Hello, everyone!
(Possible spoilers if you wanted to be absolutely blind about anything that happens in KHIII like I wanted)
So this past Tuesday I finished playing Kingdom Hearts III. I’m not saying completed because there is still a whole bunch that I want and need to accomplish before I can actually say that I have completed this game 😂. But I can tell you, I thought KHII left me with a whole bunch of feelings, KHIII tripled (see what I did there 😉) all of those feelings. I honestly spent two hours crying and messaging with my sister about i. I’m such a soft-heart 😂. I’m not going to say what happens in the ending because I don’t want to ruin the experience for anyone who is still trying to finish the game, but if you’ve grown up with these characters like I have, then I am sure you’re gonna feel something about how it ends. And the reason why I didn’t post this right away is because of just how much I was feeling afterwards. While I want to give an honest and genuine opinion, I don’t want to be completely clouded by emotions that I say something that I’ll regret down the road. Now, with that being said, here are some of my pros and cons about this game. And these are just my opinions and if you agree, awesome! If not? That’s okay, too 🙂. I’m not the only person who waited more than ten years for this game and everyone is going to react to it differently.
Let’s start with the negatives shall we? (I believe in ending on a happy note 😊)
CONS:
1. No Final Fantasy characters.
Now, I have seen quite a few posts about this upsetting other people as well, and I have also seen what had to be said about WHY the characters weren’t in the game, but it didn’t change the fact that I was majorly disappointed to not at least see Leon, Yuffie, Aerith, or Cid in a few cut scenes. Heck, I was at least expecting to at least see Seifer and his crew but the only thing that was said about them was that Seifer was on a “warrior mission” but Vivi wasn’t mentioned in that, so where was he? I know that would have been a lot of characters to deal with, but all of them were such a staple in the main KH games that it’s hard NOT to notice their absence. Leon and the crew were there so much for Sora when he was trying to find his friends that it feels wrong that they weren’t there to at least give him encouragement and support while he was trying to recover from what happened to him during 3Ds. This was a major disappointment after waiting so long to see what Seifer was going to say after telling Sora to come back when he’s older and then not receiving said reaction. And I wanted a redemption fight against Sephiroth! That man has caused me stress like no other boss has ever done in a video game! So much so that in KHII I only fought and beat him once on my PS2 and I refuse to do it again. I can’t even hear his theme song without cringing and frantically searching for a control to mash buttons on😂. I am just hoping that the future will redeem this somehow and give the fans what they want and how they have always seen the KH series, a Disney meets Final Fantasy game.
2. Not being able to visit Radiant Garden.
Now, much like the “No Final Fantasy characters” this really disappointed me. I wanted to see how everything was fixed up after we left the Radiant Garden Restoration Committee to rebuild their world. Did it look the same as it did back in Ven, Aqua, and Terra’s time? What did they change? Did Leon and all of them get their own places? What did the castle look like now? And I know that we got little flashes of what it looks like now, but I wanted the whole thing, not just what the square looks like or what the inside of Ansem the Wise’s lab looks like. I didn’t fight more than 2000 heartless for that world to not finally see what it finally looks like completed. Why tease us in such a way? Couldn’t it have been added to the final section where the Keyblade Graveyard was? There was more than enough room for another world to be placed there. Or, dare I say it, replace one of the new worlds with Radiant Garden? As cool as some of these worlds were, (and I will make a post on my ranking of each world in KHIII) I would have much rather had a world that Sora, and myself, have gone to before to see how it has evolved. If we can be given the Olympus Coliseum and Winnie the Pooh, why not give us a world that has been in three of the main games? And, who knows, maybe the creators have a plan for Radiant Garden and are just waiting for the right moment, but this was a major, MAJOR disappointment when I finished the game. Because I was holding onto the hope that it would be one of the last worlds we could go to, but nothing. Just the world of the final fight.
3. Kairi
Okay, okay, I know that I am going to get a lot of crap for this one and a lot of people will more than likely disagree with me, but I am every disappointed in how Kairi was handled. And I’ll admit, I have never been a big fan of Kairi in the games. In the mangas, she’s okay, but in the games it just never felt like she did anything but get kidnapped to move the plot along and I really, REALLY dislike characters like that. She’s supposed to be a princess of light for crying out loud! I’m sure she has a lot more power then just people a speck of light for Sora to follow. She was GIVEN a KEYBLADE by Riku for crying out loud! Let her use it! Show us her using it! She and Axel have been training for a while now! Show us how she’s grown, how she’s changed! But when that opportunity came, I was sorely disappointed. We got one fight with Kairi and Axel and even then, I was more focused on trying not to be killed by the Organization that I barely even noticed what she was doing. And then she got kidnapped by Xemnas… 😑 I don’t know why I was shocked or surprised. I should have seen this coming. She was kidnapped in all of Sora’s main games, why not this one too? Because Sora obviously needed extra motivation to fight the four main people who were trying to take over Kingdom Hearts…. A scenario that would have resulted in everyone pretty much DYING, but nope Sora won’t care unless Kairi gets kidnapped. 😤 Can you tell that I’m worked up? I wanted to expect more from Kairi. I actually wanted to get pass seeing her as plot device and see her as the functional main character like she should be seen as, but then they went and did that. I’m sorry, but this is a series that has shown to have strong female characters (AQUA, YUFFIE, AERITH, XION) and they still pull this crap with Kairi? She deserved so much more. Show me how she grew! Show me that she can follow through with her words of being able to protect Sora like she said she would. I physically wanted to see it. Show her taking out hordes of heartless along side Axel without any problems. Show what she’s learned using a keyblade. I feel that a huge opportunity was missed in not showing us her actually training with Axel or showing us how she’s changed besides in her appearance. I just wanted more from her and I just didn’t see it. Others may have seen something that I didn’t and it left me feeling incredibly disappointed and displeased. She has potential and I just want her to achieve that potential.
