Kingdom Hearts III Spoiler Thread

No and there's a large difference between the actual chosen wielder of the keyblade and the post BSB drivel that has been Riku's character.

Of course, that goes for a few characters. I wonder what possibly happened around that time that led to worse character writing. Hmmm.

Edited by deludedmusings on Mar 15th 2019 at 3:14:04 AM

Riku's a character that I feel should be retired to the background. We've re-treaded his arc until it was dust.

Give the deuteragonist role to someone else for a change.

Roxas, Xion, Aqua, Kairi, Namine, Ventus and Terra could all be interesting in their own ways as a second main character.

Although I feel that based on what we've seen, the deuteragonist role would just fall to either Aqua, Roxas or Lea if Riku dropped out.

Fact.

It had been a while since Riku and Sora had character focus between II-3D so Flanderization probably set in and built up on issues that where in II.

They like stopped retreading his stuff in 3D. That was the whole idea behind him becoming a Master amd realizing he is worthy.

But like, he wasn't allowed to do anything of import in 3 because it has to involve Sora instead which hampered anything him and Mickey should have had with Aqua, just like it does everyone else. Plus we even got a nice resolution to Riku Replica passing on in peace and him carrying on his wishes to protect Namine for him.

Plus thats not going to change because as 3D made clear Riku is essentially Sora's Dream Eater. So he'll always be there to protect him from threats just like Kairi. Kairi will never be allowed to be playable so that leaves him and him alone. None of the others like Aqua, Ventus, or Roxas have that strong a bond to Sora.

I mean Ventus has been living inside Sora for most of his life and Roxas is literally born of Sora's body. He's basically Sora's son.....from a certain point of view.

Like if the game told me that Roxas has a stronger bond to Sora than Riku does, I'd completely believe it.

Edited by MadSkillz on Mar 14th 2019 at 11:02:49 AM

Who has tried to violently take over his body and has been clear he has not been happy about being in Sora and Sora knows that and now happily exists independent of him. Just like he always wanted.

Ventus was in him but they don't have this unspeakable bond. The price of being in a coma like state. Same for Xion who responds to Roxas talking through Sora when they Time Travel her initial self somehow.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Mar 14th 2019 at 11:07:25 AM

Its not like Riku's bond with Sora is super exciting anymore. I mean its like them repeating "Wow our bond is so strong!" On repeat since they divorced them of all the competitive elements.

Plenty still eat that up, just as there are folks who do for Sora and Kairi.

Roxas genuinely likes Sora and has a good read on him. He even makes the case that "it has to be Sora" despite it almost being the other way around.

I think they have a pretty good bond.

Fair enough on this.

I'll give points to Xion for telling Sora exactly what he needed to hear about Kairi before the final battle which no one else even cared to talk to Sora about at that moment.

How far into KHIII am I? I'm in the middle of the Pirates world, and have yet to visit San Fransokyo.

Basically the end. To equate to pacing of previous games, you're at the Neverland of BBS, Hollow Bastion of KH 1, and JUST entering Twilight Town before World That Never Was. You've still got San Fran, but it's endgame after that.

Yes, this game is unbelievably short and not very developed.

Edited by InkDagger on Mar 14th 2019 at 11:45:08 AM

Really? This is my first KH title, and I am about twenty hours into the game. It seems fairly full-length to me.

Edited by AzLiddell on Mar 14th 2019 at 11:54:18 AM

The other games tended to feel a lot longer and had a lot more subquests and other things to be done.

It might be long compared to other games that might have 10 hours of content, but its short compared to a lot of other main entires in the series.

Edited by InkDagger on Mar 14th 2019 at 11:58:21 AM

@Inkdagger It isn't really shorter than KH 1 tbh.

There's just less post-game content but the Final Mix will fix that.

KH III is longer than all the other games except KH II.

Edited by MadSkillz on Mar 15th 2019 at 12:39:33 PM

You're around 6-7 hours from the end.

Edited by MadSkillz on Mar 15th 2019 at 12:38:49 PM

I played through KH 1 and 2 during the lead up to 3's release and I can tell you a 25 hour or so play time is completely typical for the series.

It feels short. I apologize that I should not have made my 10 hours comparison earlier, but the pacing is really off in KH 3 and that's why it feels short.

KH 1 has a lot of mid-points and returns while developing other subplots, like returning to Traverse Town a couple of times to meet Riku again, lock the keyhole, develop Leon and his crew as characters, and also steal ourselves twice for both Hollow Bastion and then End of the World.

KH 2 sends us all through the world map, but still returns us to Hollow Bastion to develop those plots a bit, add in Tron and Hundred Acre-Wood, ramp up the sakes a bit with both the 1000 Heartless Battle and Demyx's death as well as the plot revelations regarding Siax, Axel, Xemnas' reveal. Not to mention the trip to Twilight Town earlier involving Kairi and the Organization.

