Well I FINALLY beat Kingdom Hearts 3.  It’s getting harder and harder to get into these long games anymore!  Anyway, I was impressed with the Disney worlds you tromp around in the game, so much so that I decided to write a blog about them.  I will give a spoiler warning now, but don’t worry, I won’t spoil the plot for you as I think the storyline in Kingdom Hearts games are garbage and I don’t really play the games for the story anyway.  I just like beating up baddies in Disney worlds.  So if you haven’t played Kingdom Hearts 3 yet and want the worlds you explore to be a surprise, then don’t read this blog.  Otherwise, have fun reading my opinions and observations of the Kingdom Hearts 3 worlds!

Hercules

One of the problems with Kingdom Hearts 2 is that the tutorial world was a boring town that had nothing to do with Disney and it was very slow and took 3 hours to beat and you didn’t even play as the main character!  Well they fixed that in this game.  Right off the bat, you start off in a Hercules themed world: Olympus.  Now, past Kingdom Hearts games have had Hercules worlds, but they just call them a coliseum and it’s not really a true world at all, just an empty room where you battle a bunch of stuff.  Well, actually I think one game let you explore the underworld.  Well in this game, the tutorial world is a full world where you explore the city of Thebes, climb Mt. Olympus, and enter the city of the gods, all the while learning the ropes along the way.  You’ll even have an epic boss fight against four titans, so that was pretty neat.  Good way to start off the game.

Twilight Town

Usually in Kingdom Hearts games, there is a town that kind of acts as a ‘home base’ where you visit occasionally to fight baddies, talk to people, play mini-games, and move the story along. Well this is that town.  I think it’s the same tutorial town from KH2, but they’ve shortened it and streamlined it a bit so you don’t get lost, which is good.  You know what’s strange is that usually in these towns, you’ll talk with a few Final Fantasy characters.  But aside from moogles running the shops, and a giant cactuar you build out of green blocks in the Toy Story world, there are no other FF references.  Kinda strange.  Anyway, there are a few things in this town that are worth noting.

Bistro

In this town there is a restaurant where you can play a cooking mini-game with Remy the rat from Ratatouille.  He’ll even pull on Sora’s hair like in the movie, so that was cute.  Unfortunately the mini-game isn’t that good, but I still liked that they put him in here.  Another neat thing about the restaurant is that it’s owned by Scrooge McDuck, who is one of my all time favorite Disney characters!  Also in this town, you learn about hidden Mickeys you can take pictures of to unlock goodies, kind of like the hidden Mickeys in Disney theme parks!

Classic Kingdom Games

In Kingdom Hearts 2, one of my favorite worlds was the Classic Kingdom, which was based on the old black and white Mickey Mouse cartoons.  The whole world was even in black and white.  I’ve always been interested in those old cartoons, and I even knew who Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was since I was a kid, long before Epic Mickey and Disney buying back that character from Universal.  So I really liked how they did the Classic Kingdom in this game.  So there is no world, but near the Bistro, Scrooge McDuck made an outdoor theater to show classic cartoons, to draw customers to his restaurant so he can make more money!  So awesome!  So to promote this venture, Scrooge made little mini Game & Watch style games you can play that look like the black and white cartoons!  You’ll find them in treasure chests around the worlds, and there’s like nearly two dozen of them!  I haven’t found them all, and probably never will, but they are all very fun and I wouldn’t mind if Square made a separate game that let you download and play all of those Classic Kingdom games.

Winnie the Pooh

One of my favorite worlds in the Kingdom Hearts games have always been the Winnie the Pooh ones.  Granted, it’s just an area where you play a bunch of mini-games, but I still like them and Sora strangely fits rather well in the Pooh worlds, like he’s Christopher Robin’s older Japanese cousin or something.  You’ll hop inside a book in Twilight Town halfway through the game to enter this world.  In this one, you just explore Rabbit’s garden, so it’s a bit smaller unfortunately.  But you get to play some neat Puzzle Bobble style games where you match fruit, vegetables, and flowers, so that was kind of neat.

Toy Story

One of the worlds I’ve always wanted in a KH game is Toy Story, so I’m glad they put that in this one.  Buzz and Woody team up with you to help you fight, but in this game, you don’t have to switch out Donald and Goofy for them.  All four characters can be on the screen together, which is neat.  I guess it’s just thanks to the processing power of the PS4.  In some of the worlds, Sora, Donald, and Goofy change their appearance to fit the world better, so in this world, they look like plastic toy action figures!  Also, in many KH worlds, they follow the story of the movie they’re based off of, but in the Toy Story world (and others in this game), it’s like a continuation or a new story.  They’ll explore Andy’s room, the outside suburb area, and then a giant toy store!  Seriously, this toy store is three stories tall with little mini-stores like a shopping mall with different toys inside.  There’s a baby toy store, video game store, playground, etc.  I don’t know how a store like this could stay in business, especially since Toys R Us is now closed down!  At any rate, while I would’ve rather been able to explore a place like Pizza Planet instead, the Toy Story world is pretty neat.

Tangled

I’m not really a big fan of Tangled, as I felt it was like a Barbie movie, but I guess it was still fairly popular.  One neat thing about this world, and many others in this game, is that the graphics are so good that I probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the game and the actual movie!  You follow the plot of the film, and explore places like Rapunzel’s tower, a forest, and the kingdom village!  So a nice variety of areas.

Monsters Inc.

