My biggest worry with KHIII...

[Wilford111]

I recently watched this video and... he makes some extremely good points. If what he's saying is true, then I'm very afraid for how KHIII is going to turn out...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2gC0UzCffw

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

For those of us who can't watch the video, mind giving a rundown of what you are worried about?

 

[Wilford111]

For those of us who can't watch the video, mind giving a rundown of what you are worried about?

Sorry if it's a problem with the link, I've been having issues with it.

Basically, in the video he explains that the first 2 Kingdom Hearts games on PS2 were made by the Square Enix "Tokyo" team, and Birth By Sleep and Dream Drop Distance were made by the Square Enix "Osaka" team. However, KHIII is said to be currently developed by the Osaka team. He continues to say that the games made by the Tokyo team were better and more skillfully made than the ones made by the Osaka team, and not just because they had a bigger budget.

He says that the games made by the Osaka team were unbalanced. He uses Thunder Surge from bbs and Balloonga from DDD as examples. He says they're the best in any situation, even better than commands that fill up more space and are harder to obtain.

He also says that the regular keyblade combos felt more connected and satisfying to pull off than the combos you make in bbs and DDD. When you mash the attack button in KHI and KHII, it feels like a string of attacks and are fluid. But in bbs and DDD, they're more disjointed and it seems like the character is hesitating after every attack going into the next one. In the KHIII E3 trailer, you can see the aerial combos act a lot like the ones from bbs and DDD - disjointed.

The boss design is also a problem, as well as the different strategies in fighting them. In the data organization XIII fights for example, there are different ways to get around them, they have their "revenge values", and once you have them staggered, you can pull off a few combos. But, with the boss fights in bbs and DDD, it seems like you have to dodge roll over and over again, waiting for an opening and then using a command when you have the chance.

Anyway, I'm just paraphrasing. He words it much better in the video, but those are the main concerns.

 

[Anagram]

He's not entirely wrong....the command deck, while fun and new for a while, is heavily HEAVILY broken. If you know what your doing you can have any command and ability you want early in BBS. DDD too is easy save for a few random parts like young Xehanorts troll with time. Between flowmotion and balloonga it's dull.

Many love it but none of you can deny it doesn't set up a pattern for you. It's always [insert fave command here]>[command again]>cure spell. The keybaldes have been steadily doing less and less damage as well to the point there's no point to use them. You spam the command button just as much as people whine ya spam triangle in KH2.

There's just an oddly less amount of variety than there was when we had less options in 1 and 2.

 

[Xera Highwind]

Didn't they say KHIII was about 90% Tokyo team and only 10% Osaka team?

 

[Wilford111]

Didn't they say KHIII was about 90% Tokyo team and only 10% Osaka team?

Actually it's the opposite - 90% Osaka team, 10% Tokyo team.

 

[Launchpad]

This shit keeps me up at night. Osaka can dress their games up and give Sora one million moves to attack enemies with, but variety is nothing if there's no viability to it. I'd rather have a small arsenal, like what KH1 and KH2 gave us, than a shit system with a million options like BBS.

 

[bgizzles45]

I believe the Tokyo Team is currently working on FFXV, and have been since the last decade. They will chime in and finish up with whatever The Osaka Team created. Though I do wish the Tokyo Team worked on KHIII since the ground up. KHII was not exactly perfect either. The spamming of magnega and thundaga comes to mind.

 

[Launchpad]

I believe the Tokyo Team is currently working on FFXIV, and have been since the last decade. They will chime in and finish up with whatever The Osaka Team created. Though I do wish the Tokyo Team worked on KHIII since the ground up. KHII was not exactly perfect either. The spamming of magnega and thundaga comes to mind.

If there's one thing KH2 got right, (and there is only one thing) it was the combat system. Sure, it was too easy in some areas, and relied too heavily on reaction commands for certain mobs, but overall it was a very well programmed and realized system. Playing on Critical or hell, even underleveled on Proud will help you see how well the game was programmed and forces you to use your options. Besides Master Form, Master Form fucking sucks.

 

[Oracle Spockanort]

I believe the Tokyo Team is currently working on FFXIV, and have been since the last decade. They will chime in and finish up with whatever The Osaka Team created. Though I do wish the Tokyo Team worked on KHIII since the ground up. KHII was not exactly perfect either. The spamming of magnega and thundaga comes to mind.

