Kingdom Hearts III released in 2019 and was met with mixed reviews from even the most diehard fans of the video game series. About a dozen games came out in the franchise before this one, and many outspoken fans strongly disliked it while plenty of others absolutely loved it. Even though the opinions on the game seem rather divided, the loudest takes seem to come from the crowd who hate it more. However, it doesn’t deserve all the hate.
It’s a great game, but these naysayers claim that the game is quite the opposite. Some of their complaints include not liking the new combat mechanics, not liking how fast the main playable character (Sora) runs, there were no appearances from the usual Final Fantasy characters, and the pacing of the story. While it’s obviously okay for everyone to have their own opinion and people are allowed to not like these elements of the game, these complaints are worth dissecting.
Not being a fan of the updated combat mechanics is an interesting take to say the least. Several games have passed between Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts III, so Sora would need to feel powerful, and he does. In Kingdom Hearts III, the player could interact with the environment more than ever and use their surroundings to take down foes. Being able to utilize objects around you made the combat feel more immersive.
On top of that, there were several new special attacks. Not only did these make Sora feel more powerful, but they were a lot of fun. Some of them magically summoned Disney theme park rides to be used as giant rideable weapons which felt like exciting minigames during the fights. Others changed up the basic moveset, shaking up the combat quite a bit. The best part was having the option as to which special attack you’d use. The player could decide which was best for their given situation. With all this, Sora felt more powerful, which he would have been canonically. Wanting the combat to be identical to how it was in Kingdom Heart II is genuinely weird. That was multiple console generations ago, why wouldn’t there be an update?
The complaints about Sora being faster are also quite bizarre. The worlds are bigger this time around with more ground to cover. It only makes sense for the character to run faster to make up for that. It also further showcases how much his abilities have grown over time. Running on walls was an added bonus of that, which was just plain cool.
Not liking the absence of Final Fantasy characters is a complaint that does make a lot more sense. When Kingdom Hearts was first being advertised, it was billed as a crossover between Disney and Final Fantasy. However, it branched off into more of its own entity. It’s reasonable to expect Cloud, Tifa, and the rest of the gang after they’ve already made a few appearances. However, their story in the Kingdom Hearts saga had already come to a satisfying conclusion. They don’t really need to keep appearing once their story has ended. That being said, perhaps they should have been replaced by a different set of Final Fantasy characters to keep the crossover theme alive.
The other negative argument involves the story and its pacing. Other than the very beginning and the last couple of worlds, there’s not much plot going on outside of the separate stories for the Disney worlds, and those Disney worlds don’t tie into the overall plot as much as they did in previous games. This much is definitely true. However, when the story is present, it’s actually fantastic. It adds a lot of payoff to reaching those last few worlds to get exciting twists and turns, conclusions of various subplots, and a finale to this particular saga. Plus, there were plenty of tidbits of lore spread throughout the game and you still got to interact with plenty of fan-favorite Disney characters. This game had the difficult task of ending this saga, setting up the next one, and streamlining the plots of a dozen games into one, and it managed to do all of that.
The majority of the haters and complainers seem to be folks who either didn’t play all the other games (which KH3 assumes you have), in which case it’s their own fault for being lost, or they wanted it to be 100% like a previous game they’ve played, in which case they can just play that game instead. Kingdom Hearts III is not without its flaws by any means, but it’s still an incredibly fun video game with a moving story. It not being the most perfect game to ever exist is not a reason for the amount of hate it has gotten over the last few years.
Nonstop Nerd 