It is incredibly hard for a game as long-delayed and as much-hyped as Kingdom Hearts III to satisfy its fans. When Microsoft delayed and scaled back and delayed again Crackdown 3, it was obvious that the project was in trouble. And though the game has its fans, the general consensus has been, “Meh” at best. There is a kind of resigned sigh that goes through fans of games and series at moments like these. Things aren’t going well and they’re unlikely to get better; we just hope they don’t get worse.
Long-time fans of the Kingdom Hearts series, then, were understandably concerned by the long development time and ongoing problems at Square Enix. Once a powerhouse (two powerhouses, in fact) in role playing video games, the genre itself has waned in popularity in the age of live service games and micro-transactions. Even when committed to making a major installment in an ongoing popular franchise, like Final Fantasy, the developers just couldn’t seem to get it right.
Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy XV has some really good game elements in it, but it lacks a lot of the polish and “it” factor that made prior games in the series so popular. Because I’ve been a fan of the series for so long, there’s a decent chance that this is just “old man yelling at clouds,” so I feel the need to demonstrate just how far the series has sunk.
On the surface this looks like a well-selling, long running, and growing series. But the actual reality is darker, and I can’t dig too deep because it is taking me away from my actual point. So for the short version, look at the years between releases. While later games are selling a significant number of units, Final Fantasy XIII even outselling the iconic and one of the best selling games of all time, Final Fantasy VII, the sales per year figure is dipping terrifyingly. There is a seven year gap between Final Fantasy XV‘s release and it’s mainline predecessor. In part that’s due to the MMOs sustaining things (XI and XIV, which got main series numbers, and made lots of money, but never attracted the player base). In part it’s direct sequels. Final Fantasy X saw the first of these (Final Fantasy X-2), and Final Fantasy XIII had two direct sequels to keep the revenue coming in while Final Fantasy XV was being built. These sequels, and their sales figures, are substantial as well. Square Enix was not losing money on Final Fantasy during this late period.
Even though there wasn’t a financial crunch yet, it seems obvious that something was off at Square Enix, starting in 2001. Live services (MMOs first with XI and then XIV) and other attractions drew their eye off the ball. The game’s directors lost touch of what made the games special. Ultimately they released Final Fantasy XV, which is pretty solid, but riddled with DLC, multiplayer expansions (which they subsequently removed and repackaged as an independent game) and a host of other questionable decisions based on marketing goals. All the while, they’re selling fewer copies than Final Fantasy XIII by far, and well below trendline. After seven years of pent up demand from diehard fans like me! Or, maybe, like me, many of those fans have just moved on because Square Enix couldn’t be bothered to publish a game once in a while. I didn’t buy my copy of Final Fantasy XV until late 2018, and at a significantly discounted price. There was just no demand that I play it “now,” like there had been for every other Final Fantasy since Final Fantasy IV.
Kingdom Hearts
That is the environment into which Square Enix’s major project, a partnership with Disney, Kingdom Hearts was launching its next entry. Like Final Fantasy XV, Kingdom Hearts III was seemingly in development hell forever. Kingdom Hearts II was released in 2005. It has been nearly 14 years between major releases in this series, and that puts Final Fantasy’s paltry 7 to shame. Like Final Fantasy, there had been plenty of additional games along the way. There were 14* games in the Kingdom Hearts series1 by the time Kingdom Hearts III released. Only two of them (Kingdom Hearts and Chain of Memories) were outside of this 2005-2018 period of madness.
And it was a madness. JRPGs like those produced by Square Enix, in any of its major series (Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Dragon Quest, etc.), are often overly complicated hero journeys. That’s part of what makes them such great fantasy. The fans love a long rambling story with twists and turns, betrayals and befriending. So Square Enix provides that, and as a result, the stories are often a little confusing.
The confusing story is put on drugs when it comes to Kingdom Hearts. The merging of the worlds of ALL of the Final Fantasies and ALL of the worlds of every Disney movie into a single source was bound to be complicated. But they took it the extra mile by adding a meta-level of insanity on top. And that was true enough even within just the original game, which was overall fairly coherent without a need to build on anything or be a building block. That all fell apart by 2005.
Kingdom Hearts III was the game that was going to make the story make sense again. It would tie up the loose ends and conclude this portion of the story. There may be additional adventures awaiting, but let’s finally end this period of madness. But it can’t just wave a magic wand, no matter how much Disney Pixie Dust they use. The games in the series from 2006 are canon, no matter what system they came out on. So Kingdom Hearts III offers its version of a recap as its opening. Five ~10 minute long cut scenes that explain what the heck has happened up until this point. You can be forgiven for being even more confused if you chose to watch them.
