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The Critical Mode Experience Thread



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kaseykockroach

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I oddly found Monstropolis not that bad on Critical. I anticipated worse, but stick to long-range attacks (magic or the honey launcher) and you’re fine with the giant Unversed.
The ice dragons in Arendelle, on the other hand, obliterated my ass (and I love it).
Also, I’m currently in the process of finding every single treasure chest for the first time. I can’t believe the sheer number of chests that weren’t especially hidden, I just absent-mindedly walked past them during my first visit!
 

Face My Fears

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I oddly found Monstropolis not that bad on Critical. I anticipated worse, but stick to long-range attacks (magic or the honey launcher) and you’re fine with the giant Unversed.
The ice dragons in Arendelle, on the other hand, obliterated my ass (and I love it).
Also, I’m currently in the process of finding every single treasure chest for the first time. I can’t believe the sheer number of chests that weren’t especially hidden, I just absent-mindedly walked past them during my first visit!
I was desperately trying to find all lucky emblems/chests while visiting the world. I missed some in Corona because there was way too big, but I got almost everything in Monstropolis. I liked that they actually made a lucky emblem appear in that world only after you clear it, so you have to revisit the world (well you need to revisit for the items only the Unversed drop too).

I'm actually noticing how they made incentives to revisit the worlds, which I'm liking.

I'm heading to Arendelle now (underleveled), so hopefully I don't die too much.
 

kaseykockroach

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Beware the heartless with those laser umbrellas! Blizzard was my friend when dealing with those pests.
I’ve played KH3 Critical twice now and can say the most consistently difficult parts are Tornado Titan, the demon horse in Corona, a lot of Arendelle, and the Aqua VS Vanitas fight. Not to mention the Org 13 bosses are tough to some degree since a lot of the keyblade wielders are comically useless party members (Mickey and Riku are almost always KOed). REALLY makes me further celebrate when Donald and Goofy come back!
 
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Lulcy

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I died more than Normal Mode and Proud Mode combined, so it definetely was harder than the other settings. That said, Critical Mode still doesn't adress core issues with the gameplay:

1) Off-Screen attacks still happen. Out of nowhere and without warning you get one-shot from attacks you could not react, because they happened off-screen.

2) Removing Attraction Commands is the most lame way of "fixing" this mechanique, so now you either play with less tools and have less combat options or you play with an resource free and overpowered mechanique that can trivialize fights. Their absence did made fights harder but I still stand by that removing mechaniques should not be the way of fixing them, adjusting their damage and making them cost something should have been the way of balancing.

3) Cutting your HP in half was fine, what was not fine was cutting your MP in half. This completely gimped magic focused combat by, yet again, removing options (since now you can cast less spells). Critical Mode should have nerfed damage output, not their number of casting. So now instead of spamming spells you're spamming Link summons.

4) While Situation Commands happen less frequent, their resource free nature still makes them overpowered on any non-boss fight.

Overall Critical Mode has been a harder experience but also a very frustrating one (very frustrating as someone that likes playing KH on as magic focused).
 

Face My Fears

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Beware the heartless with those laser umbrellas! Blizzard was my friend when dealing with those pests.
I’ve played KH3 Critical twice now and can say the most consistently difficult parts are Tornado Titan, the demon horse in Corona, a lot of Arendelle, and the Aqua VS Vanitas fight. Not to mention the Org 13 bosses are tough to some degree since a lot of the keyblade wielders are comically useless party members (Mickey and Riku are almost always KOed). REALLY makes me further celebrate when Donald and Goofy come back!
I read a lot of people complain about the demon horse in Corona, but I didn't really have an issue. Maybe it was the keyblade I was using? I used the matching keyblade for each world, so I was using Ever After.

I didn't finish Arendelle because I forgot I had to do 100 Acre Wood first (or I chose to do it), but so far the hardest fights have been the Nobodies in Twilight Town, Lump of Horror, the big Unversed in Monstropolis (the one that eats you), and the possessed doll in Toy Box.

The whole getting killed off-screen thing, at first that happened to me because I didn't think Critical mode was going to be that much of an upgrade (like KH2 Critical mode which didn't really make anything in story mode harder, at least for me). Once I realized that the mode meant business and I had to be aware of what was going on, every time enemies appeared I would start dodge rolling to analyze what enemies were there and figure out how to proceed. I guess that's my way of adapting to getting killed by something off-screen, but I'm not sure how to fix that... only have enemies attack you if you can see them/are on-screen (which sounds weird and wrong)?
 

