- Joined
- Apr 9, 2007
- Messages
- 5,386
- Awards
- 19
Is that a fact? Or did you and I play different copies of KH1?
A few months later, was KH3 a failure?
- Thread starter Nukara
- Start date
|
REGISTER TO REMOVE ADS |
|
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2007
- Messages
- 5,386
- Awards
- 19
OK, so Leon and the gang helped you fight Maleficent at Hollow Bastion in KH1. Got it. Wish I had that copy of KH1. Because in my copy, Leon and the gang appear during the second visit.
Why are you putting words into people’s mouths. You keep repeating your opinion to try and make it fact but that is just ignoring the actual facts that Tartarus laid out. The RG Committee characters weren’t main plot character but they were there at the beginning and middle of Sora’s journey. To have them cut out at the end is a detriment to KH3 as a game seeking to close out its own saga which began with them and had them in the middle arc of Sora’s personal story.
In the game, Sora maybe hasn’t seen his friends in like a few weeks? But suddenly they are ignored and not referenced at all. It doesn’t matter if it’s been years since the last FF cameo. That isn’t how coherent and cohesive storytelling works.
No one is saying Leon fought Maleficent or that it would've been nonsense for him to do that, but no one is also treating that like the absolute bar to reach to become relevant in KH1.
That Leon has some rivalry with Maleficent is true and could make for a cool what if to play around with, sure.
But Leon and the others, while relevant, still weren't completely original characters who came from nothing and in desperate need of development like Riku or Kairi. It's easy to spot such things more than a decade and a half after the game's release, but back then when KH1 was this experimental game with limited options I can understand why they didn't capitalize on every single opportunity for this already well established protagonist of another videogame and focused on Sora's journey.
Would've been great for his own character, sure, but Cloud has an entire character arc in KH II and when discussing main plot relevance I'd say he's as tertiary as they come.
Besides if we take that in the broadest sense then I'd say Leon did help Sora a lot, even in ultimately defeating Maleficent. Sora wouldn't even know who Maleficent or Ansem, the two main villains of the entire game, were if not for the FF crew.
Leon is basically Yen Sid in KH1: information, hints, emotional support, even money and abilities. He and the others provide all that at the most crucial moments in Sora's journey.
Is all of that rendered null just because he didn't waltz into a boss fight with a Gunblade in hand? It seems an extremely simplistic approach.
That Leon has some rivalry with Maleficent is true and could make for a cool what if to play around with, sure.
But Leon and the others, while relevant, still weren't completely original characters who came from nothing and in desperate need of development like Riku or Kairi. It's easy to spot such things more than a decade and a half after the game's release, but back then when KH1 was this experimental game with limited options I can understand why they didn't capitalize on every single opportunity for this already well established protagonist of another videogame and focused on Sora's journey.
Would've been great for his own character, sure, but Cloud has an entire character arc in KH II and when discussing main plot relevance I'd say he's as tertiary as they come.
Besides if we take that in the broadest sense then I'd say Leon did help Sora a lot, even in ultimately defeating Maleficent. Sora wouldn't even know who Maleficent or Ansem, the two main villains of the entire game, were if not for the FF crew.
Leon is basically Yen Sid in KH1: information, hints, emotional support, even money and abilities. He and the others provide all that at the most crucial moments in Sora's journey.
Is all of that rendered null just because he didn't waltz into a boss fight with a Gunblade in hand? It seems an extremely simplistic approach.
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2007
- Messages
- 5,386
- Awards
- 19
He's accusing me of "minimizing the story" to suit my purpose and saying that what I was saying is not fact at all. What I said was that Leon and the others did not go with you to Hollow Bastion to fight Maleficent and that they didn't accompany Sora to investigate/fight Ansem, who Leon and the gang believed to be a great leader of Hollow Bastion. Those things happened in the game. Whether or not you believe it is relevant to the main story is an opinion, so I will back off on that, but I was trying to find out whether he saw what I saw in KH1 or not.
