I am still kind of at a loss as far as finding a game that really captures my attention and makes me really want to play for hours on end. I think I am kind of reaching the end of the catalogue in the PS-Plus Extra offerings as far as thing that interest me are concerned. It shouldn't really be that much of a surprise that most of what is in there is junk that they know they can't sell anymore but when I came across a game that was produced by both Disney and Square-Enix, I figured there had to be something good about it!
These games sold like crazy and a lot of people like it so I figured I would check it out even though I am not a big fan of how Squenix makes games. I "played" this title for a good 3 hours before I just got sick of the fact that you, the player, don't really do anything when playing it.
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If you don't know about these games, and I didn't really until a few days ago, just imagine a modern Final Fantasy game with Disney characters added in and seriously simplistic combat systems. At least in the first 3 hours there was nothing the could be considered any real strategy involved in the gameplay and most of it is a series of cutscenes. If you know anything about things I have written about in the past you already know that I am NOT a fan of games that are story-driven with massive cutscenes, even if said cutscenes are really well done, which they are in Kingdom Hearts 3.
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This is the main thing for me: When you are playing a game, don't you want to actually be actively involved? In Kingdom Hearts 3 for the first 30 minutes or so you have ALMOST NOTHING to do with what is going on and you will watch a cutscene only to move around for a minute or two in the environment and then you are presented with another damn cutscene. These are done quite well with voice actors, many of whom are the same people that did the voices in Pixar and Disney films, but that doesn't change the fact that you don't do anything during these times. The fact that they do not have a button to speed the dialogue along just makes it even more annoying. Sure you can skip the entire scene if you want to - which is what I started doing about 2 hours in - but seeing as how that is the main element of the game you need to step back and ask yourself why the hell are you even playing this if you aren't even going to witness the "bread and butter" of why this game exists in the first place.
As far as combat is concerned, it is extremely mindless.
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When you are allowed to fight, which isn't very often, you will encounter mostly varying degrees of enemies that are generically referred to as The "Heartless." These enemies are basically throwaway trash mobs that pose very little in the way of trouble getting past. You have magic available to you but it takes too long to use it and you end up having your casting interrupted by virtue of the fact that you are dicking around with controls while the enemies are striking you. Therefore, the best thing to do is just to do your regular attack which locks on to the nearest enemy and will continue to strike them over and over until they are most likely defeated, then you do this 12 more times in the same battle.
You end up building up a meter that activates higher powered skills that have a cool animation to them and do a lot more damage than your normal attack and this is the objective of a lot of the fights.
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I found it a bit strange that very early on in the game I was thrust into a battle with two of the Titan bosses at the same time but once again, this was just a simple situation of pushing the attack button and whatever the hell the name of your character is would just jump up to the weak point and strike them over and over again until they are defeated. While you are frantically making this happen Donald, Goofy, and Hercules are also doing the same thing on their own.
They are quite easily defeated and by the time that battle is done your thumb is tired from rapidly hitting the "X" button about 1257 times. There really is nothing more to that entire battle. When you end up facing the tornado Titan it is more of the same thing but now you have to utilize some long range lock on something or other than warps you close to it so you can attack it .... guess how? With your regular melee attack of course!
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There is a point where you get thrown way up into the sky and have to skydive back towards the tornado as it throws large pieces of rock at you and while this is visually appealing, once again, you don't really have a lot to do with it. Then when you get back down to the battlefield guess how you eventually take him out? With your close range melee attack again!
This didn't stay entertaining to me for very long and I found myself loathing the combat even more than the constantly interrupting cinematic scenes.
Also, they keep throwing more and more game modes at you and additional buttons for super attacks or whatever but the end result is that you are always attacking with your melee weapon over and over again to the point where it feels like Squenix had a deal with whoever manufactures PS controllers so that people would wear out the buttons.
I made it 3 hours and then after yet another extremely simplistic battle pre-empted and followed by a massive cinematic, that I decided that this game if f**king lame and if I want to watch a Pixar film I will put down the controller and do exactly that.
I'm guessing these games are popular because they made 3 of them but honestly, to me this is not gaming. This is a movie that you get to hit buttons rapidly in during certain points and not much else.
on to the next one!