Mumblings about Kingdom Hearts III and a parallel
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I beat Kingdom Hearts III maybe a week ago and I've been thinking a ton about how I feel about the game. I've been coming to a conclusion and I'm fairly sure I can't be the first or only person to think this but, Kingdom Hearts II is like the Smash Brothers Melee of Kingdom Hearts games, while Kingdom Hearts 3 seems to be like a brawl or Smash 4 of Kingdom Hearts and you may be able to argue that for other KH games as-well. This parallel is almost wholly where my problems arise with Kingdom Hearts III. KHIII makes me feel like I have less control of Sora despite seeming to move more fluid and look smoother. I feel like this is a strange decision to make, why would they decide to choose controls that make the player feel less in control, the controls are our medium to interact with the game if there bad its greatly effects the experience. there must be a reason that the new feel is chosen over KHII tight controls.
Now This begs the question does the common player find the new controls more enjoyable? I've heard some people say they don't like Melee controls, despite often being stated as the best controlling smash, but I haven't heard much about KH. I'm no KH speed runner but I'm defiantly a step up from casual and I find KHII to be the best feeling. I have some other qualms with the game but this seems to be my biggest problem. Id like to hear what other people who aren't into the technical aspect think, I can listen to speedrunners talk about it all I want but sitting in a echo chamber doesn't do anything.
And to close up this I'd like to say I dont hate KHIII in-fact I'm sad that Ive already done most of the things the game has to offer and that its over already. Thank you for reading through my off the cuff ramblings about this game I've thought about it enough I would consider writing a essay about it but I'd have to collect my thoughts a lot better for that.
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@FroMan36 I think there's a lot of merit in critiquing the combat, and in many ways the KH2 combat is more technical; however, I do think Osaka team have come pretty far since Birth By Sleep.
Keyblade transformations, for instance, offer a lot of combo variety that are probably more interesting than drives because or how they can be switched on the fly, while storing your place in that combo. Also a lot of the boss fights feel better, especially the humanoid fights which properly stagger now. I feel as though Kingdom Hearts 2 isn't AS in-depth as people claim. There were bad bosses, bad summons, bad boss fights and enemies. Kingdom Hearts 3 similarly suffers, but I think we are back up to a good standard.
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I don't really think you have any less control over Sora than you did in II. All of the Kingdom Hearts games since II kind of have the same problem for me, and that is that the battle systems are very airy and reliant on endless combo strings. I'm currently playing through 1.5 ReMix at the moment and honestly I really miss I's more grounded gameplay sometimes.
I thought I was going to hate Attraction Flow and Form Changes, as they felt too frequent and disruptive at first, but that was only because of the Kingdom Key. Once you get new Keyblades they really do offer a lot of variety and options with which to approach fights, especially since you can switch Keyblades mid-battle now. You can swap from a close-range to a long-range style pretty smoothly. It's a pretty nice happy medium between II and BBS in my opinion, which both have arguably the best gameplay in the series.
My main complaint with III's gameplay has to be the dumbing down of magic. Thunder remains as good as ever for crowd control, but I really loved Magnet magic in II and Birth By Sleep, so it's kind of disappointing that III pretty much only gives you offensive spells besides Cure. It makes the gameplay feel all the more mindless, which I know is what Kingdom Hearts is, but stuff like Magnet and Reflect at least allowed you to be less of a barbarian.
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@KingK "Also a lot of the boss fights feel better especially the Humanoid fights"
This statement intrigues me.
SPOILERS ON KHIII AND II
My gut reaction is to say that I disagree with humanoid fights being better than II, I would say that human fights example the Data Org and Lingering Will are much better than KHIII keyblade graveyards various human fights and Dark Inferno. but one of the things that really set my mind off about your statement was "which properly stagger now." My mind immediately goes too the revenge value system in place in KHII. Now feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but one of the things I interpret that statement to mean is humanoid enemy's can "randomly" break out of your combos and retaliate, now being technically informed on the games mechanics we would know that we can work around the revenge value and prevent ourselves from getting that retaliation and/or be able to react accordingly. But what your statement made me question is is the revenge value a mute point? The game does nothing to tell you of its existence, from a casual play through's perspective bosses just get to hit you when they feel like it. I never felt that way about KHIII. So my question is, Is that good game design or bad? I think its good but I've found that information externally. Now thinking about it I don't know if I noticed any system in play in KHIII. Now for comparison Dark Inferno does have a good react and punish system that would be very interesting to see what they do with in the DLC that inevitably is going to happen.
END OF SPOILERS
I do have to agree that KHIII is my favorite combat system of the "Osaka" games and even though I went on a technical tirade there I have to agree that KHII is not THAT complicated. But its super interesting to hear criticism against Kingdom Hearts II. I kind of alluded in my first post I've consumed a ton of wow KHII is so great content that I have not heard a ton of negatives.
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I could write a short novel about KH3 and how it stacks up to the other games in the series. If we're just talking combat though, there are arguably more negatives than positives (like the rest of the game). Spoilers incoming.