My other point before things turned into a mess was that Leon and the gang's storyline revolved around restoring Hollow Bastion. We see that story come to a close in KH2. It was never alluded to what Leon and the gang did in Radiant Garden, they didn't even seem to know Ansem The Wise, so they clearly were not notable/prominent members of that society.
Sora hasn't seen Mulan, Aladdin, Jack Skellington, Simba, Ariel, The Beast, Tidus, Wakka, Selphie, and bunch of other people in a few weeks too in KH3. By your logic, they're all ignored and it's bad storytelling to not have Sora ask about them. Why are Leon and the gang positioned higher than those characters who Sora actually has spent WAY more time with? Just because about a year or two ago in-game time Leon and the gang happened to be the first people Sora encountered and they knew a little bit about the keyblade, heartless, and Ansem (info about him that they had completely wrong btw). King Triton told Sora about the keyblade's ability to bring destruction to worlds, where are the people clamoring that because he delivered a piece of info related to the keyblade he should be brought back because it's incoherent and not cohesive storytelling?
My point was that Nomura always treated the Final Fantasy characters as minor cameos. If Leon and the gang were meant to be so crucial to the plot, Nomura would have had Leon as the party member in Hollow Bastion (as it is established that is their world). Instead he picks The Beast to accompany you, when he really didn't have to. Now I can't say what was going on in Nomura's mind, but I'm just saying that the way the Final Fantasy characters have always been used by Nomura suggest that in his mind they are minor cameos that are not needed for the main plot. Hence their absence in BbS, 3D, 358/2 Days, and KH3.
Last edited:
Now I wonder how much later DDD takes place after KH2.
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2007
- Messages
- 5,386
- Awards
- 19
It's like a few weeks, a month or two? Coded happens shortly after KH2, then we go into 3D.
Your point is based off your own conclusion that isn't really all that decisive. That's like saying Hercules wasn't relevant until KH III because he never accompanies you in the party and you instead get Auron, when he really didn't have to be there.
Now, Auron is definitely what I'd call a cameo and Hercules one of the main protagonists of the Olympus adventures. Because of all the other stuff that happens.
What we're saying is that Leon and the party are still crucial to the plot because of a plethora of other important things they do and are a part of, and deciding that they're not because they're not party members seems weird considering Kingdom Hearts never really reasoned like that.
So many characters are tremendously important even if they're not active party members nor do they interact much with their own world.
Kairi never sets foot in Radiant Garden proper after her kidnapping nor she's there during the crucial stuff in KH II and that's a huge bummer, but doesn't make her not important.
Beast is there instead and that was made to create a bond with another Princess for world-building purposes.
Advocating for a character to be as much as an active partecipant to their own storyline isn't bad, and I can understand if you would've preferred Leon and the gang there in place of Beast, or even just if you think that would've helped their characters stand out more, but you're seeing this and only this as some sort of message that confirms that they were never meant to be important in spite of all the rest.
Or you do see all the rest but still think it only makes Leon and the gang on the same level as one-time Disney characters, and there's not much to discuss there, it's personal views.
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2007
- Messages
- 5,386
- Awards
- 19
I didn't mean to make it sound like Leon not being a party member in Hollow Bastion or any character not being a party member equates that character to not being important to the main plot.
I'm saying that if Leon was so important to the main plot, why didn't he accompany you to Hollow Bastion in KH1? It was established from the get-go that Leon and the others wanted to save Hollow Bastion and that they blame its demise solely on Maleficent. However, it seems like Nomura saw them as minor characters, since their only involvement in their own world comes after Sora defeats Maleficent. They don't even seem to care that Sora encountered an "evil Ansem", who is different from the Ansem they knew about in Radiant Garden.
Basically, if Nomura saw them as a part of the main plot, they would have accompanied Sora to Hollow Bastion and been with him to confront Maleficent and find Ansem (or even discuss them with Sora). The story Nomura chose to tell with them is that of some regular Radiant Garden residents who got displaced and want to save their world. Their minor story arc is concluded in KH2 when Tron restores the name of Radiant Garden.