And Kingdom Hearts III doesn’t even try to just write it all off as a bad dream or anything of the sort. It dives right back into that insanity, quite literally in some cases. Have you ever seen Mickey confront the Darkness while wearing what looks like Sith robes? Yeah, we’ve got that here too.
With the weight of the story, the demands of the series and the long delay, there really was no way for Kingdom Hearts III to be the game that it needed to be. And yet, it has managed to pull it off and be exactly what the JRPG market needs right now.
Kingdom Hearts III is a visual treat. That much was always going to be a given, but it excels even where it is expected to be strong. Sora, Donald and Goofy travel to many different worlds and as they do, they subtly change to match their environment. When dealing with Disney’s cartoon worlds, they are more cartoonish. When dealing with live-action worlds, they take on a much more realistic appearance. And yet, this is done so subtly that it is essentially imperceptible.
The story is, of course, insane. But that’s the overarching meta-narrative, the reason why Sora and the rest are going on these journeys. Once in each world, that fades to the background, at least for a while, and the quest each world presents is at hand. These quests are not always a clear objective either, but there is always something pointing forward and a reason to keep moving. “Kingdom Hearts games make sense while you’re playing them, it’s only when you step back and try to explain the plot that you realize you can’t.” But that’s not such a bad thing. There is always a character-driven reason for you to be doing the thing immediately in front of you, so the story is never broken. The stuff going on may be goofy (and if it is, we can probably blame Goofy) but it never strains credulity to the point of breaking immersion. In short, the story is better than that of almost any recent Final Fantasy.
Gamers Just Want To Have Fun
But the real reason the game succeeds is that it remembers something that Final Fantasy forgot between 2001 and 2016. It remembers what games are for: to have fun.
The mechanics of the game are simple enough that my 8-year-old has picked it up on the easiest difficulty and is not too far behind me in story progress, and with very little assistance from me. Yet they are also deep enough to satisfy perfectionists trying to eke out every ounce of advantage on the highest difficulties. The existence of difficulties at all is also a welcome change in a genre that often assumes that “if the game is too hard, just grind levels for a while.” The characters are generally approachable, and the use of the licensed Disney characters is on-point and injects an instant warmth to the game. And of course, there is the je ne sais quois factor.
Games are about fun, but they are also about gameplay. What makes games unique as a medium isn’t story, or visual arts, or sound and tone, but player agency. The player does a thing, and the game responds. If the player does something else, the game responds differently. Sometimes agency is binary, pass/fail. Sometimes there’s more nuance. Sometimes that interaction affects something else in the game more profoundly, such as branching story paths. But no matter what is changed, the fact that the player was in control when the change happened makes the experience more personal.
For a long time, I believed that story was king. If you had a game with a good story, that was all you really needed. The “game” part would just take care of itself. I realized just how wrong that idea was several years ago when I played Game of Thrones, as developed by Cyanide. That game came out right after the frenzy over the first season of the Game of Thrones television show, and it boasted a plot written by George R. R. (get back in your hut and finish the last book) Martin. No one could be better suited to write a compelling story for this game. And in truth, it’s a pretty solid story–if you like Game of Thrones-style story-telling. Mostly it’s all-new characters, though you meet some major characters from the main series by chance. The rest is just “in the world” of Game of Thrones, essentially entirely in Westeros. And while I’m going to say some harsh things, the game is decent. But the best story in the world could not save the game in terms of gameplay. Like Kingdom Hearts, it’s an RPG featuring real-time combat where your party members go off and do their own thing. Where in Kingdom Hearts that works just fine, in the bitter world of Game of Thrones, your allies are idiots, and may actually be trying to betray you; is it for story purposes or just bad programming? We’ll never know. You don’t gain access to enough abilities to overcome this and actually give your team tactical controls until far too late in the game. By that point your protagonist is likely powerful enough to just win the fights on his own anyway. There are a host of minor problems that plague the game and reduce the enjoyment a player can get. In short, it stops being fun. And I can point to some of the reasons why.
For Kingdom Hearts III, I can’t point to many specific reasons why it is fun. I can point to the lack of the problems a game like Game of Thrones had. I can point to some specifics that work well for me, such as the winks and nods to Disney culture, or the absolute joy I take in the absurdity of the “Ride” combat mechanic. These things may not carry as much weight for someone not a fan of the genre to start with, or not a fan of Disney products. But the absence of any of the detractions of so many story-based games gives Kingdom Hearts III a chance to let the gameplay define the game, rather than the story. And that’s really for the best.
GOAT Rating
On my GOAT rating, Kingdom Hearts III gets 9 GOATS, “Great game, minor flaws only. Widely appealing. ”
