George Foster and Eric Switzer are two super fans of Kingdom Hearts. They both grew up playing the series and have completed every game multiple times, including Critical Mode playthroughs. While they both love Kingdom Hearts, they’re completely divided on Kingdom Hearts 3. What follows is a spirited debate in pursuit of the ultimate truth: Is Kingdom Hearts 3 a bad game?
ES: Kingdom Hearts 3 was the biggest disappointment in gaming history. After 14 years of waiting, we finally got a game that's worse than Kingdom Hearts 2 in pretty much every way. All of the bite was stripped out of the combat in favor of single-button mashing and grossly-overpowered Attractions, making it both unchallenging and uninteresting to play. The worlds were bigger yet emptier, unfocused, and frustrating to navigate. The RPG systems, like gear and ability selection, are so watered down they might as well not exist. The storytelling found a new low thanks to an aggressive separation between the Disney worlds and the actual plot of the game that made everything feel like pointless filler until the final boss rush that unfolded the entire narrative in a series of excruciating, poorly-paced cut scenes, so dense with exposition they became a black hole, sucking up every ounce of enthusiasm I had left for the series. I hate this game for making me bored with Kingdom Hearts. It has its moments, but if we examine it closely I think it's going to be impossible to defend this game on any level higher than basic, unquestioning fandom.
GF: Although I’d agree that Kingdom Hearts 2 is still the best in the series, I absolutely adore Kingdom Hearts 3 and it's one of my favourite games of all time. Is it perfect? Hell no, far from it, but the good far outweighs the bad. Combat is a slightly different beast from how technical it was in Kingdom Hearts 2, but Sora’s upgraded movement makes it feel much faster-paced and fluid. Attractions are admittedly overpowered and a bit too easy to rely on, but Keyblade Transformations are a smart evolution of Drive Forms that keep combat fresh. Before Re:Mind, I’d also argue there wasn’t enough ability changing, but as soon as that update came through holy crap was Sora’s arsenal fun to mess around with. It was a complete game-changer. As for the worlds, there are some misses like Frozen, but the ones that do hit like Monsters, Inc. and Toy Story are the best in the series, no doubt. I’d much rather have meaningful interactions like an original Toy Story, uh, story, than just recapping Disney films in an awkward way.
As for the narrative, where do you even begin? It is expository, dumb as shit, awkward, filled with weird performances, and overly long, but that is exactly what Kingdom Hearts is all about baby. You know what you’re here for, and the big moments like Sora rescuing Aqua, Roxas’ return, and Terra coming back from the darkness all hit me like a train. Again, it’s so stupid it hurts and it chases after Dream Drop Distance in the worst ways, but as someone who sat here waiting for answers to questions for so many years, I simultaneously felt closure and excitement for the future.
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ES: I see you're resolute in your simpery, so let's break this down piece by piece. We agree that Kingdom Hearts 2 had more technical combat. I think what most people identify as the big difference between them is just how floaty Sora is in KH3. It forces you to commit to aerial combos in a way that really limits control. Floatier combat isn't necessarily bad, but the problem is that there wasn't enough effort made to build back the combat complexity that the floatiness eliminated. Where KH2 was about positioning, counter-attacks, and building towards combo abilities, KH3 is a game where you press square a bunch, and occasionally triangle. The flowmotion, Shotlocks, and attractions don't feel like additional tools in your arsenal, they just feel like more flash on the screen. All of the combat mechanics in KH3 are in service to spectacle rather than compelling gameplay, and you can't sustain my interest in a 40-hour game with cool animations alone.
GF: Oh if there’s one thing I’m resolute in, it’s my simpery. I knew we’d hit “floaty” at some point in this discussion, and I’d be daft to pretend there aren’t some physics differences between 2 and 3. But when you look at Birth by Sleep and Dream Drop Distance, it’s definitely been improved. That’s not to say “hey, it’s less bad so it’s fine,” but it’s something that never really bothered me like it did on Dream Drop. I think Shotlock and Attractions are a bit hit and miss, but Transformations give you a whole new arsenal every time you use them, especially with some of the best ones like the Mirage Staff and the Counter Shield. Figuring out that the Counter Shield is actually a Beast is one of my favourite memories of KH3, and there are a lot of moments like that. It’s sort of comparable to when you figure out that Reflega is better than sex in KH2.
