There is an explanation as to why I didn’t love this game as much as I wanted to: I grew up.
Kingdom Hearts was my first introduction to RPG games, and for that reason I will always love the series, but somewhere along the way, it stopped being my favorite. After some soul searching, I believe that these are the reasons behind my disappointment with Kingdom Hearts III:
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
1. Disjointed Story & Plot
In Kingdom Hearts, your purpose as Sora was to (1) save Kairi and (2) save worlds from being devoured by darkness.
In Kingdom Hearts II, your purpose as Sora was to (1) stop Organization XIII and (2) save worlds from being devoured by darkness & nobodies.
In Kingdom Hearts III, your purpose as Sora was to (1) discover how to return hearts and (2) prevent another Keyblade war.
Um… okay.
The problem with KH3 is that when Sora went to different worlds in the past, he always had a direction and a reason for being there. However, in this game, Sora is wandering aimlessly by following his heart from one place to the next. The stories are siloed and don’t do anything except expose you to different Disney or Pixar movies and help you gain EXP. In my opinion, I felt bored and ended up skipping most of the scenes because I didn’t feel like they added value to the main plot.
Did I mention that Maleficient and Pete show up a few times to do nothing except plug the next game concept: the black box? Why even bother?
2. Cringy Script
The jokes weren’t funny even though characters were laughing, and the lines were just… awful. Watching the cutscenes was painful, and – like I said earlier – I ended up skipping most of them.
It’s possible that all of the Kingdom Hearts games have had this problem but I just didn’t realize it before. Unfortunately, I realize it now and it took a lot of the joy out of the cutscenes and the game itself.
3. Boring Exploration
Kingdom Hearts had 13 worlds.
Kingdom Hearts II had 15 worlds.
Kingdom Hearts III had 9 worlds.
Just 9 places to explore? Admittedly that’s not a huge difference, except that these world’s aren’t fun. Sora is extremely restricted in how much he can explore, and there isn’t much to do in each place except the storyline which isn’t really a storyline but a plug for Disney & Pixar movies. I was disappointed that there wasn’t much freedom to really delve into the world’s and see different things.
4. Gummiphones?
Really? Sora needs a cell phone? I’m sorry… what? To add to that, the loading screens are full of hashtags.
My assumption is that you’re supposed to look at this game as a cross into the real world. Unfortunately, I feel like that only makes this game worse because it is SUPPOSED to be FANTASY. It isn’t real. These games have always been removed from reality because they are literally based on fictitious movies and pre-existing games – IE Final Fantasy. Apparently though, Riku, Mickey Mouse, Sora, Donald Duck ETC all have Instagram accounts. Yay.
That was sarcasm in case you didn’t catch it.
5. Storyline: Rinse, Lather, Repeat
If the above point looks repetitive, it’s because it is. I only need to mention one world to drive this point home: Arendelle AKA Frozen.
- Land next to Ocean as Elsa is freezing it by running across.
- Catch-up to Elsa because she looks “upset.”
- Meet Org XIII member who doesn’t like you meddling and be sent to an Ice Labrynth.
- Get through the Labrynth.
- Escape at the base of the mountain.
- Start Over.
- Work your way back up the mountain to try to help Elsa.
- Listen through the entire “Let it Go” song.
- Try to talk to Elsa but run into an Org XIII member.
- Be shot down to the bottom of the mountain.
- Start Over.
- Work your way back up the mountain to ask Elsa what’s wrong.
- Meet Christophe and Anna.
- Fight the snow monster.
- Be shot down to the bottom of the mountain.
- Start Over.
- Work your way up the mountain and notice that Elsa is being carried down the mountain.
- Try to follow her, but fail.
- Find the Monster, team up.
- Find Cristophe, follow him to the frozen Anna scene.
- Fight a bad guy that no one knows about.
- Leave.
Yeah. I said the same thing.
Look, the thing is, I love the feeling you get from the story… but I don’t enjoy the gameplay anymore. I will always love the characters, and their connection to each other, but I can get that through videos of the game… I don’t need to suffer through it.
Kiminy Cricket 
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