Kingdom Hearts III - PlayStation 4

The wait if finally over. After 17 years, the trilogy (along with numerous games in between) finally reach it's end with the conclusion of the Xehanort's story arc. Story: Takes place after 'Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance' and 'Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep – A Fragmentary Passage' For those who haven't followed along the 9+ games, you may get confused on some of the character interactions as they give subtle hints of past events, making you think they're plot holes in the story. But the core story and theme is easy to follow. Think of it as someone who never watched all the Marvel films leading up to an Avengers movie; you'll get the overall plot, may get confused on the details, but overall experience is still enjoyable. There is a 'A Memory Archive' for those who want to catch up on the story. It's a cliff notes version of major events leading up to Kingdom Hearts 3. It won't give you every single detail, just plot synopsis of the games. All you need to know is that Sora, the main character in the series is trying to search for the 7 Guardians of Light to stop Master Xehanort from putting the world into darkness. Problem is, Xehanort is also gathering the 13 wielders of darkness in order to do so. Prophesy has it that once the 7 guardians of light and 13 wielder of darkness gather, a mythical keyblade will form giving the wielder exponential power. Story focus on theme of friendship and light vs darkness. There's also time travel a la 'Butterfly Effect (film), body swaps, data version of characters which people are trying to decipher , and clones of characters from light and/or darkness from their hearts who are their own individual person...yeah you have to had played all the games to get it. There are also Disney Worlds mixed in, which are retelling of their respective films with Sora, Donald, and Goofy dropped into the world. If you played any of the past Kingdom Hearts games, it'll feel very similar. Disney Worlds you'll visit include: Kingdom of Corona (Tangled), San Fransokyo (Big Hero 6), Toy Box (Toy Story), Monstropolis (Monsters, Inc.), Arendelle (Frozen) Olympus (Hercules) The Caribbean (Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End) 100 Acre Wood (Winnie the Pooh) The returning worlds like Olympus and The 100 Acre Wood has more original story to them. Sora has a more emotional side to him than past games flushing out his character. For those who been following along having played all the games leading up to Kingdom Hearts 3, the normal ending won't be a real surprise, but the epilogue is well worth it with a character reveal leading up to the next sega. --Gameplay: Similar to combo based action-adventure hack and slash like DMC or Bayonetta series, but more lenient (exception hardest difficulty) and focus on fun factor and spectacle rather than exact button presses for devastating combos. Command menu for battle system from Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II make a return. Some quality of life changes: -The gauges for party members now appear next to Sora's in the bottom right corner instead of above. - Reaction Commands replaced by Situation Commands like in KH 0.2. -Can now switch between three Keyblades on the fly during battle by pressing the Right Directional Button. Only can use one keyblade at a time (no duel wielding) -Keyblades can now level up to become stronger -Allies can invite Sora into special techniques -Can now cancel summons (Links) animations on the fly (but it does less potential damage overall) Battles are very fluid with a lot of forward momentum when battling. Way better than the first game in the series (Kingdom Hearts I), which is now almost unplayable with it's slow, floaty combat, traversal and horrible camera. Drastic change from when it started 17 years ago. You now get more options in battle with new abilities and mini-games unlocking as you progress, so it's no longer a pure hack-n-slash. You now have a party up to 5, giving a lot of team up combo potential There are now verticality traverse levels, no able to scale up/run up walls even in battles. Reminiscent of the battle cutscene in Kingdom Hearts 2 There are keyblade form changes (duel bow gun, claws, use chariot to attack enemies, AOE attacks for example) with different finishers depending on the keyblade you wield. To get a form change you have to rack up combos presented with a meter that needs to be filled. Summons return along with Attraction Flow. Summons now called Links. These include Ariel's "Lagoon Showtime", Ralph's "8 Bit Blast", Simba's "Kingsflare", Meow Wow's "Wonder Balloon", and Stitch's "Plasma Encounter". Links uses up a full MP meter, so you have to decided on regular magic attacks or save up for a Link or summon. Attraction Flow is basically summons based on theme park attractions. These appear randomly when there's a green circle indicator on enemies. Attractions including "Big Magic Mountain", "Pirate Ship", "Blaster Blaze", "Splash Run", "Magic Carousel", and "Mad Tea Cups". They are interactive (go into first person shooter, QTE for higher combo/massive damage) to switch up the gameplay. To can also skip the QTE and do standard damage. For magic, now can cast fourth tier spells There are high score type mini-games available after complete the story of a given world Gummy ship. No longer on rails. Have free range of motion with open exploration. Most battles and exploration are optional, but will miss out of items, exp, and collectables if you plan to skip. You can use your Gummiphone which can take selfies and photos from first person.There's a scavenger hunt mini game where you can take pictures of hidden lucky emblems (Micky Mouse Emblems) found throughout the worlds. Taking pictures of these will unlock stat boosts. There are also Game & Watch* type mini-games on the Gummiphone. *Simple, two-dimensional video games based on the handheld LCD games popular in the 1980's --Graphics/Audio: Amazing graphics. Slightly better than 'Kingdom Hearts 0.2 A Fragmentary Passage' with more empathises on lighting and particle effects. A huge leap from past games seeing Kingdom Hearts 2 was on the PS2 and most games after the fact were on handhelds, excluding the HD remix (which were not built from ground up). Characters emote more and feel more lively than past games. Each of the Disney Worlds have there own art-style, but the game tries to balance everything out for the game engine/overall art design across of the game. Some are not as good as the film themselves, like Rapunzel's hair in the film have individual strands, while in game her hair are more clump together. Understandable seeing the game in an interactive medium, and the budget for the Tangled film was ridiculously high. Nevertheless the game is breath taking to look at especially the environments. Audio and sound are excellent. Voice actors are on point and have really good delivery. There is some subtle banter and jokes between party members that are also enjoyable. Soundtrack is stellar with new tracks and homage to past games. Overall, had a blast playing this game. A love letter for Kingdom Hearts fans, and a enjoyable ride from newcomers (just note that you may get confused if you look to into it too much).

