It has been a long time since the last Kingdom Hearts game came out. In the time since then I started that blog that now has over 70 reviews on it. So it may come as a surprise to you that as well as liking all of the other franchises I have shown affinity towards over the course of said blog, I am also a fan of the Kingdom Hearts series. Perhaps it has something to do with my growing up watching every Disney movie that ever came out (that stopped around Lilo and Stich). So as I fan I have been there from the strong beginning, to the high point (Kingdom Hearts II) and now to the low point where it is now. Fans have repeatedly had to settle for below average games such as Chain of Memories, 358/2 Days, and Re:Coded. These games may offer little bits of the overall story, but the games themselves have been flat out bad. But Kingdom Hearts 3D was promised to be a true to form Kingdom Hearts game. But is it?
That depends on your definition of a Kingdom Hearts game. The formula, as most know by now, is you play as Sora and Riku and you take your keyblade through different Disney themed worlds fighting your way to the keyholes. This has been the M.O. for every single game with slight changes to the main characters. The reason behind doing this has always been slightly different, this time you are waking the worlds up. I won’t go into details on the story aspects, suffice it to say, speaking for the story, it is as Kingdom Hearts as it gets. Luckily, this time around Nintendo has the proper gameplay to back it up. The downfall of this franchise has been Nintendo’s lack of solid hardware to give the game those great PS2 like controls that players became accustomed to in the first games. Now we have the 3DS with its circle pad. I won’t say that it is a perfect imitation, but it certainly helps. So wrap a decent story around better controls and you have the best Kingdom Hearts game Nintendo has ever had.
Probably the most interesting change made this time around is the inclusion of a “pet system” for lack of a better name. Basically you create pet spirits that will accompany you through your journey like Donald and Goofy used to do so many games ago. These pets have their own level system and they also provide the way for you to learn new abilities and attacks. So it is only by filling up the spirit’s upgrade tree that you will be able to get such classic bonuses as combo plus and boosts to your attack and defense stats. Honestly the whole system is pretty dumb. If I wanted to play a game like that I would play Pokemon. It just doesn’t belong in a Kingdom Hearts game. But I suppose this many games into a franchise they are struggling to come up with new and interesting ways to keep the game feeling fresh and new. Aside from that the only other thing that is new is the minigame. You remember that awesome Monopoly-like minigame from Birth By Sleep? Well they threw that away in favor of a dumb card battling game with your spirit buddies. It’s worse than Chain of Memories, no lie.
The only real issue I have with this game is that it still isn’t Kingdom Hearts III. I suppose that really isn’t fair. This is a solid game and really impressive, but it is still a filler game. It is not the Kingdom Hearts game that fans really wanted. More so it is just another game that tries to wrap up a whole bunch of loose ends and attempts to get you up to speed so that when Kingdom Hearts III does come out, you will be ready. But since they have made all of these filler games, with all of their loose threads of story, strictly going from 2 to 3 would be confusing and not advised. Frankly I feel as though the whole Kingdom Hearts universe has become too bloated and I question how much longer these games remain relevant. But for now, it may not be as good as Birth By Sleep, but it is still worth playing. Provided you have a 3DS that is. I would not buy the system just for this game.