Tokyo Team...what remains of it, is split between KH3 (the 10% we know that is working on it) and the rest are considered a part of Business Department 1 (the people who made the XIII games) and Business Department 2 (FFXV, Project WITCH Tech Demo).

It stands to reason that after FFXV, BD2 will move on to their next project and not KH3. And BD1 will likely be busy with their own projects (i.e. probably FF7 Remake).

 

[Happyfunshineman]

It's almost been 10 years since KH2 was released. If the Tokyo team were making KH3, there's no telling if it would be the same as their previous works. Mentality's could be different. Heck, the team itself could be very different, what with people coming and going from the industry.

Also, the Osaka team doesn't decided whether or not mechanics should be in the game or not. I'm sure there would be tons of gameplay mechanics in kh3 even if the Tokyo team where working on it.

 

[Nazo]

While I do agree that not having the exact same team that worked on KH1 and 2 not working on KH3 is slightly worrisome, I don't think it's going to affect KH3 all that much. Mainly because it's been such a long time since KH2 so the Tokyo team that made KH2 is no more and is split as Spocky mentioned. Plus, BBS may not be as fluid as KH and KH2 but my God it's an absolute masterpiece in my eyes. The capabilities of the PSP held it back a lot though. Had it been created from scratch on PS2 like originally planned, I bet it would have been even better.

Osaka have proven they know how to make a KH game with BBS and DDD. And even though DDD wasn't of the same caliber as 1, 2, and BBS, it was a solid entry. Plus, now that they have gone back and done all the ReMIXs as well as 2.8, they themselves have even stated that it was like a school lesson on everything that was good and bad about the entire series. So, imagine if they pool together every good idea from the series after having worked on those, and fuse them all into something completely mindblowing for KH3?

Besides, I've already prepared myself for the idea that KH3 will not be the best in the series, for me. Not because it won't, but because nostalgia is the strongest preserver of love for something and I have a metric fuck ton of nostalgia for KH2, and I have serious doubts that KH3 will be so good that it will be able to shatter the wall of diamond-hard KH2 nostalgia I have. If it does though, I will be euphoric beyond words.

 

[Hirokey123]

And even though DDD wasn't of the same caliber as 1, 2, and BBS, it was a solid entry.

I agree with most of what you said except this as I found DDD was worlds above BBS as a game. It was a smaller entry but it was so much more refined in story, worlds, even gameplay. While on a technical level the 3DS being more powerful than the PSP allowed for even flashier lighting and particle effects as well as a lot more enemies on screen. Story side technical wise the cutscenes were so much more animate and there was a much lower amount of pixel face...and when there was pixel face they were smart enough to have it from a distance not zoomed in on it.

Which I mean that's not to rag on BBS but rather this is a good thing. As it shows that Osaka team has the most important part of being a game team down, the ability to learn and improve from their mistakes.

 

[Wilford111]

Honestly the only thing I want them to fix is how it feels to swing your keyblade. That's the main reason bbs and especially DDD were underwhelming to me, is because I didn't have as much fun chaining together combos in those games as I did in KHII.

Welll, I don't know if that's the only thing... but that's definitely the thing that sticks out in my mind the most.

 

[Face My Fears]

Well I don't think people are giving OSAKA a lot of credit. The fact is that they've worked on BbS and 3D, both titles that are polarizing with the fans, but also great achievements. I think they've proven they know how to make a KH game, now is their chance to work on a main title KH game. I'm sure with Nomura there, he will ensure that it retains the feel of a main title game. I hope that OSAKA's ability to be a bit more mature/dark in their storytelling remains and is woven into KH3's creation.

 

[Blackdrazon]

I'm with everyone else in saying that the time gap between then and now essentially eroded any connect the Tokyo team might have had to KH. They're not going to be the same people, and with people leaving the team and being transferred much of them probably aren't all working there anyways (it's sort of like how the closing of LucasArts didn't matter much because almost all the talent had left). As a lot of retro revivals have proven: just because a designer made a revolutionary game in the past doesn't mean they can make a revolutionary game today.

