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I’m at the final boss and let me say one thing: Donald and Goofy are very reliable in battle. Donald actually heals you when you’re at low health! Seriously the party members in this game are much better.

Donald is actually being the MVP in the final battle, healing me when I need so I don’t waste magic healing myself.

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22 hours ago, Azure the Scale Tipper said:

I know nothing of what happens in Final Chapter prologue other than D3HD, so I need to do a lot in order to start KH3.

actually, there's an extra option in the title screen that allows you to watch a resume of almost all previous chapters. the rest that's not included can be watched on YouTube.

after some more hours spent in KH3, i gotta say the gameplay has changed a lot. they kept mechanics from KH2, Birth By Sleep and also Dream Drop Distance, while adding some new features.

right now it's all about chaining attacks/spells until you can build up your damage meter, and then release stronger attacks. it's like an improved version of Situational commands/chains attacks in KH2/BBS.

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Finally cleared the game and honestly those years of waiting were worth it! The game is amazing!

And man, from the momentΒ you enter the Keyblade Graveyard world it’s β€œholy shit!”, β€œWHAT?” β€œAwesome!” and β€œWhat the fuck is happening?!” moments without stop. Until the very end it’s very tense! And there’s a part that is even more mindfucking that Dream Drop Distance.

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3 hours ago, IS Bath Salts HQ said:

I’ll be joining you folks soon.

Β 

Β 

Make sure to give your opinions when play it!Β 

And let me give you a good hint: Party members are actually pretty good in this game, especially Donald. He now heals when you need it! All you need to do is get close to him while you’re on critical health and Donald will heal youΒ instantly! Remember getting close to him is important as it is what triggers his Cure spell. Also, when you’re in critical health Donald tendsΒ to stop everything he is doing and go in your direction to heal you to trigger the Cure spell, but only when he has HP.Β 

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3 hours ago, Water Mage said:

And let me give you a good hint: Party members are actually pretty good in this game, especially Donald. He now heals when you need it! All you need to do is get close to him while you’re on critical health and Donald will heal youΒ instantly! Remember getting close to him is important as it is what triggers his Cure spell. Also, when you’re in critical health Donald tendsΒ to stop everything he is doing and go in your direction to heal you to trigger the Cure spell, but only when he has HP.Β 

Guess the memes end here, eh?

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16 minutes ago, Azure the Scale Tipper said:

Guess the memes end here, eh?

Pretty much. To be fair party members needed a buff. They were borderline useless in KH1 and KH2. Now they can kill a lot of heartless on their own.Β 

And interestingly enough, Donald and Goofy also got a buff in storywise. They don’t feel just there anymore, they are a lot more balsy towards the villains and it shows that their bond with Sora is just as strong as his bond with Riku and Kairi, if not stronger. And Donald gets an incredibly badass moment in the game and I really wish I couldΒ show it, but it’s spoiler stuff. Another recurring Disney character that usually doesn’t do much as get a very badass moment, but again spoiler stuff.

Edited by Water Mage
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12 minutes ago, Water Mage said:

And interestingly enough, Donald and Goofy also got a buff in storywise. They don’t feel just there anymore, they are a lot more balsy towards the villains and it shows that their bond with Sora is just as strong as his bond with Riku and Kairi, if not stronger. And Donald gets an incredibly badass moment in the game and I really wish I couldΒ show it, but it’s spoiler stuff. Another recurring Disney character that usually doesn’t do much as get a very badass moment, but again spoiler stuff.

No harm in not telling me. It only makes me more excited.

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14 hours ago, Azure the Scale Tipper said:

No harm in not telling me. It only makes me more excited.

Hahaha. Oh man, I misread this earlier. I was about to put in a spoiler tag exactly what I think he's talking about. It's a pretty hype moment, to be certain. Particularly since it's probably one of the last things you'd ever expect.

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1 minute ago, Dai said:

Hahaha. Oh man, I misread this earlier. I was about to put in a spoiler tag exactly what I think he's talking about. It's a pretty hype moment, to be certain. Particularly since it's probably one of the last things you'd ever expect.

This is why I should not be using double negatives.

Anyways, to those who beat it...

How would you gauge this game’s difficulty with other games on the same difficulty level you played?

