I, uh... I don't really know right now. I need to see concrete evidence of what this series will be moving forward, and I need it to be released in the relative near future. Anymore filler games, console bouncing, and significant hiatuses between titles, and I'll probably feign interest again like I did after 358. Perhaps I should explain my history with the series?
I received KH1 as a Christmas gift back in '02 without knowing anything about it. I tried it soon thereafter, and immediately fell in love with the game -- the characters, the visuals, the mythos, the music (and I hated music as a kid! lol), etc. Admittedly, it took me literally years to get some real mileage on the story... As an 8-year-old, I was genuinely afraid of the Heartless and what they represented. So scared of them that I couldn't really bare to keep playing once Destiny Islands fell to the darkness. Yup, I just kept replaying the prologue, ad nausea for years as a kid. Once I finally grew up a bit and made progress, I got maybe halfway through the game before I got stuck in one of the Disney worlds, unable to find the keyhole. I still don't know if I missed something, or if it was some kind of glitch in my copy. Despite never finishing KH1, it remained one of my favorite games all through my youth.
I again received CoM as a Christmas gift in '05, I think? I never played much of it, as I couldn't understand the combat system as a kid, and was really underwhelmed by much of the story just being a remix of what I'd already done in the only other existing title in the series. Despite this, I still periodically returned, hoping to better understand the combat or advance the story to a point where I'd learn something new about the world, or at least see Sora and his friends go on a new adventure.
I got KH2 shortly after its release in '06. I was 11 by then -- more mature, better equipped to handle the dark themes and capable of playing the combat efficiently. I remember being absolutely enthralled by Roxas' story and engaged by the villainy of Organization XIII. I adored the entire cast, the multi-faceted story with a complex mythos made this one of the first things to not just earn me as a fan, but completely encompass me with its wonders. I played for a few hours after school almost every day for probably two months before I beat the game. Man, I could never truly tell you just how proud of myself I was for beating such a massive game. I was also kind of the kid at school who got everyone else into this series. Needless to say, KH2 probably elevated itself to the title of being my favorite game through my childhood. The whole ending of the game starting with TWTNW is still among my favorite game sequences. Exciting new material that pushed every character to a new place, a scary environment with appropriately challenging, but not entirely insurmountable enemies and bosses. And then such an emotionally satisfying conclusion to everything that'd happened in the series up to that point. In retrospect, I almost wish the series had stopped with Mickey's message in a bottle.
I was 15 when 358/2 Days came out. Still being young, that four year hiatus did a lot to ween me off of the series. I was still terribly excited for the game when it came out, though. Ultimately I ended up being hugely disappointed when I quickly realized that 358 abandoned pretty much everything that I wanted it to be to then force a completely unlikable new character down my throat, and then undo itself by the story's end. I hated it.
I took my time picking up BBS maybe a year later at age 16. I'd spent years excitedly intrigued by the secrets of the Keyblade War teased in the secret ending to KH2, but the years between KH2 and 358 and the misguided story of 358 both served to really wain my interest in this series. I tried to be cautiously optimistic. A prequel explaining away the series long mythos sounded like it could be perfect, and well, it was another dud for me. Like 358 before it, BBS teased the following of one plot thread, and then instead focused on a separate set of only half-connected stories and characters, and did pretty much all of them the worst way possible. I quickly saw the game for not being what I'd wanted out of it, and put it down. I probably only played a few hours with Ventus and then left...
I didn't bother with Coded because it sounded like a spiritual successor to CoM and continued the trend of ignoring where we'd left off with KH2. Hard pass for me.
I didn't even know that DDD had existed until maybe a year or so after its release lol. I was happy to hear that they were finally continuing the story from where KH2 left off, but I thought the 3DS was a shitty console, so I just never bothered with DDD at the time. I think at this point, probably at the age of 18, despite having great childhood memories with KH1 & 2, I considered myself to be done with the series. It just didn't become what I'd fantasized about after KH2.
Then there was seeming years worth of US releases of HD Final Mix remakes/ports of existing titles, resulting in, what, a six year hiatus from new games? When I'd became aware of these, it confirmed to be that this series was basically dead.
