The series won’t return to its onus on Disney and Final Fantasy as Xigbar seems poised to be one of the primary characters moving forwards. Aside from the original trio, it’s hard to care about most of these original beings as it’s hard to grasp who they are and what their purpose is. Now, with Kingdom Hearts 3, it has become about Sora, Riku, Kairi, Aqua, Terra, Ventus, Organization XIII, Master Xehanort, Ansem, Xion, Roxas, Axel, Xigbar and the dudes who wear animal masks. Ultimately, Kingdom Hearts was at its best back in 2002 when it was a simple cocktail experimentation between Disney and Final Fantasy with only Sora, Riku, Kairi and Ansem as its original characters. The series just keeps recycling the same ways to keep itself alive and they feel more contrived each time. If it’s not Aqua who needs to be saved, it’s Terra. How many times have we had this ending? If it’s not Sora who’s lost, it’s Kairi. Master Xehanort himself is a detestable baddie because of his appearance and voice (similar to Ansem), but Organization XIII are boring because again it’s impossible to tell what’s what.įinally, Kingdom Hearts 3 also ends with Sora becoming lost with Kairi and pals in search of him. Unfortunately, the original characters aren’t that interesting or likeable as you don’t know who they are, what they are, whether they’re real or not, and they’re all just clones of each other but with different traits such as light-brown hair rather than dark. This is because the series now mostly wants to focus on its original characters with Donald, Goofy and Mickey the only surviving Disney characters with any importance. They’re not needed for the story which is a significant departure from the first instalment and even the second. Maleficent also disappeared from the opening only to have a 30-second cameo at the end, and ReMIND only gives the Final Fantasy characters a couple minutes of screentime in the DLC to set-up what is essentially just an arena.ĭisney and Final Fantasy just feel tacked-on to make Kingdom Hearts 3 a Kingdom Hearts game. Both Disney and Final Fantasy now feel tacked-on as the worlds in Kingdom Hearts 3 didn’t affect the plot in any capacity as they were simply filler. Not to mention Disney and Final Fantasy were both important ingredients in the cocktail. The dynamics of Sora, Riku and Kairi made sense, the villain’s goal of opening Kingdom Hearts via capturing Disney Princesses was easy to grasp, and all of the exposition was easy to digest. It was ultimately a simple, but enjoyable and charming, endeavour from beginning-to-end. Maleficent was positioned as the main antagonist before an original baddie named Ansem pulled the rug from underneath her feet.
The series’ first instalment was a simple novelty that had an anime kid interact with Final Fantasy characters while exploring the worlds of and reliving the events of Disney movies.
The conclusion with this new group highly suggests they will be prominent in the inevitable next game, which also suggests that Square Enix will again be doubling down on original characters.Īnd this is where Kingdom Hearts has lost almost all of the charm it had back in 2002. With all of this having already been a significant problem, Kingdom Hearts 3 ReMIND then makes matters worse by adding a Final Fantasy Versus XIII reference in Yozora, as well by ending with another variant of Organization XIII with cloaked dudes who wear animal masks.
Unless you extensively brush up on your Kingdom Hearts academia every ten-minutes, it’s impossible to tell who’s connected to who, who is an evil variant of who, and just what the hell Kingdom Hearts actually is. This was then made all the more complicated with the introduction of time-travel, and now the series has become nonsensical exposition that makes less sense as more lore continues to be explained.