Kingdom Hearts 3 Chronicles is my attempt to keep up with my thoughts on Kingdom Hearts III after every session. Today’s post will cover the 3rd world. Also worth knowing that I am playing on Proud Mode, the hardest difficulty available from the start.
Starting off the day I got into my first gummi ship battle. I somewhat mocked the gummi ship mode in my last post, since I don’t fully understand what they’re trying to accomplish with it, but I will say that having an actual battle in this space was more enjoyable than I expected. It actually is a nice change of pace.
I opted to go for the Toy Box world, although the Kingdom of Corona is also open at this point. My motivation was simply that Toy Box had the lower battle level. On first impressions, my hot take is that I’m not thrilled with the voice of Buzz Lightyear. The performance isn’t bad or anything, it just sounds… off compared to what I know Buzz is supposed to sound like. Apparently Mike MacRae, the actor, has done Buzz’s video game voice for a few years, but it just didn’t sit with me. A small nitpick, I know. Woody on the other hand is voiced by Jim Hanks, who naturally does a wonderful impression of his brother’s voice for Woody.
Andy’s House is a nice little “toy box” to move around in before getting to the absolutely massive world that follows. The fact that the street outside is a continuous area from Andy’s room is insane. Like I played Final Fantasy XV, so I know what it’s like to have a complete and full world that is totally open for exploration, but it’s never been in a Kingdom Hearts game and that’s what’s so damn impressive about it.
Then you get to the Toy Store, which is just too big, it’s overwhelming. You have multiple floors with multiple sub-areas to explore, and it’s more or less all available from the start. I started exploring every floor before realizing there would be time for that later, and that it made more sense to just go with the flow of the story and see where it took me. Sure enough I ended up close to those areas I didn’t explore. Each room in the toy store has its own identity which is a huge draw, because they feel like these little sub areas within the greater space. The entire thing is also continuous, so you can go to the doll room, or the game room, or the action figure room, and the game doesn’t put any loading screens up to slow you down (a small caveat that when you first play through the story, the route you take leads to some air vents which DO have a loading zone, but once you open that path you can move around the store freely).
Oh, and there’s mechs. Straight up robots you can hop inside and use in battle against other mechs. And it’s pretty necessary to find yourself a mech when one of the evil ones show up because they can make quick work of your fragile non-robotic self. The best part is how they’re integrated into the story: in this world there is a video game called Verum Rex, which is basically a Final Fantasy Versus XIII parody featuring giant robots. The toys mistake Sora for the protagonist of this game, which forms a running gag up to the point where you find an ad for the game and see it’s actually published by Square Enix. So Square Enix exists within the Kingdom Hearts universe. In the action figure section you can even find toy versions of the summons from Dissidia NT, which means Final Fantasy characters both exist in the Kingdom Hearts world and are video game characters. The implications are endless...but it’s all probably a Square Enix in-joke, which is just fantastic to imagine. I’m glad Nomura and his team seem to have a sense of humor.
Ok so you find out Young Xehanort is back, so that’s cool. He manipulates Buzz to (briefly) fall to the dark side. This bit is cool because they’re toying with the idea of hearts filling empty vessels (after the world it pays off with Riku realizing a heart could be put into a replica, leading to them seeking out Even/Vexen, hoping he’s still around and able to help). That has some fun implications for the characters we need to bring back, as well as those we already know. A little sad I didn’t get to fight Young Xehanort, but the boss battle you do get is a good time.
I didn’t talk much about Keyblade form changes in the previous post, so the Shooting Star Keyblade you get at the end of Traverse Town may be as good a place as any. After using your Keyblade for a certain amount of attacks (tracked right above your command window with arrows; 3 arrows triggers this) your Keyblade can transform into a new stage. The Shooting Star Keyblade turns into Double Arrowguns, which as the name suggests is more gun than Keyblade (nobody tell Leon that Sora is trying out a gunblade). Sora floats above the ground and shoots blast of light at enemies. This form can in turn transform again into the Magic Launcher, which both shoots large light balls and can deal physical combos like a regular Keyblade would. Getting to this level will also give you a powerful finishing move, where Sora shoots a massive magical blast at the enemy. This skill is particularly useful in the Toy Box world because the enemy mechs that roam the toy store are incredibly dangerous up close, so you can play it safe by zipping around and attacking from a distance.
So far this world was the best, just filled to the brim with fun things to do and explore. I didn’t even mention the miniboss, which is a possessed anime doll that will probably give me nightmares. It’s just weird and I’m happy the game is going for weird.