Enough of negative ☺️. Now onto the things I liked!
1. The graphics.
Oh. My. Gosh. The graphics in this game are amazing! Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, looked so good and pretty that I just couldn’t handle it! When I played Fragmented Path in 2.8, I was really worried because I honestly thought Mickey looked so weird. His head was too big for his ears! But then the game started and I got to see what everyone looked like pass the intro (the intros are always amazing no matter what 😊) and saw Sora, Donald, Goofy, Riku, MICKEY, I just started squealing. They looked so life-like and flawless! Square Enix really stepped up their game by using the Unreal Engine for this game and I couldn’t be happier. And this is coming from someone who was adamant that the KHII was forever going to be the prettiest game I had ever seen. The controls are so smooth and Sora could run faster then a slight jog! It’s great! And the new worlds, oh, the new worlds looked sooooooo good. Woody and crew, Rapunzel and Flynn, Anna and Elsa, everyone one looked as though they were pulled right from their movies and given a light little airbrush to make them even prettier. And it wasn’t just the characters, their worlds looked amazing too. The snow in Arendelle, the water in the Caribbean, the lanterns in Kingdom of Corona, all of it looked so good. And can we talk about the fact that when Donald, Sora, and Goofy would talk underwater it was muffled like it actually would be in real-life? The fact they took the time to put in such small details like that, or the way that Axel’s eyes teared up, it just made me want to just hug everyone involved and thank them for given us this.
2. The Gummiphone
This had to be the best and cutest thing that Square Enix could have added to this game. And the nod that Sora has been so disconnected from most of the worlds that he didn’t recognize what a cellphone was, it was just adorable. And the fact that they took the time to program character responses for each of the world characters? Not just Donald, Sora, or Goofy? Just blew my mind! Having character who have never seen a camera/phone asking what Sora was doing or what he was holding or having characters that recognized what Sora was doing pose for his photo just excelled the experience! And the selfies (and no not Selphie 😂). I honestly had Sora take more selfies then I have in real life. Part of it was because he’s just so doggone cute and because I wanted to see how fast I could take a selfie while in a fight 😂. I would usually fail 🤣.
3. Open Worlds
The exploration of the worlds was so amazing! I don’t know if it was just the engine Square Enix used, or a perspective thing, but the worlds in KHIII felt so big! There were less transitions between locations in the worlds which definitely helped the ‘open world’ feel. KH and KHII had pretty open worlds, but there was just something different about the feel of the KHIII worlds while exploring them. Worlds such as the Caribbean and Arendelle really used their open worldness to their advantage and it was so cool on how Sora could actually dive into the ocean and just swim around and locate chests or those weird white crabs 😂. I do wish that the Big Hero 6 world, San Frantokyo, was a little more open world and didn’t keep Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Baymax in Downtown San Frantokyo with Hiro jumping in to tell you he put up an invisible barrier to keep us on track, but there was still a lot to that world that was explorable so I’m not too mad about it. It was just so nice to not worry about a transition from location to location ruining the feel of an open world. It made old worlds like Twilight Town, the Caribbean, and Olympus Coliseum feel fresh and new again. Though, adding in new locations also helped 😉. I’m looking at you, Mount Olympus. But when I can go back to a world and have moments where I go “I DIDN’T KNOW I COULD GO THERE!”, then you know that Square Enix did something right.
So there are my main pros and cons! Whether or not any of you agree with me is fine 🙂. This is just my opinion about the game and it shouldn’t shape how you feel at all. Merely enlighten you to how I felt once I finished the main story of the game.
Overall, I am very pleased with the game and I am just happy that it was finally released. Even if the game bombed, (which thank all the stars in the sky that it didn’t), I would have bought the game anyways just to have it 😅. Kingdom Hearts III has delivered on so many things that it’s hard not to be pleased by the outcome and kinda grateful that Square Enix took their time on it (even if 13 years is rather excessive in my book, my 12 years was rough 😂). Are there things I wish were different? Yeah. But then again, it’s hard for there not to be. I have been waiting half of my life for this game and I had many thoughts on how this game was going to be done, but I firmly believe that most of my expectations have been met. And once I complete the game, I will be more than willing to restart it and go through the journey all over again, and THAT is what a game should do for its players. Make them want to experience the story and game play all over again. And for me? Kingdom Hearts III succeeded in doing just that. And I hope all of you have enjoyed the game as much as I have. So, to all of my fellow half pint heroes, let your heart be your guiding key. And until next time.
I’ll see ya real soon.
– Sorax
Our Hearts Are Connected 
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