"Don't assume your dreams are just fantasy. If you can imagine a world, believe in it...and dive in."
Kingdom Hearts 3 finally arrived, and, in all honesty, it's the most fun I've had with the game since Kingdom Hearts 1 came out in 2002. Let me explain why. Since the second game there have been a total of five other games, all with variations on the game play, and that even goes back to two. In the second game there were form changes. In BbS there were "transformations" that occurred when fighting enemies and in DDD there was the flow motion. With so many things added to the game, they all had to find a way into the third one in a way that made sense, or else fans, like myself, would be disappointed. Not to mention they had to find a way to incorporate the extended lore from 5 different games. Suffice to say, they pulled, not only the game play off, but the story as well. While there are areas of the game's story that could have improved over all, I think, they managed to pull of a marvelous feat. The game play and the story were all great! This is what a squeal should be.
Okay, so now that I've finished geeking out, lets get into the nitty gritty of what makes this game work. I guess we'll start with characters. I'm not going to go over Every. Single. Person, that shows up in the game because then we'd have fifty pages of just characters and that would be boring. I'll go over the three(ish) main characters, and then the main villains. That said, here goes.
You guys are the best
Sora: We start this game off, quite literally, where DDD ended. (Well technically where 0.2 a Fragmentary passage ended, but whatever). Riku goes off with Mickey to the realm of Darkness to try and find Aqua. Sora, played once more by Haley Joel Osment, having failed his mark of mastery exam, has to "find the power of waking" in order to help Riku and Mickey. That lack of skill doesn't stop him from offering his services though. Despite his desire to help his friends though, everyone is adamant that he learn this power (which technically, I don't think he ever does 'officially' all though he does end up doing it.) Another thing I'd like to point out is that there are moments in the game where Donald and Goofy tease Sora about not being able to read to which he replies "that's not relevant". I just think it's hilarious that he didn't even try to deny it. At any rate, Sore has to travel to some old, but mostly new worlds, and, of course makes new friends all the while. Oh, and before I forget Donald and Goofy are played by Tony Anselmo and Bill Farmer, respectively, and as always, they do fantastic.
Riku, David Galligher reprises his roll as Riku. He and Mickey (Bret Iwan) are off in the realm of Darkness where you get to play as him once. After that the two of them have to leave where they spend much of the rest of their time both in Yen Sid's Tower and in Radiant Garden, (sadly not a returning world in the game at least not for Sora). At any rate, they head back into the realm of darkness, and the next time they do, Sora finds his way inside to help. Then they go off to the final world. Sadly, there's not a lot to say here. While they call Sora a lot through out the game, it's just to relay information. Which is good, I'm glad we got to see them, but with Riku such a predominant character in many of the other games I was hoping for a bit more with him.
Kairi who is no longer played by Hayden Penettiere, likely do to the fact that she may still be a fugitive in Japan, is now played by Alyson Stoner, who does an okay job, but, honestly I miss Hayden. Oh well, at least I still have Willa Holland. She and Axel (Quintin Flynn) are off in hiding training with Merlin to be full fledged keyblade wielders. They have one or two scenes together before they turn up and with Sora and the gang at the end battle, where Kairi, once again becomes the DiD (if you don't know what that is go watch the original Hercules movie by Disney). This time though, Sora doesn't save her and she ends up dead, well, maybe, it's really unclear actually. I know a lot of people were dissapointed, myself included, that she didn't have more of a prominant role with all the hype, and with her having a keyblade and all, but Kairi's never been anything more than that, so I can't say I was surprised.
Aqua Yay for Willa Holland! She is probably one of my top three favorite characters in the game. With all that she's been through, I feel like she has the best story over all. Our first meeting with her we see she and Ansem the Wise (Corey Burton) and some other guy who shows up knocks her into the ocean depths thereby sending her deeper into darkness. We don't see her again until Sora shows up and helps Riku defeat her. Beating her, she wakes up to the light, thanks in no small part to Sora, and takes them to the land of Departure/ Castle Oblivion where we Sora kinda sorta discovers the power of waking because Ven (Jesse McCartney) wakes up. Before that, we get to play as Aqua in her fight against Venitus (Haley Joel Osment), so that's cool. Oh, yeah, and Terra (Jason Dohring) shows up in the final world somehow breaking free from Xehanort. Terra's voice doesn't bother me as much as it did in 0.2, maybe because he has fewer lines, i don't know.
