Did Kingdom Hearts regain its former glory with Re:Mind?

3 was already great, but Re:Mind was downright incredible and has all the best boss fights of the series. It's just a shame that even though it's still great, they didn't make a lot of the simple changes that would elevate 3 as a whole to being 13/10.

It's nuts how KH by the end of the PS2 era was poised to become even more popular than Final Fantasy when X-2 had its lukewarm reception. Now? Now it's fucked in that regard, likely forever, thanks to how long it took for 3 to happen.

KH3 should have been an early life or even release PS3 title. They took far too long fucking around with spinoffs to truly capitalize on the first two games' insane popularity.

>3 was already great
let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I loved remind but hated KH3. It feels unfinished and like half of the game is minigames, also has hardly any decent bosses which is like the best part of KH and why remind is so great

KH1 had a sense of mysticism to it that KH2 traded in for anime melodrama. KH3 falls under the burden of wrapping up so many useless side stories. Its gameplay is fine, but the charm of the series came from all the weird parts coming together. 3 is just a disappointing puddle of nothing no matter how much dumb shit you want to add on top of it.

No

You grew up and have shit taste now.

Attached: Data Lexaeus (Level 1) .webm (900x506, 2.94M)

There wasn't even any outrage when KH3 was passed over for GOTY nominations. Everybody but the retards knew KH3 didn't even deserve to be on the list of candidates.

Not that the awards mean much but still. Nobody was going to kid themselves into thinking KH3 deserved it over shit like Resident Evil 2, Sekiro, Out Worlds or Smash Ultimate.

Imagine telling someone in 2005/2006 that KH3 wouldn't even be up for discussion for GOTY.

It probably got stuck in dev hell and various ideas and attempts to modernize the game conflicted with the original image for the game, resulting in the shell of a game we got.

Phil didn't even say a single line of dialogue, did he? He was just there at Olympus stage and that's a good indicator of what happened: the game just lost its soul (SOOOOUL)

>Phil didn't even say a single line of dialogue, did he?
His jap VA died so that means he can't talk anymore. Same with Xaldin and Lexaeus.

But didn't xehanort's jap voice die too?

Original KH3 was shit. The finale of a nearly 2 decade long build up, with multiple side games with tons of characters with stories to resolve. Instead of spending the entire game to do this, the game is 90% Sora watching Disney movies with very little interaction and 10% wrapping up the actual KH story.

The DLC fixed alot if this... But it was essentially making long time fans of the series pay extra for what should of been in the base game.

This is true but Xehanort is too important to to plot for him to just start pantomiming instead of talking. There seems to be a pecking order for what characters go silent while others just get a new VA.

3 really exacerbated the problem 2 sort of had, where they piled on everything in the latter half of the game after a slow build up. In 2, it was still pretty good - the flaws in that game come from hoe they keep spamming the same arena fight over and over at the player until the end and the data fights, which is when the combat really shines.
With 3, there’s a very long buildup to sora consistently watching people sacrifice themselves to protect the people they love, and part of the payoff is that he ends up doing that too. However, all of this comes so suddenly that it’s jarring - the entire ending hours of 3 are both the most cathartic yet borderline fan fiction tier bullshit the series has indulged in. Some of the Disney world’s are pretty good though, like pirates.

As far as mechanics go, 2 and 3 have the same problem in that their Final Mix / ReMind exclusive fights actually provoke use of the more interesting mechanics in the game, but FM added a lot more interesting stuff into the base game as well. I don’t think it’s quite as tight as 2FM because that game had it’s grounded animations and magic system down pat, while 3 has some animations that take up half the screen and take forever to end (the ground ones are way better than I thought they’d be though), but the ReMind fights and endgame content were very good indeed.

no it's worse than ever

Even before FM, 2 still felt good to play and had fun encounters outside of disney bosses. FM just added extra mechanics and bosses on top of it making the game really enjoyable the whole way through. Base 3 on the other hand still plays like a messy musou most of the time. The only content that is still fun on repeat play is anything in REMind. The base game is a total chore.

Are you sure you're not the one getting ahead of yourself? Half of the game is minigames, really? The bosses were pretty solid for what they were and many were actually really good, it just didn't have very much optional content which is historically where all the outstanding bosses are kept and are also added in after release, which is still dumb but not new. Which tends to go for a lot of people's loudest complaints, when they're not completely overlooking the things that were actually present in the game but could have done with more of a focus. Moving the Aqua rescue to after the fourth world would have made a gigantic difference alone.

>dlc that costs as much as the base game
no

I’m not disagreeing but I think critical did good to make the base game less mindless. The game’s focus on building meter for flashy moves is what kills the pace of combat, and it’s initially broken magic meant that there was no incentive to weave different types of damage together.
That being said most KH players are shitters who only use magic for cure only and sit as the pink bar tells them when they can use cure again

I got the game for $12 and then paid for remind
It was worth since remind is actually amazing

the data fights were good but the extra story content was trash and the package was ridiculously overpriced

also fuck data riku

I honestly hate REmind sometimes because it has convinced me the dev team is purposely making the base game as flashy and braindead as possible to appeal to as many people as possible. The DLC shows that Osaka team DOES know how to make good combat encounters. I had this feeling back in 2.8 as well when the one super boss, Phantom Aqua, was incredibly well designed and also really fun to fight (despite 4 dogshit fights leading up to her).