‘Kingdom Hearts III’ sticks with formula to make Disney magic happen

Kingdom Hearts fans know what it is to wait. 

We know what it is to pore over decades of lore for clues and parse storylines that arrive fragmented, with missing information. We are the ones who waited 14 years between Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts III, trusting Square Enix to deliver a finale that was worth our effort and our study. 

Our wait is over and Kingdom Hearts III is here. It’s exactly as magical as we remember, with an extra helping of big box features and homicidally effective Disneyland rides. It’s definitely worth the wait.

As for that finale… well. Let’s maybe start at the beginning.

Once upon a time in Kingdom Hearts

It’s useless to judge Kingdom Hearts III on whether or not it’s playable to someone who wants to jump into the franchise with this game. The core structure — Disney-themed worlds serving as a backdrop to an intensely convoluted original story — has always meant that Kingdom Hearts games are half recognizable to everyone on the planet and half unintelligible to anyone who doesn’t literally study the game’s internal lore. 

I fall somewhere in the middle of those types of players, having watched many a recap of the plot before starting but still a little unable to keep track of Xehanort’s evil plan du jour, and found the game to be completely enjoyable. The Disney worlds (more about those later) are more or less contained stories and the resolution of the main plot is action-packed and emotional regardless of one’s personal attachment to the characters. 

That said, even without the series holding players’ hands before dumping them at the end of a nine-game saga, Kingdom Hearts III still suffers a little from its own machinations. In its haste to set up the next chapter (and having finished the game, I can tell you there is going to be a next chapter), it wastes a lot of this game’s precious time. There’s a lot of plot to get through, and finding out at the end of the game that certain newly introduced mysteries won’t matter until Kingdom Hearts IV: Dream A Little Dream For Me 420 Blaze It comes out on the Playstation 7 is a little hard to swallow. 

And yet! As a contained element in the series, and as the ostensible end of this section of the Kingdom Hearts franchise, III is good. Great, even. Here’s why.

I can show you the worlds 

The original miracle of branding at the center of Kingdom Hearts is its existence as a Disney property. “Watch Disney Princesses kick ass” was how I was sold on the games over a decade ago, and III of course continues in that grand tradition; the arenas of exploration and battle are more Disneyfied than ever before.

Each of its eight Disney worlds do a great job capturing the visual style of their source films, with the Pixar worlds of Monsters, Inc. and Toy Story in particular looking like perfectly animated extensions of their films. While the game still chunks its “open” worlds into loadable areas (would it feel like a Kingdom Hearts game if it didn’t?), the complexity of the levels and the attention to Disney detail makes almost all of them feel like fulfilling adventures.

Some of the worlds have better stories than others, like the Kingdom of Corona’s rehash of Tangled that puts Sora at the center of that very good movie’s action. Others excel in spite of their plots, as The Caribbean’s naval combat and underwater exploration are significantly more interesting than rewatching the third most recent Pirates of the Caribbean movie. 

While all of the worlds look good and are entertaining to play around in, the Disney characters lend Kingdom Hearts III lots of charm, sentiment, and fun. I cannot overstate how awesome it is to watch Woody from Toy Story read an iconic Kingdom Hearts villain to filth, or to ride around San Fransokyo on Baymax, or dance with Rapunzel in the village square. It’s magic! It’s immersive! It’s Disney as hell. It’s Kingdom Hearts, baby.

A game worth fighting for

Combat in Kingdom Hearts is fairly simple on paper. Boy gets key, boy sees monster, boy whacks monster with key until a heart pops out, boy continues to do so until the metaphorical/literal heart of the universe is safe from the time-traveling wizard megalomaniac with several backup bodies and a squad of leather daddies.

It’s a song as old as rhyme. And Kingdom Hearts III goes in for the remix. 

I mean, yes, the basics of Kingdom Hearts combat are the same in III, in that keyblades are used in a basic attack/block/recovery formation, but the types of keyblades available and their form changes are a much bigger deal this time around, as are the new attractions.

Attractions are a new combat mechanic triggered by attacking enemies highlighted with a green circle in the midst of a regular battle. Attacking that enemy adds a Disney theme park attraction— which one depends on the situation — to your action queue that can unleash hot, magical hell on your enemies in the most adorable way possible. 

The first time I triggered an attraction I did so by be accident: I was fighting normally and suddenly became a boat. I accepted that I was a boat, I pressed X when prompted, and when I stopped being a boat, everyone was dead. 

The moral of this story is that attractions are very powerful and very easy to deploy accidentally. No, really, it’s super common to try and pick up a sprig of parsley and instead summon a deadly carousel made of light and sound. 

Aside from attractions, which are especially fun in boss fights, there are some fancy new keyblades to play with, some of which have astounding form changes that are powerful for any playstyle. With the right keyblade Sora can build Rapunzel’s tower, wave a pirate flag straight through a Heartless’s head, slather folks in sticky honey, and yank enemies around the field with merciless mechanical arms. Thanks for those, Hiro.

Going the distance

A lot about video games has changed since Kingdom Hearts II. In addition to getting through the main campaign of most big box titles, players have come to expect photo modes, collectibles, and mini challenges that offer more combat-free playtime. Kingdom Hearts III finds a way to cram all of those in by introducing one simple, if incongruous, mechanic: The Gummiphone. 

Put simply, the Gummiphone is Sora’s smartphone, gifted to him by royal engineers Chip and Dale. It’s a plot point within the game itself, as there are several moments where Sora checks in on other characters via video call, but it’s also an important tool that helps update the franchise’s older mechanics. 