From the beginning of the game, the player is handed way too much. Attractions, forms, and multiple abilities? I can understand the abilities, but not needing to unlock forms or attractions is a bit much, especially when attractions are so overpowered. I don't even think those stupid things should be in the game, but that's just my opinion. The combat difficulty is watered down so, so much. I was facerolling my way through the game using Aero/Thunder combos, forms and their finishers, and attractions if I pressed triangle by accident. When I got to the new organization, I thought "Damn, 3v1? This is gonna be rough. Finally a good challenge." Nope, Luxord had very few health bars and Larxene and Marluxia were pitiful compared to what they were in KH2FM. Same goes for every other enemy in that stage of the game. I didn't even have to fight Saix because Roxas obliterated him while I just watched in amused bewilderment. Then the big showdown at Scala ad Caelum was a big letdown. Fighting Xehanort's other selves before him was one of the "harder" fights due to the sheer number of them. i was about level 40 the first time I went into the last fight, and I pretty much tanked and spanked Xehanort the whole time. It wasn't even funny. The most disappointing thing though was the secret "boss" Dark Inferno. Before I fought him, I pretty much 100 percented the game aside from beating him because I thought I was gonna get destroyed like with Terra in KH2FM. I was level 99, had the ultima keyblade, and the best equipment ready to go. It was so easy I thought something was wrong with the game. I said out loud "that's it?" I couldn't believe it. So I tried it again and took my time with the fight to see what was going on. Turns out that I unknowingly skipped his second phase the first fight because I obliterated his health so quickly and easily. That convinced me something went wrong in the development of the game. Were they disconnected from their audience? Did they try to dumb the game down so it could be more accessible? We might never know.
If we want to talk combat mechanics specifically and how combat feels, then yeah it feels great. It's a good improvement over 0.2 and the previous titles. It's not as "tight" as KH2, but I don't think the development team wanted "tight" for whatever reason. Or perhaps it was impossible. By that, I mean the combat is a little floaty similar to 0.2. It takes more time to change up what you're doing than in KH2. I'm not entirely sure why someone would think floaty is a good idea other than maybe the flashiness of it. Yeah, it feels a little satisfying to see Sora fly around everywhere chasing heartless through the sky each time you hit the attack button, but flashy animations are not compatible with tightness. The magic is a great example of this. The magic looks great, feels great, and does probably too much damage in KH3. But there's no depth in all the flashiness. KH2 had depth in its mechanics. KH3 does not. It has almost no strategy besides choosing which weapon or type of magic is easier to wipe out the enemy. I have to give credit where it's due, and Flowmotion in KH3 feels fantastic and doesn't break the game like it does in 3D. I never really used it for combat unless I needed out of a situation quickly for some reason, the most prominent example in my head being the flan in Monstropolis. I also have to admit I found the gameplay fun. It wasn't tight, difficult, or challenging. But it was flashy and satisfying by having an overpowered character fly/bounce around and wreck everything. I got 100% in the game without getting too sick of it, after all.
This also means there's little replay value for me. Now that I've got 100% in the game, I'll probably never have a reason to open the game back up. I might consider it if they added Critical mode (why this doesn't exist already is beyond me) or if they added more optional (and difficult) bosses. Seriously, one secret boss? That's just ridiculous. This game has really let me down after the decade+ of waiting and hype. Keep in mind my rant only covers combat; there are more things I found wrong with the game (and a few things the game did very well). I'd like to hear the opinions of others regarding what I said and if they have something else to add/argue.
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@Ventus To touch on your Dark Inferno experience. I think Dark Inferno is actually a fun boss but I fought him 40 levels lower than you and most likely less prepared. The boss has a functioning react and punish game and after I beat him I did see videos and think "huh I could have done that too". Now I think we need to be careful in comparing Dark Inferno to KHII Super Bosses, take into consideration that the really fun bosses (Data Org, Lingering Will) are from Final Mix so Dark Inferno would be compared to vanilla KHII Sephiroth where then I'd have to say they may be equal difficulty.
You talk about the 3 v1 fights towards the end of the game. Now this might be just a personal point but I don't like when a game puts you in mob humanoid fights. For example the last fight before you go to the final area (name escapes me now) Sora Mikey Riku vs. Xehanort's. Xehanort's heartless has an attack where he surrounds himself in light and walks twords you. now since I'm focusing on killing one of the other dudes he can just walk behind me and hit me and disrupt me fighting a different Xehanort. Maybe I have bad spacial awareness but I don't know how I feel about that being a possibility.
SPOILERS
I had multiple "That's it?" moments my first biggest one is they build up Sora going to help Riku and Mikey save Aqua from the Darkness. Now I'm pretty invested in this Aqua B plot since Aquas been in the Darkness since I was a kid. I was ready to enter the darkness and explore have a huge dramatic scene save her escape et cetera. But no, we go to Destiny Island Find Eraqus's keyblade and warp right to it. Well that's no fun.
