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Guess the Review Score

  • 95+

    Votes: 42 3.3%
  • 90-94

    Votes: 192 15.2%
  • 85-89

    Votes: 592 46.8%
  • 80-84

    Votes: 366 28.9%
  • < 80

    Votes: 73 5.8%

  • Total voters
    1,265
  • Poll closed .

Famassu

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,186
None of what you just wrote made an adequate case for why BBS is a PSP game and not a PS3 game. You didn't really engage with what you quoted.
The simple answer is that they didn't have resources. A PS3 Kingdom Hearts would be a much bigger project and require far more manpower than SQEX had available at the time, let alone after they ran into issues with FFXIII, XIV & Versus XIII's development. PSP level handheld games were something they could do with a studio like the one at Osaka.
 

Applebite

Member
Oct 27, 2017
569
DDD is the sequel to KH2 and KH3 is the sequel to DDD, despite the names. It's only logical that KH3 relies a lot on DDD (and BbS). It's like saying that Harry Potter 6 shouldn't be so important to enjoy HP7 which makes no sense.
The "despite the names" part is the most important part, though. How the stories follow doesn't really matter in this case, it's how it was marketed and appeared outwardly to casual fans. If KH3D was called Kingdom Hearts 3 and KH3 was called Kingdom Hearts 4, they wouldn't have been in this mess.
 

Iceternal

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,499
According to Gamekult, Square Enix only sent review codes to select websites of their choosing. It's insane.
 

Serene

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
52,534
Had they designed to make BBS for PS3, it would have gotten Versus XIII'd
 

Inuhanyou

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
14,214
New Jersey
These are both fair points. Though, it doesn't really change that a big portion of the playerbase is out of the loop because of that.

At the time, SE were going through a crisis with their console segments in various ways, it was a clusterfuck. Almost nothing, regardless of the team, was able to be completed outside of lighting spinoffs and the fixing up of FF14(which had originally been a disaster)

That's why to actually continue the story, the handhelds were the only solution. Nomura originally wanted BBS on PS2, but by the time they were able to start full work on it, that was out of style
 

PlanetSmasher

The Abominable Showman
Member
Oct 25, 2017
115,742
The "despite the names" part is the most important part, though. How the stories follow doesn't really matter in this case, it's how it was marketed and appeared outwardly to casual fans. If KH3D was called Kingdom Hearts 3 and KH3 was called Kingdom Hearts 4, they wouldn't have been in this mess.

Nah, then you'd run into this argument: "WHY IS KINGDOM HEARTS 4 ON THE DS!?!?"

There's no way to win here.
 

Milennia

Prophet of Truth - Community Resetter
Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,254
Holy shit I thought this would be way more decisive then it ended up being review wise, fantastic
 

Braaier

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
13,237
I was surprised about the RE2 scores and I'm surprised again. It will be interesting to see how the outlets that didn't get review copies score this. I'm thinking the current score will drop.
 

Applebite

Member
Oct 27, 2017
569
I got more trailers and interviews, don't worry
Do you actually expect the casual audience to care about this? Why do you think the KH3 trailer garnered so much more attention than any other game in that franchise since 2? The only thing that really matters is how the game is titled. The content of trailers and interviews don't really matter to an audience that immediately sees it as "another one of those spin-off titles".
 

bombshell

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,927
Denmark
Gamereactor DK: 10/10

+ Phenomenal story, fun gameplay, interesting characters, incredibly beautiful, improves ideas from previous titles.
- The beginning is probably confusing for some players.
 
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KanameYuuki

Member
Dec 23, 2017
2,650
Colombia
It's why he is the best protagonist for Kingdom Hearts.

Even if Nomura's shitty writing didn't intend it, I have given The Keyblade Master all the depth he requires. The perfect person to save Disney worlds, and his friends only.

That really is the best part, Riku is for all the intents and purposes, even canon wise, the real protagonist, he got into serious problems, grew up as a character, got insane power ups, heck he actually graduated unlike Sora but he loves his friend is having the time of his life.
 

Lukar

Unshakable Resolve - Prophet of Truth
Member
Oct 27, 2017
23,413
Had they designed to make BBS for PS3, it would have gotten Versus XIII'd
Bingo. I'm glad the series hasn't come back to home systems until now, because if they'd tried to continue on the PS3 or 360 instead of moving to other systems, then the series would be dead in the fucking water. Let's not forget what happened with Crystal Tools and FF14. SE was a disaster in a lot of ways last gen in terms of home console development.

Keeping the budget, scope, etc. for the series small in those years probably saved it.
 