Final Fantasy characters are gone . . .ish from the world of Kingdom Hearts, that is with the exception of moogles who may likely vanish now with the appearance of Chirithy, but maybe not, we'll see. I say "gone" with a grain of salt because while there are no official "Final Fantasy" characters the is a commercial upon entering the toy story world for "Verum Rex" which looks eerily identical to the original Versus XIII trailers, don't believe me? see for your self:
Final Fantasy Versus XIII
Verum Rex
After the commercial and the full on product placement for "Verum Rex" in that level, you see nothing of them again, that is, until the secret movie where you see all kinds of crazy shit happening, including the main Yazora who acts as the main character of the "Verum Rex" game. I don't know where Nomura is going with this trippy reveal, but what I do know is . . . I kinda want to play Verum Rex now . . .
Organization uh, not thirteen? So not everyone in organization 13 is so bad apparently. You've got Axel (Lea) who turns good. As does Zexion (Ienzo Vincent Corazza) as well as Xaldin (Dilan) and Lexeus (whatever his real name is). They are helping out in Radiant Garden. The latter two without voice actors. Oh, and Demynx (Ryan ODonohue) who is also good now. Then you've got Roxas who gets resurrected as well as Xion. Even Siax turns over a new leaf and Luxord (Robin Atkins Downs) while he starts out as a villain, turns out not to be so bad after all, even giving Sora some kind of card that does . . . something . . .??????
Protect yourself from mayhem like me
Xehanort, Rutgar Huer, sounds weird. At one point he sounds as if he's got a bit of a spanish accent, and then he doesn't, and then he does again. I just didn't like the choice for this character. It's hard to fill Lenoard Nemoy's shoes though. I think it would have been funny if they'd used William Shatner, but maybe that would have been too strange. Fortunately he doesn't have that many lines to care about it too much. He does kill Kiari though "you bastard!" At the end of the game he meets Mark Hamill i mean Eriquis who shows him the evil of his ways and the two of them walk away together into the sunset.
Marluxia, Keith Ferguson, is still kind of a douch. We first see him first in the Kingdom of Corona and learn that he is after the new princesses of light, since the old ones (Cinderella, Snow White, Auroa, Jasmine, Belle, and . . . Alice) are, too old now. We see him again some time later in the game talking to Siax and then we beat his ass at the end. I think it's the same
actor from Chain of Memories. He does a great job, not much to say about him sadly.
Shanelle Workman Gray, plays
Venitus voiced by Sora, is another story. We first see him in the Monster's inc world where Sora, for the first time, fights Unversed. He appears again in the world of Departure where we fight him as Aqua, and then we fight him again as Sora. When Sora sees his face his reaction is priceless. I love that they managed to get all of these characters in the game some how. They even managed to get Dark Riku from Chain of Memories who turns good some how. it's just great!
Xigbar is probably the most interesting character. We see him several times through out the story, often just to mess with Sora, but also with the organization. At the end of the game, when you fight him, he doesn't die or fade, but laughs, letting himself fall off a cliff. At the end, it is spoiled that he is acutally a character from the Union Cross mobile game. (I want to pause here to say something. It is important to play all the games in Kingdom Hearts [except for coded] because without having played/ watched all of the games or movies you would be utterly lost. Granted the game does allow you to access Jimmeny's journal files to get some background, but it's not enough. Yo really need to watch and play all the games before you start this, or the story will make ZERO sense. Unfortunately, that can put a lot of people off. I'm just glad I followed the story this time otherwise I'd take issue with alot of this story) at any rate, Xigbar, James Patrick Stuart, turns out to be one of the Lost Masters from Union Cross (which by the way, you should just you tube it. No offense to the Union Cross game but you've got to wade through a lot of shit plot before you get to the good stuff.)
