Kingdom Hearts 3: The Good, The Bad, & The One Reason I Keep Yelling At The Screen

Here's a first for me: I started playing a video game the very day it was released! Me! The girl who stumbles on to every Popular Thing at least 2 years too late!

I didn't plan to play Kingdom Hearts 3 this soon, but John brought it home Wednesday night as a surprise. "Here," he said, "you can play this while I'm re-plumbing the house." Which was the most romantic thing anyone has ever said in the history of the entire world.

I'm about 9 hours into the game, and as one might expect, I have thoughts. Good thoughts. Bad thoughts. Conflicted thoughts. Thoughts that make me think in short, choppy sentences.

That's right, this is a job for... BULLET POINTS.

The Good:

- The Fighting 

The fighting in Kingdom Hearts has always been fun, but in KH3 it is INSANELY fun. Button-mashing galore, eye-candy combos left and right, and new special moves that call down Disney rides (like Splash Mountain or the Tea Cups) to bash your enemies with. SO SO FUN. 

It's all pretty easy, too, since you use the same 3 buttons to do all your combo moves. So just keep mashin' away, follow the prompts on screen, and cool things are gonna happen.

- The Exploring

The graphics and areas maps are gorgeous, of course, and just like the previous games you can smash most things around you to get health and rewards. There are also hidden chests, food ingredients, and a scavenger hunt for Hidden Mickeys that make exploring just as much fun as the fighting.

 

 - The Themed Lands

Let's be honest, this is the main draw for all of us, right? Getting to play inside your favorite Disney movies? And seeing all of Sora's themed outfits and Keyblades?

In Toy Story land, they're actual toys! Eeee!

Honestly, these 3 things are all I want out of Kingdom Hearts: I want to explore the Disney-themed worlds, watch a fun cut scene or two, and smash bad guys with giant teacups shooting fireworks. You know, the little things.

Ahhh, but enter...

The Bad:

- The Gummi Ship travel

Ug, tedious and not fun. The graphics are a little better than the last KH, but let's be real: no one is playing Kingdom Hearts to customize a LEGO rocket ship and navigate - slowly - around asteroids. Basically an unskippable intermission on the way to the good stuff.

That's a minor quibble compared to the one TRULY bad thing, though:

- The Cut Scenes

 ::DUN DUN DUUUUUUUN::

Just how agonizing are the KH3 cut scenes? Let me count the ways:

1) They last freaking forever. In my first 4 hours of "gameplay" more than half that time - I'm talking over 2 hours - was spent watching cut scenes. According to this review on Euro Gamer there are about 238 cut scenes, and the game only lasts 30-40 hours. That works out to roughly 6 cut scenes per hour, or one every 10 minutes. And these are NOT short scenes.

So yeah, just as you're breathing a sigh of relief when one cut scene is finally over... ANOTHER ONE STARTS PLAYING. Many agonized screams. Many. "Just let me plaaay!!" A few times the game literally let me walk 10 feet before triggering another cut scene - and once a scene started while I was mid-fight! NOWHERE IS SAFE.

Another issue: the cut scenes often end by putting you in a completely different area, or even off the whole world, back into space. So if you're not done exploring yet you have to backtrack. Are you imagining the face I'm making right now? Because I am making a face.  >.<

Of course, cut scenes in themselves aren't bad, provided they're telling a good story.

::deep sigh:: 

::slowly and sadly bonking head on keyboard::

2) The story is bad, y'all. So bad. It's often clear the writers aren't native English speakers - phrases that are technically correct but sound odd  - and then the plot itself is a huge, confusing, unwieldy mess. Everyone's talking about hearts: don't lose heart, follow your heart, someone else is INSIDE his heart (??), now the bad guys are splitting hearts... it's all pretty bewildering, which, whatever, games don't need a coherent plot, right? Except they WON'T STOP TALKING ABOUT IT.

 

3) There are long, awkward pauses between most lines of dialogue. Square Enix must think Americans talk like slow idiots, because the pace... is... excruciating. To be fair, the last KH games were the same, but c'mon guys, you've had 14 years to fix this!

There are exceptions to the awkward pacing, and the scenes that are lifted straight out of the movies (like Tangled) play great. But all the extra content with characters explaining the "plot?" AGONY.

4) And you are...?

KH3 dives in with zero refreshers from the last game - which most of us played over a decade ago - so other than Sora, Kairi, and Rikku, I have no idea who any of these people are. And there are so many people, talking about even MORE people! Which, again, wouldn't matter, except I'm being forced to watch hours of cut scenes of characters I don't remember drone on about following hearts and not losing hearts and someone's AFTER our hearts and sweet Jiminy Cricket just let me play the game.

 These guys talk a lot. You can tell they're bad by the matching fetish wear.

Around hour 5 I discovered something absolutely miraculous, though: if you hit the Select button during a cut scene, YOU CAN SKIP THE SCENE.

This has saved my sanity more than a few times already, though I'll admit most of the time I'm afraid to skip and miss something cool/important. So I'm being held hostage by slow-talking strangers explaining really dense plot points, when all I want to do is find more ingredients for Remy to cook with, dangit. (No joke, I fell asleep waiting for a lecture about "data streams" to end.)

All of which brings me to my real dilemma:

John did buy me the game, but he ALSO rented it from RedBox, so I could try it out first. I've been playing the rental disk for 2 days now, and I honestly can't decide if I like KH3 enough to keep it. I think I may cut my losses with the $8 rental fee, return the game, and wait a while 'til the price comes down. 

That said - and despite all my complaining - I do like Kingdom Hearts 3 and want to finish it. I just don't think this much aggravation is worth $60. I mean, if I wanted to be frustrated playing a game, I still have Overwatch. Heyooo.

So there you have it, gang. Who else is playing KH3? Who plans to? What do you think so far? Is the nostalgia worth the aggravation, or - and here's a thought - am I the only one who finds the cut scenes aggravating? 0.O Does it get better after you get to the Tangled world, since that's where I left off? Tell me in the comments!