The real mic-drop moment for me with combat is Critical difficulty. I don’t know if you’ve done a Critical playthrough of 3, but it really makes you use every single tool in your arsenal. Suddenly that Shotlock that recharges your health changes from a shrug moment to something you owe your life to, and the same goes double for transformations and attractions. My original playthrough of KH3 on Normal was astoundingly easy, but Critical is up there as one of my favourite playthroughs of KH for how much it puts things in perspective.
ES: I was so put off by the game that I never went back for a critical run, though I’ll admit that as far as combat goes, I did enjoy the boss fights that Re:Mind had to offer. If Critical Mode really shows the depths of the combat then I’d be willing to give it a try, but to be honest, slogging through the story again is an even bigger turn off than the combat.
I give Nomura a lot of credit as a director, but his vision for level design is extremely lacking, and I think Kingdom Hearts 3 might be his worst showing yet. What made him think it was a good idea to expand the size of every environment so much but still leave them so empty and boring? I can close my eyes and draw a map of every world in Kingdom Hearts 1, 2, Birth by Sleep, and probably Dream Drop Distance because they’re all so concise and they flow well from one area to the next. Kingdom Hearts 3’s worlds are just a total mess. I spent so much time walking around aimlessly from room to room just trying to figure out where I was supposed to go, especially in the worlds like Arendelle and Kingdom of Corona that had a ton of backtracking. None of them felt fun to explore like Tarzan’s Deep Jungle, the Timeless River, Halloween Town, or the Symphony of Sorcery. Half of them are tedious mazes, and the other half are big open spaces filled with nothing. And that’s before we even get to how painfully vacant the plots are.
GF: Oh yeah, Re:Mind’s boss fights are some of the best fights ever and a good sign that Osaka team have learned from previous flops like Birth by Sleep’s Mysterious Figure.
Fantastic segue though, and I guess we’re on the real scary stuff now – DISNEY. You made some great points up until you talked positively about Deep Jungle and then I remembered slipping off hippos and falling off vines and you lost me in a flood of tears. Although the original Kingdom Hearts did make each world feel unique, sometimes to their detriment (ahem, Wonderland), Kingdom Hearts 2 just gave up and said, ‘Here are a bunch of rooms, please walk between them.’
With Kingdom Hearts 3, there was a lot more to see and do in each world, especially the first time through, whether it's hidden emblems, mini-games, or finding a good spot for ingredients. I can’t believe I’m going to compliment Dream Drop Distance, but Flowmotion really made an impact and it shows with how much more movement there is, even if I’d argue it was done better in that game (stupid sparkly walls). Some of them are guilty of being too big like Big Hero 6, and I hate Arendelle with all my heart because it’s just a nothing world, but when I think of Kingdom Hearts 3’s Disney worlds, I think of hunting for Lucky Emblems, trying to get the best mini-game times, and even just being impressed with how well something like Monsters, Inc. or Andy’s Room was recreated.
Plot-wise, yeah you’re either getting a lazy retelling (ARENDELLE) or a total mess of weird Kingdom Hearts-isms like puppets in the Toy Story World that then give way to legendary moments like Woody roasting Young Xehanort. That’s the good shit. Maybe I’m just so used to Kingdom Hearts now but that is the sort of stupidity I eat up like a good little fan.
I guess we’re going to have to talk about the non-Disney plot now, huh?