Last and least important we have Maleficent and Pete Susanne Blakeslee and Jim Cummings respectively. They show up once in the first world you visit, Hercules and then at the end, when Xigbar reveals himself to the Lost Masters. Fortunately, there, they don't really say any thing. Honestly, I was worried we were going to get a lot of non sense when we first saw them, but I'm glad they took a back seat. I feel like every time Pete shows up, you know not to take the game too seriously. Maleficent just feels like a staple now, she's always going to be there even when the plot doesn't really require her.
The rest of the Disney Cast some characters reprise their rolls while others are out right replaced. That being said, most of them do a good job. I honestly couldn't tell much of a difference between the voice actors from the game and from the movie. Maybe if I watched and played side by side.
Recalculating!
Now that we've got the characters down, let's move on to the levels. So the game starts out much the same way as Kingdom Hearts 1 did where Sora is dreaming in limbo and you chose your play preference, eg mage, warrior, defender. From there you are taken to Yen Sid's tower where Sora is told he must gain the power of waking, but in order to do that, he has to change clothes first.
It's after that, when we arrive at our true first level Thebes/ Olympus
The game starts off on fire, literally, the whole town is blazing. It's up to Sora and his pals to put out the fires and stop the heartless causing it. There are a bunch of towns people you can either choose to save or you can decide to let them all burn, your call, but once your done, you meet Hercules, and he tells you that My Olympus needs help, so off we go to climb the mountain. About half way up we Meet Hades having an exchange of words with Maleficent and Pete. Neither of them stay long, and we continue up the mountain to have our first titan fight with our good ol' friend the rock titan. It's different this time in that, he's throwing crap at us until we can reach him, at which point we beat him into a pile of pebbles. From there we actually get to see the realm of the gods. It's once we reach the tippy top that we get to fight all the other titans from the movie, Lava, Tornado, and our good friend Ice.
From here you're free you are given a small tutorial on navigating through gummi space. Normally I wouldn't bring it up, as flying the gummi ship is pretty boring, but here they did something different that I think, is really fun. Flying through gummi space is similar to playing No Man's Sky, I'll be it an easier version. You still get into fights, but you have to initiate them, most of the time. There's also constellations that you can try and find as well as hidden treasure spheres. Its really fun to just fly around and explore, at least, it was to me, but I'm a sucker for games like that.
So, from here you get to chose where you want to go. The next the game wants you to go to is the Kingdom of Corona. It's here where we meet Repunzel and Flynn Ryder. He's just taken her out of the tower and we (Goofy, Donald and Sora, see what I did there Square, I changed the order, you should try it some time,) act as her guardians as she makes her way to the lights to fullful her birthday wish. I didn't think I was going to like the new lack of classic worlds in the Kingdom Hearts games, but I have to say I was pleasently surprised. Not only was the world fun, it was fun having Rapunzel in the party, that is until the game forcebly rips her away from you, but before that, Marluxia shows up and says some words about darkness, and princesses, and stealing hearts, Sora kills him . . . well not quite yet. . . At any rate, the story ends with Sora fighting a Heartless version of Rapunzel's tower. God the fighting in this game is fun. I loved fighting every enemy and every boss. The game was a bit easy (I played on proud) but, at least for me, that's very refreshing. I don't need Darksouls difficulty in every fucking game. Honestly, if all games were like Darksouls, I'd probably quit gaming.
The next world you visit is Twilight Town. It's a much smaller version of the world being only the tram square (with all the shops) the sewer, the forest, and outside the mansion. It's a little disappointing until you realize that the other worlds in the game are massive and more than make up for Twilight Towns lack of size. The story here is simple: Help Ratatouille make food. It's fun for a while but the novelty wears off quick. Fortunately, Merlin shows up (because apparently he's board with training Axel/ Lea and Kairi) and forces us to go and see Pooh Bear. Fortunately, there's only one place to visit, and its only for a short time. Oh, and we do go into the mansion, via cut scene, to view the computer. Later, Hayner, Pence and Olette, find Ansem the Wise here and he helps them retrieve his data from the computer.
