Kingdom Hearts 3 (PlayStation 4)
User Review
Product Information:
- Release Date (NA): January 29, 2019
- Release Date (EU): January 29, 2019
- Release Date (JP): January 29, 2019
- Publisher: Square Enix
- Developer: Square Enix
- Genres: Action RPG
- Also For: Xbox One
Game Features:
Single player
Local Multiplayer
Online Multiplayer
Co-operative
The story you've been waiting for. Sort of.
Intro
I love the Kingdom Hearts franchise. I have completed every single game there is across its crazy, confusing timeline and would consider myself a big fan. Naturally I've been excited for Kingdom Hearts 3 since it was first revealed years ago now. Did it live up to the hype? Lets find out.
There may be minor spoilers in this review such as locations and such but all major story spoilers will be discussed within a spoiler tag.
Gameplay
If it ain't broke don't fix it. The gameplay in Kingdom Hearts 3 is largely the same with few minor tweaks here and there. One addition is the return of each of the previous titles combat gimmicks: Flow motion, shot locks and transformations all return from the games they originally appeared exclusively in.
Similar to Birth by Sleep, each keyblade you acquire will unlock special moves and transformations unique to that blade.
I will say however flowmotion in this game is not nearly as fun to use as it was in Dream Drop Distance and I found it to be rather useless even with all the abilities unlocked.
A great new feature of the game allows you to level up each keyblade as well via synthesis and this ensures that no keyblade ever becomes useless unlike past games where you'd typically ditch a keyblade for its low stats despite it having a rather good ability or perk unique to it.
There is also the new addition of Attraction attacks based off some of the iconic rides at Disneyland. Sora will summon things like water rafts from The Grizzly River Run or the iconic spinning teacups to take out hoards of enemies with ease.
Now, level design wise, we have some things we need to talk about. Aside from really just the Monsters Inc. world, which feels more in line with levels from the past games, the levels in this game are humongous and have a massive sense of scale to them.
Personally I found this design choice to have bigger worlds missed more than it hit and it's one of this games very few problems. With the worlds being so big, some of them begin to feel like they're losing focus, dragging on and even losing their Disney charm. The Tangled and Frozen worlds feel flat out generic and empty. While yes they're faithful to the source material, it's not enough because there wasn't much to work with anyway. The Kingdom of Corona is just a really big forest. Sure there's a lot of pretty scenery but there just isn't anything to do. Once you finally reach the town area at the end of it, while it does breathe some much needed personality, all there is to do is an admittedly not very fun minigame. And all you do in the Frozen world is trek up a mountain in dark, snowy scenery with an annoying, generic ice maze in the middle to pad it out. The starting world, Olympus, starts out great and feels unique but then turns into another generic climb up a mountain that doesn't feel like "Hercules" in the slightest. It concludes with going to the Realm of the Gods up in the clouds, which definitely brings back the Hercules feeling but its very awkwardly empty. It's even lacking in heartless battles only having a couple.
It's not all bad though. The worlds it definitely worked in were the Toy Story and Pirates of the Caribbean ones. The massive scale and smart perspective modeling really made you believe you were a toy. And the Pirates world lets you roam a big open sea complete with a fully explorable, seamless sea floor, multiple islands, and the Port Royale village all topped off with fun ship sailing and cannonball combat.
Despite a few of the worlds feeling pretty generic, they're still fun to play through thanks to the battles within and your movement abilities.
Story
So Kingdom Hearts has a notoriously confusing story. If you aren't at least mostly up to speed, I really wouldn't recommend just jumping into 3 because you won't have any idea what's going on. The game genuinely does have callbacks to every single game, even to re: Coded which I honestly didn't think would come back in any meaningful way. You can still get away with only have played a few of the games but it really is for the best if you know all of them though.
As for the story itself, it wraps up almost everything. I'll get into specifics in a spoiler section below but despite definitively ending all the Xehanort, Organization 13, and the Nobody and Heartless business, they leave just 2 small things unresolved just so they can keep milking this franchise as far as it can go. If you can ignore that though, this is a satisfying end to the story so far.
One complaint I have though is the pacing and this is where the spoiler section will start:
Presentation
This is one of the most beautiful games I have ever seen. All the worlds, despite some of the genericness and occasional empty feeling, are detailed to an incredible degree.
However, the visuals come at the cost of framerate. The FPS issue is a very complex one because of all the different ways to play with these mid gen "Pro" consoles. On the base level consoles expect a fluctuating framerate of anywhere from as low as 30fps to barely hitting 60 in less taxing areas. Xbox One X typically stays in the mid 50s to usually hitting 60, as for PS4 Pro. However, currently the best way to play, and this is what I did, is to use PS4 Pro and set the display to 1080p with no supersampling. These specific settings will net you a solid 60fps with extremely minor drops in rare cases. It's awkward and cumbersome that there's no easy way to pick this setting, hell its not even something you can do on the more powerful One X as you can't disable super sampling.