You can compare their role to the filler Disney characters. Their concerns are limited to what happens in their world. Main characters are involved with stories outside of the filler characters' bubble. Compare Maleficent's role to Clayton's in KH1 or Ariel to Riku. Now if you compare Leon to any of the filler Disney characters, he is just like them. His story is focused in one world. Yes, his world is the hub of KH2, so because of that is might seem like he is part of the main story, but he really isn't.
Anyway, speaking of Tron, everyone is going ballistic over Leon not being mentioned, but Ienzo is literally using the computer Tron is in and Sora doesn't even ASK how Tron is doing? To be honest, that is the bigger issue over Sora not asking about Leon. Ienzo is talking about data he found in Ansem's computer, data Tron probably dug up. It's surprising they didn't have Ienzo or Sora mention Tron.
That's what I was thinking, gotta at least be a month or two. Couldn't be any longer than that, or they run the risk of Xehanort getting what he wants.
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2012
- Messages
- 6,316
- Awards
- 39
I mentioned this on the site a few days ago. I think. It could turn out I'm confusing it with a conversation I had IRL. In which case I didn't and everyone should be ashamed for not having their telepathy on. lol
And it's super especially erroneous when DDD made a big deal about Tron and there's KH3's moments about data/the Datascape.
KH3 is just a conga line of wasted plot.
Idk to me cutting out Squall and the rest of the characters in Radiant Garden will always be my least favorite part of this game. Just doesn't feel right finishing a saga without the characters that were there with us in the first two parts.
And for what it's worth, my friend has never played Final Fantasy so she didn't even know about who's a cameo (other than Cloud). And she was really confused as to why Squall, Yuffie, Cid, Aerith just vanished and were never mentioned.
And for what it's worth, my friend has never played Final Fantasy so she didn't even know about who's a cameo (other than Cloud). And she was really confused as to why Squall, Yuffie, Cid, Aerith just vanished and were never mentioned.
You seem really infatuated with these kinds of false equivalencies, so let's take this one at face value and see where it leads us:
If notable elements of the story in KH3's plot had centered on the worlds of Mulan, Aladdin, Jack Skellington, Ariel, or The Beast, and Sora was in regular contact with another character who was stationed at any of those worlds, and Sora did not even so much as inquire about his Disney pals while talking on the phone so that the script could cop out of giving them an appearance by writing them off as ~busy elsewhere~, then yes, I'm confident that everyone who is in this thread criticizing KH3's erasure of the core FF group would be making the same comments in regard to the erasure of Disney characters who were previously established as part of Sora's network of friendships. That's the equivalent scenario, and even that line of reasoning gets us into trouble, because unlike these Disney worlds which have some self-contained significance presented in the context of the specific games in which they appear but generally don't contain a broader legacy to expand on in future installments, Radiant Garden was established from KH1 to be a world with long-running relevance to pretty much every single main character (a quality reinforced by its reappearance as the main hub world in KH2). So while it's easy enough to imagine a KH3 without Land of Dragons, it's not so simple to cut out Radiant Garden-- despite Nomura's best efforts, as well as his worst inclinations. And because the Restoration Committee is based out of a world with that kind of recurring significance for the franchise, they inherit that sense of significance to a degree: they are part of the story and history of that place, and have a functional contribution to make in terms of its ongoing integration into the larger narrative. For instance, just on a character level, it makes absolutely no sense that Mickey would engage Dilan (literally who?) for escort through RG instead of, you know, the person he explicitly directed Donald and Goofy towards in the first game for assistance in finding a Keyblade wielder-- which is Mickey's actual current mission.