And now a note from our sponsor
Upon Entering "The Toy Box" we are shown a game trailer that has nothing to do with Kingdom Hearts . . . yet. Verum Rex is a game within the game, so to speak, and in the toy box world, it's all over the place. I said before and I'll say it again, these characters are what I imagine Noctis would look like had he been in Kingdom Hearts. It's clear that Nomura has some bitter feelings about being taken off Versus XIII.
With that out of the way, now we get back to story. Andy is missing, along with some of the other toys, and we have to travel to Galaxy Toys to find them. That's it. Some one from the organization does show up if memory serves, though I can't remember who exactly. At any rate we finally find the rest of the toys and end up fighting a giant plane heartless. Then we are suddenly transported into the Verum Rex game where we have to fight mecha suits whilst inside another mecha suit. You can try without the suit but, yeah, good luck with that. At the end of the level the soldiers call, telling us that Andy has returned.
Periodically, between levels Sora converses with Riku and Mickey. The two of them start out in the world of Darkness looking for Aqua, but while they're there, get into a (playable) fight with a tornado of shadow Heartless, and Riku's keyblade breaks. He and Mickey have to leave so they can recoup orate. They end up in Hollow Bastion. From there, Sora hears from not only Riku but from Zexion as well, who is a good guy now along with Xaldin and Lexaus. They talk to Sora from the lab (where we got to the Space Paranoids in KH2) We learn most of are main plot from them, and from what they've uncovered. I can't remember it all, there's so much plot in this game, so much.
I do want to commend the game for being able to get through so much of it. I honestly didn't think they'd be able to cover every thing that we learned from every game, but they did, and that's quite a feat. It really is amazing how much happened. I'd also like to give one little gripe about the game. I wanted to play as Riku more, maybe in Hollow Bastion, or in the Dark World, but we only get that one time to play as him which is unfortunate.
Now onto the next world, Arendelle. With the exception of having to listen to "Let it Go" for the millionth time the world was incredibly fun to play in, which I didn't think it would be. I'd been hoping for some older worlds, like Jungle Book, or something, but alas, it was passed over again. Maybe in Kingdom Hearts Insert Incredibly Long and Needlessly Complicated Title Here. The best part about Arendelle is that it's really funny. Sora, GOOFY, and Donald are trying to get up to the ice castle after seeing Elsa run away, but every time the do, something, or some one, brings them back down the mountain, forcing them to find their way up again. It's super funny. Before all that though we meet up with Larxene who tells us that the Organization wants both princesses from this world. It's only after that, and several trips up and down the mountain (and through an ice maze courtesy of Larxine) later, that we meet up with Marshmallow (the abominable snowman from the movie and one of the many reasons for our trek back up the mountain) who is trying to save Elsa. Sora and him, in a surprise twist, team up, and stop the evil prince from killing Elsa's sister. He gets so mad at his failure that he turns into a Heartless, who Sora and Marshmallow make short work of, oh and Donald and Goofy help too.
Monster's Inc is next. This world is unique because Sora Meets the Unversed for the very first time, as well as Venitus. The story is pretty much the plot of the movie, only it takes place after the movie does, meaning Mike and Sully are President and Vice President of the company. Sully, at some point before Sora and the gang arrived, went through Boo's door and brought her to the office for a visit. Unfortunately, there is't much to say about the world. There is another giant boss fight at the end, which was fun. What I really liked about this level was that Sora got to fight the Unversed. I really didn't think I'd see them again. It was a bit of a surprise for me, but seeing as how Venitus was there, I guess it shouldn't have been.