In fact, in a related but distinct point, just because a designer made a revolutionary game in X generation doesn't mean they're necessarily going to be able to make a revolutionary game in Y generation. Successful media is a combination of a lot of ingredients but one of them is circumstance. Peter Molyneux could make bleeding edge simulation games in the technical and budgetary environment of the early 90s, but he shouldn't be trusted with a social game today, as he has repeatedly proven. Similarly, the development minds that made a Kingdom Hearts game in the early 2000s might not necessarily be the development minds you want making a Kingdom Hearts in 2015.

None of that's necessarily in favour of Osaka team per se, but in an industry that changes as rapidly as gaming, appeal to nostalgia can be even more fallacious than usual. I don't think I'd trust Tokyo team with KH3 any more at this point than anyone other developer who's created a successful action game in recent memory (for argument's sake let's call FFXV a "success"), which to me puts them at best on similar footing to Osaka.

If you don't like Osaka's games that's one thing and perfectly fine, but as far as alternatives are concerned, I'd just as quickly call in someone else than Tokyo.

 

[BlackOsprey]

As one of those weirdoes who doesn't hate the games created by the Osaka team, I'm kinda with EeL on this one. However, I do recognize the issues with the command deck, and I'm hoping that they'll switch it to a system more akin to KH1 or II. Given what we've seen so far, it looks to me like command deck isn't returning, but I could be wrong.

To be perfectly honest, "perfect" gameplay would be icing on the cake for me. I'm looking for some god-tier music and some closure to the story that about half a dozen games have been leading up to. Though it would be nice to be able to rely more heavily on good old-fashioned Keyblade combos again... I really liked that about II, how I could actually beat down bosses with normal strikes.

 

[Venx]

Your problem is that you want KH3 to be the best game of the series, what is totally okay, but there is no way you won't be disappointed. I personally think KH2 is a perfect game over all (yea, it has some little things I would change, but there is always something you would add or erase.) and I just want KH3 to be a really good and fun game with a great ending to the franchise.

We can just wait and hope they're doing a great job, so let's not hate anyone from the beginning.

 

[Professor Ven]

Osaka's been doing a fine job integrating Nomura's various ideas of combat for each game they've worked on so far, I personally would rather there be a mixture of Command Deck + Flowmotion in KH III. This is simply because of Sora's "re-learning" of how to use the Keyblade in DDD, and the Command Deck was a nice customizing feature in BBS. While it might seem overpowered for some people, it allows for a more fluid combat once the player gets used to it - something that I feel should stay in KH. Gone are the days of mashing X repeatedly in KH 1 and a monotonous string of X for the elusive Reaction Command in KH 2.

That aside, Osaka team is currently the most up to date on KH's style and setting (BBS, DDD, ReMIX 1.5, 2.5, etc). I feel safer because of this that KH III is in their hands versus the other SE teams.


What KH3 really needs on the PS4 is multiplayer - after all, "friends are my power" and all, right?

 

[Chuman]

Osaka's been doing a fine job integrating Nomura's various ideas of combat for each game they've worked on so far, I personally would rather there be a mixture of Command Deck + Flowmotion in KH III. This is simply because of Sora's "re-learning" of how to use the Keyblade in DDD, and the Command Deck was a nice customizing feature in BBS. While it might seem overpowered for some people, it allows for a more fluid combat once the player gets used to it - something that I feel should stay in KH. Gone are the days of mashing X repeatedly in KH 1 and a monotonous string of X for the elusive Reaction Command in KH 2.

That aside, Osaka team is currently the most up to date on KH's style and setting (BBS, DDD, ReMIX 1.5, 2.5, etc). I feel safer because of this that KH III is in their hands versus the other SE teams.


What KH3 really needs on the PS4 is multiplayer - after all, "friends are my power" and all, right?

I agree with this whole post. Maybe its my purely adolescent and fast-paced mindset but the command decks felt more intuitive and useful than the ps2 games. I admit it was easier to use thunder surge or balloonga but i always kept my deck balanced to stay strategic.

The deck commands aren't even in III so how are people concerned osaka will fuck up the mash X nauseam formula? They are putting in many gameplay mechanics to keep things fresh, I'm just hoping they can keep things difficult enough to utilize these, and they aren't just gimmicks.

Command styles and drive forms were cumbersome and broke up the flow of a battle which was frustrating beyond belief. Multiplayer would be great, i made a post a while back about multiplayer but i liked an idea launchpad said about local co-op, just playing as donald, goofy or a world character.