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I'm ten hours in and the combat's definitely better than I anticipated. Controls are very responsive. I feel like the only time I get unnecessary lag is when I choose not to finish a combo, which locks me out of making more attacks for like a full second, which is the typical lockout timer for actually finishing a combo. The KH2 magic system feels as refined as it should, keyblade transformations are very creative and I love putting away transformations to use their finishers later at the right moment. It's a lot of resource management that feels fun to optimize.Β 

What brings it down is of course the situation commands. How those charge up and how the player influences which ones appear is vague and feels inconsistent. Plus there's too damn many of them. Press triangle to win is a tired KH2 meme that feels much more appropriate here. I can go into MP recharge when I've got three of them queued up plus a keyblade finisher, and just spam them all one after another and my MP will probably be back by the time I'm finished. I hope this isn't a thing during superbosses, for now I'm cool with breezing through the main story if the game will let me. I also hope they put in a critical mode to give me an incentive to play the game again some day in the future.

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17 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

I'm ten hours in and the combat's definitely better than I anticipated. Controls are very responsive. I feel like the only time I get unnecessary lag is when I choose not to finish a combo, which locks me out of making more attacks for like a full second, which is the typical lockout timer for actually finishing a combo. The KH2 magic system feels as refined as it should, keyblade transformations are very creative and I love putting away transformations to use their finishers later at the right moment. It's a lot of resource management that feels fun to optimize.Β 

What brings it down is of course the situation commands. How those charge up and how the player influences which ones appear is vague and feels inconsistent. Plus there's too damn many of them. Press triangle to win is a tired KH2 meme that feels much more appropriate here. I can go into MP recharge when I've got three of them queued up plus a keyblade finisher, and just spam them all one after another and my MP will probably be back by the time I'm finished. I hope this isn't a thing during superbosses, for now I'm cool with breezing through the main story if the game will let me. I also hope they put in a critical mode to give me an incentive to play the game again some day in the future.

combat overall is fine, althou i find a bit weird the fact that you can't move while casting spells by standing still, but you can actually slide on the sides and keep going if you cast spells while moving around.

as for the Situational commands, it's pretty much all related to what you do during battle.

if you keep using magic, you build up your magic meter and then you can cast a stronger spellΒ with triangle, same goes with physical attacks and Fusions/finishers.

your allies also have their own special attacks, so everything gets stacked when you manage to chain your attacks properly.

then, there's Focus attacks, Flowmotion attacks, Keyblade switching...i agree that all this mixed new stuff can beΒ quite overwhelming at first, but in the long run you get used to it, and you can come up with better combos management and eventually new tactics later on.

Β 

besides, there's tons of stuff to do in game and a lot to explore.

i find taking photos with other characters a quite silly and even entertaining aspect of the game sometimes, and it's probably one of those things that actually shows how much care forΒ the details they've put in the game during development.

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3 hours ago, Fenreir said:

as for the Situational commands, it's pretty much all related to what you do during battle.

if you keep using magic, you build up your magic meter and then you can cast a stronger spellΒ with triangle, same goes with physical attacks and Fusions/finishers.

That's how it should work in theory, but I could do a full combo of four Fire shots, then fill the rest of the meter with basic attacks, and only earn my keyblade transformation, and not the upgraded fire spell. However, if I do a full keyblade combo, then fill the meter with fire shots, I get both. That's what I mean about it being inconsistent. It seems to forget what attacks I used during the first half of the meter. I also said it's vague not because I misunderstand the mechanic (it's from 0.2, which I used to speedrun and can tell you the same issues existed then too) but because none of the game's tutorial popups specify how your attacks affect your available commands. They're just suggestionsΒ Furthermore, the meter isn't much of a meter, you just get three notches indicating different levels of closeness to your next set of commands. I wish it were a literal meter, so I'd know when to start using the appropriate attacks for the commands I want.

Of course none of that matters much for the casual player. You can very reasonably get through the game without knowing where your situation commands come from, especially since the game is dumping team attacks and attraction moves on you seeminglyΒ for free. I also don't like how the second transformation of a keyblade is labeled as a situation command with a generic 30 second timer. But if the existing timer for your current stage runs out, so does your opportunity to switch. So if the time displayed for the next stage is any amount longer than the actual window of time you have left to switch, then the game is just lying to you.

