Alright, so having finished it, here is how I feel overall:
-The drop system was a bad idea. Yeah it allowed them to do a few story things in the end that would have been awkward if the games were just two separate runs, but the entire rest of the game would have been better off as just two separate runs. Disrupting the flow of the world stories, being dropped back in with 1 hit until your dead and surrounded by enemies an hour after you left that second is not good and worst of all I ran out of time and was forced to drop during the final boss fight for Sora. I had the boss (who in usual KH form has like 8 lifebars) down to 1 lifebar and I was about to finish the boss and then I ran out of time and it switched me to Riku. When I switched back it restarted the boss fight from scratch and the boss had full 8 bars again. Shouldn't the drop bar TURN OFF during boss fights? The drop points and buffing as you switched between the two was ok, but honestly the drop system is pretty worthless.
-The Monster (Pokeheart) system was ok. It was like an amateurish SMT/Pokemon system of fusing monsters from ingredients and leveling them for helpful stuff. With Sora they're actually pretty fun and useful since he has a unique combination attack with all of them. A lot of pretty cool and powerful. With Riku they tried to make his combinations like the final form modes from KH2/BBS, but they're nowhere near as useful or cool here. They are a good addition that work in this game, but I don't want to see them back in the next game. Give me real teammates from Disney movies and combinations with them.
-The Worlds were nice and big. Fun to explore and find the treasures. Free Flow Movement is a lot of fun and it's great zooming through the environment. It doesn't feel like there's a lot of worlds, but they all feel really big. Some are amazing like
, others freaking suck like
. I'd say more are good than bad though.
-Graphics are decent. 3D is nice looking when it works in colorful bright areas. Models and environments are about on par with BBS, maybe a little worse. Image quality is a bit jaggy/pixelated but not terribly so. Good enough looking game for their first attempt on early 3DS hardware.
-Music is fantastic. My only complaint is there is not much of it, a lot of re-used tunes throughout. But the tracks are seriously great. Some really fantastic battle themes, great mixes of places like
, and the
is absolutely incredible. Audio delight.
-The sub-systems are just ok. The way your monsters give you temporary buffs and permanent abilities as you level them and unlock stuff is good, even if it takes a while to get link points to unlock stuff. The monster combination attacks are good w/Sora as mentioned above and bad/Riku. There's not a whole lot of systems in this one as the system focus is really just on the monster growth. It's ok but tbh you spend too much time in the menus tinkering in this one (like 358/2 days).
-Combat is great. Feels smooth, the free flow movement is a nice addition, some of the new attacks are fun. Otoh, Lack of any sort of fusion/melding to get spells or final form modes, or really crazy attacks (maybe 3D has all the really awesome final attacks that BBS has and even better with more new ones, but I wouldn't know since without a fusion system, I'm probably missing some of the end attacks like meteor/flare/holy/etc...) makes it a notch below BBS.
-Length is good. Took me 22 hours, and there's definitely some side stuff I could do if I wanted to 100% it. It's shorter than BBS, but still a good length for an arpg.
-Story is lolololol. First of all, it's good to go in with low expectations, since the game has no plot at all until the final world. So instead of a original plot carrying the story across the various disney worlds, there's nothing and it's just a bunch of episodic disney stories. The disney stories are hit and miss. A couple of them are AWESOME and really well done
, but a few of them just tell snippits of the stories and not the whole tale of the Disney film
. The OG story when it actually appears is a decent amount of story in a small amount of time. It's also looooooooooooooooooooooooooooool. I think the only reason BBS had a good story after the humongous mess that was KH2's story was that, like MGS3, it didn't have to do with any of this crazy, and could just tell a compelling story with compelling characters. The story is a big mess for sure, with a bunch of nonsense, and a generic setup for KH3 (there will be a bad guy, there will be good guys, they will fight). I'm sure they're still going to split the KH3 story into a few different games because there's just way too many characters and subplots to wrap everything up in a single storyline game. At this rate, KH3 has a very good chance to be an MGS4 >_<
Overall KH 3D is a pretty solid fun entry in the KH franchise. Because of the lack of story for 4/5ths of the game and small amount of worlds, I wouldn't really put it up with KH1/2/BBS, but the quality of the combat, the worlds, and the presentation put the game above all the spinoffs. It's much closer to the mainline games even if it's a rung on the ladder below them. Although I have a soft spot for 358/2 days just because I liked the story with Roxas/Xion/Axel and it had a strong powerful ending. But gameplay-wise 3D is 100x better.