Because while this game deserves better then a 4 star doesn't deserve quit a 5 star either, for me it is about a 4.75. Pros World design is fantastic, unlike previous titles where you could not miss any chests doing the level because the rooms where so small, it is an actual treasure hunt this time if you want to find everything because the level design is much larger and has a lot of versatility and finding all the mickey logos is no easy task either. Fighting- very customization to fit your play style and each key blade has it's own uses now and can be upgraded via gummy parts so that you don't have to toss that starting weapon aside that has xxx skill just because another one has much better stats, they each have their own set of skills tied to their transformations and even a couple that are always active, a nice change from just forgetting about your last key blade whenever you get a new one. Gear- Much like the keyblades this time gear also has skills tied to them, so now rather then the choice being just 1 def 20% fire resist to say 2 def 20% dark resist, it is 1 def 20% fire resist with the skill to gain MP any time your hit with fire and 2 def 20% dark resist and turn all 1 Muney drops into 5 and all 5 muney drops into 10, so do you want to gain MP when you get hit by fire or do you want to get money a lot faster? The stories both per world and over aching- The world stories are exactly what you would expect from KHs, well modified versions of their movie counter part, but this time the over arching story is much more engaging and you get quit a fair bit between each world completion, unlike is say KH1 where you get a touch of overall story at the beginning then nothing again till the last level. The Toy Story intro was so well done that I was like "Why is there an advertisement for a game in the game?" only to realize that that was very much a part of the original Toy Story story. I didn't expect that right after the first world I would be handed control of Riku and Mickey for several minutes to fight a boss, it ties the story together quit well. The gummy ship- Is fun? No seriously the thing that most people only ever do just the one time then never do it again because it is the weakest part of the previous games, it's actually much better implemented this time. You still are not going to boot up the game to just do it for hours unless you are grinding for 100% completion on sythisis items, but at the same time it isn't something you wish wasn't included either. Only major gripe with it is while going left/right/forward/backward is easy enough going up and down feels like you have to break the game to get it to do what you want it to do. Difficulty - Unlike previous titles, while still not super hard isn't something that death is of no risk until the final boss, I wouldn't call it hard but I would say it isn't as stupid easy as previous titles to the point where it is good to keep the item that rezs you back to full health on you at all times just incase. Could be harder but at least it isn't hand the controller to a 3 year old and still not die levels of easy that some titles where. Now for the cons Ever since the most recent patch walking straight forward my character stutter steps, I have only seen one other person report this and changing controller seemed to fix it for them, but it is a potential bug for some people and rather frustrating. Yeah that about covers all the cons I have run into so far. It's by no means perfect, level design can be a bit of a maze every once in a while, but all in all it is a great addition to the series. If I run into any other complaints I'll update this since I am only about 3/4ths the way through the main story since I have been focusing on a fair amount of the side quests as well.

