Your unspoiler-y verdict on Kingdom Hearts 3?

Is this a game that's only meant for die hards? I've played through KH1 & 2 and I thought 1 was ok if dated and I liked the beginning of 2 but thought once you start playing as Sora, it was a steady decline. Also, the structure of 2, how you had to revisit the worlds gave it a bad disjointed pacing.

I've always wanted to like KH or at least understand the love of it because I have a friend who does so I've been slowly playing through some of it and I think I did begin to understand the depth of the series with some of the stuff that happened in 2. But with 1 and 2 under my belt, I feel like I can confidently say in my humble opinion, these games aren't what I'd deem "good" games.

Still, I listen to some of Waypoint's KH lore episodes and I do think KH is interesting and absolutely has stuff going for it. I have Birth by Sleep and I'll probably play that at some point but I was wondering if I should pick up KH3 'cause I see it on sale for $20. I feel like I'll probably end up not liking it that much like KH1 and 2 but it does seem like something I should see through just cause it's a game that ppl wanted for so long and took even longer to come out. There is an enormous curiosity factor to it like FFXV just as someone that likes video games, tho not quite in the same way.

As a huge fan of the Kingdom Hearts series, I’d skip the third one. It is one of the most disappointing games I’ve ever played for a multitude of reasons. But I’ll give a quick summary why.

1. The combat doesn’t feel as good as it should. I love Kingdom Hearts 2, especially the Final Mix version, and its combat feels great to me. The Kingdom Hearts series has an odd quality of the gameplay getting much better as you play and acquire more abilities. After a certain point, aside from some minor quirks, I think the KH2 combat feels really good. Not as tight as a Bayonetta or Devil May Cry sure, but still good. This does not apply to Kingdom Hearts 3 at all. It’s never terrible, but i can’t say I ever had the same thought that it was good. The combat looks cool to say something positive. The moves all look great and are very cinematic.

2. Story is awful. The story was always kind of a mess, but KH3 doesn’t even resolve the interesting story threads that are brought up in side games. It also doesn’t help that it feels like you do nothing of importance for 90% of the game and then backloads all the story into the last few hours.

3. Voice acting is atrocious. Idk what it is with this game but the voice acting sucks. Outside of the main crew, none of the characters sound remotely decent.

Ultimately, there are small sparks of a great game in KH3. Like if the cacophony of ideas they mashed together had some better direction and purpose, it could have turned out great. It didn’t though. If you’re really that curious I’d say check it out just to see what you think of it.

Short answer:
Kingdom Hearts 3 is a game for Kingdom Hearts fans.

Long answer:
As much as I like the series, I wouldn't exactly call it accessible since you kinda have to know your KH stuff, which can take a while since that's multiple 30 or 40 hour adventures to go though because the "side games" are essential to the overarching story (give or take Coded since that game is straight up filler). Just going into 3 after 1 and 2 just leads to a number of "Wait, what?" moments in 3. I suppose playing 3 could be enjoyable despite not fully being on board with the series or being explicitly knowledgeable about the series for the sake of 3 being a mechanically decent action RPG, and completing 3 could be incentive to go back to the other games to fill in the blanks. But that's a really long stretch of a prediction since I sincerely doubt those who are lukewarm on the older games are suddenly going to join the KH fandom because of 3, especially among this community where the general consensus seems pretty cold towards KH.

So with that said, I grew up with the series while other haven't, so it's fine to not like KH despite fans like me feeling otherwise. I rather people spend their time and money with games that they enjoy and have a confident level of interest in, not try to persuade someone or make them feel obligated into playing something that they're not all that interested in to avoid mutual disappointment. But if someone with a more optimism is willing to vouch for the series towards a lukewarm audience, go for it. I'll continue to air on the side of caution with low expectations.

It's actually kinda insane how Kingdom Hearts 3 got made. It's a game that has zero respect for new players, and absolutely requires you to have played every single other KH game to understand it. It's a game for two groups of people: die hard fans and kids who love Disney. It fails to satisfy either group.