PlanetSmasher

The Abominable Showman
Member
Oct 25, 2017
115,742
Bingo. I'm glad the series hasn't come back to home systems until now, because if they'd tried to continue on the PS3 or 360 instead of moving to other systems, then the series would be dead in the fucking water.

Keeping the budget, scope, etc. for the series small in those years probably saved it.

I'm just imagining a timeline where Nomura was trying to make KH3 and Versus XIII on the PS3 at the same time.

Dude probably would've killed himself from the sheer stress. Especially considering how badly he was fucked over and jerked around by Square for the entirety of last generation and most of this one.
 

Skittles

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,274
I think it is pretty ridiculous and condescending of you to expect the majority of an audience to catch up with remasters and rereleases when this is the next numbered entry in the franchise. I don't think it's unreasonable for an audience to expect the experience of playing 1, 2 and 3 of a series to be a relatively smooth or logical experience. If SE hadn't made a mess of making the most significant story entries in the series spin-off titles (and I mean in a marketing sense as they are not numbered), there wouldn't be a problem here. It doesn't make sense to me to put the blame on the players to not be able to make sense of the mess that SE and Nomura have made, even if they have tried to redeem themselves with their re-releases. The damage is done and it's not on the (casual) playerbase to fix it. Best case scenario, KH3 has a quick summary of what happened since KH2 to provide context to the audience.
19789999.jpg
 

Wrestleman

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,304
Virginia
That's really is the best part, Riku is for all the all intents and purposes, even canon wise, the real protagonist, he got into serious problems, grew up as a character, got insane power ups, heck he actually graduated unlike Sora but he loves his friend is having the time of his life.

Sora has always felt like more of a likeable vehicle for the story than the actual main character per se. And that's fine, because he has enough character and development to carry that. Going into the next arc, it would be nice to get a bit more focus back on him himself, though.
 

mnk

Member
Nov 11, 2017
6,340
The Polygon reviewer meant this to sound negative but honestly it's one of the most exciting reassurances I've read that KH3 is truly still a KH game at the core. So good.
Sounds like someone needed to replay the first trip to Traverse Town. Sora's not allowed to frown if he wants to keep traveling with Donald and Goofy!
 

Serene

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
52,534
Bingo. I'm glad the series hasn't come back to home systems until now, because if they'd tried to continue on the PS3 or 360 instead of moving to other systems, then the series would be dead in the fucking water. Let's not forget what happened with Crystal Tools and FF14. SE was a disaster in a lot of ways last gen in terms of home console development.

Keeping the budget, scope, etc. for the series small in those years probably saved it.

Even KH3 started shaky in that regard

Be able to get off of Luminous and onto UE4 probably saved development in some ways
 

Damerman

Banned
Jun 9, 2018
850
There are so many bad worlds in the series, it's difficult to pick one as the absolute worst. That's kind of the problem. There's a lot of crap in the series which tarnishes the good aspects. I'm still disappointed how they managed to ruin good worlds like Mulan and The Lion King in KH2. Those had so much potential and they just fucked them straight up.
Agreed and it seems they did the same with frozen and tangled. Its frustrating, but so long as i have fun just walking around the new twilight town, andy's room and san fransokyo the game is a success for me.
 
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PlanetSmasher

The Abominable Showman
Member
Oct 25, 2017
115,742
Would have been better for the casual fans though. At least then they'll have known it's an important story.

To be fair, though, casual fans would probably be the ones least effected by all of this. The issue here right now is people who are apparently extremely hyped to play this game but somehow went an entire decade actively avoiding every single opportunity to get caught up.
 

THE GUY

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,223
That's really is the best part, Riku is for all the all intents and purposes, even canon wise, the real protagonist, he got into serious problems, grew up as a character, got insane power ups, heck he actually graduated unlike Sora but he loves his friend is having the time of his life.
Can't wait for Kingdom Hearts 3 to end one of two ways:

1. Sora and his friends come out of it all cool. Everyone else is screwed. Because this is a fitting ending for Psycho Sora's journey.
2. Everyone else comes out fine, but as justice for Sora being such a selfish shit, he's the one who ends up screwed. Preferably because of one of Riku or Kairi.

Basically, either Sora gets his, or Sora gets his.

Personally, I'm rooting for 1 because fuck Roxas. He's literally a nobody.
 