I should also mention there's an option to lock the game at a supposedly more stable 30fps on all systems, but they didn't make sure the frame pacing evened out and it actually looks even more choppy with this turned on. It's unfortunate that the game is only stable in this one very specific setup, hopefully this is addressed via an update.
As for music, it's all fantastic and sounds better than ever, but personally I was disappointed by the lack of new compositions. Yes, theres the 2 new songs by Hikaru Utada but overall its just a lot of the old classics rerecorded. Also when just exploring a Disney world the same song tends to play the entire time(I'm looking at you Toy Story world) and it can get a little annoying after spending hours in the same level.
Final Thoughts
Even with a lot of the low points I mentioned, as a fan I was still satisfied by Kingdom Hearts 3. It may not have lived up to the legendary levels of hype a lot of us had but it was still an extremely fun game and a satisfying end to the current storyline we've been following for all these years.
I love the Kingdom Hearts franchise. I have completed every single game there is across its crazy, confusing timeline and would consider myself a big fan. Naturally I've been excited for Kingdom Hearts 3 since it was first revealed years ago now. Did it live up to the hype? Lets find out.
There may be minor spoilers in this review such as locations and such but all major story spoilers will be discussed within a spoiler tag.
Gameplay
If it ain't broke don't fix it. The gameplay in Kingdom Hearts 3 is largely the same with few minor tweaks here and there. One addition is the return of each of the previous titles combat gimmicks: Flow motion, shot locks and transformations all return from the games they originally appeared exclusively in.
Similar to Birth by Sleep, each keyblade you acquire will unlock special moves and transformations unique to that blade.
I will say however flowmotion in this game is not nearly as fun to use as it was in Dream Drop Distance and I found it to be rather useless even with all the abilities unlocked.
A great new feature of the game allows you to level up each keyblade as well via synthesis and this ensures that no keyblade ever becomes useless unlike past games where you'd typically ditch a keyblade for its low stats despite it having a rather good ability or perk unique to it.
There is also the new addition of Attraction attacks based off some of the iconic rides at Disneyland. Sora will summon things like water rafts from The Grizzly River Run or the iconic spinning teacups to take out hoards of enemies with ease.
Now, level design wise, we have some things we need to talk about. Aside from really just the Monsters Inc. world, which feels more in line with levels from the past games, the levels in this game are humongous and have a massive sense of scale to them.
Personally I found this design choice to have bigger worlds missed more than it hit and it's one of this games very few problems. With the worlds being so big, some of them begin to feel like they're losing focus, dragging on and even losing their Disney charm. The Tangled and Frozen worlds feel flat out generic and empty. While yes they're faithful to the source material, it's not enough because there wasn't much to work with anyway. The Kingdom of Corona is just a really big forest. Sure there's a lot of pretty scenery but there just isn't anything to do. Once you finally reach the town area at the end of it, while it does breathe some much needed personality, all there is to do is an admittedly not very fun minigame. And all you do in the Frozen world is trek up a mountain in dark, snowy scenery with an annoying, generic ice maze in the middle to pad it out. The starting world, Olympus, starts out great and feels unique but then turns into another generic climb up a mountain that doesn't feel like "Hercules" in the slightest. It concludes with going to the Realm of the Gods up in the clouds, which definitely brings back the Hercules feeling but its very awkwardly empty. It's even lacking in heartless battles only having a couple.
It's not all bad though. The worlds it definitely worked in were the Toy Story and Pirates of the Caribbean ones. The massive scale and smart perspective modeling really made you believe you were a toy. And the Pirates world lets you roam a big open sea complete with a fully explorable, seamless sea floor, multiple islands, and the Port Royale village all topped off with fun ship sailing and cannonball combat.
Despite a few of the worlds feeling pretty generic, they're still fun to play through thanks to the battles within and your movement abilities.
Story
So Kingdom Hearts has a notoriously confusing story. If you aren't at least mostly up to speed, I really wouldn't recommend just jumping into 3 because you won't have any idea what's going on. The game genuinely does have callbacks to every single game, even to re: Coded which I honestly didn't think would come back in any meaningful way. You can still get away with only have played a few of the games but it really is for the best if you know all of them though.
As for the story itself, it wraps up almost everything. I'll get into specifics in a spoiler section below but despite definitively ending all the Xehanort, Organization 13, and the Nobody and Heartless business, they leave just 2 small things unresolved just so they can keep milking this franchise as far as it can go. If you can ignore that though, this is a satisfying end to the story so far.
One complaint I have though is the pacing and this is where the spoiler section will start:
Kingdom Hearts 3's story is very poorly paced. Outside of a few cutscenes you can probably count on one hand, the entirety of the non-Disney story comes at the end of the game, after you beat all the Disney worlds. The game dumps what must be 15 hours of nonstop cutscenes and bossfights against the remaining organization members and other bad guys like Venitas, Terranort, and data Riku. While its all good stuff and very satisfying to see finally happen, its so awkward that this is just all unloaded at the very end of the game.