The Gummiphone is capable of playing minigames, which are found by scanning QR codes found on posters and in secret chests hidden around the worlds. It also functions as Jiminy Cricket’s journal this time around and stores information about past adventures, characters, and anything else you might want to look up mid-game. 

Above all (OK, some) of these Gummiphone features is the camera, which is useful in three separate ways. First, it’s essentially the game’s photo mode and it’s a gas to take selfies with Disney characters. Second, it’s a way to unlock valuable synthesizer recipes, as the Moogle Shop won’t unveil certain items until you bring them a picture of a specific statue, person, location, or enemy.  Third, using the camera is only way to unlock Kingdom Hearts III’s secret ending. 

The secret ending is connected to your in-game collection of Lucky Symbols, which are really just Disneyland-style Hidden Mickeys placed all over the game’s many worlds. Mickey Mouse’s distinctive head-and-ears shapes can appear anywhere — carved into a wall or in a pile of rocks — and aside from having to snap a certain number of them to get the ending, collecting pictures of them leads to in-game rewards. 

Finally, and unrelated to the Gummiphone, is the Bistro. The Bistro restaurant in Twilight Town is the home of Kingdom Hearts III’s cooking minigame, which requires collecting ingredients from every world and also having very, very sensitive button reflexes. The restaurant is run by Scrooge McDuck and staffed by Remy the cooking rat from Ratatouille, who is never named and is instead referred to as “Little Chef” despite him being a complex character in his own movie that… you know what? Never mind. 

Narrative injustice aside, the Bistro is one of my favorite parts of Kingdom Hearts III because hey, I’m a sucker for fancy food. Some may find the ingredient hunting aspect of the game irritating, mainly because either Donald or Goofy will interrupt literally everyone to yell, “This might be a good spot to find some ingredients” when some collectibles are in the area, but for me the payoff of cracking a perfect egg or making an item off the secret menu is worth it. 

Completing menu items leads to in-game bonuses from Scrooge as well as food for your inventory, which can be arranged in five-course meals that offer temporary stat bonuses. Bon appétit! 

Do you wanna watch a cutscene?

Any game with a lore as convoluted as Kingdom Hearts would struggle to convey the full scope of its narrative without resorting to cutscenes, but the franchise’s dependence on long, long pauses in its action to check in on other characters, proceed with conversations, and prolong its mysteries is kind of egregious in Kingdom Hearts III.

Seriously, make sure you have a snack for when you get hungry watching cutscenes. Hell, bring a full meal. You will have time to eat it. 

Some of the cutscenes approach the so-long-it’s-funny threshold, like when Queen Elsa sings the entirety of “Let It Go” in a shot-for-shot remake of Frozen while a weirded-out Sora & Friends watch from the mountain below. (After she sings, Sora remarks that he has no idea what he just saw.) Others are just long-long and so densely packed with plot information that it feels like progressing through a series of lectures on the topic of Hearts, Friendship, and whichever form of Xehanort you’re looking at right now. 

A lot has been said about the sappy dialogue and lackluster voice acting in Kingdom Hearts games, and unfortunately III is no exception to this tradition. Some of the character scenes are downright cringey and slow, with scenes going on for twice as long as they would if the characters spoke at a normal pace and didn’t pause awkwardly between lines (looking at you, Aqua and Riku). 

The drawn-out dialogue style is a feature and not a bug, which makes sense considering the characters live in a universe where feelings also have feelings. Yes, it’s annoying to hear everyone refer to the main trio as “Sora… Donald… Goofy” in a breathless tone as if group nouns were never invented, but at this point it’s part of the Kingdom Hearts charm that either works for you or doesn’t. 

I see the light 

When I finally finished Kingdom Hearts III with 46 hours of playtime under my belt, having not left my apartment in five straight days, I remember feeling content. A little shocked, maybe, at all of the game’s many endings, and definitely fatigued for purely human reasons, but I felt nostalgically satisfied and pleased with myself. 

I was also thinking of how I was going to write this review, going over how darn cheesy some of the final lines are and how many times I rolled my eyes at the wide-eyed earnestness of the game’s morality. The game’s unchanging affectations made me feel self-consciously old, too cool to really buy into all the talk of hearts and love, but I also felt excited and somehow younger. Un–self-consciously happy. 

When I was first introduced to Kingdom Hearts II, I was 14 and a latecomer to video games in general. It was the first full console game I had ever played and it opened my eyes to what storytelling and characters could be like in what was to me a brand new medium. It didn’t seem cheesy back then, it felt real and thrilling. I was invested in Sora’s loyalty to Riku. I wanted to wring Demyx’s neck with my bare hands if he said “dance, water, dance” one more time. I cried when Axel sacrificed himself for Roxas. 

At the end of Kingdom Hearts III, all of those things ended up mattering, those plot points that made me love gaming in the first place. I felt embarrassed to be emotional about the ending, then was embarrassed for being embarrassed. Kingdom Hearts hadn’t changed. I was just older and getting in the way of my own enjoyment. 

If you love Kingdom Hearts, and if you’ve read to this point you probably do, know that Kingdom Hearts III is more of the same stuff that made you love the series. There are fancy new attacks and scavenger hunts and a few new Princesses to deal with, but its heart has always remained the same. 

Absolutely everyone who was alive to play the other games is different now, and that’s not a bad thing. I love the idea of this game being able to float me back into a time where I could cheer for Mickey Mouse without feeling silly and cry because Naminé was lonely. That feeling alone is worth the box price on Kingdom Hearts III. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to start again on Proud Mode. Nothing takes me back to my childhood like cussing out Donald’s stingy heals and what can I say? I’m in a nostalgic mood.