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Kingdom Hearts III Pre-Release Spoiler Discussion Thread



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notnow123487

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Yes he would have to pay a fine but that's it. He won't get much of anything else, not even close to what the actual thief will get.

Thats not true. It is illegal to purchase stolen goods if you know they’re stolen. It is criminal.
 

rmunoz1994

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My thoughts if you care to read. Gonna be a long one.

So I'm trying to sort out in my mind and put to text how all of these leaks are making me feel and what I actually expected in the next numbered installment...so I'll try to keep it as coherent as possible.

I see a lot of people saying that this is just the opinion of a couple of people on the game. That's true, but there is a lot of information out there that they revealed that allows us to form some opinion of our own too. Story wise, everyone will have a different reaction...and I tend to like divisive endings so I don't particularly care what they think about the story. It's what we know without their opinions gameplay wise that has me worried so I'll go into that.

Playtime and Difficulty 34.5 hours to beat the game on proud on a first play through with only 4 deaths, level 39, 6-7 hours of side content included in that total time, and what I'm sure are several hours of idle time. That probably makes the total time no longer or a little bit longer than my first playthrough of KH2FM on normal. Now i wasn't expecting a 50+ hour game like some people were strangely expecting, or even 40+...but I did hope and do think was reasonable to expect in a modern KH game and any RPG in general that a casual playthrough would hit closer to the 30/35 hour mark on normal on a first play through. They "claim" to be casual. I put that in quotes because maybe they are less casual (I take casual to mean casual with game mechanics...not necessarily story) than they say, but if I were to take that at face value...only dying 4 times on proud with that total game time as a casual player is extremely disappointing. In addition, I think usually the average player (at least I did) hit close to level 45 when beating the game. If it is indeed true that someone (who claims to be casual) can beat the game at a low level in a quick amount of time on the hardest difficulty(critical not available on first playthrough), then people who speculated that Sora is too OP seem to have been correct and there is a huge problem with balancing.

Worlds and Exploration Now let's go into the worlds. There are 8 Disney and 4 original. We know what they are now as a fact and have proof. As far as the Disney worlds go...that's a fine number to me, but for the life of me I don't understand why the took resources to develop the hundred acre woods as a mini game world. Those resources could have gone so many other places. Of the originals...we have Twilight Town which we have already seen, The Realm of Darkness...which I HOPE is more than just the same areas of 0.2, the Keyblade graveyard which I assume is barely explorable and is mainly just a final battle arena, and Scala Ad Caelum which sounds like it isn't very explorable. When I heard that there would be fewer Disney worlds, I assumed that the original worlds we got would be pretty fleshed out.
I expected from KH3 Twilight town fully explorable, The Keyblade Graveyard(just as the scene of the battle), possibly the Realm of Darkness being explorable, One NEW fully explorable original world, Radiant Garden, and Land of Departure. I also didn't expect, but hoped for Destiny Island and Traverse Town(this one was more of a reach).
So Twilight Town, the Keyblade Graveyard, and the Realm of Darkness seem to all hit what my expectations for them were. But what about the rest? No Radiant Garden? This is probably the most recognizable original world in the KH series and is where the FF gang(will get to that later) lives. No Land of Departure? I fully expected we would be going there for Ventus and would transform Castle Oblivion...but this is only cutscenes now. The only new original world Scala Ad Caelum seems to be barely explorable and mostly just part of the final battle? The absence of the worlds I mentioned or their lack of content are probably my biggest disappointments and hit me the hardest when they weren't included. These weren't worlds I felt were asking for too much(excluding Destiny Island and Traverse Town), but something that should have been integral to the ending of the Dark Seeker Saga. Including what I mentioned would easily have gotten that gameplay time up to what I was expecting from KH3.

Quickly on FF characters...this is iffy, but it sounds like there is only 1 aside from the moogle. Wut? I understand what Nomura said that KH has so many original characters that it doesn't "need" FF characters to support. But I think that TOTALLY misses the point. We've known Leon and the gang since KH1. They contributed to the story and for me personally were always a big part of the heart of the game. Now they don't matter enough? The Saga is ending and they won't be a part of the final story? To me that is sad. This is a game that was built on the premise that it is a strange Disney/Final Fantasy crossover and that is barely the case now.

