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Has Kingdom Hearts Lost Its Essence?



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disney233

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Another issue is that I think Disney is a big part to blame. Back when KH1 and KH2 came out, Disney wasn't the giant it is today. Disney also didn't really care what KH did with the properties besides Mickey. Now that Disney is DISNEY, they want to conquer everything and realized that KH3 was an easy hype machine/cash cow for them. They became more involved, but I feel TOO involved. They didn't care that we could beat up the Queen of Hearts, but don't want Mother Gothel or Randall to fight? They didn't want "Simba" to be in different Disney worlds, so he had to be renamed to something else... but it's still Simba? Sora, Donald, and Goofy are clearly kept away from the Arendelle plotline, all while "Let It Go" and "Do You Want To Build A Snowman" are included with no real effect ("I See The Light" would have actually been more impactful in Corona than any song in Arendelle). If Disney thinks that what Frozen fans was to see a cheap re-telling while you run around a snow mountain with no real memorable locations from the film... then Disney really needs to cut back on their involvement in KH because they're taking away their own magic.
T H I S.
There's so much potential for both Disney AND Square Enix characters. Endless possibilities of story and gameplay. I mean as reluctant that I am seeing them as fights, THEY MADE A BOSS FIGHT WITH THE FREAKING MAGIC MIRROR. They made countless Disney Villains have an envolvement in the series. Yet shy about taking Simba out of his world? Something done before? Disney....I just don't know about them anymore. Actual Disney films suffer the restriction of an original plot (Olympus, Corona, Arendelle & the Caribbean) while Pixar films suffer from USING an original plot but restriction of familiar territory and boss fights with Disney characters (Toy Box, Monstropolis, and I'm not quite sure with San Fransokyo) I don't think there was...Any freedom for anything.

This will REALLY put a damper on things regarding a new line of Disney worlds. Either another ridiculous retelling or a swiss miss on boss fight opportunities. Like you said Disney's ironically ruining that Disney magic. And that's what hurts me about this game.
 

Face My Fears

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T H I S.
There's so much potential for both Disney AND Square Enix characters. Endless possibilities of story and gameplay. I mean as reluctant that I am seeing them as fights, THEY MADE A BOSS FIGHT WITH THE FREAKING MAGIC MIRROR. They made countless Disney Villains have an envolvement in the series. Yet shy about taking Simba out of his world? Something done before? Disney....I just don't know about them anymore. Actual Disney films suffer the restriction of an original plot (Olympus, Corona, Arendelle & the Caribbean) while Pixar films suffer from USING an original plot but restriction of familiar territory and boss fights with Disney characters (Toy Box, Monstropolis, and I'm not quite sure with San Fransokyo) I don't think there was...Any freedom for anything.

This will REALLY put a damper on things regarding a new line of Disney worlds. Either another ridiculous retelling or a swiss miss on boss fight opportunities. Like you said Disney's ironically ruining that Disney magic. And that's what hurts me about this game.
Now that I think about it, I feel like the Disney aspect of KH2 is basically what saved that game from losing its essence. If all the Disney worlds were packed with heartless/nobodies bosses, the game would have just felt empty and soulless. Why journey through Agrabah if you're not going to fight Jafar? KH2's main plot was all over the place, but the Disney worlds you spent most of the time (even though the worlds weren't built well and had no connection to the main plot) at least felt like Disney worlds and rewarded you with a Disney boss fight (in most worlds). I feel like if KH3 had that, it wouldn't have felt so "empty". What I mean by "empty" is a world's climax being a fight with something that wasn't the antagonist throughout that world AND no fights with Organization members. It was just heartless/nobodies/unversed, then giant heartless/unversed boss, rinse and repeat until the last two Disney worlds (one boss being a mini-game), then jam-packed with final bosses at the end.

