By Sleep with one less character. While that's not entirely true, as there are far more mind f@#$ moments near the end, it is the best way to describe the overall story. Sora and Riku go on their Mark of Mastery Exam (like what Terra and Aqua were doing in Birth By Sleep), however, unlike a simple sparring match, Sora and Riku need to go and save the "sleeping worlds" that haven't recovered from the Heartless attacks. Like Birth By Sleep though, this plan fails when Evil McWigglefingers from Birth By Sleep decides to crash the party with his new Organization XIII, including some of the older members, and some new ones, all of which are either another form of himself or him possessing others. He kind of took the idea of "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself" to its literal extreme. Up next on the recruitment drive is Sora himself, and enlists his younger self, heartless self, nobody self, and the members of Organization XIII he can salvage while the remainders ditch the x in their names and have some normal ones again, like Axel being renamed to Lea (cause Roxas is just Sora backwards with an x in it). As a result it's up to Sora and... actually no, it's up to just Riku to find out what's going on and to save Sora, who himself is falling for this trap faster then EA fans thinking they're going to get a game that doesn't try to take every cent they own. Before I get comments on it, that's aimed more at the larger, in house games rather than their financed indie experiences.
I'm not a huge fan of the overall story though mostly because of how to get there. While I love the ideas behind most of the new worlds, including the flagship world of the game is based on Fantasia, as seen in the game's summary intro done to an orchestral version of the Kingdom Hearts 1 theme, Dearly Beloved (which I do really enjoy for the record), there are some worlds that bleed into each other. Alongside Symphony of Sorcery (the name of the aforementioned Fantasia world), there's also the Country of the Musketeers, based on the direct to DVD Three Musketeers movie, which in itself kind of blends in with La Cité des Cloches, a world based on The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Grid returns from Kingdom Hearts 2, now based on Tron Legacy's story, but due to the returning World That Never Was, it too blends in. I know there are more differences between them, and these are surface level similarities, but for me, it made it harder to keep up with the overall story. What doesn't help with keeping up with it is how they handled splitting the story between the two characters. Imagine if you were playing Birth By Sleep as Ventus, then the game suddenly goes "Nope! You're playing as Terra now", then eventually goes "Now you're playing as Ventus again", though more on that later. Throw in Time travel being the reason why we have four versions of Evil Mc WiggleFingers (no I will not stop calling him that), and you have the reason why Kingdom Hearts' continuous story being viewed as a complete and total mess. A beautiful mess, yes, but a mess all the same.
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| If this is a tease for what's coming in KH3, then I can see some very awkward interactions happening between Sora, Ventus and Roxas |
The gameplay can be summed up as "Good ideas, bad execution at best". With the three biggest changes being the causes. Flowmotion, Drop gauge, Dream Eaters. Let's start with the one I like in concept, but has the most flaws in its execution, Flowmotion. Flowmotion is a parkour system that allows you to use your mobility to travel around the map a lot faster and bounce around the walls and roof to perform wider reaching attacks in battle. It's fun for travelling around the map, though it has made the worlds feel more barren then previous games, due to the excess space needed for travel, but it's tedious in combat due to the game relying on context sensitive inputs, making flowmotion very unreliable, especially with how much it can cause the camera to mess up. Then, of course, there's the Drop Gauge, a mechanic that can be easily ignored, it's also just as easy to forget until it's too late. Recall what I said in the previous paragraph about the forced change in characters? This is the culprit. As you play as Sora or Riku, a mostly invisible meter will tick down until you have 30 seconds left. Unless you use this game's equivalent of coffee, Sora or Riku will instantly fall asleep, with the game expecting you to switch to the other character. Alongside the coffee, you can easily go straight back to the other character and continue with what you were doing, which gets tedious if you drop in the middle of a boss fight. It wasn't needed, it's padding, and there are far easier ways to encourage smaller play sessions because a mechanic like this can easily encourage people to play longer.
Finally, there are the Dream Eaters. I hope you like pet sims because if you don't, then you are going to hate this game. Dream Eaters are your party members with none of the charms aside from funny moments during some moves, especially as Sora, though mostly due to Sora's reactions. On top of feeling like they're doing nothing in battle, these critters are where the stronger spells and abilities are hidden. You thought Leveling up would get you stronger spells and abilities that'll keep you from being combined into oblivion by harder bosses? Nope, instead you have to take care of your Dream Eaters, something that's fine for the 3DS, not so for the PS4. While yes, there's Remote play compatibility if you have a PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, if it's anything like the remote play the PS3 had, don't bother. While the pet simulator mechanics are in-depth at least, this isn't something like the Tamagotchi Mini's or Pokemon Amie/ Refresh, but it's not a style of gameplay that's interesting for many people and due to how mandatory it is, will alienate people. What doesn't help is that there's no charm to the Dream Eaters. I feel things for my Pokemon, my Nintendogs, my Tamagotchi (before I took the batteries out of it and gave one to a friend of mine), but I feel nothing for these things, even when I'm doing the mini-games.
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| Side note, I hope you like Balooons, cause Balloon, Baloonra and Baloonga are the best spells in the game |
A mess is really the only thing that can describe this game. Does it look and sound good? Yes, it's a Kingdom Hearts game, of course, it will. But the gameplay suffers due to stupid mechanics, and the story is a complete mess, making it a slog to play through. It's most certainly a low point of the franchise, not the worst, granted, but one of the worst that at least somewhat plays like a regular Kingdom Hearts game. I do like how they didn't use Final Fantasy characters this time, instead of going for the main characters from The World Ends With You, but that doesn't help the story as you sink deeper. Kind of a downer note to end the marathon on, but the year's just getting started, and with three on the horizon, we'll soon see if things have improved for it, or if more handheld games then numbered sequels has taken its toll. Next week will be one of two things, Super Smash Brothers Ultimate, or Yoshi's Woolly World, but come Saturday, the review of some Legends Class Jeeps.
Before I forget, the reason I didn't bring up King DDD's (I had to fit that in somewhere) augmented reality function for the 3DS release is because I don't have the ARG cards. I got my copy pre-owned.
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