SPOILERS END
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@FroMan36 Oh yeah I agree with the Aqua bit. She's one of my favorites and the story of how we got her back was almost insulting, as was a lot of other story elements.
With Dark Inferno, I still can't see it even being compared to Sephiroth from KH2. Even at max level and geared out, Sephiroth still took a few minutes and you had to properly block or use mechanics or your HP would get wiped. I literally spammed Dark Inferno with everything I had without regard for my safety and wiped him up. I didn't heal a single time in either fights I had with him and he didn't get me below 75% health despite hitting me multiple times. The only difficult thing about the game was some of the gummi ship bosses.
I thought the group fights at the end were supposed to be slightly unfair in that you had to deal with these bosses from the other games in the series all at once while hoping the ally AI was good enough to help. Yeah it would've been rough had they been as hard as their old versions, but this is Kingdom Hearts 3, the culmination of almost two decades of games. I wanted unfair and brutal gameplay in the climax of what was supposed to be one of the biggest hype games this decade. I wanted the 3 Xehanort's to tear me a new one. Kids and more casual gamers wouldn't have liked that, sure. But that's why there's supposed to be difficulty settings. But there's no critical mode and proud was way too easy. For Square to drop the ball on this is a massive disappointment.
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@Ventus I guess I have to agree that Sephiroth Is more complex than Dark Inferno, I may be giving it a little extra credit as I really wanted this game to be phenomenal. I don't have a KHII save before I killed Sephiroth so I can't as easily fight him for reference like I can the Data Orgs and Terra.
Just some food for thought it seems unanimously agreed that KHIII proud mode was easier than previous Proud Modes, but from what I remember KHII proud mode and critical mode the only change is half health proud and critical enemy did same damage. say DLC comes out and throws Critical in would half health really be a satisfactory change?
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@FroMan36 If you put it that way, I suppose critical would not be satisfactory. However, I'd like to see a slight mix of different critical modes from the other games. It would be much better if: enemies did double damage and had double health, we had half health and did half damage (one blizzaga is like half an enemy health bar), and EXP gained is 75% less than normal (took me 25 minutes to go from 60 to 99). If a critical mode had those conditions, I would probably be more happy with the game. I would need to test it to be sure though.
Trust me, I desperately wanted this game to be fantastic, so I get where you're coming from. But after completing it and looking back, most of it was pretty bad given the amount of time they had to work on it.
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From someone that's put a lot of time into Kingdom Hearts 2 recently, and just finished my 2nd playthrough of KH3 on Proud Mode, I think there are very enjoyable differences to both games. The comparison to Smash Bros and its evolution as a series makes sense, especially in the case that I think both games do a lot of the same things (as well as completely different things) very well, but have flaws that vary in severity depending on who you ask.
In terms of difficulty, it's clear that KH3 is a step down from KH2 in terms of the challenge it wants to offer to the player, both in how punishing enemies are overall and how many tools the game gives you for free just based on the design of its combat. This isn't to say the game isn't enjoyable, or even less engaging. KH3 just feels a little too generous with things like Attraction attacks and Keyblade Transformations that are incredibly fun and useful tools, but appear a bit too often and have a bit too much power to feel balanced.
In terms of hand-holding, however, I think KH3 is a step above its predecessors, in the sense that they aren't afraid to give you a larger set of tools from the start. An aspect of Kingdom Hearts that's always frustrated me in the previous games is how reluctant the games are to introducing concepts outside of "attack by pressing X." It's no surprise that the common misconception of this series is that you "mash X to win" when the games offer far more depth and variety than that. The problem is that these earlier games condition players to rely on nothing but basic combos for the first few hours of the game before even giving you basic spells like Fire or Blizzard. By the time they get those tools, they don't want to bother with them because they've grown accustomed to gluing their thumbs to the X button to get the job done. I think the first game is able to get away with this since 2002 was still sparse on 3D action games of its kind and navigating that space was already a large enough task, meaning an intro like that was more necessary. I don't feel that KH2 had that same excuse though.
KH3 is great in this respect because they not only start you off with magic immediately, but give you TWO different spells instead of just one, as a means of learning that the spells have very different utilities and properties to just swinging your keyblade. I really appreciate that quality of KH3, as well as its larger focus on exploration, its use of verticality in its level design, and its sense of progression by allowing you to feel out your favorite Keyblade and make that option viable throughout the experience instead of just picking the one with the better stats.
That got a little long-winded, my bad!
tl;dr KH3, while certainly not as snappy with its combat as KH2, I would argue offers MORE control by allowing you to fine-tune your equipment to suit the benefits or combos you prefer, at the cost of a generally more approachable difficulty. If the lengthier flashy animations are bogging down your experience, there's also options to turn those things off and make them feel more instantaneous if that's more your style.
But yes, the game is a bit too easy. If they were to patch in a Critical Mode update of sometime down the line, you better believe I'd be all over that.
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