That said, as you effectively argued with the Tron comparison, everything with the Radiant Garden plot and the intersection of characters who should be at the center of it is handled shoddily, so the FF crew is far from the only casualty. Even straight up mains like Lea and Kairi get zero exploration of their relationship to the world and the impact events there have had on their lives-- oh, my bad, Lea and Isa get a few throwaway lines, about a character who is neither of them, with the singular intention of lining up plot points for the next game. Congratulations, KH3 is terrible in every dimension of its storytelling.
@allenleonardo for reference, this is what I meant by objective reasoning pointing to an observable failure on the part of this game.
KH3
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2007
- Messages
- 5,386
- Awards
- 19
My argument was never whether Leon and the others should have been in KH3 or not. My argument was whether they were important to the main plot -- which I do not agree with at all. Maybe it's because I see it that way that their absence in KH3 doesn't really affect me. I did think it was strange that we didn't see them at all and I was looking forward to what contribution they would make in KH3 (I thought it would be something to do with Cloud/Sephiroth).You seem really infatuated with these kinds of false equivalencies, so let's take this one at face value and see where it leads us:
If notable elements of the story in KH3's plot had centered on the worlds of Mulan, Aladdin, Jack Skellington, Ariel, or The Beast, and Sora was in regular contact with another character who was stationed at any of those worlds, and Sora did not even so much as inquire about his Disney pals while talking on the phone so that the script could cop out of giving them an appearance by writing them off as ~busy elsewhere~, then yes, I'm confident that everyone who is in this thread criticizing KH3's erasure of the core FF group would be making the same comments in regard to the erasure of Disney characters who were previously established as part of Sora's network of friendships. That's the equivalent scenario, and even that line of reasoning gets us into trouble, because unlike these Disney worlds which have some self-contained significance presented in the context of the specific games in which they appear but generally don't contain a broader legacy to expand on in future installments, Radiant Garden was established from KH1 to be a world with long-running relevance to pretty much every single main character (a quality reinforced by its reappearance as the main hub world in KH2). So while it's easy enough to imagine a KH3 without Land of Dragons, it's not so simple to cut out Radiant Garden-- despite Nomura's best efforts, as well as his worst inclinations. And because the Restoration Committee is based out of a world with that kind of recurring significance for the franchise, they inherit that sense of significance to a degree: they are part of the story and history of that place, and have a functional contribution to make in terms of its ongoing integration into the larger narrative. For instance, just on a character level, it makes absolutely no sense that Mickey would engage Dilan (literally who?) for escort through RG instead of, you know, the person he explicitly directed Donald and Goofy towards in the first game for assistance in finding a Keyblade wielder-- which is Mickey's actual current mission.
That said, as you effectively argued with the Tron comparison, everything with the Radiant Garden plot and the intersection of characters who should be at the center of it is handled shoddily, so the FF crew is far from the only casualty. Even straight up mains like Lea and Kairi get zero exploration of their relationship to the world and the impact events there have had on their lives-- oh, my bad, Lea and Isa get a few throwaway lines, about a character who is neither of them, with the singular intention of lining up plot points for the next game. Congratulations, KH3 is terrible in every dimension of its storytelling.
@allenleonardo for reference, this is what I meant by objective reasoning pointing to an observable failure on the part of this game.
KH3
I think the issue comes down to Radiant Garden itself. I don't think Nomura ever planned for Radiant Garden to become the home world of so many characters, specifically the Final Fantasy and Organization members/Ansem. Because the Final Fantasy characters never got fleshed out more on what their original purpose was in Radiant Garden, we have no idea what their roles were. All we knew was that they were restoring it and in KH3 it looks restored completely. We also know that Ansem The Wise, Apprentice Xehanort, Dilan, Aeleus, Even, Ienzo, Lea, and Isa are from Radiant Garden. Unlike the Final Fantasy group, we actually know more about what those characters actually did in Radiant Garden and interacted with them beyond just the exposition the Final Fantasy group offered. I think it came down to which characters we needed to see at Radiant Garden in KH3. We didn't need to see Leon and the others (as much as we all would have liked to see them). We didn't need to see Aeleus or Dilan, but I think Nomura put their silent selves in there so that there wouldn't be any confusion on what happened to them after they became whole.