Applebite

Member
Oct 27, 2017
569
The simple answer is that they didn't have resources. A PS3 Kingdom Hearts would be a much bigger project and require far more manpower than SQEX had available at the time, let alone after they ran into issues with FFXIII, XIV & Versus XIII's development. PSP level handheld games were something they could do with a studio like the one at Osaka.
At the time, SE were going through a crisis with their console segments in various ways, it was a clusterfuck. Almost nothing, regardless of the team, was able to be completed outside of lighting spinoffs and the fixing up of FF14(which had originally been a disaster)

That's why to actually continue the story, the handhelds were the only solution. Nomura originally wanted BBS on PS2, but by the time they were able to start full work on it, that was out of style
Nah, then you'd run into this argument: "WHY IS KINGDOM HEARTS 4 ON THE DS!?!?"

There's no way to win here.
You are all essentially making the same argument here: SE was, for whatever reason you might choose, forced to release a KH game on handhelds instead of consoles. Because they were on handhelds, they should not have a mainline title. But I don't think any of this disproves that they made a mess by doing this. And despite any financial or logistical reasons, this is all still on Square Enix. That the games with the most important story bits were released as handheld titles with what appears to be spin-off names. This is their mistake, and I don't think it's fair to expect the audience to make up for it. They could have either titled the games in a way that would communicate what they were canonically to the fans better, or they could have held off until they could develop fully fledged KH titles. In any case, this is ultimately not a problem made by the consumers, and expecting them to catch up on this logistical mess is unrealistic.
 

JayWood2010

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,120
Glad to see its doing well so far. I know a lot of people are emotionally attached to this series, and I hope its a worthy resolution for all the fans out there.
 

Applebite

Member
Oct 27, 2017
569
Thanks for the meme response buddy, really appreciate your valuable insight into this discussion. I'm just going by what megafans on here have been communicating about BBS and DDD. But it's nice of you to dismiss an entire discussion because you don't think those games are the most significant story entries.
 

shaneo632

Weekend Planner
Member
Oct 29, 2017
29,008
Wrexham, Wales
So weird that Eurogamer of all outlets didn't get a review code yet.

I guess that means I have zero chance getting my request fulfilled, lmao.
 

Sparks

Senior Games Artist
Verified
Dec 10, 2018
2,879
Los Angeles
Pretty great and what we expected.

Not sure how people expect this to be high 90's, honestly I'm not even sure what a Kingdom Hearts could do to get to high 90's. There is no way that story could ever be salvaged enough to be a masterpiece.
 

Milennia

Prophet of Truth - Community Resetter
Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,254
I seems as though a common theme is that there's huge payoff for everything and that's pretty much all I care about after all these years
 

KanameYuuki

Member
Dec 23, 2017
2,650
Colombia
Sora has always felt like more of a likeable vehicle for the story than the actual main character per se. And that's fine, because he has enough character and development to carry that. Going into the next arc, it would be nice to get a bit more focus back on him himself, though.

I hope so, would be amazing if we get a transformation like Aang, a cute dork first then the wise man he became on Korra.

Personally, I'm rooting for 1 because fuck Roxas. He's literally a nobody.
He is one of the main plot points I'm more interested in, he isn't Sora nor Ventus, can't wait.
 
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PlanetSmasher

The Abominable Showman
Member
Oct 25, 2017
115,742
You are all essentially making the same argument here: SE was, for whatever reason you might choose, forced to release a KH game on handhelds instead of consoles. Because they were on handhelds, they should not have a mainline title. But I don't think any of this disproves that they made a mess by doing this. And despite any financial or logistical reasons, this is all still on Square Enix. That the games with the most important story bits were released as handheld titles with what appears to be spin-off names. This is their mistake, and I don't think it's fair to expect the audience to make up for it. They could have either titled the games in a way that would communicate what they were canonically to the fans better, or they could have held off until they could develop fully fledged KH titles. In any case, this is ultimately not a problem made by the consumers, and expecting them to catch up on this logistical mess is unrealistic.

They would've had to wait almost an entire decade to put anything in the series out, because last generation was a literal nightmare for Japanese developers. This idea that the entire series should just be frozen in time for ten to thirteen years so that people who are too stubborn to play games in a series they supposedly like is maddening to me.

Again. Dream Drop Distance is not that important. I don't know how many fucking times I have to reiterate this point. The only things you need to know from that game are that Xehanort is alive again and Sora failed the Mark of Mastery exam while Riku passed it. That's literally it.

Birth by Sleep is important, yes, but if you literally can't be arsed to play a SINGLE GAME without a mainline "numbered" title, even in a long, long dead period between mainline releases, when it was ported and released at a discount price on multiple more accessible consoles, you probably don't care that much about the series as a whole.
 