I actually had to go back and play KH2FM to make sure I wasn't misremembering, but no. It's a worse game in almost every way. The combat is much too floaty, and until the Critical Mode update, basically played itself. It has some fantastically gorgeous world designs like Toy Box, Monsters Inc. and PotC, but that's it.

The only thing I can say is maybe this game gets a Final Mix treatment and becomes something that can stand closer to KH2FM in quality, but in its current state it's just a huge disappointment.

Side note: Sora is a much better character in KH2. In KH3 and DDD he's insufferably naive.

If you don't like Kingdom Hearts, you don't like it and that's not bad. I've only played the first one and had maybe 1% fun the whole time. In the time since I watched all the cutscenes and it did almost nothing for me. As a classic Disney fan, it saddens me to see that whole element so divorced from what matters. Like you, I've wondered why people love the series so much and the best I can come up with is that they might have low standards? Play the games if you want, but don't let the anticipation of other people determine what you're "supposed to" like.

I think if you're curious to see what Kingdom Hearts looks like now, it's worth a peek at least. If you don't like Kingdom Hearts, or rather "Kingdom Hearts" in the same way people say they love or hate "anime", then don't bother. KH3 is that in excess.

There is some interesting things you might appreciate if you've been a fan of the series up till now, but it mostly asks that you either have a healthy amount of nostalgia for the series or are seriously devoted to the lore (or both, really). It's a bit of a mess, but it's not without charm. It wears a bit thin, and feels half-baked at points, but if you squint and give yourself over to "Kingdom Hearts" instead of Kingdom Hearts you might get something more out of it.

I thought it was really good. They give you a bunch of different methods of catching up, if you're not a close follower of the series (which I'm not). The gameplay folds in a bunch of new gameplay mechanics from the offshoot games much more smoothly than I was expecting, and I liked the expansiveness and verticality of the worlds.

I've seen a bunch of complaints that it doesn't have enough content, but it's pretty comparable to the KH2 vanilla, in that regard. I think people just went into the initial release with Final Mix expectations.

The game is indecipherable unless you've played every game and disappointing if you have. Like others have said, the combat isn't great and nothing happens until the last 20% of the game. However, I actually expected that because those have been problems since BbS. What I didn't expect was how underwhelming the 20% would be. It's like they put together a checklist of every plot point they needed to wrap up and did them all as quickly and predictably as possible one right after another. It made me feel like Nomura's grown tired of the Xehanort saga and just wants to move on to the stuff he's been setting up in the mobile game. Don't get me wrong, I like that stuff too and am excited to see it come into the console games. It's just I didn't want it to be at the expense of what I've been waiting 10 years for.

I enjoyed it as a beautiful, indulgent catastrophe. Some of the Disney worlds are straight-up bad, the conclusion pulls a Metal Gear Solid 4 and starts pulling plot conveniences out of its ass, and the combat feels like it has a lot of interesting ideas but is absurdly easy almost the entire game unless you're playing on Critical Mode (at which point it's still not as responsive as KH2 FM).

But also, I enjoyed the hell out of it. This is me, coming to it as someone who thinks Kingdom Hearts is, at its core, equal parts profoundly stupid and 110% earnest. Kingdom Hearts III is those ideas taken to its logical conclusion, so if you aren't into that, I do think it's worth skipping. The combat isn't good enough on its own to be worth playing.

The words beautiful and catastrophe are brilliant adjectives to describe Kingdom Hearts 3. I went into this game thinking I’m on board for several hours of nonsense. However, the nonsense was far from fun at points. The world’s you visit are a visual masterpiece but they’re a bore to explore. The narrative could help to push you along in it wasn’t just every disney world being either uninspired or just a remake of the films they’re based on.

I will also add that listening to Anna explain her backstory while the audio from the flashback audio plays is the worst example I can think of production values alongside the incredibly stilted dialogue from Riku. Problems that didn’t exist in the older games. Except the mobile game (which apparently is also relevant to the plot as I learned towards the final hour).