My top games of the decade. Number Five.

Welcome back to your regularly scheduled programming.

KINGDOM HEARTS III

Once again another game I am super excited to talk about! Well, these are my top games, if I wasn’t excited about them then all the posts would be pretty redundant. By now you can see that two of my previous games, and soon a few more of my further up games, are continuations of a series of games, remakes or sequels to games. This is because I can get very invested into a series much like the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” films or the series “Stranger Things” on Netflix. I find this is due to the fact I get very invested into the lives of characters or just become loyal to the franchise as a whole. There are of course, negatives and exceptions to this rule, one being if a sequel is disappointing I find myself unable to continue playing that series. This isn’t the case with Kingdom Hearts III.

Kingdom Hearts III was the sequel to 2012’s “Kingdom Hearts: Dream, Drop, Distance.” However, it is considered as a “main series game,” something the franchise hasn’t seen since 2005 with the release of “Kingdom Hearts II.” The story takes place literally right after Kingdom Hearts: 3D and sees the main characters go on their final quest to save three long lost Keyblade wielders that haven’t been seen for eleven years, except for Aqua who hasn’t been seen since the time of Kingdom Hearts – the original – which was set three years before this game. In the meantime, Xehanort (Zay-a-nort) is quietly collecting his thirteen darkness’s to start the legendary and prophesied Keyblade War.

For me, this game was my most anticipated game of the past ten years as I only played Kingdom Hearts II in 2011 because PlayStation 2 games were difficult to get a hold of at the time, also being a 14 year old with no money didn’t help. This series of games got progressively more and more in-depth as each new side game was released, each one slightly progressing the plot to this climactic event. The release of Kingdom Hearts III definitely tore the community in two with one half being completely satisfied and fulfilled with the story and happy with how it concluded, and the other half being disappointed in the lack of endgame content and the fact the story was left open for the next future installment inevitably coming.

The latter does not include me. I adore this game. It has its faults of course and they are undeniably there, but, they are simply so negligible to the overall feel of the game and reason that I play that I can easily over look them, but I will get into them because I think that is only fair to talk about them. This game included new Disney worlds such as, Toy Story, Pirate of the Caribbean, Frozen and Monsters Inc. There are more of course, but these were definitely my favourite. The worlds were vastly improved in comparison to the last main series game’s worlds. The Toy Story world constantly had background music that was a remake of the iconic “You Got a Friend in Me” song, you were also miniaturized into a toy to fit into the world. Seeing wooden toy versions of Donald, Goofy and Sora just felt so right, like you were sitting there and watching these characters in the actual Pixar films.

I could go on about the reasons why each world was individually amazing but I feel I could go on for a long, long time. I will sum it up and say that you actually felt like you were playing in the Disney films. It felt like Sora and the gang were making impacts to the stories of the movies they were obviously a part of, or the worlds they were in. It was much more immersive and engaging than in Kingdom Hearts II where you were essentially dealing with a side story whilst the main Disney plot was progressing. This was not the case for all Kingdom Hearts II worlds, which I feel I need to clarify. However, the Disney worlds in Kingdom Hearts III definitely didn’t feel like a necessity to the plot, they were obviously there to keep the trend of Disney related content in the franchise but filling the time before you got to the climactic final act of the story. This was a very obvious negative, but each individual worlds story felt so immersive and were quite honestly fun that this obvious negative just simply didn’t matter to me.

To conclude my praising before I get to my negative points, the final act of this game was one I honestly think I will remember for the rest of my life. It felt so rewarding to see how this saga of the Kingdom Hearts story ended, I was so giddy and excited with every new reveal or plot development that happened. So many things that I never saw coming and many things that I did, of course, see coming. I must state, I am not well versed with the Kingdom Hearts lore or theories, so some the community hypothesized and got correct were things I simply didn’t see coming. For the last few hours of the game I was at the edge of my seat the whole time, it was filled with heart breaks and epic moments of heroism and incredibly satisfying villainous moments. If you can’t tell, I am really trying to praise the final act without giving away spoilers in case my friend Sam sees this as at this current time, he has not finished the game.

Now…my issues with this beautiful, but flawed game. I mentioned above that the Disney worlds were obvious fillers and didn’t progress the plot in anyway, so I got that out of the way. This does not excuse some other problems though, for example, the new “gimmick” of the game which was of course, the Disney amusement park rides. They were just awful. They felt like cheap, get out of death buttons and were so over powered it was so unrewarding to use them, there were points during the story where you were forced to use them and it really took away from the moment that was being created. Luckily in an update they added a function to turn these off but it should of been there from the beginning, they just felt so out of place in this really serious feeling game and whilst a nice idea just simply didn’t coexist well within the tone of the game.

Square Enix also added a new “selfie” feature which was required to complete one of the side objectives in which you had to photograph “lucky emblems” scattered across the world. It just felt, for lack of a better word, cringey. It was obviously their way of appealing to a modern audience as the world has changed a lot in the fourteen years since Kingdom Hearts II was released, but was just so out of place, to suddenly add a mobile phone into the series as a form of keeping the characters in contact with one another? This also came hand in hand with the “amazing” Instagram-esque loading screens each tailored to the individual character who posted them, hashtags included. It simply wasn’t necessary, however, being loading screens it was excusable and not noticeable unless you really looked at it.

Finally, the overall difficulty of the game was practically non existent. I played on the hardest difficulty at launch and I think I may have only died once during gameplay. This was something that a lot of people complained about and therefore I do feel justified in saying that is a big issue I have with the game. Critical mode came out after launch though and I took back what I said but still, the difficulty was appallingly easy first time round, they added an item called a “Kupo Coin” which allowed you to come back to life if you received a fatal blow during combat. Of course, this was a purchasable item in-game and was therefore optional.

Kingdom Hearts III, whilst flawed definitely brought back that feeling I had when I was a teenager of experiencing Kingdom Hearts II for the first time. It was definitely a magically journey and one I am so glad I waited for. With the current saga over I do hope to see where the next saga goes and hopefully, from how it feels, it continues on the darker path it seems to have set out.

Please do not disappoint us, Nomura.

Harry.