Then, unexpectedly to me, while watching showcases from E3 '18 at age 23, there it was, Kingdom Hearts 3. At long effing last! You'll never understand how quickly my heart beat in such rapid succession. After something like eight years away from the series, Kingdom Hearts was finally back and in the form of what I'd be wanting out of it for twelve years. I thought I was done, but after I saw that amazing trailer for KH3, I was back in. I knew that I had to buy KH3 as soon as it came out.
I was very hesitant because I'd skipped Coded, Dream Drop Distance, and Fragmentary Passage. I never finished KH1, CoM, or BBS. I didn't remember everything from KH2 and 358. From my understanding, KH3 was intended to be a culmination of everything that preceded it, and be a definitive end to the series. How do I pick up with KH3 in that state?
Thankfully, The Story So Far released on the PS4 a few months before KH3's release. A $40 two disc collection of HD Final Mix remakes/ports of everything. I was 24 at that point. It'd be a 16 year journey then. I started as a child and was engaged then, could I still be this involved as an adult?
Yes and no. Replaying and completing all of the games at my leisure, on and off over the course of about six months was a very mixed experience for me. As an adult, I see now just how horribly written the story and dialogue are. Like, holy crap, this is razzie award level bad sometimes. The gameplay gimmicks in all of the spin-offs were really daunting to me. I felt alienated. I flat out hated CoM (although I did rather enjoy Riku's Reverse/Rebirth story), 358, and Coded, which comprised something like 40% of the series. Not a great way to get excited for the imminence of KH3. Regardless of the terrible writing, I still find myself in love with most of the ideas presented by the series. Just what a shame that nearly every character hardly has a semblance of an arc outside of a few tropey traits assigned to them in their first scene. I realized that most of what I initially liked about these characters were a combination of subtle implications and fanon.
So yeah, great ideas, really bad execution. Mostly tedious gameplay (except KH 1 & 2, which I think both worked really well), and dismal writing. Constant retcons, poor characterizations, random changes in lore, too much recycled assets across the series, and far too much of a hesitance to actually explain anything, let alone do so well. I still don't understand many things in this series!
I loved finally getting into KH3. It was a really fun, if suspiciously easy, game to play, and I was tantalized by the myriad of story threads. The worlds were massive in comparison to the previous titles, and it seemed every character was finally an active player with their own missions. And then we got to the Keyblade Graveyard... At first, I thought this was only roughly the halfway point of the game, and thought that the story was about to massively escalate now that all of the main characters were together. And then I realized that this was the end of the game already. I thought they promised like an 80 hour epic? I'm only about 20 hours deep... I guess all of those unresolved plots are either totally forgotten about, or just thinly veiled sequel bait again! Wait, this can't possibly be the end of the series?! Oh, it's just the end of Xehanort's saga? But we still hardly know anything about Xehanort!
I don't think I've ever so quickly dropped from such pure giddiness, to such sinking disappointment.
ReMind angered me. I still feel like my money was stolen, what with how cheap that was with so much recycled content and hardly anything new.
Confirmation of a Xehanort mobile prequel game being the next title? Come on!! Enough with this nonsense. No more pay-to-play mobile games. No more spreading titles across different platforms. No more recycled content. No more misguided prequels and midquels that focus on the wrong thing. No more several year long hiatuses between titles. No more Xehanort. His saga is over. Yes, there's plenty that wasn't done with his character, and lots that still don't make sense. But Nomura, et al. already fucked all of that up. It's over with. Let it go.
Constantly retreading the series' misfires is a sure fire way to chase right back out all over again right after you just got me back in here. I don't want to go. I want to see this series through to its end, and I want to see that on a single console, and within a reasonable amount of time. It's been 18 years now.
Give me an HD console remake of Union X so that myself and many others can actually experience the story and better understand the series' lore. And then, give me straight sequels that actually advance the story and fill me with positive experiences. I don't care if they're numbered sequels or not. I just want a full effort on the part of the development team. No more bullshit.
I swear, it almost feels like they keep throwing crap at their own audience just to see how much we'll endure before leaving. Stop treating me like that. You want my money and adoration, don't you? Then make me outwardly optimistic about this series' future. I'm not going to touch Union X, and I probably won't touch Dark Path either, if it follows a similar route as the aforementioned.
so what are you thinking of now?will your drop it? Or be a causal fan and pay less attention to it then usual? or still big fan and stick till the end?