Side/Additional Content Lastly in talking about the leaks...side/additional content. 1. No coliseum... 2. a small armory of keyblades(Very small number of non-disney keyblades), 3. No secret bosses? On the first point...i fully expected (as I think the majority of us did) to see and battle in some form of the Coliseum in KH3. The fact that it isn't there makes me question what the developers were even thinking. That alone would add to the overall playtime significantly. On the 2nd point...I do understand why the number of keyblades would take a hit since each of them have transformations attached to them now. That being said...the lack of original KH keyblades is disappointing. The leaker claims that Oblivion and Oathkeeper aren't there for story reasons...but still...we needed something more in the original department. On point 3...I thought I remember an interview where they said they were going to have secret bosses. Now I could be wrong on that, but that's what I thought I heard. In addition, the leaker could have also just not found the boss. Now the third possibility...maybe it will be included in the patch with the epilogue? I know that wasn't specifically said, but look at Lingering Will. That's a spoiler. I believe there is a chance the secret boss is tied to the epilogue or secret movie and could not be included for that reason. As far as expectations, I fully expected at least 1 secret boss at the time of release...and I hoped for Sephiroth or at least some FF secret boss.

So that was a lot to get down. If you care to keep reading...I'll talk about more of my expectations/hopes not necessarily pertaining to the leak.

Combat Gameplay KH2 has always BY FAR been my favorite in terms of combat. Easily. No question. Fast combos, fluid movements, the feeling of control I had over Sora. Loved it. Now maybe I shouldn't say I expected this because this is Osaka we are dealing with, but I believed I SHOULD have expected the following...Base Combos that AT LEAST meets the same level of KH2. Also better spells, more options. As far as spells go, I think KH3 will definitely exceed that. I love the spells I see. The way they cast is beautiful and very useful. I rarely used magic in KH2 (Aside from reflega in FM) but I can definitely see myself using it a lot more in KH3. Now...base combos. So what we have seen in the trailers and in the leak....disappointing. I understand their are degrees to which people hate/don't like but don't care too much about floaty combat. I HATE IT. It only slows down my combos and leaves me open to being hit. I really don't see why they couldn't easily get rid of this. I understand there is more aerial combat in KH3, but you could pull off aerial combat just fine in KH2. KH3 adds guarding and dodging in midair which is AWESOME, but while this does help combat the downsides of floatiness, there really is still no reason for the floatiness to have to combat it in the first place. In addition Osaka's combos mostly seem like overly fancy wide moves that leave you very open to attacks that will break your combo. That move in most of the trailers and demos where Sora puts his keyblade in the air and summons a small beam of light is awful (I played the demo and can say that from first hand experience). There are a lot of moves that take too much time like this and it scares me.
Attraction Flow. I never really had much expectations for it. It seems like I was right not to. They are just spectacle that takes a lot of time and seem to be more annoying than helpful after seeing it the first few times. They are just another option for people that may like it, which is fine with me, but there really needs to be an option to disable certain situation commands you don't want to use. This would get rid of the clutter of commands that pile up for people that want them limited.
Keyblade transformations are a pretty cool concept that I welcome. I do think they also suffer from the spectacle they are trying to create though.
Wall Running. Loved the way it felt in the demo. Awesome mechanic that adds more verticality. Two things I wish were changed though. The first, no sharp turns. They should have taken a page from the absolutely fantastic wall running in Spiderman where you were in full control of the direction you go in. Secondly, the white highlight on everything you can run on. For some this is more of a problem than for others. I fully believe there should be an option to disable it or at least change the type of indicator or the opacity of the highlights. Since as of now that seems to not exist...that really needs to be patched in ASAP.
Flowmotion. This is a fun addition that doesn't seem OP anymore. Fantastic!
So how does KH3 seem compared to my expectations? Expectations have been met and exceeded for spells and additional options in combat. I did hope for dual wielding but had no expectations for it. In terms of base combos? So far it definitely hasn't met this expectation. Unfortunately this was by far for me personally the most important expectation to be met. Now...I haven't played the final game, but from the leaks it doesn't seem much has changed. That's not to say that the combat doesn't look fun. In fact, this easily looks like the best KH game in terms of combos since KH2...but then you have KH2. The leaked ability menu also doesn't seem to have many combo modifiers which is disappointing.

Story My last point. I'll just talk about what I expect and hope for in the story. I don't know any detail from the leak pertaining to this and don't care about opinions on the story from the leak as that is probably the most subjective part of KH games. All I feel I should expect is an ending that feels mostly final. Everything done with Xehanort. Leaves the door open for more, but feels like a satisfying conclusion. I welcome a character death with emotional weight. I just want that final battle to be emotionally packed and epic. I want/expect the Disney worlds to have more weight in the overall plot compared to previous games which seems to be the case. I want Kairi to have a larger role, and I want some sort of resolution for each character whether that be happy or sad. I expect to know more about the nature of Kingdom Hearts. It's inevitable that the mobile game is going to be included in the story which is absurd, so I hope it isn't too much. I could write a dissertation on everything wrong with that, but I won't get into it now.
Something I really wanted is a sort of mid game OG World segment similar to everything that happens in Radiant Garden in KH2. I'm not talking about another 1000 heartless fight there, but just some type of huge story development that takes place in an original world that is playable. What I'm most worried about is that all the major story developments will be pushed to the very beginning and the very end. This really should not be the case anymore. We should have a substantial event in the middle and I feel that is a fair thing to expect.