First of all, I’ve been waiting for this game for over 10 years. I’ve played all the others, I’ve read theories, I even joined the mobile game and a hard core player and waited patiently. And finally it’s here!!! Now that I have finally finished the game, it’s time for the game review. Beware of potiental spoilers. The graphics were phanominal, the unreal engine is just unreal. Even playing it on a standard PS4 was amazing, and I get to finally test it out on the Pro soon with the 4K capabilities. In the pirates world, everything looked so real I thought I was watching a movie, and that wasn’t the only time. The movements were so smooth and it was just beautiful. Gameplay was amazing. Easy to figure out, and once you have it set up to how you like with your shortcuts and what not, fighting is fluid and fun. The reaction commands, the form changes, and being able to switch between keyblades are all what I would hope for in a Kingdom Hearts game. Story, for the most part was good! The pacing seemed a bit slow during the worlds. It wasn’t until the end, the final world, that everything started to pick up and it came one after another after another. But man, those last like 5 or 6 hours were absolutely GREAT. I lost it a few times. As a huge KHUX(the mobile game) player, they had an event for 300 players to get their characters name into KH3, and I knew some of those people who’s name made it in to the the fight with the heartless tornado. Unless you played the mobile game and knew all the history, some of this wouldn’t of affected you as much emotionally like it did me. The final fights were everything I could’ve hoped for. And the ending was such a bittersweet ending. But I’m left to wonder why I don’t feel as satisfied as I would’ve hoped after waiting so long. The epilogue was a huge shock and twist to the KH story, and then the secret movie left me so confused, but also excited for Kingdom Hearts 4. Would I recommend this game to a friend? I have been for years and still would! I love this series so much, and I will keep following it for as long as Nomura makes them. I only hope that the next game isn’t making me wait another 10+ years. While I wait, I’ll work on collecting all the trophies. 10/10, would play again.

I'm going to try to leave out plot spoilers in this review. Instead, I'll talk about gameplay. The first thing you'll notice is that the story to gameplay ratio is extremely high. I just finished my first playthrough on standard mode, no strategy guides, and it took me 36 hours, and I'd guess at least half of that was cutscenes. Some of it was me pausing a cutscene and walking away to vent my frustration at having to watch yet another cutscene. Also, most of the story for the first 2/3s of the game is cribbed from Disney movies. Not like previous installments where it was just the best part of a movie, but practically the whole thing. Annoying if you've already seen the movies, and confusing if you haven't. The gameplay is very inconsistent. It starts out so easy I was almost crying at how pointless the fights were. After a couple of worlds you'll actually need to keep an eye on your health, so it does get better. The battles are very chaotic, with loads of enemies and moves that let you streak across the battlefield, whether you meant to or not. The final battle was actually really hard, with an enemy move that disables your healing until you figure out the trick. This game has an absolutely massive amount of sidequests and minigames. Those were what made me start to like the game; I had just about decided to chuck the disk across the room when I got to the block-assembly minigame in the Toy Story world. That was so hard, I realized it was the challenge I'd been missing. And fulfilling Rapunzel's requests was cute. It was like the game itself was basically saying, "Look at this game! It's gorgeous!" And it is. There's a lot I want to say about the story and characters, but I promised I wouldn't. I'll just say, I approved of most of what happened, except for the massive amounts of cutscene incompetence displayed by every character, at one point or another. It's hard to watch them go from slaughtering towering monstrosities to panicking at the mere sight of an enemy. At least they're tough when the battle finally begins. One last thing, it seems like there are no Final Fantasy characters in this game, except for the moogles. I'm not sure if I just overlooked them. My overall rating is that Birth By Sleep is the best Kingdom Hearts game, KH1 and KH2 are great for offering unique stories and challenging gameplay, and KH3 falls short of all of them. It's still a really good game, but the Disney worlds just took too much time away from the real story.

Was this game perfect? No, but it hit the right notes. Difficulty wise? Laughable even on proud mode. Critical mode humbled the hell out of me. Soundtrack? Best in the series. Purely because they included past scores and remixed them somehow and even combined themes/scores. Listen to that Xemnas/Ansem/YX fight and tell me that score isn't amazing. Gameplay? A great mashup of styles like flowmotion, magic casting on the run, keyblade transformation and much more. However, that attraction flow has to go. Glad it can be removed in critical mode. Also, love that in critical mode you can also fill up the gauge less so stuff like grand magic and keyblade transformations occur less. Story? Well it had to juggle characters from 7-8 different games that span 17 years, so with that in mind. It was great in handling payoffs and connecting storylines. However, it was very top heavy. You get pieces of story after every finished world, then get about 6 hours of story in the end all jammed at once. Now believe me, in the moment, I was taking it all in. Looking back, that was quite the pacing issue. My enjoyment for this game is why it's 5/5 stars. I am not oblivious to the flaws and the ways it can redeem itself with the DLCs and other stuff. Some flaws can't be fixed as well. However, to someone like me who is consumed with love for the series, I can't rate it any less. I've loved this series since it first had that commercial on the Disney Channel of the boy seaking into Disney Labs and showed us a trailer of this new game called Kingdom Hearts. I rented it from Blockbuster the time it came out and played it till I could get it as a gift. Since then, it's helped me bond with my autistic brother, get me through hard times in life, and much more. I see all the negative reviews and I wonder what people expected with this game. It was the end to a saga which was the entire series. It had to please hardcore fans, new fans, fans f different consoles, fans from now different generations, Disney fans, etc. There was no way this game could pay off everything it had to do. It had such a long wait and was delayed and yet still had feelings of it being rushed. I think we can give it some slack for what it tried to accomplish. The only thing I can compare it to is Endgame. Everything to that moment had to be juggled and paid off. Did it succeed? Many will say yes, but others not as much. You can;t please everyone. However, from this longtime and lifetime fan, I smiled and cried from hour one till now.