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4 hours ago, Fenreir said:

combat overall is fine, althou i find a bit weird the fact that you can't move while casting spells by standing still, but you can actually slide on the sides and keep going if you cast spells while moving around.

as for the Situational commands, it's pretty much all related to what you do during battle.

if you keep using magic, you build up your magic meter and then you can cast a stronger spellΒ with triangle, same goes with physical attacks and Fusions/finishers.

your allies also have their own special attacks, so everything gets stacked when you manage to chain your attacks properly.

then, there's Focus attacks, Flowmotion attacks, Keyblade switching...i agree that all this mixed new stuff can beΒ quite overwhelming at first, but in the long run you get used to it, and you can come up with better combos management and eventually new tactics later on.

My issue with this is that this is all very situational. The core combat that you'll be doing for 90% of the game is static and doesn't change much. At most you get one move added to your core ground comboΒ at a time, and one move added to your core air combo at a time. Magic, if you're playing as either Balanced or Strength focused, is not nearly as powerful as your melee combat, and will generally take a back seat to your melee combat, which is button mashing to the extreme. I find Focus attacks to be super clunky and not worth trying to bring into normal combat most of the time.

I also really don't like the Keyblade forms. I hate when games lock a vast majority of the combat options behind specific weapons. Things like weapons of a type all having unique movesets is one thing, but having every single weapon have unique movesets in a game where the melee combat is this basic really just doesn't do anything for me.

I won't say the combat's mindless, since those situational bits, like Flowmotion and the action commands require your attention to pull them off, but the combat's very shallow. You just button mash until a triangle prompt pops up, or a piece of the environment flashes so that you can do some more Flowmotion stuff. You go through the motions until something flashy happens and the game largely plays itself, while you play the boring parts. It's style/spectacle over substance, which can be fine... but there are times when the game almost broke me.

Spoiler

The Frozen world is just running down corridors for hours, button mashing your way through probably 50 enemy encounters, with briefΒ breaks to the gameplay toΒ put Olaf back together and snowboard a bit. I started skipping cutscenes so I could get out of the world faster because I was getting so aggravated and tired of the gameplay.

And to make matters worse... the game's not hard. At all. It really doesn't do anything to encourage you to play around with the combat. I'm playing on Proud, and from watching other people, the most notable change is that everything just takes longer to kill. Which was probably a bad idea, due to how the pacing of the game is killing me more than anything, but I dug my own grave. But the game's not difficult, even on Proud.

Edited by Slumber
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11 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

That's how it should work in theory, but I could do a full combo of four Fire shots, then fill the rest of the meter with basic attacks, and only earn my keyblade transformation, and not the upgraded fire spell. However, if I do a full keyblade combo, then fill the meter with fire shots, I get both. That's what I mean about it being inconsistent. It seems to forget what attacks I used during the first half of the meter. I also said it's vague not because I misunderstand the mechanic (it's from 0.2, which I used to speedrun and can tell you the same issues existed then too) but because none of the game's tutorial popups specify how your attacks affect your available commands. They're just suggestionsΒ Furthermore, the meter isn't much of a meter, you just get three notches indicating different levels of closeness to your next set of commands. I wish it were a literal meter, so I'd know when to start using the appropriate attacks for the commands I want.

guess they didn't think about it too much, but those aspectsΒ can still be changed by patching meters and build up mechanics eventually.

from what i've seen, it seems that when they worked on the 3 main builds you get to choose at the start of the game, they kind of forgot aboutΒ the main difference between gameplay styles( warrior, mage, balanced ), wich means they were probably giving higher priority to basic attacks over anything else.

then again, it's been 2 days already that the game has been downloading new updates, so there's always hope for improvements.

19 minutes ago, Slumber said:

And to make matters worse... the game's not hard. At all. It really doesn't do anything to encourage you to play around with the combat. I'm playing on Proud, and from watching other people, the most notable change is that everything just takes longer to kill. Which was probably a bad idea, due to how the pacing of the game is killing me more than anything, but I dug my own grave.

to be honest, all previous games were never really hard. surely not on Proud, and probably not on Critical either. at least for normal gameplay/story.

secret bosses, on the other hand, were always hardΒ becauseΒ that's where the real challenge was planned to be, and rightly so.

however, with the latest titles in the franchise( especially BBS and 3D ), it felt like secret bosses were more "puzzle" encounters, rather than being really hard, because you were almost forced to use specific tactics in order to defeat them, while previous titles gave some more freedom about how you wanted to fight them.

for me, that wasn't a real challenge, but rather just a process of trial and error over and over again until you figured out the proper strategy to deal with them.

i'm still early in the game thou, so i can't say anything yet about secret bosses in KH3.

