♪ "Kingdom Hearts" - Video Games Live Vol. 1 ♪ (music stops) - [Dunk] Huh? Now, we get to play the- Finally-
Finally we get- You know.
After we learn about expedi- Here we go! Alright.
What is this now? Finally playin' the game. We're actually-
I'm actually in the- Eh? Just- S- Skip... (Stuttering) Just the-
Just- Wait... I should read this. Kingdom Hearts 3 is one of the biggest glumber fucks, I have ever witnessed! Never have I seen so much hard work wasted on a product, so astonishingly bad. (Angry Donald Duck Sound) For reasons beyond me Square places all of its chips on the story, which is possibly one of the worst yet, in a video game. There is so much expository dialogue, so many back-to-back scenes of characters explaining what is happening and still, you are just completely lost. There is no sense of narrative cohesion. Scenes just happen with no logical reason behind them as the game stacks one plot hole in top of another. Like it's playing fucking Jenga with them. - [Chip] "Back when you and Riku quested through the Sleeping Worlds." "Riku recovered some secret research data that Ansem the Wise hid inside you." - [Goofy] "It was a test" "to see if your data version was ready to face the hurt" "that you carry inside" - [Sora] "I do know hurt." (Dunkey laughs) - [Dunk] But far worse than being a convoluted mess the game is boring. Really boring! The dialogue is so stilted, so forced, so robotic, that its characters are completely incapable of evoking any sort of emotion. The few exceptions, like Hades and Rex, are trampled over by a horde of fucking cyborgs. - [Riku] "Replicas..." - [Sora] "Huh?" - [Riku] "Well, replicas are basically human" - [Sora] "Uh. what?" - [Riku] "Oh, yeah..." "You wouldn't remember." "...the replicas will become people." - [Sora] "Cool." - [Dunk] Rather than showing you things happening, they just talk about stuff that already happened. And when they aren't explaining some major event, that the player missed out on, they're spouting cryptic bullshit and making anime sounds with these long, awkward pauses. (Awkward "anime noises" over awkward pauses) - [Dunk] As a genius plot device Sora apparently has amnesia and forgot all of the Kingdom Hearts games, that nobody played. But so did everybody else, except for some people. And the entire goal of the game is for Sora to learn the power of waking, but then he forgot about that. - [Hercules] "So, Sora." "Is there a reason you guys are visiting?" -[Sora] "Oh, yeah!" - [Goofy] "It sounds like somebody forgot." - [Donald] "Why do you think we came here?" - [Sora] "Got me, Donald." - [Dunk] There is no structure, no stakes, the villains are completely aimless, nobody seems to know anybody or understand what their motivations are... During the loading screen Riku is tweeting about how he is in the shadow world with the hashtag "realmofdarkness". - [Ienzo] "Aeleas and Dilan–
the two you knew as Lexaus and Xaldin–" - [Goofy] "...do we know this guy?"
(Monsters, Inc. version) - [Donald] "Eh..."
(Monsters, Inc. version) -[Riku] "...Aqua fell into the realm of darkness after she dove in to save Terra." - [Sora] "I don't know what you're saying." - [Goofy] "I think we might be goin' in circles" - [Mickey] "Xehanort's heart took his master's name, Ansem," "and traveled to the past to give his younger self instructions." - [Sora] "I'm lost.
What's going on?" - [Riku] "But all the while Young Xehanort had been visiting the future to choose thirteen vessels of his own." - [Hercules] "Guys, this is getting worse by the minute." - [Sora] "Xemnas?" - [Goofy] "Aw, he's with them!" - [Ienzo] "Not anymore." - [Goofy] "Actually, he mighta been friends with another version of ya." - [Young Xehanort] "Do you even realize what you are saying?" - [Sora] "A heart can live anywhere. Even inside data." - [Xehanort] "...Darkness" - [Sora] "Uh." "What?" Gameplay-wise, there is an ambitious variety of play styles; with platforming sections, then it's a beat 'em up, then it's a shooter, then you're collecting 300 crabs, then it's a rhythm game, then you drive a pirate ship, then it's a Star Fox, then you play Puzzle Bobble with Winnie the Pooh. It doesn't do anything particularly well, but it does a lot of things. The combat is easily the most fleshed out, but for all the fancy moves at your disposal, nothing feels as effective as mashing the "X" button and then pressing "Triangle" to do one of your Specials. In a game, already dominated by cutscenes, the lengthy canned animations in combat make it feel like you're still watching a movie. - [Riku] "It reminds me of a promise I made" - [Mickey] "To Who?" - [Riku] "Just someone I once met." "Can't tell" - [Mickey] "Sounds like a good memory" - [Dunk] For me, the highlights of this game are where you're just exploring the enviroments. They look great, they're full of little details like this little hidden Mickey emblems, and the music is enchanting You know, until fucking Donald Duck comes: - [Donald] "This might be a good spot to find some ingredients." "This might be a good spot to find some-" "This might be a good spot-" "This might be a good spot to find some ingredients."
