FULL SPOILERS FOLLOW.
There’s been a lot of talk about this one since its release, and I want to say right off the bat that Kingdom Hearts III is not a bad game, in or out of the context of the series. A lot of care has been put into the base game and it’s clear that Nomura wanted to give us a satisfying conclusion to the Xehanort saga.
At the same time, I was caught between choosing a cover photo that shows off the new worlds, or one that shows all the Keyblade wielders together, and, well…there’s a reason I chose the one I did.
When you begin KHIII, Sora is on a quest to regain his lost power of waking, picking up right where 0.2: A Fragmentary Passage and, to a lesser extent, Dream Drop Distance leave off. To do this, Sora has to journey to Olympus to see Hercules, who’s a true hero and will be able to help (even though this power has nothing to do with Herc or with being a hero – as always, Kingdom Hearts requires you to just go along with some things). Olympus is in this game is beautiful, and is quite possibly the first version of the world that I’ve really been impressed with. It’s here that you realize how much work was put into the worlds – the play area is huge, the environments are varied, and multiple routes mean you’ll be doing a lot of backtracking if you’re the exploring type.
Olympus ends after some great interactions with Hades and a surprise appearance from Maleficent and Pete, and then we get a nice little segment of Riku and Mickey searching for Aqua in the Realm of Darkness. Riku gets his own playable boss fight when they encounter one of those Heartless columns from 0.2, and this is where I got really excited for the game to come. To me, getting to play as Riku for this fight that came from an Aqua game proved that all of the plot threads I had come to be invested in over the past eight games would finally be tying together in one grand conclusion.
After this little interlude, we come back to Sora as he visits the Toy Box, our first Pixar-inspired world and one of the only worlds in the game that takes place after its corresponding movie. Toy Box is great, and it ends with Woody giving the “you’re full of crap” talk to Young Xehanort right before the big boss fight – a role which is almost always given to Sora and is really fun to see from another angle.
And that’s how it goes for most of 75% of the game. You see, for as excited as I was early on, for as well as it seemed to be melding everything together, Kingdom Hearts III has a massive pacing issue. The overarching plot isn’t even really put into motion until the last five or so hours of the game. The rest of the plot trickles out in cutscenes between Disney worlds and largely consists of Organization members bickering with each other.
But at least the Disney worlds are good, right? Well…when they’re good, they’re great. But as a whole, they lack that classic KH feel which is largely due to the fact that only the Hundred Acre Wood and Olympus are based on 2D Disney movies. Every other world was very clearly chosen to show off the game’s new engine, which is fine, but the collection ends up feeling a bit too new-age for the series. Where previous games would include worlds like Deep Space right alongside the Dwarf Woodlands, the oldest movies represented in KHIII came out in 1995, 1997, and 2001. The most recent was 2014. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that none of them have any bearing on the actual plot of the game, nor are they referenced after you complete them. Previous games have at least made an effort to connect their worlds to the story.
Corona is okay, but amounts to a lot of wooded area with one very small, barely used town square. Monstropolis and Arendelle both play at larger connections but their involvement of the Unversed and new princesses of heart respectively are dropped from the story after beating them. Bonus points go to Arendelle for finally, finally, including a song from the movies in the form of the beautifully recreated “Let It Go.” The Caribbean has the best gameplay of all, taking some cues from Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag to create a truly unique pirate adventure – but the tone of At World’s End is a hilarious mismatch for this series and you end up watching Sora, Donald, and Goofy murder Cutler Beckett in cold blood when they sink his ship in an exact recreation of the movie’s famous slow-mo scene. The best part is that he’s barely a villain in the game as it only includes one scene of dialogue between him and Jack, so as far as the gang is concerned, he might as well not be a villain at all.
San Fransokyo is the last Disney world, and possibly my least favorite, although that likely has more to do with the fact that by this point I was starting to get really nervous about the state of the remaining story. It did reintroduce us to Repliku, though, so I guess my previous statement about the Disney worlds being irrelevant wasn’t completely true. We got one.
The real story starts after San Fransokyo, and at this point the game becomes and remains an amazing reunion between all of our favorite characters. Aqua is rescued, Ven is woken up, everybody gets together at Yen Sid’s tower for some rest and then it’s on to the final assault against Xehanort and the Organization. Roxas and Xion regain their lives, everybody cries, Sora dies. Sora comes back because this isn’t Game of Thrones and in a final epic battle against Xehanort, he and the Organization are defeated and he gets a touching moment with Eraquus before they both depart to Kingdom Hearts. It’s an ending that, incredibly, is easy to follow while also calling back to nearly every lingering plot thread from the last several years. The cherry on top is one final scene of the Destiny, Sea Salt, Wayfinder, and Disney Trios all hanging out and being friends together on Destiny Islands, which is something I’ve desperately wanted since I first finished the previous games. Everybody, that is, except Sora and Kairi because psych Kairi was kidnapped again and now Sora has to save her again and this is what they chose to do with her instead of developing her character even a smidgen beyond being the series’ MacGuffin hahahahahahahahauuuuuggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh
But that particular issue aside, I’m very happy with the way everything wrapped up, as well as the post-credits stinger revealing Xigbar to be Luxu, sixth apprentice to the Master of Masters, thereby setting up the next series arc.
My biggest complaint about KHIII is that it doesn’t feel like its own game. with every other game in the series, there is a Plot that revolves around a Thing and has a Beginning, Middle, and End. KHI is about Sora discovering the connected worlds, rescuing Kairi, and defeating Ansem and the Heartless. Re:CoM is about the Organization manipulating Sora’s memory. KHII is about the Organization opening Kingdom Hearts and Sora figuring out who the hell Ansem the Wise is and what he has to do with Xemnas and Xehanort. Days is about Roxas, Axel, and Xion discovering the Nobodies have emotions and feelings, regardless of what they’ve been told. BBS is about Xehanort splitting up the Wayfinder Trio and setting his plans in motion. Re:Coded is about restoring Jiminy’s journal and figuring out what happened to it in the first place. DDD is about the Mark of Mastery exam and restoring the sleeping worlds. And 0.2 is about Aqua traveling through the Realm of Darkness so she can find a way out.
By contrast, KHIII is about ending the series. There is no beginning or middle, only one big ending, which throws the whole thing off balance. I get that everything had to be wrapped up, but in the dev team’s haste to do so, they forgot to create a compelling narrative that would make the game stand on its own. Instead, it felt like they settled for closing everything up and allowing the rest of the game to stand as a (really fun) tech demo.
I don’t know where I would rank this one as of yet, and I’d like to replay it before I make that call. Part of me wants to say it’s one of the best games in the series, but another part says just as loudly that it’s not better than DDD, BBS, or either of the other numbered entries. It’s a good game – but maybe not as good as I wanted it to be, and maybe not as good as the series deserved. Time will tell.
Mister Binger 