I started with KH 1 when it released but...

[WhateverWorks]

Tonight is my first time playing KH3. I waited, mostly because I knew it would one day reach PC, and partly because I didn't particularly hear good things about it when it came out. Fast forward to tonight and I just finished the into cutscene and FMV, and I'm making my initial choices. I mainly just wanted to make a topic to say, wow. This game is beautiful, and the moment I was able to move as sora I could tell I'm going to enjoy the game play a lot.

A tad annoying that they show you things from the end of the game right in the beginning, but whatever. I'm planning on avoiding the "ride" reaction commands I've heard people talking about, and I might install a mod or two if I don't like how drive forms are handled. Any tips?

[Midnight Sky ✨🌙✨]

There's a mod that gives you critical difficult exclusive abilities, I recommend installing that as they completely remove attraction flow. They also make entering keyblade transformations much more consistent as you're guaranteed to roll one when you get situation commands. Unfortunately, I believe you need to do it on a fresh save.

As for actual tips for playing the game, make sure to make use of links once you have them, which are the summons for 3. Summons have always been strong in kh, but they're the strongest they've ever been in 3. Keep in mind you need a full bar of magic to use them.

[WhateverWorks]

Holy crap the story is insanely boring. I'm having a hard time resisting the urge to skip scenes because it's like one ten minute scene after another. I realize the other games were also like this but man...idk. Also I realize Disney expects you to have played every ounce of media involved with this story to make sense of any of it, but this is way more egregious than going into 2 straight from 1 was.

[Midnight Sky ✨🌙✨]

Originally posted by WhateverWorks:

Holy crap the story is insanely boring. I'm having a hard time resisting the urge to skip scenes because it's like one ten minute scene after another. I realize the other games were also like this but man...idk. Also I realize Disney expects you to have played every ounce of media involved with this story to make sense of any of it, but this is way more egregious than going into 2 straight from 1 was.

There's a lot more games between 2 and 3.

If you want to play catch-up, you have a few options with story summaries. My go to would honestly be the videos from the channel "Ask Your Uncle" since he summarizes them while recognizing that this series is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid so he doesn't take it too seriously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvWTqM7ad10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKxe--zj3x0

Also some of the world really are just boring no matter how much knowledge you come in with. This series made me hate Frozen and I never watched it.

[WhateverWorks]

Appreciated, I played BBS when it released originally but I only did the Tera storyline. I do intend to revisit that one because I genuinely like those three characters (more than the "main" keyblade wielders tbh), but there is zero chance I'm going to devote the time to play everything else. To me, this series really ought to have been 5 games tops. 1, 2, 3, BBS, and a version of CoM that plays like an actual Kingdom Hearts game.

They didn't actually need to do whatever Disney woo-doo to bring back already dead villains, this isn't a universe that is difficult to imagine a new threat in. Could have made Vanitas the final big bad of Sora's story, presenting a deeply personal fight that can't be avoided and has huge repurcussions. Present it as "this is the last remaining source of Darkness that Xehanort caused" or something. Idk, I feel like less could have been more. The gameplay is insanely fun though, no denying that.

[Alpacaparty]

Originally posted by WhateverWorks:

Holy crap the story is insanely boring. I'm having a hard time resisting the urge to skip scenes because it's like one ten minute scene after another. I realize the other games were also like this but man...idk. Also I realize Disney expects you to have played every ounce of media involved with this story to make sense of any of it, but this is way more egregious than going into 2 straight from 1 was.

There's thankfully a lot of good "this is the story so far" videos on youtube and the likes, so you don't really have to play all the games.

[KaosReigns]

Originally posted by WhateverWorks:

Holy crap the story is insanely boring. I'm having a hard time resisting the urge to skip scenes because it's like one ten minute scene after another. I realize the other games were also like this but man...idk. Also I realize Disney expects you to have played every ounce of media involved with this story to make sense of any of it, but this is way more egregious than going into 2 straight from 1 was.

Oh, it gets so much worse when you do a run while skipping all the cutscenes. You realize pretty fast there is only about 6-8 hours of actual gameplay involved. I did my ez merit run in less than 10 hours.

[Protoman]

Another first-timer here. Yeah, I agree the worlds this time are even smaller than the ones in KH1/2. I don't know yet if I'm going to visit every world twice (like in KH2), but I've finished Olympus in 20 minutes, there are like 5 battles total and the bosses in there. I started right in Critical Mode because that's what I did in all previous games, and I probably died some 20 times before getting the hang of the battle system.

Things I disliked so far:
- game throws you into difficult battles right off the bat
- almost every enemy that can do a charge attack, will do so from offscreen and wreck you
- tons of tutorials, and some of them even have wrong descriptions (usually don't mention R2/X do the same thing). I just started Olympus and I've already seen like 20 tutorial screens.
- attractions (...)

One minor gripe is that the shield slide reaction command in Olympus... is it just me or you can just ignore it? I fell from the shield after slamming onto the wall, and Sora fell on the hot ground twice, did the whole "it's hot!" but took no damage. The third time he touched the ground he could just walk over it.

[mdesaleah]

Whatever you saw at the beginning is not what is actually shown in the end

If you meant the intro, then vaguely it shows battles and what happens later in a general way towards the end. It’s not actually any cutscene that happens later. Most of the intro is a fancy recap of previous games, like Sora Riku and Kairi being separated from KH1, Roxas fighting Axel from 2, Xion from Days, and the BBS trio also getting separated

It’s more of a music video with recap and implications. No literal ending scenes are used

If you mean the heart platform where you pick your ability routes, those are images from all the previous games