Kingdom Hearts 3
There’s something almost defiant about Kingdom Hearts as a series—the idea that you can smash Disney and Final Fantasy together, throw in a teenager with a giant key for a sword, add mythology about light and darkness and hearts, and somehow make it all land. It shouldn’t work. It keeps working.
KH3 finally came out and after the wait, the experience is exactly what you’d expect if you’ve played the others. You’re in Frozen, then Pirates of the Caribbean, then Tangled, moving between worlds with Sora and Donald and Goofy, collecting allies and keychains and fighting an ongoing battle with darkness. The Keyblade transforms into different shapes mid-combo, you summon Disney rides as weapons, you ride ice slides created by magic. It’s visually absurd and almost aggressively flashy.
The game is really three things in rotation: talking, running, and fighting. Exposition, movement, combat. Each one takes its time. If you’re impatient with any of them, you’ll feel the other two dragging. And the story—god, the story. If you haven’t played the six or seven prior games (depending on how you count them), you’ll need YouTube just to understand who’s talking about what. I had to relearn entire character arcs I’d forgotten.
But there’s something endearing about how earnest KH3 is about its own absurdity. The plot about light and darkness and friendship takes itself completely seriously while happening inside Arendelle and the world of Ratatouille. Somehow, by the end, you’ve gotten attached to these people and you care what happens to them, even though it’s ridiculous.
The combat is dumb and fun—thirty combos stacked into a single fight, your numbers rising while explosions bloom behind the characters. The soundtrack is reliably orchestral and dramatic. Hikaru Utada came back for the main theme, Skrillex got involved somehow, and it all works in that way Japanese games make orchestral music work.
It’s a game for people who got attached to Kingdom Hearts when they were young and never let go, who think mixing Disney and anime action is the most interesting idea in gaming, who don’t mind that the story requires a flowchart. If you want coherent narrative structure, you’re in the wrong place. If you want to spend thirty hours in a mashup of everything, comfortable and familiar and deeply, unapologetically strange, this is exactly what it’s always been.