LuisGarcia

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
3,478
Not sure if I will start on Proud or normal. I normally do normal but the too easy complaints may make me play proud.
 

Skittles

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,274
Thanks for the meme response buddy, really appreciate your valuable insight into this discussion. I'm just going by what megafans on here have been communicating about BBS and DDD. But it's nice of you to dismiss an entire discussion because you don't think those games are the most significant story entries.
You're using the word spin off even when the titles in question are significant to the storyline...that's not what spin off means lol. You and a lot of other people seem to be confused about that. CoM, BBS, and DDD were never advertised as spin off titles.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
5,620
Watertown, NY
You are all essentially making the same argument here: SE was, for whatever reason you might choose, forced to release a KH game on handhelds instead of consoles. Because they were on handhelds, they should not have a mainline title. But I don't think any of this disproves that they made a mess by doing this. And despite any financial or logistical reasons, this is all still on Square Enix. That the games with the most important story bits were released as handheld titles with what appears to be spin-off names. This is their mistake, and I don't think it's fair to expect the audience to make up for it. They could have either titled the games in a way that would communicate what they were canonically to the fans better, or they could have held off until they could develop fully fledged KH titles. In any case, this is ultimately not a problem made by the consumers, and expecting them to catch up on this logistical mess is unrealistic.

Thank You.

It's like people live in alternate realities of how a product should be treated, and not fragment player base. I feel they should have had BBS and the likes be spin offs without having any huge or significant story impact.

Then when they had the funds and team did a full KH3 that starts where KH2 left off.

I mean how are people not acknowledging a lot of reviewers that do love the game say the main negatives are the story being confusing?
 

badcrumble

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,732
Thanks for the meme response buddy, really appreciate your valuable insight into this discussion. I'm just going by what megafans on here have been communicating about BBS and DDD. But it's nice of you to dismiss an entire discussion because you don't think those games are the most significant story entries.
The problem is that the *titles* of BBS and DDD are bad, not that KH3 is bad for having a story that follows up on them.
 

crash-14

Member
Oct 27, 2017
341
Some thoughts from another person at Gamespot





call it

I'm going to post the same I did a few weeks back in another thread very similar.

87-89 with a chance to be in low 90.

I've seen press far more positive with 3 than past entries. Press doesn't even acknowledge most of the concerns around combat and "floatiness" (Like happens in fighting games). They'll just see it's flashy, has good graphics, many options that are fun, extremly polish (like every KH game) and great boss fights. So if the story it's cohesive (For a KH story), with disney worlds not feeling like filler (Meaning they're integrated to the main plot like they were in 1) and self concludes in the right tone, I expect the game to have great reviews.

Yeah, I've seen many of the spoilers and I've seen fans concerns, but some of the pessimism comes from delusional expectations while other comes from content they expected/wanted in but is mia. I think it's going to be one of those weird cases where press values the game far more than many hardcore fans. I'm going to enjoy it regardless

It might end up around 85, but still what I expected from the trailers and the leaks I saw.


BTW, the reason the handhelds weren't called KH 0 or 3 it's because the gameplay it's different from the main one's due new core mechanics. That's the reason Nomura gave. They're not story spin-off but they're "gameplay spin-off". Yet 3 merges many of those mechanics into the mainline gameplay.
 

PlanetSmasher

The Abominable Showman
Member
Oct 25, 2017
115,742
Thank You.

It's like people live in alternate realities of how a product should be treated, and not fragment player base. I feel they should have had BBS and the likes be spin offs without having any huge or significant story impact.

Then when they had the funds and team did a full KH3 that starts where KH2 left off.

I mean how are people not acknowledging a lot of reviewers that do love the game say the main negatives are the story being confusing?

Who the hell wants to play a spinoff with no story value? The games might as well not exist at all if they don't have any story relevance. This isn't Kirby or Mario, it's an RPG franchise. People play them for story.
 

Alox12

Unshakable Resolve
Member
Jan 23, 2019
296
The "despite the names" part is the most important part, though. How the stories follow doesn't really matter in this case, it's how it was marketed and appeared outwardly to casual fans. If KH3D was called Kingdom Hearts 3 and KH3 was called Kingdom Hearts 4, they wouldn't have been in this mess.
I won't lie and tell that the names aren't confusing for a newcomer, because they are. The point is: if you're told that BbS and DDD are not spin-offs and that you need to play them/read the story, yet you still refuse to acknowledge them as essential games, then the blame is on you.

I think that the only ones that should be complaining are Xbox users because they weren't given a chance to catch up, and that's stupid.