I'm a diehard Kingdom Hearts fan. I've been waiting for this game for a long time and I'm so happy that it's finally here. If you are a KH fan, this is a must buy. If you're new or interested in KH, this is just as good of an entry point as ever. Understanding the story aside, this is still a fun game with a lot to offer. I won't speak too much to the story since I don't want to spoil it, but there are many stand-out moments. Long running story arcs reach a conclusion and fans will be treated to many memorable moments. For those wanting to catch up on the story thus far, it does include several video summaries that artfully recount the major plot points. However, if you're new to the series, I'd highly recommend picking up one of the KH compilation games out right now and getting caught up before diving into this game. The story begins readily tossing around ideas and concepts that are laid out in the previous games, so series newbies might find themselves a bit lost on the meaning of certain events. Either way, the summaries will ground you enough to get the gist of things and hopefully will inspire one to play the other games. Square Enix has always been great about presentation and this game is no exception. Especially now that we have a KH game made on a next-gen system. Worlds feel more alive now with npcs wandering through various parts, offering the occasional ambient dialogue. The Disney worlds in particular are faithful adaptions of their movie counterparts. The worlds are almost much larger, full of nooks and crannies to explore. Finally you can sail alongside Captain Jack Sparrow on the high seas or dash across the rooftops of San Fransokyo. Battle effects are as flashy and gorgeous to watch as ever. Gameplay remains one of the KH series' strengths. Here the Action RPG combat that has been iterated throughout the series has been distilled into its most refined form to date. You can combo magic, Keyblade strikes, Link Summons, Shotlocks and powerful Reaction command finishers in a deadly dance of light and flashy effects. Sora now has access to the Form Change system which is similar to the command style from Birth by Sleep. This lets him transform his equipped keyblade into unique form with its own fighting style, abilities and combos. And the game gives you all the freedom to experiment with the ability to equip up to 3 Keyblades that you can freely swap between combat. This means you can stock Form Changes by swapping midfight to make the most of every option you have! There's some good depth there so feel free to experiment!!

This game does not disappoint, fun addition to the kingdom hearts universe. Spent hours playing this. Satisfying. Challenging but not impossible. Cool worlds in it. ✨🪐🎮🌌🗝️♥️

Kingdom Hearts III for PlayStation 4 is an epic and unforgettable gaming experience that combines the magic of Disney with the captivating world of Final Fantasy. This long-awaited installment of the Kingdom Hearts series has exceeded all expectations, delivering a masterpiece that will leave players mesmerized from start to finish. The graphics and visuals are nothing short of stunning, immersing players in a vibrant and enchanting world filled with beloved Disney characters and iconic locations. The attention to detail and artistry bring the characters to life, making the gaming experience feel like stepping into a Disney animated film. The gameplay is smooth, responsive, and incredibly fun, with a perfect balance of action-packed combat and engaging exploration. The combat system is dynamic and allows players to unleash powerful abilities and magical attacks, adding to the excitement of battles. The storyline is rich and emotionally compelling, blending themes of friendship, courage, and adventure. It seamlessly weaves together the different Disney worlds and characters with the overarching narrative of Sora, the main protagonist, creating a captivating and heartwarming journey. Furthermore, the game's soundtrack is a masterpiece in itself, featuring a mix of original compositions and iconic Disney tunes, enhancing the overall gaming experience and adding to the emotional depth of the story.

My son loves this , thank you

100% original, great game

Quiero ser honesto, no soy fan ni experto de Kingdom Hearts, los unicos que habia jugado antes de esta tercera partes son los de la DS que es el 358/2 y el Re-coded, francamente me gustaron, vi en oferta el título y lo compré, y vaya, visualmente, jugablemente y argumentalmente me ha gustado para mi es muy bueno, para los super fans no tanto pero es cuestión de gustos... La entrega fue perfecta así que no hay queja....

Para quem curti a franquia ou um bom RPG é um excelente game, não exige muito conhecimento mas é muito divertido.

Todo bien según lo previsto