My question is this: What would Leon and the others have done in KH3? They know nothing about Master Xehanort, the "Real Organization", Roxas, Aqua, Terra, Ven, the X-Blade, true Kingdom Hearts, the keyblade war, and everything else that's going on in the plot. It would be a waste of time to see them get enlightened about it because we already know about it. I mean it would have been a nice cameo to have them be absent all during the game and when Yen Sid showed up at the Keyblade Graveyard, Leon and the others were with him and they just yell out something about "Sorry we took so long, we were getting caught up on the details" then a little fan service fighting cutscene, then the plot moves on. But I can't realistically see them doing anything more than that.
I'm not sure I can agree at all with that. Radiant Garden has always been quite important, seeing as even in KH1 it was Kairi's homeworld. And in any case, what does number of characters have to do with the lack of inclusion? If anything, radiant garden should have been top of the list just on that basis alone.
What was Sora's original purpose for being on the Destiny Islands? It's their home, they don't really need a reason to be there. And that's another thing. DDD was supposed to take place a year after KH2, what with the whole AtW "its been a year since I've seen him" thing in blank points. RG being restored to BBS levels in a year seems believable, bit you expect me to think they did that in a matter of weeks? Nah b.
Like you said earlier, KH3 could have been a blank disk! It didn't *need* anything if we're gonna argue that point. Just like how KH1 didn't need trinities or Dalmatians, and how KH2 didn't need to include three massive original worlds of which two were hubs. KH3 was a masterclass on how to make a game that only includes the bare minimum and clearly, it didn't land all that well at all seeing as how divided people are over it.
There's plenty they could have been there for. For one they could have had a nice B plot with the former org members; that definitely should have caused some tension. Furthermore they should have been manning the computer in the first place. Speaking of the computer, I wholeheartedly agree with you on Tron. I thought it was a huge shame he wasn't a part of KH3, as his world has always been a proper crossover compared to the other Disney worlds.
KH3 had so much of this pointless re explanations, when we could have had some real plot going on. At least this would be slightly more organic than just SDG and Riku and Mickey reconfirming shit they've known for the last umpteen games
But it did, and he continues to bring it back into the story as an important place except in the one game where it should have had the most importance.
Except that’s Nomura’s fault for shuffling them aside because of his wishy-washy feelings about them. In BBS he wanted to have them then changed his mind, in KH3D he wanted them but changed his mind, in KH3 he wanted to have them and changed his mind. They can’t have a role if they keep getting cut, thus we are never privy to their development.
Conveniently restored. In like a few weeks/months. That’s just plot convenience.
Except we don’t. We don’t know more about any of those characters. They are all still one-dimensional. Dilan and Aeleaus don’t even talk when they appear and all we know about them is what we learned about them in CoM, KH2, Days, and BBS which was still all of nothing.
Ienzo gets okay development but he’s by far one of the weirder characters because we never see what makes him decide to go from “ruthless schemer” to “repentant, sweet, nerdy science boy” besides him getting his heart back?
Even is the same since we never see just what motivates him to betray the Organization, only that he decides to after chatting with Saix who was always planning on betraying the Organization since Days.
Why would anybody have been confused? I think people were more confused about why they were there doing nothing, saying nothing, adding nothing to the plot.
They could have been there wondering why the fuck the people who led their world to ruin and essentially triggered the spread of the Darkness across the universe were suddenly walking around the castle like they owned the place.
They should have been SDG, and Mickey & Riku’s direct point of contact since they were the ones to rebuild the castle and would have, in theory, full control of the computer system there.
Did Ienzo, Dilan, and Aeleaus know anything about all of those things you mentioned? Did they come to the war and fight? No. Why do you keep giving these false equivalencies?
