When it comes to video games, one of the most important factors is balance— and that doesn’t just apply to multiplayer. Balance is found in the narrative and gameplay down to the smallest nuances. For this week’s example, we’re gonna be talking about Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts III.
Kingdom Hearts III. There’s a lot to unpack about both the game’s narrative and gameplay, but the narrative part is a bit spoiler-y so that part will be much later.
The gameplay of the demo comes first. Kingdom Hearts 0.2: a fragmentary passage was such an out-of-left-field thing that most people were just surprised we got it at all— let alone with an HD port of a full game and movie. The gameplay, however, was what left people wondering with either sick curiosity or immense worry: the combat was extremely floaty. All the attacks were slow, with very long animations and times to hit— during which you could be hit out of most of, and only a few you could block out of— alongside the trademark of the playable character, Aqua, which is her cartwheel dodge, which has a ridiculous amount of i-frames. This “demo” received only minor updates in relation to crashes, lighting, etc. and can still be played in this state today— not balanced, not very well handled, but the coat of paint it wore told us it was Kingdom Hearts and that’s about that. The whole purpose of the demo in the narrative sense was to just tie another story into the ending of the original Kingdom Hearts, and on every other front didn’t add much. That left the demo with very little balance between gameplay and narrative— with gameplay being the main focus but being somewhat panned and narrative being very minimal but being what a lot of people focused on in terms of longevity, which is typically opposite in Kingdom Hearts.
Then, in early 2019, Kingdom Hearts III finally released. When it came out, many fans worries were alleviated— even if only slightly. The combat was faster and had more weight, which was a much loved change compared to 0.2. Sora’s movements in flowmotion chained better, the aerial combos didn’t take six years to come out, and overall combat felt snappier.
But compared to earlier entries, this combat still felt a little off. Sora’s combo moves all felt like they came out fairly slowly, with a normal length aerial combo taking almost double that of a maximum length aerial combo in Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix. On top of that, some of the strength values at the end of the game were rather disproportionate (i.e., the final boss takes a LOT to take down unless you’re overleveled for the area you’re in, basically) and there’s a rather distinct lack of mini-bosses, bosses, and super bosses in the game (KHIIFM had not very many mini-bosses, at least two bosses per world excluding 100 Acre Wood, and 14 super-bosses. KHIII base game had a lot of random mob fights, a lot of set-piece bosses alongside the actual bosses, the end of the game essentially being a “Greatest Hits” of “don’t you wish these fights were in the game?” followed by what is essentially a super-boss for the final boss, all accompanied by one secret super-boss that you can’t even try to fight until after you beat the game.) The narrative itself takes a backseat until the last quarter of the game in which you literally act out the prophecy that has been foretold across almost every single game before this one: the Keyblade War. Narrative again took a backseat to somewhat lackluster gameplay that didn’t really get to shine much during the best points of the game, given there are so few bosses.
If it sounds like I’m salty about the state in which Kingdom Hearts III was released, it’s because I kinda was. Key word there being “was”.
Kingdom Hearts III RE:Mind was released in January of this year, 2020. With the release of RE:Mind came a free update that improved upon combat and movement in general among these being the increase of combo speed. It also came with the DLC (obviously), which remixed the “Greatest Hits” I talked about earlier so you can either play as Sora or one of the assists you have during that fight in the main game, added four to six new bosses on top of that (the first of which being a powered up rehash of the secret super boss from the base game, another of which being a set-piece), as well as an additional 13 super bosses and 1 more secret super boss. Now reading that sounds like some 14 year old found a bunch of buzz words about JRPGs to promote their upcoming RPGMaker game, I get that, but this level of content? Insane addition, even for Square Enix. Ultimately, this DLC remedies the issues of gameplay and adds on narrative that balances with those gameplay changes. It strikes the happy medium of focus on where the gameplay shines and then supporting the narrative as well.
Really, I just wanted a reason to rant about how good RE:Mind is, so this has been about 800 words of that and some mildly apt comparisons in relation to gameplay balancing and narrative.
Probably the worst blog post yet, imo.
C. B. Irby 