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2 minutes ago, Fenreir said:

to be honest, all previous games were never really hard. surely not on Proud, and probably not on Critical either. at least for normal gameplay/story.

The only game I've played that had some modicum of difficulty on higher difficulties was KH1. The way they changed up the gameplay focus from 2 onward hasn't really been that great for difficulty scaling.

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Finished the game yesterday, spoilered thoughts:

Spoiler

KH3 decided to backload almost all of its central plot into the last quarter of the game after you've journeyed to all of the Disney worlds. This last portion of the game is a blast for longtime fans with numerous scenes for fans of secondary characters, and how half of the bosses in this gauntlet are reused bosses from previous games that employ new tricks to keep the encounter interesting. It's also the first point of the game where I found it necessary to use guard and dodge commands intelligently and save my situation commands for moments when I am being comboed or timing them during boss super moves so that I can safely avoid devastating attacks while still dealing good damage. All three of my deaths in my Normal Playthrough were on the last two boss fights, and they were well deserved since I never bought a Kupo Coin nor hooked up any item to use besides a single potion. While part of me wishes the entire game had sufficient challenge, I was pleased to see the game would eventually ramp up to a point where I actually died. I also noticed through those deaths that the checkpointing, at least in those two final bosses, seems pretty generous which I'm sure casual players will appreciate.

I've already aired my grievances about situation commands but it's just a blemish on a good-enough combat system. Not as tight as KH2, but I've long reconciled with the fact we won't ever get a game like that again in this series.Β If they ever add a Critical Mode to this game, they're going to have to do a lot to the combat system to make it as fun and challenging as KH2 Crit, and I'd start by making it so attraction flows and team attack commands appear about 80% less, or perhaps the choosing of one command should take away the other choices currently available so you're not stacking them to use all at once. Yes KH3 has "floaty combat", but I'd rather have a ton of overpowered options than just one overpowered option and I think that's the difference some casual observers as missing.

As for the story, the dialogue and cutscenes have certainly improved. We still get half hour cutscene strings of characters standing around and talking, but at least the animators went to the trouble and made the characters less motionless and more emotive which makes a world of difference. I thought Kairi was a missed opportunity, she serves no ultimate purpose other than a final motivation for Sora at the end when she's captured. They seemed to be building up to a scenario where she saves Sora's life for a change and it never happens. The complete absence of Final Fantasy characters also feels unusual. Yeah they didn't serve much purpose in previous games but that was a problem to be solved, not ignored. And I'm stunned there's no Sephiroth superboss hidden away somewhere. I also can't help but notice Maleficent and Pete also serve no purpose in this story which feels like a missed opportunity with how much screentime they get.

I have no idea where to start on ranking the game, since in many ways this game was made for me. But as a longtime fan I also understand the game's greatest flaws and can only guess how they might impact a casual player's perspective. I will say I was anticipating a much worse game than this one in terms of gameplay. And I might even say it lives up to the hype? I'll need to ruminate on this a bit more. For now though I'd much rather do another play of Resident Evil 2 at the moment, since my dive into that game was cut short by the release of KH3.

Β 

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On 2/5/2019 at 4:24 PM, Glennstavos said:

Finished the game yesterday, spoilered thoughts:

Β  Hide contents

KH3 decided to backload almost all of its central plot into the last quarter of the game after you've journeyed to all of the Disney worlds. This last portion of the game is a blast for longtime fans with numerous scenes for fans of secondary characters, and how half of the bosses in this gauntlet are reused bosses from previous games that employ new tricks to keep the encounter interesting. It's also the first point of the game where I found it necessary to use guard and dodge commands intelligently and save my situation commands for moments when I am being comboed or timing them during boss super moves so that I can safely avoid devastating attacks while still dealing good damage. All three of my deaths in my Normal Playthrough were on the last two boss fights, and they were well deserved since I never bought a Kupo Coin nor hooked up any item to use besides a single potion. While part of me wishes the entire game had sufficient challenge, I was pleased to see the game would eventually ramp up to a point where I actually died. I also noticed through those deaths that the checkpointing, at least in those two final bosses, seems pretty generous which I'm sure casual players will appreciate.

I've already aired my grievances about situation commands but it's just a blemish on a good-enough combat system. Not as tight as KH2, but I've long reconciled with the fact we won't ever get a game like that again in this series.Β If they ever add a Critical Mode to this game, they're going to have to do a lot to the combat system to make it as fun and challenging as KH2 Crit, and I'd start by making it so attraction flows and team attack commands appear about 80% less, or perhaps the choosing of one command should take away the other choices currently available so you're not stacking them to use all at once. Yes KH3 has "floaty combat", but I'd rather have a ton of overpowered options than just one overpowered option and I think that's the difference some casual observers as missing.