But Leon, Aerith, Cid, and Yuffie have been there since day 1 helping Sora understand what Ansem and Xehanort were doing in the past, and they could have been doing the very same thing this time too. There could have been a combined effort between what the Restoration Committee knew from their own research and experience with what the former apprentices knew and led to some exposition on that.
Like hell, we could have had the reports sent to Sora from them. Instead they are just random reports that...appear for no reason? No preamble. They just happen because...they always appear in the game. Gee...hmm.
It doesn’t take much to imagine a scenario for them. It’s really not that hard and you are trying so hard to write them off because YOU feel like they didn’t need to be there but so many other things in KH3 definitely were in there because they just felt like having it without little rhyme or reason as to why it needed to be in the game. The FF characters in RG were definitely of more value than those things and yet they are treated as though they never mattered but like everybody keeps trying to tell you, they were important in the past and they should have been important now.
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2007
- Messages
- 5,386
- Awards
- 19
I laughed so hard at that LOL. Now that you mention it, I think it would have been a nice side story to see the Final Fantasy characters and the past Organization members initially fighting over the castle/computer. Sora steps in and convinces them to work together, gradually we see Ienzo/Cid get along with the computer stuff, Leon and Yuffie could have a slight feud with Aeleus/Dilan over who are the true "protectors" of Radiant Garden with Aerith trying to make them get along.
Also, about the people being confused thing. I meant that this is KH and people analyze things non-stop. Demyx's absence from the KH3 ending = He's Master of Masters. So I think Nomura just wanted it to be clear that Aeleus and Dilan weren't in some new plot or something off screen.
Even after all the great points you all made, I still strongly believe that the Final Fantasy characters weren't needed in the game. It would have been better with a throw away line like "Leon and the gang's busy" included to at least mention them. Basically, they should have been in, but they weren't needed. I do wish I knew the internal schedule for KH3 and whether Disney/Square Enix were pressuring Nomura to get it out. My only wish for KH3 was that Nomura get the time needed to make the game he wanted, but some of the interviews make me feel like he made the game he wanted in the time he had.
And my argument is that you're drawing arbitrary conclusions based on personal feeling. If Nomura had written the Restoration Committee to be important to the main plot, they would have been important to the main plot. Leon could have just as easily been pushing those buttons and making those phone calls as Ienzo-- which is not to say that's the role I would have liked to see him play, but if that's the minimum threshold in KH nowadays for "main plot relevance," it's not exactly a high bar to clear.
We know that they lived in Radiant Garden, and it was their home world, and it was violently stolen away from them. Which is literally as much as we know about Sora, Riku, Kairi, and their relationship to Destiny Islands. Moreover, you're minimizing their motives as characters: Leon, Aerith, Yuffie and Cid don't just take up the role of restoring Radiant Garden; their whole mission is to act as its guardians and oversee its continued prosperity. Cid tried setting up an entire automated defense system to this end. To argue that they just wouldn't care or wouldn't notice or wouldn't be involved in who is coming and going from the castle is in direct contradiction of what we actually know about their position within the world. You may not "feel" that it's important, but the actual internal logic and continuity of the series begs to differ.
In what way do we know anything more about the Apprentices than we do about the FF crew? All we know about them is that they were on RG, got their hearts stolen, became Nobodies which made them ~evil~, then they got restored and some of them stopped being ~evil~. That's the entire knowledge base we have for Ienzo's arc: we know nothing about his specific relationship with Ansem the Wise except what is alluded to in a couple of brief scenes, and even less about his relationship with any of the other Apprentices. The Organization members who are actually fleshed out as characters and play major roles throughout the series aren't even Ansem's Apprentices; Lexaeus has literally one or two scenes in CoM and one line as a guard in BBS. Xaldin is actually and undeniably a horrible person for the sake of being horrible in KH2, then inexplicably flips without even a mention of his past misdeeds or what might have motivated them in KH3. Vexen is purely functional plot fodder; again, we know next to nothing about his specific qualities of character, what makes him tick, what his relationships with his colleagues is or was like. Just that he conveniently "wants to atone" so the good guys can get their Replicas-- which, ironically, makes Ienzo even less useful or unique.
