Anyone Else Think Disney Ruined This Game?

[Elysium]

Spoiler Show

Yes. No FF characters,ATROCIOUS treatment of original worlds,only 2 Non-Disney Keyblades and Disney characters making Org members a joke. Disney prevented this game from being a 10.

I was/am pissed about the lack of FF characters and no Radiant Garden, too, but that really is not Disney’s fault at all. All of these complaints should be directed at Nomura.

 

[Griewer]

I love the story of the game. Thats not the issue for me here, my issue is with the actual gameplay.

I know Nomura knows how to make a Kingdom Hearts game. I've played all of them - and ALL of them are more challenging than KHIII. ALL of them require more thought and strategy. For a game best described by Kairi as "their toughest battle yet" this is by far the easiest in the series.

And the major reason for it? Attractions/Links/Shotlocks and Keyblade Limit Breaks or whatever they're called all break enemy combos, do major damage, and grant either invulnerability or significant damage mitigation. On top of these you can use magic and dodge roll on nearly every enemy in the game and be perfectly safe. I'm asking myself is this even an RPG? Does leveling even matter in this game? We are on a roller coaster where we are forced to get experience and I wonder if my experience would change if the leveling system and the ability to change equipment were removed completely. I don't think it would.

Learning how to abuse this system takes all of 15 minutes of experience. For anyone familiar with the series it probably took you even less time. I was abusing this system halfway through Olympus. Between this and the complete lack of challenging enemies and end game boss content this is my biggest complaint about the game. The question is why?

The endgame is filled with tedious grinding. Between the mickey emblems, the chests, and the minigames grinding out ultima weapon is maybe more time consuming in this than in any other game so far with none of the satisfaction of searching for unique enemies and looking for unique crafting material. You are either searching every spot in every level looking for an emblem or sledding down the same mountain minigame looking for treasure for the 30th time. Did Nomura really exchange good boss fights for hide and seek minigames that would honestly consume 20+ hours of time if anyone gave this an honest attempt?

As beautiful as the worlds are, they are hallways the same as FF13 was. Well they are exactly what I expected to be honest, actually they exceeded my expectations, and I'm not complaining about that. Actually I think the worlds are so beautifully constructed and the disney characters meld so well with sora and the story it makes me think that Disney used up the majority of KH3 funding to represent their brands as best as possible and gave Nomura the scraps to fund the ending of his story.

I mean think about it, who needs who more? KH is such a beautiful story that Nomura undoubtedly puts his soul into it and wants to get it done. Disney is simply in this for the profit and knows that Nomura needs them to do it, so they're extorting him as much as they can

Maybe thats why 3/4 of the parts of the story that actually matter are at the very end completely segregated from the disney content.
Maybe thats why postgame is 90% irrelevent minigames and hide and seek
Maybe thats why the singalong from frozen was so forcibly injected into Arendelle

Considering some of the pacing of the dialogue and number of glitches/ clipping issues ive had in the game I wouldn't be surprised if Disney also forced Nomura to speed up game development.

The story of the game is brilliant and I'm going to make another post on why this game is brilliant and a philosophical masterpiece but I need to take a moment to rant about this because it upsets me as a person who loves video games and more specifically kingdom hearts games that this is 100% the worst game in the series. As a movie I would say its arguably the best, as a game I would actually throw it in the trash.

I can honestly say this is the only Kingdom Hearts game I wish was a full on movie instead of a game.

Actually...the story itself could've been handled much better. :'D
As for gameplay - long story short, Disney can enforce certain rules regarding the worlds, the stories told within the worlds and the interaction with the characters of said world. Beyond that, I'm quite sure Disney has no impact on actual gameplay.

I'm positive that they didn't tell Nomura or SE to make the game blatantly easy. I'm not even sure, why critical mode, the actually difficult mode of the game is absent. The company 100% didn't tell Nomura to stuff the battle system with all these shiny, glittering parade. They've been heading towards this direction since BBS and DDD. Then again you are never required to use any of these abilities, so feel free to make the game harder by not using them and by de-activating as many abilities as you wish. The fact that you can customize Sora's abilities this much makes it an RPG alone. There is also a mode to turn off leveling so you can give the game quite a bit of headstart to make your later worlds more difficult.

As for crafting the ultima weapon and finding boxes and every collectible - it has always been a part of the game and it has always been a tedious grindfest. It wasn't ever more interesting or more incentive. The difference is that the Disney world have become huge, so the search is - of course - longer.
"As beautiful as the worlds are, they are hallways the same as FF13 was." - really? Have you seen Toy Box or San Fransokyo? They both seemed quite like small sandboxes to me. And honestly, every KH game so far had a linearity. You couldn't just go into every part of the world from the first moment, because most of the time the game didn't let you go astray or wonder off the course.