Well...I think that's everything. If you've actually taken the time to read my thoughts thank you! It was a lot. Just felt like I needed to get them out there. I don't think anything I expected of this game was unreasonable. Despite how insane my hype levels were before the leak, I think my expectations were grounded to an achievable degree. So it's very upsetting that some of these expectations are definitely not going to be met. With only a month until the game comes out...I'd be lying if I said the leak didn't take most of the magic of this time period away from me. That being said, that could possibly be for the best since it seems a lot of my expectations for this game aren't going to be met, and to look at this as realistically as possible.
 
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rmunoz1994

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It's been apparent ever since that new CEO took over. I knew something was up when Nomura said he didn't even know he was directing FF7R until he saw his name on the announcement trailer.

Just want to clarify a fallacy here. Nomura knew he was directing FF7R when the E3 trailer happened. He had already been directing it since late 2014. It was at an internal company meeting where they showed Nomura this trailer which was basically there way of announcing to him that he was the director.
 

Darvandark

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I mean this in the nicest way possible...but there was zero reason to believe that and I honestly would sooner fault the people for such expectations than the developers. The FM was done again and again because they could dedicate time to it now that the big hurdle, which if the game itself, was done. A lot of time people see FM's essentially as cut content (even though very little of the content is actually cut) instead of the developers going "okay all the hard/long game development stuff is done, the game itself is complete, let's see what we can add to make it better and let's take this chance to improve on some the areas fans felts were lackluster.

Likewise moving forward development has largely only gotten harder not easier and so while the systems are more powerful, it takes significantly more time and effort to just make the base game alone. So you need to have real expectations here not just idealism, and it's basically always been unrealistic to think KH3's initial release was going to match KH2FM+ from the get go. The most one could hope for, and the level at which KH3 appears to have successfully achieved, was to still be the best vanilla game in terms of content and gameplay which just going by what we know it seems to have. In fact from a gameplay perspective it's looking better tighter than even KH2FM+ did but if it actually is remains to be seen.

We haven't moved away from FM's we've just moved to an era where now FM's can/should be DLC content. They'll only need to focus on the new content instead of porting or remaking the game and likewise they can sell the content at a reduced price instead of asking us to buy the entire game again.

I prefer this concept in reality. Give me a solid game with "little" content and take time to work on the side stuff later. At the very least let this be better than a whole new FM or region locked content. Especially since the majority are in a different region from the source material.
 

mriku90

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God I truly miss when Square Enix was Square Soft. It wasn't just a name change that occurred but so much changed for the worst IMO.
 

sorawild

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God I truly miss when Square Enix was Square Soft. It wasn't just a name change that occurred but so much changed for the worst IMO.

I wouldn't say so. The biggest economic flop Square has ever had and almost put them out of business, was back when there were still Squaresoft. Almost 2 decades later and "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" is still one of the biggest economic dumpster dives in entertainment history.
 

shuyin_zer0

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It's been apparent ever since that new CEO took over. I knew something was up when Nomura said he didn't even know he was directing FF7R until he saw his name on the announcement trailer.

That information is false. Nomura had been directing since a year before the announcement trailer was shown publicly

Also, Matsuda is infinitely better than Wada
 

Oracle Spockanort

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Matsuda and Wada both have their pros and cons. Wada was a bit more open to passion projects so we got a ton of good (and bad) middle-tier games (in that they were budged projects) that experimented within franchises and new IPs. The downside is that there was a lot of top-down mismanagement and excessive spending, which led to extremely insane sales expectations that could never be reached.

Matsuda is good about reducing excessive spending, but we have seen a huge reduction of experimental projects and middle-tier games. With successes like Nier Automata and LiS, though, SE is starting to come back around. There is still a lot of mismanagement, but it seems to be stemming from an odd approach to “global” selling. They want to capitalize on trends without understanding their market. Dissidia, for example. SE wanted to test out e-Sports so they used Dissidia for it rather than focusing on making a Dissidia game for the fans. The entire DLC/microtransaction debacle with Deus Ex. The barren wasteland in XV as an open world.
 

Recon

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They want to capitalize on trends without understanding their market. Dissidia, for example. SE wanted to test out e-Sports so they used Dissidia for it rather than focusing on making a Dissidia game for the fans. The entire DLC/microtransaction debacle with Deus Ex. The barren wasteland in XV as an open world.

inb4 some IP is used to test out how profitable a battle royale multiplayer game will be
 

mriku90

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I wouldn't say so. The biggest economic flop Square has ever had and almost put them out of business, was back when there were still Squaresoft. Almost 2 decades later and "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" is still one of the biggest economic dumpster dives in entertainment history.