As for the 2 plot points they left open ended, Xehanort sends Kairi to the Dark realm before you kill him and Sora goes to search for her after the battle. And it turns out Xigbar escaped and he was the hooded man from that Back Cover movie from the 2.8 collection if any of you watched that. Otherwise, literally everything you could have asked for is completely 100% resolved and ends happily.
Since we're on spoilers I just want to say that the final boss is honestly really disappointing. Not for its story implications but just in wow factor. In the games final moments you have what must be at least 10 of these 1 on 1 battles between the remaining bad guys and they all just feel the same and none of them are particularly flashy either. The final battle between Xehanort is really no different either besides taking place against some neat looking backdrops.
I guess what Im saying is I miss the crazy, almost euclidean final battles of 1, 2 and Dream Drop Distance with the trippy final worlds, giant scale boss fights with multiple forms, launching Skyscrapers and flying around in huge arenas. I was definitely expecting that and more considering the much improved tech at their disposal. So I was immensely disappointed in that regard.
As for the 2 plot points they left open ended, Xehanort sends Kairi to the Dark realm before you kill him and Sora goes to search for her after the battle. And it turns out Xigbar escaped and he was the hooded man from that Back Cover movie from the 2.8 collection if any of you watched that. Otherwise, literally everything you could have asked for is completely 100% resolved and ends happily.
Since we're on spoilers I just want to say that the final boss is honestly really disappointing. Not for its story implications but just in wow factor. In the games final moments you have what must be at least 10 of these 1 on 1 battles between the remaining bad guys and they all just feel the same and none of them are particularly flashy either. The final battle between Xehanort is really no different either besides taking place against some neat looking backdrops.
I guess what Im saying is I miss the crazy, almost euclidean final battles of 1, 2 and Dream Drop Distance with the trippy final worlds, giant scale boss fights with multiple forms, launching Skyscrapers and flying around in huge arenas. I was definitely expecting that and more considering the much improved tech at their disposal. So I was immensely disappointed in that regard.
Presentation
This is one of the most beautiful games I have ever seen. All the worlds, despite some of the genericness and occasional empty feeling, are detailed to an incredible degree.
However, the visuals come at the cost of framerate. The FPS issue is a very complex one because of all the different ways to play with these mid gen "Pro" consoles. On the base level consoles expect a fluctuating framerate of anywhere from as low as 30fps to barely hitting 60 in less taxing areas. Xbox One X typically stays in the mid 50s to usually hitting 60, as for PS4 Pro. However, currently the best way to play, and this is what I did, is to use PS4 Pro and set the display to 1080p with no supersampling. These specific settings will net you a solid 60fps with extremely minor drops in rare cases. It's awkward and cumbersome that there's no easy way to pick this setting, hell its not even something you can do on the more powerful One X as you can't disable super sampling.
I should also mention there's an option to lock the game at a supposedly more stable 30fps on all systems, but they didn't make sure the frame pacing evened out and it actually looks even more choppy with this turned on. It's unfortunate that the game is only stable in this one very specific setup, hopefully this is addressed via an update.
As for music, it's all fantastic and sounds better than ever, but personally I was disappointed by the lack of new compositions. Yes, theres the 2 new songs by Hikaru Utada but overall its just a lot of the old classics rerecorded. Also when just exploring a Disney world the same song tends to play the entire time(I'm looking at you Toy Story world) and it can get a little annoying after spending hours in the same level.
Final Thoughts
Even with a lot of the low points I mentioned, as a fan I was still satisfied by Kingdom Hearts 3. It may not have lived up to the legendary levels of hype a lot of us had but it was still an extremely fun game and a satisfying end to the current storyline we've been following for all these years.
Verdict
What I Liked ...
- One of the most visually impressive games available
- Tried and true Kingdom Hearts gameplay is still as fun as ever
- The longest and most content filled Kingdom Hearts game to date
- The ending hours of the game are filled with pleasing fanservice moments
What I Didn't Like ...
- Inconsistent framerate depending on your platform of choice/system settings
- Very awkward story pacing
- Some of the Disney worlds felt empty and generic because of the new level designs
9
Gameplay
Its the gameplay you know and love from the series but flashier than ever and with the most combat options too
However, some of the Disney worlds in this installment outstay their welcome and aren't very memorable at all.
9
Presentation
Absolutely jaw dropping visuals and animations throughout the entirety of the game. There are times I genuinely cannot distinguish the game from the movies they are based on. Fantastic music too just not many new compositions.
However, the uneven framerates and sometimes awkwardly empty areas bring the experience down just a little.
8
Lasting Appeal
Theres a lot to do in Kingdom Hearts 3 but I had my fill after doing each one just a few times. The game on its own however is a joy to play with very few low points.
9
out of 10
)