The Caribbean. I both love and loathe this level. On the one hand, we get a boat and can sail all over the place, have fights all along the water, and explore the vast islands scattered all around us. On the other hand, there are required moments in the game that are very frustrating. One is racing against Luxord. At one point I beat him, but the game wouldn't let me through the "barrier" telling me to "head for the right spot" or some vague bullshit that just pissed me off. I'm on a fucking boat and I won, just let me through goddammit! Needles to say that took longer than it should have. The next spot was a required boat fight that I kept loosing to. There were so many friggin' boats that the just destroyed me. I amended it by leveling up my ship but I wasn't happy about it. It was late at the time and I just wanted to stop, and save, but I couldn't because the game was going from cut scene to game play, with no save spots in between. I guess that's what I get for choosing proud mode. As for story, I don't' really remember. Luxord is here for the black box, which he thinks Davy Jones has, turns out it's just Jones's heart in a box. The boss is fighting Jones's ship, which was pretty tough. I may have left something out, but whatever.
San Francokyo Is kind of a strange world. Sora finds the Big Hero 6 team, helps them out, and then travels around the city with them, both in day and in night. The only thing that bothers me are the "barrier" put up by Hiro. I keep running into it and he's all "don't go near the barrier" and I'm like "bitch, don't tell me what to do. I do what I want!" As for story I'll do my best. Replica Riku (from chain of memories) isn't as dead as we thought. He's the instigator of what's happening, but he's not really a bad guy, he just wanted to torment Sora because he thought it was fun... or something. I got nothing.
World of Darkness and the Land of Departure: Despite being told numerous times throughout the game not to enter the World of Darkness, Sora does it anyway, and he dies. Okay that last part's not true. He fights Aqua, with Riku's help, and frees her from the darkness. She then takes him to the Land of Departure as a reward. It's here where we see Venitus again, and fight him as Aqua. Before she can deliver the final blow Sora kind of sort of wakes Ventus up. I think it may just have been the fact that he was in the vicinity of Ventus, and Ven's heart was freed from Sora's, the game's not clear on that. What is clear is that Ven wakes up and helps stave off Venitus.
The Badlands Keyblade Grave Yard. It's here where the game starts to shine again.
Almost as soon as Sora arrives here, all of his friends, minus Riku, are defeated. Sora cries, saying he can't fight without his friends, and Riku is like, "Get the fuck up and help me dude." Sora and Riku fight only to fail. Now it's Sora alone. He travels through a portal left open by the Heartless who defeated all his friends, and, teleporting to each of the aforementioned worlds, has to fight the boss in order to wake his friends up.
Someone on YouTube mentioned that, this would have actually been a better place to start the story, with Sora having to save his friends by traveling to each world, and having to gather his friends, and then save them with the power of waking. Either way, he saves everyone, and then they defeat the Heartless together. Also Ephemer from Kingdom Hearts X comes to help, as well as everyone who's played the game . . . I guess. Then where's my name damn it!
Anyway, after that, Sora dies.
That's not even a joke. He dies, ending up in the place Where Hearts Return. There is a scene there, that's optional I think, where Sora talks to a ball of light. There are several balls of light that he talks to actually, but only one that's actually voice acted. From there, Sora form there Sora finds the pieces of his heart that are scattered all around. You only have to collect something like 50 or 100, but I stayed until I collected them all, you know, just cause. I believe the total is something like 237.
Once that's done, Everyone meets back in the badlands, where all the Xehanorts have gathered. I maze pops up out of nowhere and Goofy, Donald and Sora are separated from their friends. As you go from place to place there are nice big open arenas where Sora, along side all his friends, hast to fight all of organization 13, or at least those that are left.
All of them die. Luxord gives Sora a wild card before he does. As for what it's for? No one knows as of yet. After defeating Xigbar, he kind a runs away, or at least deliberately falls off the wall. Siax, once defeated, doesn't die, but does have a change of heart.
Then it's off to fight Xemnas, Ansem, and Xehenort. Sora defeats the first two, but Xehenort wins stealing Kiari and killing her. Sora hulks out and goes after him.
He finds himself in a place only known as the Final World which has an eerie likeness to Daybreak Town from Kingdom Hearts X. Sora finds and defeats Xehenort. Though like in true RPG fashion he refuses to die. That is until Mark Hamill shows up (aka Eriquis) and says something like "Dude, the show's over," and the two of them hold hands as they head off into the sunset.
Then we see them as little kids, as we did at the beginning of the game, and Eriquis says, "hey lets play a new game," and resets the chess board.