That was just one of the most ridiculous things ever and that was a film not a game. Although yeah that film is something nobody ever wants to acknowledge as even existing.

But this company made some of their best titles when they were Square Soft.

I mean the FF old school games including iconic 7 and my personal favorite 9, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, Secret of Mana, Xenogears, I mean just so many fantastic titles when they were SS.

SE on the other hand leaves a lot to be desired. The very divisive FF 13 trilogy, FFXV, JC4, Deus Ex, the new Tomb Raiders. I will say there are some hidden gems like NIER, LIS, TWEWY, and of course Kingdom Hearts series aside from the first one have all been Enix properties.
 

ultima-demi

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Funny enough, I never thought i would say this but is anyone else a bit more interested for what comes after KH3 at this point.

I'm not sure if i'm remembering right or if this was said at all..but i feel it was said as much that Nomura seemed more focused for what is after KH3 then KH3 itself?

It just looks like KH3 is just laying the groundwork and the next game will be a lot bigger/better.
 

Seighart

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Funny enough, I never thought i would say this but is anyone else a bit more interested for what comes after KH3 at this point.

I'm not sure if i'm remembering right or if this was said at all..but i feel it was said as much that Nomura seemed more focused for what is after KH3 then KH3 itself?

It just looks like KH3 is just laying the groundwork and the next game will be a lot bigger/better.

I was. It honestly all depends on how soon we get it because I dont want to wait another 4-6 years after being spoiled with a KH game yearly for a while
 
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Alpha Baymax

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Square Soft was incredible. Ever since they changed the name to Square Enix there's been a significant drop in quality. But when it was Square Soft it was literally one of the giant kings of the gaming companies in the world. Because every game they put out was quality, even something like The Bouncer was enjoyable for what it was and a new experience.

I forgot when the change officially happened but it was after KH2 for sure.

That's becuase Square Enix is just a renamed Enix Corporation, not a renamed Square (Squaresoft was just the branding used for international Square games). Square was the company that was legally dissolved in the merger.

When the merger occured, Square was absorbed into Enix as Enix had more capital, and was the more established company in Japan. Despite Enix acquiring Square's development and international publishing assets, most of the Board of Directors for Square Enix are former Enix staff.

So yeah, blame the Enix Board of Directors for screwing up Square's quality ethos over the years. With that being said, Kingdom Hearts has always been consistent with its quality.
 

Senzura

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Funny enough, I never thought i would say this but is anyone else a bit more interested for what comes after KH3 at this point.

I'm not sure if i'm remembering right or if this was said at all..but i feel it was said as much that Nomura seemed more focused for what is after KH3 then KH3 itself?

It just looks like KH3 is just laying the groundwork and the next game will be a lot bigger/better.

So we've finally moved on from denial and now we're bargaining

"It's fine that KH3 is bad, because its just a test for Kh4!"

you have no reason to believe this
 

robotman

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I don't think we'd be feeling like this if the leaker wasn't so negative about the game. The issue is that the leaker as pretty much confirmed what some of us thought about the game.

The game doesn't have enough Disney worlds, it lacks original worlds and they aren't as big as they were made out to be, it also has no secret bosses or coliseum/torunaments... I mean the leaker even said that the game doesn't have critical mode, like this is completely ridiculous. He also said that Proud mode was too easy and he completed the game at level 39... I mean WTF... I don't know what they were doing when they made the game but they certainly didn't listen to what the fans wanted.

Like I said before, we can only hope they fix this in the final mix version but the stuff that they need to add should be in the main game already and not DLC. I'm still very confused because they said that they were struggling to fit it all on the disc but then it ends up being around 40GB... Someone make it make sense!
 

maximumlight8

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I don't think we'd be feeling like this if the leaker wasn't so negative about the game. The issue is that the leaker as pretty much confirmed what some of us thought about the game.

The game doesn't have enough Disney worlds, it lacks original worlds and they aren't as big as they were made out to be, it also has no secret bosses or coliseum/torunaments... I mean the leaker even said that the game doesn't have critical mode, like this is completely ridiculous. He also said that Proud mode was too easy and he completed the game at level 39... I mean WTF... I don't know what they were doing when they made the game but they certainly didn't listen to what the fans wanted.

Like I said before, we can only hope they fix this in the final mix version but the stuff that they need to add should be in the main game already and not DLC. I'm still very confused because they said that they were struggling to fit it all on the disc but then it ends up being around 40GB... Someone make it make sense!

he said there is critical, bu there's no NG+. So you can only continue a cleared save, which sucks because critical will be a fresh start.

Never got the mentality of "lock you out of how you want to play the game". It's ridiculous.
 

doublerainbow

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Why are we even responding to that Senzura guy? All I see from him is arguing with everyone, denying anything and everything.He's been spreading negativity around here ever since he registered his account 3 days ago. Pretty sure it's a troll.
 
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