Compare that with the Restoration Committee, which come from the same basic drawing board but have actual arcs beginning with KH1, where they enjoy an explicit connection with Sora and the journey he's on-- providing critical information/assistance, regularly acting as a springboard from which he grows and develops over the course of his adventure, bookending his quest by returning to reclaim Hollow Bastion and affirming his efforts with a final salutation that carries such thematic weight it becomes part of the bedrock of the next two games. Then in KH2 we see them all working as a team to defend their world and make it livable and safe again, and they once again provide Sora with a home away from home-- something no other group of characters could have done, and something which is sorely missing in KH3-- before helping him to solve one of the core mysteries of the game. They may not, themselves, be at the center of that mystery (or any of the mysteries in KH), but that's hardly the point: on the contrary, their role is invaluable because they have both a sufficient level of connection to and distance from the "main plot" to perform the essential task of supporting the weight of the story material without overshadowing or becoming entangled in it. The fact that we don't need to know more about them than we already do is the beauty of it: what they inherently provide from the perspective of the player-as-Sora is a sense of emotional trajectory, from KH1 through to this newest (and ostensibly most harrowing) journey. They are an essential link in the chain of Sora's history as a character. That's what makes them matter.
Except that it makes no sense whatsoever that Leon and the gang aren't present in KH3 given the framing and context of the story as it has been presented over multiple installments. As a result you can't explain their absence, you can only insist that you don't care about it.
Well considering they were living with Merlin and Merlin has a certain important task which involves preparing certain important people to partake in a certain important war-- gosh, I can't imagine a scenario in which these characters had any relevance or contributed in any way shape or form to the events of KH3.
In fact if they were involved in this subplot it would actually help explain why Merlin just dips from the essential duty he was supposed to be performing mid-game to go get his PSL fix.
They're living with Merlin, who knows all of this.
"Hey, Sora."
"Leon! It's been ages!"
"Merlin filled us in."
Job done.
Again, this is all rooted in an arbitrary series of presuppositions on your part. None of your arguments hold together on the basis of what is actually evidenced within the series itself, or even this game taken in isolation. It's not like the KH3 we got is in any way superior for its lack of FF characters: it's not like we spent more time learning to understand the characters who are in it and getting grand, meaningful arcs for them because Nomura took all the time he would have spent on Leon, Aerith, Yuffie and Cid having actual conversations with Sora and put it to more effective use elsewhere. It's not like deep friendships are forged or rekindled between Ienzo and Sora, or Vexen and Demyx, or (lmao) Dilan and Aeleus: these people are coworkers and opportunistic allies, at best, and when they don't have plot jargon to espouse they aren't in frame. What exactly is the contention here. That we couldn't have gotten that one (1) scene between Ienzo and AtW if the FF crew had been around? Or that we wouldn't have gotten that one (1) scene of like 1/3 of the main cast throwing past plot points at a dart board in Yen Sid's closet together? Yeah. Remember that great Namine arc we got because Nomura decided to cut out Leon and the gang? Oh wait. Remember that great Kairi arc we got because Nomura decided to cut out Leon and the gang? Oh wait. Remember that great interaction between Ven and Roxas, or Sora and Roxas, or Kairi and Xion, or Kairi and Namine, or Aqua and Eraqus, or Ven and Eraqus, or Xehanort and anyone who isn't Sora? Gawrsh, I know I sure don't.
I think that this is my problem a bit too. Sora has a huge amount of friends. Some of them even childhood friends. He never asks for any of those, so why should he ask for Leon and the others. For us many years have passed after KH2 but for Sora barely any time is gone, so why should he ask for them, especially since he does not even know if Ienzo has any contact with them.
I do understand why people want to see them again, but I just dont see a reason to include them in a game which is already packed with character interactions and open plot points, only for them to have no real connection to the main story itself. And for me at least that makes the game no failure at all.