KH 3 feels shorter because there's ultimately a lot less continuously going on and being developed. We don't have much mid-point deviating from the Disney worlds besides cutscenes of other character's furthering the plot instead of SDG or cutscenes of bad guys talking to give the player exposition that none of the protagonists will get as well as scenes with SDG going "Do we have the Power of Waking yet? No? NEXT WORLD!". More obviously, we don't really have any subplots either. There's less going on and less being accomplished so it feels shorter.

Edited by InkDagger on Mar 15th 2019 at 2:48:11 AM

I really feel KH 3 was missing a Traverse Town/Radiant Garden type world to tie it all together. The cutscenes at Yen Sid's tower try and fail to fill that void.

A clear mid point would help. Aka the 1000 Heartless fight for 2, and uh Neverland for 1?

KH 1 never had much of a mid-culmination. Traverse Town 2, Agrabah, and Monstero are the best I can think of as its the first of Maleficent's Group to be taken down, Maleficent gets actually revealed to Sora, and Riku shows up to also reveal to the player that he's becoming a rival.

However, it does have a stronger Act 2 to Act 3 with either Neverland to Hollow Bastion or TT 3-Hollow Bastion 2 into End of the World depending on how you want to structure your acts.

KH 2 actually has a solid beginning, even if I didn't apprecieate it at the time, and a pretty good mid-culmination with sequence-tension-release between and even a pretty good third act. I don't think it has a great Act 2 to 3 transition but I can't quite think of a better way of developing that except to just expand Axel's role to a more direct betrayal and turn to Sora's assistance.

I would consider Traverse Town 2 to be the mid-culmination in the first game. A lot happens that changes or defines the stakes of the plot: It's when you learn about the purpose of the keyholes for the first time and Riku is revealed to be in cahoots with Maleficent, giving clearer goals and dramatic stakes to the conflict.

In gameplay terms, it's also when you get the warp option for the Gummi Ship, which makes the game open up quite a lot.

I agree that KH 3 was lacking in a clearly defined midgame point (such as the fantastic Battle for Hollow Bastion sequence in KH 2), but I disagree that it feels rushed or small due to that. There's no comparison between the worlds of 2 and 3, the latter are so much bigger, more expansive and with so much more going on plotwise. There's easily more to do in a single world in 3 than in both visits of a world in 2 put together.

I agree. The sheer scope and size of most of the worlds would make a Second visit to them mostly superfulous, and they likely weren't designed for it.

Not to mention, this is the first HD Kingdom Hearts, So I 'm not surprised that SE's Osaka team need to learn from the ground up how to develop for it.

Future games on HD hardware will probably be made more efficiently.

Hell, I don't see KH 4 or the in between game thats supposed to come out before it happening until Next Gen, really.

I think the main reason we didn't get a second visit was the way the narrative is structured. In KH 2, the main purpose of the second visit was to square off against an Organization member. The first half of the game is dedicated to Maleficent and Pete's plot while the Organization does stuff in the background, and then in the second half, the Organization steps up to be the bad guys.

KHIII had the various Xehanort vessels as the bad guys right from the get-go. There wasn't a decoy villain like KHII had with Maleficent and Pete. They existed, mind you, but they f*ck around in the background and never do anything or justify their presence in the story. They're just here to remind you that they exist.

The problem the Xehanorts have, in turn, is that their story is painfully straightforward such that the fleshing out each member gets doesn't really contribute much to the story or enhance their characters in any fashion. At the start, Xehanort's just like, "There's going to be an epic third act climax between all of my me's and all of you guys. Go waste time until the plot happens." And then thirty hours of the game are dedicated to doing precisely that.

KHIII might be the most straightforward game in the series, weird as it is to say. There are few twists and turns to be had. Sora spends the game doing all the obligatory things that must be done. Save the characters that we know must be saved, experience a few Disney worlds because you gotta do Disney worlds, and fight the exact set of villains we knew he would fight, who are all thoroughly established characters right from the start.

In a weird way, I think KHIII might actually have Middle Chapter Syndrome despite being the third part of the trilogy. We already know we're here for an epic final battle and every single player in that battle is a known entity, so the meat of the game just feels like it's filling time until the climax can start. There's nothing new to learn or uncover, so it just winds up running down a checklist of plot threads that need closing.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 15th 2019 at 9:53:30 AM

I feel like, from a plot perspective, 3D and 3 were originally meant to be one game, before the Pixar negotiations started to take extremely long and they decided to just make another game for the 3DS.

And then one for PC.

And then one for mobile devices re-using the art-style and retelling the plot of that PC game