"Disney used up the majority of KH3 funding to represent their brands as best as possible and gave Nomura the scraps to fund the ending of his story." - I don't think this is how the game works. It never worked like that. They have control over their trademark and how it is used, but SE is the developer, not Disney.

The main story is segregated from the disney content, because it is original content. Would be quite weird to have your final battle in the Dwarf Woodlands. Kingdom Hearts has always separated the disney content from the original content. In Kingdom Hearts - when Disney was strict(!) - this boundary was the weakest, with Disney Villains being the main enemies, and still the big bad arrive in the Original world. Kingdom hearts 2 was the same, with Org members appearing every now and then just to remind you that there is a meta-story being told.

Yes Arendelle is a weak link. I do agree with you on this point, but even Nomura stated that they had a lot of rules regarding this specific world. And it turned out to be quite terrible in the end. But it was Nomura who wanted this world to be included, and not Disney.

Someone did speed up game development, I do agree, but that was probably SE who wanted this game to be released already, especially since they've been teasing it for years and the fans were slowly going mad. We could argue whether it was a bad decision or not, but that doesn't make Disney the culprit.

"this is 100% the worst game in the series" - this is quite subjective. I think Chain of Memories, Days, Birth By Sleep, and Dream Drop Distance are all below this game (haven't played coded so I can't really decide how good that was).


TLDR version: Disney doesn't have this large impact on financing or development of the game. They can limit the use of their trademarked properties (not allowing certain things to happen, like fighting a character), but beyond this they probably have 0 impact on game design.

 

[mriku90]

Spoiler Show

Yes. No FF characters,ATROCIOUS treatment of original worlds,only 2 Non-Disney Keyblades and Disney characters making Org members a joke. Disney prevented this game from being a 10.

This is ALL on Nomura, not Disney. Disney did not have any control over SE properties, only Nomura did and he chose that.

 

[Onion Knight]

Imagine giving it your all and going through the trouble of gathering blockbuster Disney IPs and making a game with CGI level graphics that people for begging for for over a decade, only for those same people to complain that your game is a failure because of stupid crap like this. Taking small inconviences and letting them blow out of proportion is an insult to everyone who worked hard on the game. But then again, why am I expecting more out of the Kingdom Hearts fanbase?

 

[Launchpad]

Disney MADE this game. In most cases the Disney scenes and environments were WAY more compelling and entertaining than the original stuff.

 

[2 quid is good]

It wasn't that there was an overabundance of Disney in this game, its that it wasn't balanced with the original stuff.

I don't know who mandated it or why, but somehow there's far too much emphasis on Disney in this game with original plot being relegated to the end in an almost haphazard way.

I don't think the Disney Worlds or the company ruined the game, but the imbalance certainly did

 

[Sephiroth0812]

It wasn't that there was an overabundance of Disney in this game, its that it wasn't balanced with the original stuff.

I don't know who mandated it or why, but somehow there's far too much emphasis on Disney in this game with original plot being relegated to the end in an almost haphazard way.

I don't think the Disney Worlds or the company ruined the game, but the imbalance certainly did

Correct, but this imbalance isn't because of Disney or the Disney content placed in the game.

It is an issue of bad pacing and story flow, something the KH series has had a problem with ever since KH 2 and that's all on the script writing (or lack thereof).

That there is so much crammed into the last quarter of the game regarding the original plot is haphazardly, no doubt about it, but the fault for that ain't with Disney.

Thing is though that the game started promising with original plot being weaved into and between the Disney worlds, which is done vastly better than KH 2, BBS or DDD ever did, but they dragged out things too much and kept all the "big things" solely to the last quarter so there wasn't enough time to address every important character and plot arc individually.
Had things been spread out more and some things allowed to be resolved before the great finale marathon it would have been more satisfying overall.

 

[drew0512]

No? I don't think think there is much evidence for Disney having been involved in every decision you seemingly don't like other than it seems you don't want to think Nomura made a decision you don't agree with?

I really don't see how they have much to do with the difficulty level or gameplay balance at all? Though to be blunt I also disagree entirely about it being the EASIEST Kh game. I really feel like you guys forget how simple OG KH2 was now that we have Final Mix. I literally beat KH2 in like 3 days and died twice as a literal 12 year old. I have struggled more than that with this game, though admittedly not much more for sure.