Overall Grade: B
-The drop system was a bad idea. Yeah it allowed them to do a few story things in the end that would have been awkward if the games were just two separate runs, but the entire rest of the game would have been better off as just two separate runs. Disrupting the flow of the world stories, being dropped back in with 1 hit until your dead and surrounded by enemies an hour after you left that second is not good and worst of all I ran out of time and was forced to drop during the final boss fight for Sora. I had the boss (who in usual KH form has like 8 lifebars) down to 1 lifebar and I was about to finish the boss and then I ran out of time and it switched me to Riku. When I switched back it restarted the boss fight from scratch and the boss had full 8 bars again. Shouldn't the drop bar TURN OFF during boss fights? The drop points and buffing as you switched between the two was ok, but honestly the drop system is pretty worthless.
-The Monster (Pokeheart) system was ok. It was like an amateurish SMT/Pokemon system of fusing monsters from ingredients and leveling them for helpful stuff. With Sora they're actually pretty fun and useful since he has a unique combination attack with all of them. A lot of pretty cool and powerful. With Riku they tried to make his combinations like the final form modes from KH2/BBS, but they're nowhere near as useful or cool here. They are a good addition that work in this game, but I don't want to see them back in the next game. Give me real teammates from Disney movies and combinations with them.
-The Worlds were nice and big. Fun to explore and find the treasures. Free Flow Movement is a lot of fun and it's great zooming through the environment. It doesn't feel like there's a lot of worlds, but they all feel really big. Some are amazing like
Fantasia
Tron Legacy
-Graphics are decent. 3D is nice looking when it works in colorful bright areas. Models and environments are about on par with BBS, maybe a little worse. Image quality is a bit jaggy/pixelated but not terribly so. Good enough looking game for their first attempt on early 3DS hardware.
-Music is fantastic. My only complaint is there is not much of it, a lot of re-used tunes throughout. But the tracks are seriously great. Some really fantastic battle themes, great mixes of places like
Traverse Town
Fantasia music
-The sub-systems are just ok. The way your monsters give you temporary buffs and permanent abilities as you level them and unlock stuff is good, even if it takes a while to get link points to unlock stuff. The monster combination attacks are good w/Sora as mentioned above and bad/Riku. There's not a whole lot of systems in this one as the system focus is really just on the monster growth. It's ok but tbh you spend too much time in the menus tinkering in this one (like 358/2 days).
-Combat is great. Feels smooth, the free flow movement is a nice addition, some of the new attacks are fun. Otoh, Lack of any sort of fusion/melding to get spells or final form modes, or really crazy attacks (maybe 3D has all the really awesome final attacks that BBS has and even better with more new ones, but I wouldn't know since without a fusion system, I'm probably missing some of the end attacks like meteor/flare/holy/etc...) makes it a notch below BBS.
-Length is good. Took me 22 hours, and there's definitely some side stuff I could do if I wanted to 100% it. It's shorter than BBS, but still a good length for an arpg.
-Story is lolololol. First of all, it's good to go in with low expectations, since the game has no plot at all until the final world. So instead of a original plot carrying the story across the various disney worlds, there's nothing and it's just a bunch of episodic disney stories. The disney stories are hit and miss. A couple of them are AWESOME and really well done
Fantasia, Mouseketeers
Hunchback, Pinnochio
Overall KH 3D is a pretty solid fun entry in the KH franchise. Because of the lack of story for 4/5ths of the game and small amount of worlds, I wouldn't really put it up with KH1/2/BBS, but the quality of the combat, the worlds, and the presentation put the game above all the spinoffs. It's much closer to the mainline games even if it's a rung on the ladder below them. Although I have a soft spot for 358/2 days just because I liked the story with Roxas/Xion/Axel and it had a strong powerful ending. But gameplay-wise 3D is 100x better.
Overall Grade: B
