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If your really interested and want to try for yourself KHUX skips you to any mission with a cutscene now (it doesn't mean that the cutscene has anything important in it though) so you would probably be playing a couple dozen missions to get to anything interesting. Although I would say to just get Kingdom Hearts: The story so far which is a huge collection of everything in the series so far that's important to KH3. Also KH3 isn't going to end the series it will just end the main antagonist of the series up to this point.

In that one sided beating I was given I never actually mentioned that XV, even in its current state, is the Final Fantasy that I enjoyed the most.

@Lief While it's also a retcon the series treats Timeless River as it's own separate world that just so happens to connect to the events of the past for a particular world. Timeless River and the Country of Musketeers are both past versions of Disney Castle/Town and Symphony of Sorcery is the past of the world Yen Sid's tower was on before he moved to the outskirts of Twilight Town. So when they went to Timeless River in KH2 they didn't really time travel they just went to another world that was only accessible through Disney Castle. But like I said; it's just a retcon.

@Slumber and @Armagon So I should probably make it clear that I've never followed games development closely. When games are announced I basically just say "cool" and ignore much else about the game until it's out. I don't even really follow the development of games in my favorite series. This whole thing is more or less because of me diving into the Youtube comment section of videos on Tabata leaving Square and seeing tons of people pinning the blame for a lot of ridiculous things on Nomura. So this has been me partly venting and partly wanting to talk about it with someone who's not in the cesspool of the Youtube comments. This definitely looks like I'm punking out because I lost an argument or something, but to be honest it's not really something I felt super strongly about and really... I just wanted to talk with someone about it. I still like the games that Nomura has worked on and found the stories enjoyable in spite of no real plan. I actually kind of like stories that work with throwaway plot points from previous installments and turn it into something (It's the main reason why I started to like comics) so I never had a problem with their being no plan for the future installments and just enjoyed the ride. Sorry if I've come across as obnoxious to you guys.

Oh I'm totally not excusing it. it's stupid, but it's not on the directors that these games get announced way too early. It ends up putting a lot of pressure on them and their teams and ultimately hurts their reputations more than they deserve because their bosses made bad decisions. I guess we'll agree to disagree, because Fates is way worse as far as I'm concerned. KH is at least centered around likable leads. The ass kissing on display for Corrin from every character we're supposed to like just makes me think about how the writers wanted to make the players feel good about themselves for just playing the games, by using the most pandering way imaginable.

@Armagon announcing games before they’ve even really started development is a typical Square-Enix move at this point, I doubt Nomura has much say in it especially since he’s recently mentioned in interviews that he thought it was announced way too soon as well. I’m not super knowledgeable about game development, but wouldn’t be difficult for him to work with only a tenth of his team and an unusable engine? Also, as a fan of KH I admit the series isn’t well written but the characters are enjoyable and the games are fun and for me that’s the most important thing. Some KH’s spinoffs weren’t even Nomura’s decisions. As far as I know he wanted the series to just be 1,2, birth by sleep, and 3. Also the fact that 3 won’t be the end of the series isn’t really a negative to me since 3 will still be the end of the overarching antagonist of the series up to this point of the series. @Lief I thought ReCom was fun, but it totally overstays it’s welcome. If the worlds were shorter it would be a better game for it. Also birth by sleep was definitely built with the idea commands being your primary method of attack so your better of just getting commands and abilities that let them recharge faster. I usually just block all of Braig’s attacks and counter the few times he’s in range.

So you’re just ignoring the fact that his team was given an incomplete engine to work with and kept having their people pulled to work on other projects. Don’t get me wrong, Nomura was reported to have reworked the story every 3 months, but the fact that Square-Enix felt like it was fine to completely ignore versus xiii all that was a huge reason for the game never making progress. I didn’t follow XV’s development since I didn’t care about but it seems ridiculous to put the blame entirely on Nomura or call him crazy (not you but someone did).

Geez, I got FFXV for like $20 and enjoyed the game so I didn't care much about anything else even though I knew the problems with it, but this seems really damaging to the franchise. With how KH3 was looking and Octopath it seemed like Squeenix was regaining some of their credibility, but one of their big directors leaving and the second season of DLC cancelled might just kill FF. Though it would be funny as hell if they kept throwing Nomura into another project while he's supposed to work on the 7 remake

I’ve played through all the games at this point. Started the series in 2013 with KH1 and instantly fell in love and sank a ton of my cash in getting my hands on the whole series. Most of my play thoughs of KH1 were using the shield and my current playthrough with the staff is pretty rough for me since I’m really missing the ability to block, but I guess I just need to make more use of magic and summons. 358/2 days is really rough, but at least the emotional moments of the story were decent. I found recoded was just a much more enjoyable game in spite of having the most throw away story in the series. If you do care about the story at all you’ll probably be just fine skipping 2.8’s stuff especially if money is an issue.

Cool, I've been replaying the series in anticipation for KH3 and KH2 on critical is insanely fun. The extra abilities given to just offsets the rough start for me. The Roxas fight is probably one of my favorites in the series to since it's pretty much all about learning how block him and take advantage of his openings. He's pretty much the boss that teaches you what the supebosses will be like (not that I've beaten them all) so good luck if you decide to try. Is this your first time going through the series? Or is it a replay like it is for me?

In order for armors to be relevant they would need either positional skills, different/new map objectives, and/or map and enemy design that really makes the class a lot more appealing. Imagine if a map sent reinforcements at you that could nearly one shot everything except the normally overkill defenses of an armor knight. You'd feel a lot more incentivized to field them. Also I would like a really basic approach to classes in Three Houses and not go too crazy. Mainly since I'd like to see the classes be a bit better balanced and that seems impossible when you just make a class for every movement and weapon type combination possible.

Loved the trailer and this box art just gets me even more excited for the game.

Interesting I heard the Langrissers comparison with Three Houses and was planing on checking out the series. If these make it overseas then I'll have to give them a try.

I think people were expecting a big interconnected story since that's just the norm for these kinds of games and the fact that Octopath does something different from that is treated as though it's a flaw. They see the smaller, more personal tales as lesser and critique them without actually looking at the individual stories for what they have to offer on their own. I still haven't finished the game (for the past few weeks I've just gone to work, come back home and gone to sleep), but the stories I have seen I really enjoyed when I stopped and thought about the experiences of the characters along the way. It's just kind of sad that people don't seem to appreciate the game for it own merits (aside from the gameplay) and criticize it for not being something it was never trying to be.

When it comes to Alm I find him to be a likable person, but as a character he's pretty boring. He's the character I'm following and am supposed to be most engaged in on his route, but nothing of interest really happens to Alm until the end. He gets made the leader of the deliverance, wins battle, is practically told he's Rigelian royalty multiple times and just kind of ignores it (but that's not really my point), and then he finds out he killed his father and cousin and then has an interesting moment realizing that he's mat the family he's always longed to have and they're dead now. Other than the ending there isn't anything engaging about Alm as a main character; no trials, doubts, or changes (meaningful ones for him at least). Throughout Alm's route I was more engaged with Clive as I watch his development from a man rooted in his beliefs only to try something new when his old methods don't work and how this lead to a series of events that give him a whole new world view. Clive was a much more engaging character since it felt like a new meaningful piece of his story got added. When I judge characters I don't like comparing them with others as I feel they should stand on their own merits. Comparing Alm and Celica doesn't matter to me and I found Celica to have her own issues with her actions feeling poorly established and required some leaps in logic from the player to understand why she would do any of the things she did. I intend on playing the game again to see if their really is something I just missed on her story though, but for now I don't get her wide appeal just as much as I don't get Alm's.