Also, base KH1 and 2 barely had any side content post game as well. I once again don't see how this has anything to do with Disney when its literally exactly what always happens. A lot of the side content got added to our version of KH1 and Birth by Sleep specifically, and then the Final Mix versions of all the games clearly added a ton more. If anything, this post game is par for the course. We didn't get any extra goodies cuz we only waited 5 days after Japanese release.

I have gotten more lost in these worlds than any of the other games so I don't know how they are "just hallways" at least, again, any more so than any other game in the series? Also lol, I'm sorry but Nomura definitely needs Disney more than they need him? They literally don't need KH to promote their movies that do ridiculously well already. There wasn't a single obscure film in this game, all were hugely popular already. Also I think they have been clear the KH team picks the worlds themselves.

I haven't finished the game but I think the pacing has been mostly decent as well. At least as good as it was gonna get since they focused on SDG traveling around while a bunch of other stuff happening behind the scenes. I really don't know how much differently this could have gone? It would have needed to be a game about all KH original characters at that point and like, thats not what they wanted this game to be clearly. And I think that was a good decision.

Not saying its perfect. Like idk, your criticisms are rooted in merit. I just don't know why you are blaming "big bad Disney" for issues the series...has always sort of had honestly? I am not seeing anything here that's really new except its the first time in a while a game has been super easy I guess. But its still not the first time so? And honestly all the past games have had broken mechanics people exploited to cheese even the hardest difficulty settings anyway. That is actually something that has been happening for a very long time. Also I guess the bottom line is: I am having a fun ass time. Which is what games are ultimately for. Not every game needs to be challenging to be a good game. Though since this series has had "challenge" (if you don't utilize the broken techniques lol) before, so I get the desire for it. Even I desire it, so I am on that side I just don't think I could ever say its a "bad video game" because its sorta easy.



Toy Story is older than a Bug's Life and Pixar was still involved in its world lol. Monsters Inc isn't much older either. I guess I assume they still care enough about a Bug's Life they would want to be involved as well for even that film despite it not being relevant anytime in the last decade.

Are you trying to bring common sense in the KH fanbase? That's bold.

 

[furusatoe]

Thing is though that the game started promising with original plot being weaved into and between the Disney worlds, which is done vastly better than KH 2, BBS or DDD ever did, but they dragged out things too much and kept all the "big things" solely to the last quarter so there wasn't enough time to address every important character and plot arc individually.
Had things been spread out more and some things allowed to be resolved before the great finale marathon it would have been more satisfying overall.

Exactly this. I just finished the game and, yeah, if anything needed work it's those last few hours from the Keyblade Graveyard onward. I thought the story pacing was quite excellent until that point. And then you get to the end and then it's like, oh shit, they're trying to resolve way too much and have allotted far too little time for it.

 

[Alpha Baymax]

Spoiler Show

Yes. No FF characters, ATROCIOUS treatment of original worlds, only 2 Non-Disney Keyblades and Disney characters making Org members a joke. Disney prevented this game from being a 10.

Go play a Final Fantasy game then ya buzzkill. The only Final Fantasy characters that really mattered were Leon, Zack and Cloud (and Joshua if you want to be Square Enix specific), and their roles are arguably replaceable.

Kingdom Hearts II came out at 2005, times have changed, gaming has changed, the relevance of Disney and Final Fantasy has changed. Like Launchpad said, critics have unanimously praised the Disney elements, so Disney definitely did not ruin this game.

 

[KHFan91]

This is ALL on Nomura, not Disney. Disney did not have any control over SE properties, only Nomura did and he chose that.

Sure, because Nomura is the scapegoat creator within Square Enix.

 

[UltimaXOmega]

Spoiler Show

Keyblade Graveyard getting enemy spawns would up it to a 9.5. It's a good size but it's empty I expect Scala to be a full world in Final Mix/DLC, as it should be..

 

[Sora2016]

Exactly this. I just finished the game and, yeah, if anything needed work it's those last few hours from the Keyblade Graveyard onward. I thought the story pacing was quite excellent until that point. And then you get to the end and then it's like, oh shit, they're trying to resolve way too much and have allotted far too little time for it.

I honestly feel like an original world in the middle of the game would have possibly helped as they could have done some main story beats there that they put off till later. Its sad cuz my previous comment in this thread said I thought the pacing was pretty good but yeah now I am closer to the end and I for sure see the strain. They should have done more in the middle, even if it was still handled better than some other games in the series.