ES: I am also guilty of eating up all the absurd nonsense Kingdom Hearts feeds us, I don’t think you can be a fan of the series if you don’t accept that the story is a fever dream of half-baked ideas, sudden retcons, and meta concepts that are poorly explained at best and hilariously mishandled at worst. My problem with Kingdom Hearts 3 is how unsatisfying it is a finale to the Xehanort Saga. It would have been foolish to expect everything to come together in a cohesive way, but it feels as though there wasn’t even a genuine attempt made to pay off most of the branches of this storyline.
It’s so easy to see that the game was made in a bunch of different pieces. In other Kingdom Hearts games, the overarching plot was woven through each of the worlds you visited. The first one was about Maleficent gathering the seven princesses of heart from the worlds you visit. In the second game, Organization 13 has strong thematic reasons to intervene in each world. I think Xaldin’s subplot with Beast is a great example. In Kingdom Hearts 3, the Seekers of Darkness occasionally show up for unknown bad guy reasons, but they’re rarely influencing the stories of these worlds in any meaningful way. Sora’s quest to master the Power of Waking is the most compulsory reason to visit these worlds we’ve ever seen. The themes aren’t strong, it doesn’t feel like he’s growing as a character, and the story never progresses until you get to the Keyblade Graveyard.
From there, it's just one long boss rush constantly interrupted by 30-minute cutscenes where every villain is given a hasty resolution. It’s poorly paced, none of the plot points have any weight, and when it’s all said and done we don’t even have a new status quo to build off of. Evil is defeated… maybe. Sora is lost in a new place we’ve never heard of, or something. I know there are moments of pathos along the way, but I cared deeply about these characters and I don’t feel like I got any kind of real closure here. Maybe you can point to specific beats that offered some nice pay-off, but you have to admit that it all gets pretty muddy during that painful final act.
GF: Oh I’m right with you there, the final act and some of the main themes are such a rollercoaster of ups and downs. The Power of Waking feels like something so grand and important despite really only being in two games and not having any sort of explanation. It awakens lost hearts but can also time travel? And doing so will transport you to another world? I’m sure whatever’s next will explain some of that, but even the Re:Mind stuff with Yozora is so achingly confusing when it’s pretty clear we won’t have a clue until the future. That’s just one example in a game filled with them, so I can’t argue too hard on it being a mess. It’s also hard to judge the game when I had about a decade worth of expectations for the final battle. Did I get everyone in Keyblade armour rushing around as we switch between characters and get resolutions for everyone? Not even close.
But then, to be the glass-half-full guy, I think of the moments that truly mattered to me in Kingdom Hearts 3, the ones that I’ll always remember. Aqua coming home, Terra escaping the darkness and being proven to be Ansem’s guardian, the relationship between Sora, Donald, and Goofy finally feeling real, Sora’s speech about leadership and doing something with all his heart, and so many more. It’s sandwiched between tons of stupid stuff, but I still cry at some of these because they manage to hit so hard. For me, that doesn’t excuse any of the bad stuff, but it is enough for me to not really mind it all that much, which I guess is really how I feel about Kingdom Hearts 3 as a whole.
For every open-world Gummi Ship section or annoyance over the black box being teased to no avail yet again, there’s Sully yeeting Vanitas through a door, a Keyblade Wielder team-up in the sky, and a fated reunion between long-lost friends that manages to make me forget the bad and give in with all my heart.
ES: Yeah, I think that’s really what it boils down to. Kingdom Hearts has endured because it consistently delivers powerful moments. I get choked up when I think about Kairi’s line “This time, I’ll fight” or Roxas’ “Looks like my summer vacation is over.” My problem with Kingdom Hearts 3 is that it’s filled with big, melodramatic moments, but it doesn’t deliver the context or justification to give them emotional weight. Maybe I’m not as easily moved as I once was, maybe I’ve gotten cynical with age, but Kingdom Hearts 3 just didn’t have the same magic that made me fall in love with the series. I totally get why it still works on you – in fact, I’m jealous of it. But all my issues with the game just compounded until I couldn’t feel the moments anymore. It’s not the worst Kingdom Hearts game, but it will always be the most disappointing to me.
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