Like the Toy Story world, this one is a continuation of the movie.  The Scare Floor is now used to make children laugh, and Boo has found her way there to play with Sully.  But the Heartless are invading, so Sora, Donald, and Goofy pose as monsters and say they’re exterminators and help Mike and Sully get rid of them while keeping Boo safe and guiding her to her door.  Not my first choice of Pixar worlds but it’s still very endearing.  The only problem with this world is that most of it is just factory rooms and office hallways, so a little on the boring side.  Sure they have familiar locations like the Scare Floor and you do ride on doors like in the movie.  But even with the slightly boring locations, I still enjoyed playing around in this world.

Frozen

While the characters are visually stunning, this world is a little boring as you just climb the same snowy mountain 3 times in a row.  They even complain about that in the game, which I think is funny.  What killed me is they devoted a whole cutscene where the Frozen ice lady sings Let it Go. The…entire…song. I guess they felt they had to do that, but come on.  What also surprised me is who they picked to fight along side you.  The Frozen lady or her sister?  Nope.  That guy with the reindeer?  Nope.  Not even Olaf the snowman!  Instead, you fight alongside the giant snow monster that the Frozen ice lady makes!  So weird!

Pirates of the Caribbean

I don’t HATE these movies, but I’m not a big fan of them either.  I didn’t even see the last one in theaters.  I did rent it, but fell asleep during it, and when I woke up, the movie was still on and I felt I didn’t miss a dang thing.  They just all seem the same and run together for me.  They’ve already done a Pirates world in a past KH game, so I think this one is based on the second (?) movie.  They flip a ship over and there’s an octopus beard guy and his heart is in a box.  So that one.  I don’t know if it’s because I mostly play cartoony games, but I was amazed by the realism in this world.  It looks almost just like the live action movie!  They even give Donald and Goofy extra textures in places, like Donald has feather textures on his butt!  They still look cartoony, though, but in more of a Roger Rabbit kind of way.  There are a wide variety of things to do in this level, too.  There are large underwater sections, you can explore a large town and fort, and even board your ship and head out to sea and partake in pirate ship battles.  Kind of reminds me of the Pirates area in the first Disney Infinity.  You can level up your ship by collecting white crabs, and much more.  Surprisingly, even with all this stuff you can do, the world felt rather short.  It just felt like it was over quicker than the other worlds.

Big Hero 6

This was a fun world.  Also a continuation from the movie.  Probably the closest thing we’ll get to a Marvel world in a Kingdom Hearts game, since Big Hero 6 was originally a Marvel property.  You mostly start in Hiro’s garage and take on missions in a day and night giant city area that’s fun to explore.  It’s fun for what it is.

Last Worlds

And those are all the main worlds.  After those you go to a few more little worlds to finish up the story, like the “Final World” which isn’t really final as there is also a Keyblade Graveyard.  But nothing really worth mentioning or Disney related.  They pad out the game by making you fight bosses in the other worlds, all of Organization XIII, and such.

Really I only had two main problems with the game.  Well, besides the garbage, hard to follow storyline.  One, there are too many cutscenes.  The game took me 25 hours to beat, and I swear more than 5 hours of that were spent in cutscenes.  That’s almost a quarter of the game, and that’s a lot!  Also the game has more style than substance.  You can do all these cool moves, but most of it just boils down to mashing the buttons a lot.  But even so, I still enjoyed the game a lot and it’ll be a contender in my Game of the Year category.

The Future of Kingdom Hearts

At first the ending for KH3 wrapped up everything pretty nicely but then it brought up all these loose ends that never got resolved, so I guess we’ll be getting more.  I don’t know if it’ll be another game or just DLC, but I think we’ll be getting DLC first.  I don’t think I’ll mess with the DLC unless they bring in something I’d really want.  Speaking of which, I thought I’d end this blog with lists of my favorite Disney and KH characters, KH games and worlds, as well as what worlds I’d like to see in a future KH game, If they ever make any more.

My favorite KH specific character is Aqua because she has blue hair and is fun to play as.  Gameplay wise, my favorite KH game is Birth By Sleep.  But as far as just worlds go, KH2 had a Classic world and a TRON world, so that was great.  Although KH3’s worlds are no slouch either.  My top five favorite Disney characters are Chip N Dale, Scrooge McDuck, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Sorcerer Mickey, and Wreck-It Ralph.  I can write a blog about WHY those are my favorites in a future blog if anyone would like to read that.

As far as future KH worlds go, I’m glad we got some Pixar worlds in this one, but my favorite Pixar movies are Finding Nemo, Up, and Inside Out, and I would love to see them in the game.  Although underwater worlds don’t do too well in KH games, so Nemo may be out.  But I think the themes in Inside Out would work well in a KH game.  Even though Wreck-It Ralph is a summon character in KH3, I’d like to see a whole world of that, too.  I don’t know how well it would fit, but since Disney owns Star Wars now, a world of that would be neat, especially if they based it off the older movies.  You know, the really good ones.  Another license Disney now owns that I like are the Muppets.  Would love to see them in a KH game as well!

I’m a big fan of the Disney Afternoon cartoons.  I don’t know if a DuckTales or Rescue Rangers world would work, but I think TaleSpin and especially Darkwing Duck would fit.  And speaking of Disney television animation, how about a Gravity Falls world?  I just want to see more of that, it was such a great cartoon.  And finally, on the Square side, we know they own Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, but did you know they also own a large share of Taito?  Wouldn’t a Taito world be great?  I’d love to see a Bubble Bobble world.  Or…well, I guess Taito doesn’t have very many established worlds, but I’d still like to see that anyway!

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about Kingdom Hearts 3!  In the comments section, let me know what you think of my blog and tell me your favorite KH games, characters and worlds!  Later!  –Cary

Tags: Game Reviews, Movies with Children, Television