I feel like they could have at least given us a fight with Marluxia and Larxene in their respective worlds, to make those worlds feel a little bit more special. If Xaldin wasn't at Beast's Castle in KH2 as the boss and it was just back-to-back to heartless bosses, I would have hated that world. But Xaldin actually made Beast's Castle feel special and different, somewhat important.
 

disney233

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Now that I think about it, I feel like the Disney aspect of KH2 is basically what saved that game from losing its essence. If all the Disney worlds were packed with heartless/nobodies bosses, the game would have just felt empty and soulless. Why journey through Agrabah if you're not going to fight Jafar? KH2's main plot was all over the place, but the Disney worlds you spent most of the time (even though the worlds weren't built well and had no connection to the main plot) at least felt like Disney worlds and rewarded you with a Disney boss fight (in most worlds). I feel like if KH3 had that, it wouldn't have felt so "empty". What I mean by "empty" is a world's climax being a fight with something that wasn't the antagonist throughout that world AND no fights with Organization members. It was just heartless/nobodies/unversed, then giant heartless/unversed boss, rinse and repeat until the last two Disney worlds (one boss being a mini-game), then jam-packed with final bosses at the end.

I feel like they could have at least given us a fight with Marluxia and Larxene in their respective worlds, to make those worlds feel a little bit more special. If Xaldin wasn't at Beast's Castle in KH2 as the boss and it was just back-to-back to heartless bosses, I would have hated that world. But Xaldin actually made Beast's Castle feel special and different, somewhat important.

It also gives some interesting mechanics as well. Imagine a boss fight with Vanitas in Monstropolis and he uses the screams he and the Unversed collected as a means to up his strength. Or Marluxia somehow utlizing Rapunzel's Healing Incantation to heal him up. Even an Elsa boss fight could've worked rather than Marshmallow. Kingdom Hearts 2 had boss fights utlizing the enviornment around them: Like the Grim Reaper utlizing the Aztec treasure, or Pete LITERALLY using his steamboat AND toon logic in Timeless River. Even something as small as Xaldin using Beast's bridge as a battlefield. Organization fights should've indeed happened in the Disney worlds, as well as more Disney characters and fights. Reasons why as you said the worlds and fights in 3 just felt hollow. Hell the Organization (though I appreciate their confrontation with Disney characters) just...didn't feel satisfying. Half of the time they just...didn't have a reason to be in those worlds.
 

ultima-demi

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Using these big blockbuster ip's now comes with some big negatives nowadays. Disney is too involved with them which in hindsight ends up hurting it more than help. If it was up to me, I'll have a bigger balance of older properties Disney doesn't care much about for every title going forward.

At least that way we get a decent amount of worlds where square has a lot more freedom to recapture a bit of that magic. As things are now, I can't even get excited in the idea of some of these newer properties being included because how much Disney's involvement would up hurting it and that's a bad thing when the Disney worlds are a big part of the magic of the series.
 

Alpha Baymax

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For someone who loves Kingdom Hearts III, I see a lot of topics by you nitpicking about the game.

Which I get, the game has its glaring problems. But from the topics you've posted so far, it makes me wonder whether you really love the game or whether you've finally lost interest?
 

disney233

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For someone who loves Kingdom Hearts III, I see a lot of topics by you nitpicking about the game.

Which I get, the game has its glaring problems. But from the topics you've posted so far, it makes me wonder whether you really love the game or whether you've finally lost interest?
It's....complicated for me. I love Kingdom Hearts, I always will. That's the series that inspired me to make my AU stories and so on. At the same time....that light that kept me interested in it...just finally burned out. I don't hate Kingdom Hearts, it's just I've gone to the point of prererring stories and the manga than the game itself. The Disney magic that was once in KH1...just doesn't seem the same anymore to me.
 

allenleonardo

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Yes the series after KH2 changed but honestly I am not sure if it truly lost its essence or if the change itself is bad. There could only be so many games of Sora searching for a missing friend and at least in KH2 it already got bigger with the organisation and the nobodies.

I think (and that is only my opinion) that a story that goes on for a long time needs to change to stay fresh. I dont mean that everything needs to be taken away but would it really be that interesting if he still just searches for another missing person with some small stuff happening next to that? I do like that there is a bigger picture behind that and yet we still get the magic and wonder of visiting disney worlds and seeing Soras reaction to it.
 

Face My Fears

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For someone who loves Kingdom Hearts III, I see a lot of topics by you nitpicking about the game.