Lulcy

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I guess that's my way of adapting to getting killed by something off-screen, but I'm not sure how to fix that... only have enemies attack you if you can see them/are on-screen (which sounds weird and wrong)?
Not all, the Devil May Cry games have had this feature to prevent this kind of unfair bs blindsiding players.
 

kaseykockroach

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Ppppffftttthahaha, Riku and Mickey die within five seconds or so into the triple battle. As in, both KOed before the whole “keyblade swarm takes them away” business.
It’s like the game is really looking forward to D&G coming back. In fact, others being left out feels spiritually like when D&G underwent the “shoo out the clowns” business in past games’ finales.
Mocking aside, I really like the structure that D&G come back in the nick of time. The final battle wouldn’t have had quite the same impact if they hung with you the whole labyrinth.
 

Face My Fears

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Not all, the Devil May Cry games have had this feature to prevent this kind of unfair bs blindsiding players.
Maybe they should include it as an option you want off/on? I don't have a problem with it now. When I was walking in Olympus and one of the archer heartless killed me and I didn't even realize what happened, that annoyed me, but now that I know what to expect in Critical mode I've gotten used to it.
 

KHRULER

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Final boss of Monstropolis gave me the biggest headache of all time. My head was about to nearly explode after trying for an hour.

Thankfully, Vanitas getting yeeted out of existence made up for it.
 

Face My Fears

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Beware the heartless with those laser umbrellas! Blizzard was my friend when dealing with those pests.
I’ve played KH3 Critical twice now and can say the most consistently difficult parts are Tornado Titan, the demon horse in Corona, a lot of Arendelle, and the Aqua VS Vanitas fight. Not to mention the Org 13 bosses are tough to some degree since a lot of the keyblade wielders are comically useless party members (Mickey and Riku are almost always KOed). REALLY makes me further celebrate when Donald and Goofy come back!
That was so good advice, the first encounter with them I realized that they would be trouble and took care of them. I only died once (or twice?) in Arendelle and it was to enemies on the field. In a somewhat disappointing twist - because I was excited to face the Critical version of this boss - the final boss was actually pretty easy and easier than the Proud version (or at least less fun).

Side note: Replaying Arendelle for the third time is making me really feel how bland the world is. It barely feels like a Disney world. It's not even like KH2 worlds where the cutscenes and party members salvage the Disney essence. Arendelle feels like a KH3D world. It follows the movie plot, Sora isn't really part of it, and there's a giant boss at the end. It's weird because the cutscenes (with the Disney characters) are over loaded Disney IE straight from the movie, songs from the movie etc. Yet somehow it feels devoid of Disney (at least to me). So I think Arendelle is going to take Monstro's spot as my least favourite Disney world in all the games.
 

Face My Fears

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It's been a while since I posted here so...
I just beat The Caribbean and I'm really enjoying Critical Mode. The underwater battles can be somewhat tricky when things attack you from nowhere and you have limited moves underwater, but I got used to being more alert underwater (this makes me hope and pray that they improve this further and bring back Atlantica as a battle world). The giant flying heartless at the start of the world was probably the least interesting boss so far in KH3, but I still had fun flying around on the heartless. The boss fight I was waiting to see improved by Critical (or should I say hoped) was Davey Jones. In my Proud run (before the update), I ran over him. This time around on Critical, he was challenging (not too hard), but I had a lot of fun fighting him. He did moves I didn't even know he had (glowed and reflected your attack, summoned tentacles to grab you even when the Krakken isn't attacking). I wish more boss fights were like this in KH3, I liked the restricted space on the Flying Dutchman which added a different dimension to the fight (like jumping around) rather than a huge space for the giant heartless bosses.

On to San Fransokyo... if only Dark Baymax was upgraded from mini-game boss fight to an actual fight.
 

Danrye001

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My experience is like absolute hell, I died many times in dark side, in titans, and in Toybox, without a Gigas, you're dead, the Gigas in KH critical mode are hell. But once you get to LV 70+ it's like a cakewalk.
 

horto12485

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My experience on Critical Mode was like crazy i got defeated Several Times in not just the Battles with Heartless, Nobodies and Unversed but the Boss Battles on Critical Mode were hard and Hardcore
 
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