(Talking under water) - [Dunk] Diehard fans who become really invested in the overarching story of the previous titles will be happy to know, that they just dumped all of that shit straight into a garbage bin, so that Sora can go dick around with a bunch of Disney characters. And it's here, in this episodic segments, that you can see just how fast this team's vapid approach to storytelling unravels. - [Young Xehanort] "So we made a copy of the world, and then pulled those hearts apart." - [Woody] "I'm confused." "Did he say he made a copy of the real world?" - [Sora] "Only one of the worlds is real," "and the other is just really convincing." - [Buzz] "You can't be serious." "Oh! That's right, you're from a video game." (SSB's Home-Run Bat sound) The Frozen and Tangled levels are literally just 3 major scenes from movies and then the characters desperately try to explain how you reached those moments. It's like watching some asshole Fast-forward through the DVD and then he just stops for two minutes, before skipping to the end. If you've seen the movies beforehand, it might make a vague amount of sense to you, but it doesn't work at all, within the context of the game. Then you have the Pirates of the Caribbean level, where it's like:
(Laughing) Woah, ho- Woah, ho, ho, ho, ho! - [Sora] "So, we do have a destination, right?" - [Goofy] "I can't tell anymore." - [Dunk] This movies were already an incomprehensible disaster, but then you combine that with Kingdom Hearts and it's like: "Wha- ?!
What the-?!
What the-?!" (Donald duck scream desperately) Kingdom Hearts 3 is all flash and no substance. Only ever embracing its Disney side, on the very surface level. There is no wit, no charm, just filler bullshit until you finally arrive at the story, the developers wanted to tell. About anime characters hitting each other. - [Buzz] "This is ridiculous." - [Sora] "Hey!" - [Dunk] I give this shitshow... ...a 1 out of 5. - [Donald] "What?!" [OUTRO]
You can tell the voice actors were in the dark. The conversations are so disjointed. No proper tone and inflection in statements or replies to the context.
I know that Dunkey consistently takes scenes out of context to make them look worse or funny, but the dialogue in this game really is horrible. Does it sound better in the original Japanese or something? Or is it just terrible all around?
Man, even as someone who enjoyed the game, I'm having a hard time disagreeing with Dunkey. It's a game with a real identity crisis.
I've never been a fan of Kingdom Hearts, but honestly I'm sold just on the premise of the batshit insane over the top plot being delivered through exposition via Goofy.
[removed]
Square Enix honestly should not have recapped anything and made the main plot a bigger part of the game instead of shoving it in at the end.
Infinity War didn’t spend 90% of the movie explaining the MCU to people that missed it, they left them in the dust and told the story they wanted to. If you wanted to know what was going on, you should have played 1.5,2.5,2.8
The voice direction in this game is possibly some of the worst I've ever seen, it's on par with like the original Resident Evil, like in this day and age I cannot understand how they mess it up this bad
So as someone who couldn't play the game, but has watched basically every cutscene:
I think the main problem with the story isn't specifically KH3's fault. It's more that KH3 was left to wrap up all the left over outrageous plot threads from every other KH game. There's so much baggage from about a dozen games of unresolved questions that someone had to try to answer.
As is you have dozens of characters, many of whom are copies of other characters, who need their arcs wrapped up but also need their presence explained because not everyone's played every KH game (and even if you have it's very hard to keep track of it all).
The first game had Sora see Riku or vice-versa here and there, and Mickey was being mentioned so even while messing about with Donald and Goofy in various worlds, it still had the main plot unraveling around it.
Here we could easily have done the same! Hiro could've used his knowledge and tech expertise to help Sora with Roxas. PotC could have used its death/living without a heart theme to develop the Ventus story etc. Instead we get a bunch of super pretty worlds that are fun to explore but meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
Then we have the abandonment of FF characters in favour of emo exposition scientist and the like that I honestly skipped cut-scenes for. Even subtle inclusions would've fine. A memorial statue of Zack in Thebes for example.
The oversights and priorities turn what was close to being an amazing game into a disappointing mess, for sure.