Kingdom Hearts 3 review

Before jumping into the heart of this review, I just want to start off by saying I am a huge Kingdom hearts fan and have been saying following this series for many years and probably poured a lot more time into the games than is healthy amount, so the series has a special place in my heart. Kingdom Hearts has often been known for having a very complicated storyline and that it’s incredibly difficult to follow and yes in some parts I would agree but if you enjoy the games and pay attention it’s not that difficult to follow. The main premise (without spoilers) is it’s a story of Good vs. Evil with various Disney elements mixed in.

We’re going start by talking about the gameplay, now if you have played any of the previous games then you will feel right at home, it’s a combination of all the games thus far, from the amazing battle system taken from KH2 and a scaled down version of the flow-motion movement system from the 3DS game Dream Drop distance.

One of my favourite aspects to come from this beautiful new system is the Keyblade transformations as from one instance you can have a giant key to a huge hammer the a couple of hits later you have a mini hand drill and by having these transformations and allowing them to be triggered at will by the player opens up the system to give you so much more freedom when fighting hordes of Heartless, along with the new Keyblade skills there are the Attraction Flow rides which are attacks based on rides form the various parks around the world.

Graphically it has to be one of the most beautiful games that I have ever played and by far the best in the series, from the lighting effects of the magic to the incredible backgrounds of the worlds.

Over the years there have been many worlds used for the settings in the Kingdom Hearts games but this time they have focused on mostly on Pixar films and they have all followed the many plot line of the film that the worlds are originally based on. Some of the worlds this time around are based on an original story from the creative mind collaboration of Square Enix and Pixar, such as the story to the Toy Story world is completely original and is actually cannon to the Toy Story universe being set between the second and third films.

In days of old in the two main entries of the series the way you get to the different Disney worlds was through a Space Invaders/Star Fox-esc spaceship shooting gallery which they have transformed into a more free-roam space adventure that you can explore in your own time. Another one of my favourite things about the Kingdom Hearts games is the incredible music composed by the amazing Yoko Shimomura having composed variations of classic Disney songs for overworld music then having a battle theme that doesn’t feel at all out of place.

Spoiler warning

Now, a lot – if not all of my gripe for the game comes from the postgame, and I’ll try and keep the spoilers and details to a minimum.

The majority of the Kingdom Hearts story comes at the end of the game and I wish that they had placed a section of it for when you get halfway through the Disney worlds a lot like they did for KH2 as roughly halfway through the game they had a section where you went to a original-non-Disney world and did a list of story missions.

The postgame is a little lacking in comparison to previous games you had the Olympus Colosseum to play through and you had to grind to meet certain criteria to enter them and several secret bosses that were extremely difficult unless you were a really high level which kept me play for hours and hours in end.

This game was a beautiful successor and a love letter to the fans that have been with the series for quite some time and also easy enough for newcomers to the series to enjoy, although some of the emotional connection to some of the later parts of the game will be lost on new fans.