We then see everyone gathering on Destiny islands. Even Kiari (or so the game would have us believe, it's really unclear) shows up, and it looks as though she's sitting next to Sora until he fades away.
In the next second we are back in the Keyblade Graveyard where it's revealed that Xigbar is Luxu, who was tasked by the Master of Masters (See Kingdom Hearts X Black Cover) to take the black box away. He summons the master's from Kingdom Hearts X who apparently are still alive. That's when we see Maleficent and Pete again, watching from a distance.
And here's where things get even stranger. Sora Wakes up in Shabuya (From The World Ends With You) or at least in a version of it. At the same time, Riku wakes up in a town that looks almost identical to Crown City from Final Fantasy XV/ Versus XIII. What's even MORE strange is that the main character from Verum Rex shows up, just chillin' on top of a building like you do. The strangest thing that happens, is we see a normal round moon, and a hooded figure hold up his hands forming a heart shape around the moon. It's assumed that he is the Master of Masters, but what he's doing there, and where he is in relation to Riku and Sora is totally confusing and exciting all at the same time.
I'm a pretty girl out jogging
Yeah, so story took up way more space then I wanted. But anyway, now it's onto the game play, and after all, isn't that what's most important?
To put it simply, it's great fun. They managed to take all the great features of the spin off games, and from past games, and bring them all back. You like Sora's "Special" moves from Kingdom Hearts 1, they're in there, I'll be it different, but still there. You like Sora's Drive forms in 2, well, they're there too, and so are the form changes from BBS as well. Speaking of BBS did you like the Focus Meter, because that's back. How about the completely customizable "Decks" in BBS and DDD, well, they're back. And don't forget flow motion, that plays a huge roll in many of the levels.
There really wasn't a single thing about the game play that I didn't like. Everything was right there, easily accessible, and easily customized. That's not to say the game was without faults though. With the introduction of Attractions in this game (which are essentially Disney Rides) it cane be really hard to chose the form you want. For example:
A form you haven't tried yet shows up.
You have 30 seconds to use it.
You hit triangle, but Sora does an attack with goofy instead.
You hit triangle again, but Sora does an Attraction attack instead
you cancel
Time limit expired, try again next time.
That happened to me a lot in the game. There is a way around it, or rather, to extend the time limit so you get to try everything, but when you have 5 attacks stacked up, waiting to be used or lost, it can be a bit annoying. Not to the point where you want to quit, but just so.
Keyblades in this game are uniquely different as well. This time, you can level them up. With each new level, you gain stronger attacks, magic, and even some new/ expanded form changes, and each weapon is different. I stuck with the kingdom key the whole time, using other keyblades as needed.
I don't really know what else to say about the game play with out repeating myself. It's just hella fun. Probably the most fun I've had with a Kingdom Hearts game since Kingdom Hearts 1, and that's saying something.
Are You in Good Hands
The last thing to talk about is the music. The theme for this new game is meh. I know a lot of people love it, and that's great, Utada Hikaru is a great singer, but, I don't know, I've just never thought that her songs fit Kingdom Hearts. That, or maybe it's the fact that I know the song will be featured in the next 10 spin off games, and I'm just anticipating being sick of it already. Whatever, if you like it, then great. As for the in level music, it's wonderful. I don't really have much to say about it though. It's nice hearing the old Colosseum music from KH1 and the music in each level, and on the gummi map is great. I didn't need to hear "Let it Fucking Go" again but, whatever, I pretty much knew that was going to happen when they announced that world.
All in all, this game is SO good. It's everything I wanted in the next installment of Kingdom Hearts. As much as I love the series though, I have to wonder how much longer it can go on. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of story left to tell, but I don't want it to start feeling stale. My hope is that Nomura has an End Game. So many of my beloved series *cough* Final Fantasy *cough* go on for so long, that the makers of those games seem to have forgotten what made them so great in the first place. While Final Fantasy 15 was a step in the right direction, it left a lot to be desired in the story department. I don't want that to happen to Kingdom Hearts. Tell the story, take it as far as you have to, but then, put it to rest.
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