TLDR If you're a diehard fan then buy it, but if you aren't go play KH2 instead. While the game itself is beautiful, it has issues and lacks content in certain areas. As a long time fan of the KH series and as a person who has bought all the games released (and the remakes) since the PS2-era, I can not with a good conscience recommend this game to anyone except the most diehard fans of KH. It could've been so good, but ended up being a very mixed bag. For those of us who are diehard fans, the ending alone is worth the drag that this game sometimes is. I wish I could give it a mixed review, but it will have to be a positive review with a warning. 🤷♂️ Note: If you are willing to mod the game (it's very easy for KH3) then it'll become infinitely better. Twilight town: While Twilight Town is beautiful, it's also vastly smaller compared to the previous iteration in KH2. This is a real shame and I was hoping for more of this world out of all. It is after all, arguably, one of the most important ones story-wise. 100 Acre Woods: This world has never been good in any of the games, ever. Period. Somehow, however, it's even worse this time around. There are zero collectibles, it's all just a bunch of minigames in one small area. I don't know if I should be happy that it's such a small part compared to previous games or offended that they've yet again shrunk a world to a shadow of its former self. The mini games are literally all the same concept. It's very clear that not a lot of effort nor focus went into this world. It was a drag playing it and I only did it in the hopes that I would get an Orichalcum+ for the Ultima weapon. Nope. Don't waste your time here unless you're going for 100%, it's just a filler world for ingredients. The cutscenes: Look... The Kingdom Hearts games have always been heavy on the cutscenes, but this is getting out of hand. You kill a group of enemies and walk through 1 door. Bam, cutscene. You skip that only to go through another door and guess what? Cutscene. Sometimes it's 4-5 cutscenes one after another. Maybe - just maybe - either cut down the content or condense it into only the meaningful parts. Make the characters talk faster. They speak as if they have a learning disability at times. It's frustrating and I found myself skipping more and more cutscenes. Now before you come crying about how KH2 had more cutscenes, you need to take one thing into consideration. While KH2 as a whole had more cutscenes (it had more content as well, by the way), the cutscenes were generally spread out in a far more reasonable way than in KH3 although KH2 also had moments of obscene amounts of cutscenes. In KH3 you can't go more than at most 2 rooms ahead without a cutscene playing. It ruins the pacing. Your controller will be down more than it will be up until you reach the endgame. Something else to consider is that the cutscenes are generally much longer in KH3 than in KH2. That's why the game is such a drag to play. Shorten them or spread them out more like you did in KH2. The length: No second visits to worlds. It's all over very quickly. Beautiful worlds, none of them visited more than once in the story. It's a shame and kind of a waste. You don't really end up giving a shit about anyone in the worlds. The character "development" doesn't hit as hard as it used to. It feels like they rushed through the Disney bullsh1t to tell the story they really wanted to tell. In videogamedunkey's words: "A story about anime characters hating each other". Riku's voice acting: Who the fuck voices Riku? Is he being held at gunpoint? Did they take an innocent civillian hostage? It's so lifeless you'd think they were forcing him to not show emotion because otherwise they would kill his family. Is this man still alive? What did Square Enix do to him? While Riku is the worst offender, he's not the only one. It's not that big of an issue generally, but listening to RIku talk is grating. He always had a bit of a monotone voice, but it's just... Sooooooo much worse in this game. The classic kingdom minigames: The idea was cool, but the execution was poor. It feels like an unpaid intern created these games and the only reason you should ever collect them is if you intend to 100% them. Otherwise don't bother because these minigames are mind-numbingly bad. Remember Mushroom XIII? Yeah, in this game we have "the flantastic seven", which instead of giving you something useful like crafting materials or a crown if you do all of them they.... Give you food ingredients or abilities that aren't really that good nor important. I mean come on, guys. Ingredients? Do you know what you get for beating all the battlegates , which I guess is similar to the extra content in KH2FM? Instead of a badass crown, you get selfie poses ... Seriously? Before anyone says "we'll get something similar in the final mix version" just know that first of all, there will be no more content for KH3. This has been confirmed by the devs themselves. Second of all, do you even know why the original final mix versions existed? It was extra content for people living in Japan . This happens all the time. It's a thing over there. Originally, it was never even meant to reach the western audience. From now on it will always be the same version. No more differences. Nomura himself confirmed this so selfie poses is all everyone gets... Thanks, Square Enix. Conclusion: I'm a big fan of the KH series. I bought the games on PS2, I bought the games on PS4, and now I have bought the entire collection on PC. The gameplay is great in KH3, but sometimes it feels like you are playing a movie (not in the good way like Uncharted 4) with some actual game in between rather than a game with cutscenes. The amount of cutscenes in this game is too much and the extra content is just "eh" at best. It makes it very hard for me to recommend the game unless you're a big fan of Disney stuff (I'm not, not to this degree). I was honestly about to give up on the game in Arendelle. How could you drop the ball so hard, SE?The end game content saves the game somewhat . That's when you get the actual game. Sadly, it's quickly over. Because of this It's going to be a no from me. This game is a beautiful mess with great combat that becomes an absolute drag and slog to go through due to the obscene amounts of cutscenes that in reality no one truly gives a fuck about until in the end when the real story is told. That's not what made the original games fun. It's the gameplay. Yes, the older games had tons of cutscenes as well, but in my opinion it was better balanced and the extra content was far better than what we have here. For anyone other than diehard fans, I don't recommend KH3. Go play KH2 instead. Original review: The playstyle is different from KH2 and especially KH1. Using attractions and formchanges is crucial in critical mode if you want to survive. Anyway, graphics-wise this game is the best one so far. People say it looks generic and that the colors don't "pop", but I think they are affected by nostalgia and therefore can't see it objectively. It's an objective truth that everything from the effects, animations, colors to the world themselves look sublime and far better than the previous games. It doesn't have the same charm, but looks better. Performance wise I get a stable 150-165 FPS at all times at the highest settings. Running RNDA2 GPU 6950 XT, your mileage may vary with RDNA3 GPUs as well as some Nvidia ones as they are known to crash. The worst thing is the constant talking from all the characters. It's like they forgot to add in a timer as they will spam bullsh1t statements all the time. Other than that so far it's great. Will update review once I 100%'ed it.
Read more