As for the story, the dialogue and cutscenes have certainly improved. We still get half hour cutscene strings of characters standing around and talking, but at least the animators went to the trouble and made the characters less motionless and more emotive which makes a world of difference. I thought Kairi was a missed opportunity, she serves no ultimate purpose other than a final motivation for Sora at the end when she's captured. They seemed to be building up to a scenario where she saves Sora's life for a change and it never happens. The complete absence of Final Fantasy characters also feels unusual. Yeah they didn't serve much purpose in previous games but that was a problem to be solved, not ignored. And I'm stunned there's no Sephiroth superboss hidden away somewhere. I also can't help but notice Maleficent and Pete also serve no purpose in this story which feels like a missed opportunity with how much screentime they get.

I have no idea where to start on ranking the game, since in many ways this game was made for me. But as a longtime fan I also understand the game's greatest flaws and can only guess how they might impact a casual player's perspective. I will say I was anticipating a much worse game than this one in terms of gameplay. And I might even say it lives up to the hype? I'll need to ruminate on this a bit more. For now though I'd much rather do another play of Resident Evil 2 at the moment, since my dive into that game was cut short by the release of KH3.

Β 

Spoiler

I agree that the game only really begins to feel challenging in the last boss fights. On my Proud playthrough, I died to the penultimate Xehanort fight once, and the final one maybe 5 or six times. All of those happening after he forces you into Rage form, which was a little annoying.

Still really not a fan of the combat, though. Even during those tougher fights, it still felt like I was mashing my way through the entire thing, only I had to rely on dodging and blocking slightly more. It still felt like autopilot to the very end, which I am really not a fan of. For the "One overpowered" vs. "Several overpowered" options, neither are really ideal. Especially when "Several overpowered" includes the most basic combat options of the game. It's like the game is daring you to deviate from the basic Keyblade combo->Attractions/Team Attacks, because it's so stupidly good and simple. Experimentation with combat is almost nonexistant, and I agree that I think it really wouldn't change in a Critical mode unless they just completely reworked the combat. I never thought I'd say that I miss the context commands from KH2, but here we are.

Heavily disagree with the dialogue being better. I think it's markedly worse. Now that we're in a mainline entry with 4 entire side games that weigh heavily into the actual story, so much of the dialogue is characters awkwardly explaining stuff that they already know, because 90% of the people playing the game don't. It's so stiff and tedious to sit through. It drags down the already abysmal KH dialogue standards, which at least moved at a tolerable pace before. And then the rehashing of certain stories, like Tangled and Frozen, while having to address Sora and crew... there's some serious tonal whiplash in those parts of the game.

I do agree with the animations, though. I will give high, high, high praise for the attention to detail that goes into the characters animating when they talk. It's one of the areas of the game that genuinely impressed me, and the amount of animating the characters do for a 30+ hour RPG that has a lot of lengthy cutscenes only adds to it. It gave me something to appreciate during the cutscenes.

I've given up on expecting Kairi to be anything more than a living plot device. Princess Peach is more proactive than her these days. And the absence of Final Fantasy characters is especially odd. KH2 took emphasis away from Disney, but gave a bit more to the FF characters. Squall in particular was actually an important character in the game to a certain degree, and now they're just all gone, with only Seifer(Of all people) getting a mention because Twilight Town is your non-combat town are for the game. And I really don't like how unimportant it is. Traverse Town and Radiant Garden were all places you frequently went to in KH1 and 2, but you go to Twilight Town once(Twice if you want to return Pooh's book), for something that's not especially important in the grand scheme of things.

I'm also very upset that there's no Colosseum. I didn't realize how much I'd miss its inclusion until it's gone. The lack of meaningful distractions in general is pretty upsetting. Sure, there are things to do, and there are a handful of rewards for doing them, but they feel empty and hollow. The Flans especially feel like the developers just didn't have any good ideas on how to get people to revisit some worlds now that they're all one-and-done for the plot.

This game is definitely my least favorite of the KH games I've played, and I didn't have an especially high opinion on KH2, which was my previous last place. This game actually makes me retroactively like KH2 more, honestly.

Β 

Edited by Slumber
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