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 7th world. Also worth knowing that I am playing on Proud Mode, the hardest difficulty available from the start.
So that cold I mentioned in my last post got worse and knocked me on my ass so it took me like a full week to play through the Pirates of the Caribbean world (including finally finishing it after being unable to sleep at 2am and deciding I might as well do something with my time if I was gonna be awake coughing). Anyway, it was a good level, in spite of me dragging it out.
The very first thought I had is that I actually really love the slight change to the art style of Goofy and Donald, and I’d much prefer if they just went with that for the whole game, but I get it doesn’t match the cartoony vibe they’re generally going for. They did a much better job of matching Sora to the Pirates world than in Kingdom Hearts II, where he showed up in his regular clothes and normal art style but everyone else was more realistic. There’s much more self consistency in this game and it does a lot to help place you in the world.
Ok so up top Sora, Donald, and Goofy straight up DIE by falling off of a waterfall, and waking up in Davy Jones’ Locker. Donald and Goofy even have a line where they almost realize they were dead for a little while, which is hilarious but obviously unimportant to the larger story. The first thing you have to do in this world is catch up with the Black Pearl, and right away you learn that this level is more about gimmicky gameplay moments than any other so far. You gain the ability to swim and dive underwater (and not only does Sora not need to breathe, he can even talk underwater) which allows you to explore underwater caves and later will let you explore more open areas. After you find a ship you get to actually pilot it around the ocean, and immediately have to partake in ship race against Luxord, this level’s Organization antagonist. Then you have to explore Port Royal to find 200 white crabs in order to repair your ship and sail back out in search of Luxord.
This bit with the white crabs is easily the worst part of the level because Port Royal is a huge open space and all you can do is run around smashing crates looking for these damn crabs. I get that they built this big area and need to give players a reason to explore it, but I would’ve at least appreciated the ability to save my game in the middle of my search so I could take a break from crab hunting. It was needlessly monotonous and totally broke the flow of the level.
However, once you get done with that bit you get access to your ship again and you’re able to enjoy one of my favorite parts of the game thus far. The entire ocean is open to you to explore as you see fit. A dozen or more islands scatter the waters, ready for you to land on in search of treasure (and a couple really well designed Lucky Emblems). When I first saw the expanse of sea in front of me I was a bit intimidated, and thought I would rather just continue onto the next story bit, but once you visit a few islands you’ll want to keep looking for more.
It’s also worth your time to explore because as you do you’ll find more white crabs, and the more crabs you find the higher your ship’s level, which unlocks more abilities and makes you stronger in battle. Oh yea, I didn’t mention it before, but your ship is for more than traveling: there are also naval battles. The system for fighting is simple enough - use X or R2 to first your cannons at your opponents, hit Square to put up a temporary shield around your ship, eventually you can use Circle to boost through the water, and Triangle will give you stronger attacks like the finishing moves and summons you normally use. What makes it fun is navigating around your enemies, trying to get the best shot on them. Each ship has a glowing orb somewhere on its surface to denote how strong it is - green is weakest, then blue, then red - and if you hit the orb directly you’ll cause significantly more damage. Enemies will spawn randomly as you explore the open waters, but if you try to go straight to the next story beat you’ll be met with a very tough battle against multiple high level ships that will make short work of you. It’s in your best interest to explore the world a bit, level up your ship, learn the ropes of fighting against random encounters, and then try your luck at the story boss. It’s a pretty tough battle, especially if you get unlucky and don’t get many reaction commands to deal extra damage. I found it to be much harder than either of the two fights that followed.
Once you meet back up with the cast of the Pirates movie, you advance that storyline to the end in a twist on the film’s ending that puts you in the center of the action while the Black Pearl is being attacked by a Kraken. Your ship has to fire at the Kraken’s tentacles while also warding off the Flying Dutchman, which appears periodically to fire at the Black Pearl. If the Black Pearl takes on too much damage, you lose. I didn’t have much trouble with this fight, so it was more about the spectacle than the challenge.
Finally you wrap up the level with a fight against Davy Jones himself. He has the ability to sink into the floor of the ship and move to a new location, which also gives him temporary invincibility, which is sure to mess you up if you don’t catch it when it happens. However if you can get him into an aerial combo you can deal a huge amount of damage before he’s able to counterattack, which makes the fight more of a marathon than a fight for your own life. He does eventually summon the Kraken’s tentacles onto the ship, and they’ll hit you hard if you get too close, but you can take them out easily enough before returning focus to the villain himself. I stuck with my Happy Gear Keyblade from Monstropolis which felt effective in this scenario.
I’d rate this level very highly. It had a lot of gameplay gimmicks sure, but for the most part they were a lot of fun (I actually just realized I completely skipped over the aerial battle you have against a giant Heartless while you’re riding another Heartless, so that’s another one for you). The crab search in Port Royal was a low point, but nothing else in this world came close to matching it. I don’t have much affinity for Pirates as a series, and was pretty unimpressed with the level in Kingdom Hearts II, but I think they do a great job of making this world feel cohesive and fun to play. I can see myself going back just to do some more pirate ship exploration.
After the level you get a couple cutscenes, I think I have them in the right order here. First we see Axel and Kairi in their training world. Kairi is wearing her new outfit, and asks why Axel won’t change into his. He seems to just like the black robes. He reflects on having known Ventus when he was younger, and that his memory of Ventus is part of why he became friends with Roxas - because Roxas looks just like Ven. Now Axel is nervous that they’ll save Ventus but Ventus won’t remember him. Kairi says she wants to let Namine free so she can be her own person, which dovetails nicely with Sora wanting to free Roxas - I like that because they haven’t met and discussed that, it’s like they both came to the same conclusion on their own. I’m excited to see these two come out of their training world and get involved in the story proper.
Next we get an entirely too brief cutscene with Riku and Mickey back at the Dark Margin, where they both have new keyblades. Riku is knocked back by the Demon Tide again (is it Tide or Tower? Sorry…) and Mickey is seemingly swallowed up by it before we cut away. Shame on Square for giving us so little here
The next sequence is much longer, and sees Ansem Seeker of Darkness and Ansem the Wise arriving in Twilight Town, apparently to look into some of the Wise’s research. They’re still talking about the “girl” but it’s more confusing to me now than before. They bring up both Kairi and Namine’s names multiple times, but then still refer to “the girl” as “the girl” so I’m not sure if it is meant to be either of them? When they first start talking it seems as if they mean Namine, and that they just aren’t aware that she merged with Kairi, which would make sense considering the earlier scene where Kairi mentions wanting to free Namine. But something about their constant reference to “the girl” and not making it explicit that they mean Namine makes me think they must mean someone else. But there’s another problem here because initially I theorized they were looking for Elrena in order to turn her back into Larxene, but this scene seems to take place in the current time, when Larxene is already back in that form. When we first saw the two Ansems meet, it looked like a flashback that could’ve taken place at any time, but in this new scene we have Hayner, Pence, and Olette watching the mansion, which is what they are doing in the current time. So I’m stumped on this one, I feel like the timing of some of these scenes just doesn’t add up right now, also it’s a bit of a bummer that you can go to Twilight Town right after watching this scene but nothing happens. It would’ve been cool to have a new playable bit open where you can meet up with Ansem the Wise, but I’m sure that’s forthcoming…
That’s all for this time, hopefully the next entry doesn’t take me days but I’m still fighting this cold so it’s hard to say when I’ll be able to play through a whole level. I feel I’m locked into this format at this point because it just feels like a nice way to frame the discussion, but if it gets really bad maybe I’ll do more updates.