Kingdom Hearts has a special place in my heart. I remember when the first game came out, and it was talked about by a lot of people on the school grounds. I was in junior high when it was released, but I didn't get it until it was a Greatest Hits release at $20. I found it hard at the time and never finished it. When the second game came out, I rented it from GameFly and actually cried at the ending. It was so memorable and engrossing for me as a teen.
Here we are, almost 15 years later, with the third installment in the mainline series. I was insanely excited and didn't follow any previews or reviews for the game leading up to actually getting around to buying this game. I played the first area of Hercules (again?) and got to Toy Box (Toy Story!) and lost interest. Yeah, the game hasn't really evolved all that much. My biggest problem with Kingdom Hearts III is the lack of imaginative level design and the use of mostly modern Pixar movies. The best part about a new Kingdom Hearts game is discovering what the next Disney movie will be that you get to explore. It's like a surprise each time, and I loved that with previous entries. This was the first time I was praying it wasn't another modern Pixar movie.
While Hercules was very cinematic, scripted, and looked great, it's an overused Disney movie in the series. Toy Story was exciting, especially when we were in Andy's room, but we wound up in a generic boring mall? It was such a boring level to get through, and I didn't feel anything like the movie. We then move on to Repunzel. Why? Another issue with this game is playing each movie scene by scene around the second act. We're stuck at a generic forest level here. After this, we get into Monsters Inc., which is actually pretty cool, but it's a generic monster factory. Then it's...FROZEN?! Why Frozen? We even get a literal, scene-by-scene, shot-by-shot rendition of the "Let It Go" song. If I wanted that, I would just watch the movie. A generic snow level awaits us here.
Then we go back to Pirates of the Caribbean, of all movies. I appreciate that the visuals are improved enough to give us realistic versions of this movie and not the cartoony one we got last time, but I didn't care as the original voice cast wasn't present again. And it's based off of the third film for some reason. I liked the fact that you get to sail an open ship and go find crabs to upgrade your ship, but I skipped all of this. The ship steers like a hot-wheeled car, and the generic seaside town and ship battles weren't very interesting. Then we finally arrive at Big Hero 6, which is also pretty cool, but it's a generic large map of San Francisco, and it is incredibly boring. That's it. No more worlds, and you are stuck in the last level for about 10 hours doing boss rushes like every other RPG has done, and this seriously needs to stop to just bloat game time.
Even if you like or dislike these Pixar movies, the fact is that the levels are incredibly boring, and each one plays out the same way. You get through several mini-bosses, fight waves of enemies, collect some stuff, and fight the movie's main antagonist. Every world is a generic feeling with no life from the movie injected into it. The reliance on playing through scenes of these movies isn't what I want in a Kingdom Hearts game. I want a unique experience at each level that makes me feel like I'm part of that world. Not just some character who crashed the movie in the middle of its runtime.
I can go on and on about how much I hated the uninspired level design and repetitive nature of each world, but then there's the Gummi Ships. I hated these in the first game, and I really don't like them here. I like that the Gummi Ship part is a large open map that you can explore freely between worlds, but there's nothing interesting here. You fly around collecting parts, Munni, and you can find shooter waves flying around that have levels and stars attached to them. Upgrading your ship but being able to buy parts to put together blueprints is a staple of the series, but I just don't find it interesting. A new alpha Gummi part can be attached now to help fight in battle. It's essentially a satellite ship flying around yours. There are speed tunnels all over the place, asteroids, and various obstacles, but I just wanted to get to the next world.
Finally, there's the combat itself. I never really cared for Kingdom Hearts' combat. It works, it's fine, and it can be fast-paced, but you fight the same Heartless over and over again, and the game is heavily reliant on keyblade transformations. Actual attacking and magic have taken a back seat. I rarely touched magic, and it felt useless. I was just attacking until I got my three pips and I could transform my keyblade into a more powerful weapon and execute its finishing move. This does the most damage and is a must for bosses, or you won't survive at all. The final act of the game pits you against around a dozen bosses, one after another, and it's a frustrating chore. You can still use Link commands, but they aren't that great this time around, and I felt like they hindered battle more than anything. The goal was to attack and get a few combos in, transform my keyblade, execute attractions that put you on famous Disney park rides that do damage, and just rinse and repeat. Items are useful for sure, and it's important to keep abilities tagged, as adding combos and modifiers to combat really gives you an edge. However, this all gets so repetitive, and you just stop caring before you get to the third world.
Then there's the story, which I haven't even touched on yet. It makes zero sense, even to people who have played the series up until now. My main interest was in the little stories inside each world. I never cared for the overarching Kingdom Hearts story. It's a bloated, overcomplicated mess involving Organization XIII, and Final Fantasy isn't even a part of this story anymore. Xehanort was the X-Blade. Aqua is trapped in a world, I think, where there are multiple versions of everyone. Yeah, I don't know. Go watch a comprehensive timeline explanation on YouTube instead. Sadly, each world is just a retelling of each movie, which I could just go watch if I wanted to. At least the visuals are really good, and everything is bright, colorful, and full of life.
The voice acting is also hit-and-miss, but mostly terrible. Haley Joel Osment as Sora again was a bad choice; he's just not a good voice actor. Outside of some of the mainline Disney characters, the voice acting is just wooden and awkward. Most Disney films don't retrain their original voice actors. Especially in Pirates of the Caribbean…again. What's worse is the writing. The script feels like it was written by a grammar school student. It's just the most basic lines, replies, and banter. It's just enough to get through each scene. There's a lot of nothing being said by most of these characters. Shouting each other's names a lot, and a lot of "You will never stop us!" or "I will defeat you!" over and over again. Yawn.
So, there's a lot I don't like here. The lack of older Disney movies, the complete absceneness of Final Fantasy stuff, and the fact that each movie is just a scene-by-scene replay of the original movie are boring. The levels feel generic, uninspired, and repetitive, and the combat, while flashy, uses an overreliance on keyblade transformations, attraction attacks, and links and magic. Enemies repeat far too often, and the final act is nothing but a frustrating slog of a boss rush. The story is insanely and wildly confusing and unnecessarily complicated, but at least the visuals are a nice treat. If you didn't like previous games in the series, this does nothing that will convince you to like it now.
Side note: I was incredibly disappointed by Utada Hikaru's song with Skrillex on this one. Both Simple and Clean and Passion/Sanctuary are classics and some of Utada's best work. This song was terrible and wasn't a good start to the game for me.