Which I get, the game has its glaring problems. But from the topics you've posted so far, it makes me wonder whether you really love the game or whether you've finally lost interest?
I love KH3, no doubt about it. You probably missed by other threads/posts defending it in "KH2 is better than KH3" debates and other topics that were hating on the game.

I guess the reason I'm making these posts now that are more geared towards "nitpicking" KH3 is that I'm starting to look at the series as a whole. This thread came about because I was remembering how it was with KH1-CoM-KH2, then comparing that to KH2-Days-BbS-Coded-3D-KHUX-KH3. My mindset was going off of how CoM was treated in comparison to KH2. Not that it didn't "matter", but it was resolved in itself and didn't hold much bearing on KH2. On the flip side, most -if not all - the side games between KH2 and KH3 impacted KH3, and with more side games between KH2 and KH3 than there are in the original trilogy -- I just felt like the essence of Kingdom Hearts itself was lost in KH3 because the side games sort of ended up defining what a KH game was. With that said, it was seemingly hard to return to form in KH3 with so many different iterations of what is expected in a KH game. We became used to Disney worlds with no actual Disney villain as the boss. We became used to multiple other characters being the focus instead of Sora (and since those characters didn't get closure in their own games, KH3 would have to figure out how to give it to them and focus on Sora).

I definitely haven't lost interest in KH3 or the series, as I'm on here almost every day. Now that the Xehanort Saga is complete, I'm looking back on it and picking up on stuff that I wanted to discuss with people.
 

Alpha Baymax

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It's....complicated for me. I love Kingdom Hearts, I always will. That's the series that inspired me to make my AU stories and so on. At the same time....that light that kept me interested in it...just finally burned out. I don't hate Kingdom Hearts, it's just I've gone to the point of preferring stories and the manga than the game itself. The Disney magic that was once in KH1...just doesn't seem the same anymore to me.

I don't know how else to say this without sounding cynical... but take a break from Kingdom Hearts? I mean, I've kind of been taking a semi-break from Kingdom Hearts and just popping here occasionally when worthwhile news drops by.

The common correlation that I personally see is that those who are more vocal against Kingdom Hearts III are often the ones who hyper-obsess over the series. Those and the people who say they'll "give up" on Kingdom Hearts only to jump back into a series after a new entry is unveiled.

I love KH3, no doubt about it. You probably missed by other threads/posts defending it in "KH2 is better than KH3" debates and other topics that were hating on the game.

Fair enough, I never realised that.
 

Oracle Spockanort

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For someone who loves Kingdom Hearts III, I see a lot of topics by you nitpicking about the game.

Which I get, the game has its glaring problems. But from the topics you've posted so far, it makes me wonder whether you really love the game or whether you've finally lost interest?

I just want to say that somebody can love something and still have issues with it. Things we love should not be absolved from criticism.

And I don’t think telling people that they might have lost interest is fair when they have already prefaced things by saying they loved the game. Like how can you judge somebody’s interest based on how much they love a game and say that vs how much they critique it? Nor is it fair to suggest that they should take a break as a “solution” when there is nothing wrong with critiquing KH3 while also saying they love the game.

We are going to be waiting for awhile until the DLC releases, so it’s not like people won’t have time to step away from the series anyways.
 

Alpha Baymax

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I just want to say that somebody can love something and still have issues with it. Things we love should not be absolved from criticism.

And I don’t think telling people that they might have lost interest is fair when they have already prefaced things by saying they loved the game. Like how can you judge somebody’s interest based on how much they love a game and say that vs how much they critique it? Nor is it fair to suggest that they should take a break as a “solution” when there is nothing wrong with critiquing KH3 while also saying they love the game.

We are going to be waiting for awhile until the DLC releases, so it’s not like people won’t have time to step away from the series anyways.

I'm not discrediting the criticism's themselves. Entertainment is subjective and having these sorts of discussion is necessary.

I just personally feel as though there's an undeniable correlation between the harshness of criticism to an element of Kingdom Hearts and how much time a person spends consuming Kingdom Hearts media. That's just my two cents.
 
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