Kingdom Hearts III (PS4) After almost two decades, and numerous spinoffs of inconsistent quality, the Kingdom Hearts trilogy finally concluded. What a ride it's been, and what a ride this last game was. However, there is a bit of a "spectacle over substance" issue. The graphics look better than ever, everything is over-the-top and flashy, and the music by the legendary Yoko Shimomura is absolutely phenomenal (Utada Hikaru killed it as well, and surprisingly, so did Skrillex). The game is consistently fun with fluid combat, and there's new things to do in every world - for instance, the Toy Story world has a mecha shooter element with giant robot toys, and the Pirates of the Caribbean world gives you a ship to partake in naval combat with. The downside of this is that, whilst all these different genres break up the combat (which frankly can be really button-mash-y on normal difficulty: I basically dodged and mashed X to attack and only died once, on the final boss), doing a lot of things doesn't mean they're done well. Which is not to say they're done badly, they're just passable at best. This game focuses on wrapping up all the loose ends of the Xehanort saga. While this is immensely satisfying for hardcore fans of the series, this narrative focus does have some flaws: firstly, all of the story basically happens in the endgame. Sora (the protagonist) has no purpose in visiting the various Disney worlds. He spends the majority of the game visiting places aimlessly trying to figure out what he needs to do (and obviously getting involved in the Disney stories along the way because he has nothing better to do). Secondly, to follow what's going on, this game expects you to have seen all of the relevant Disney movies and played all of the Kingdom Hearts games - including that dumpster fire of a mobile game. In fact, it doubles down on that, opening new unresolved plot points stemming from the mobile game's story (which is actually a really cool story, wasted on a terrible gatcha game). While I have a lot to complain about, however, my initial comment still stands: this game was loads of fun, and I'm glad foundations have been laid for the series to continue. 8.5/10 https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt_v8Ttl4Gj/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1zew88a84yxe
