Oh goodness, Kingdom Hearts III, how I love and loathe you
Let me start out by saying, some of the major issues with Kingdom Hearts III are Disney's fault, not Square's or Tetsuya Nomura (Disney likes to ruin shit, so that should come as no surprise). Some of the disappointments, however, are on the game itself.
One of the obvious talked about things is the exclusion of all Final Fantasy characters. I didn't notice until half way through the game (this isn't the first game that didn't have any, but it's the first of the numbered titles to not), and while I was disappointed, I both get their reasoning and disagree with it. One of the main reasons was that Kingdom Hearts originally needed the popularity of those FF characters to draw in fans, but that time has long since passed; Kingdom Hearts, obviously, has a huge, dedicated following of its own, so the FF characters were no longer necessary. Secondly, at the time, it was a novel concept to have FF characters from different games crossing over like that, but now we have so many things like Dissidia (originally intended as a KH spinoff if Disney wasn't always a bunch of fucks, but I digress), World of Final Fantasy, et cetera, that that's no longer an interesting drawing point either. However, while I understand that the FF characters were no longer necessary, they were still characters that were important to Sora and his story, with stories of their own that now remain unfinished. And as such, I disagree with the decision to exclude them entirely.
Another thing, which is really what bothered the shit out of me and still does, is how the Disney worlds were handled. Now, a large portion of this is entirely Disney's fault, but I don't think Square is free of fault at all. Who else noticed that the Kingdom of Corona, Arendelle, and Pirates were all rehashes of their respective movies (Pirates a little less so virtue of the fact that it had previously appeared in KH, but that actually presents more problems that I'll get to later)? And not only that, in those worlds especially there was extremely limited (to none!) interaction between the KH villains and Disney heroes, or Disney villains and KH heroes, which was an extreme let down. The worlds had absolutely zero bearing on the overall story, and were literally just there as filler. They did scene by scene recreations of the movies, for fucks sake. Never before has that been the case in KH; even when they went through the story line of the movies, they did it in such a manner that Sora and co. got to interact with the Disney villains (usually resulting in boss fights) and actually feel involved in the story (kinda like some really bad self inserts lol), and the KH villains actually interfered in and influenced the worlds.
In KH III? Mother Gothel interacted with Sora for like half a second, and only had a few minor scenes (the end boss fight was cool in how they did it, but other than that). And Hans? Not a single fucking line! You were literally a side character in Pirates of the Caribbean lmao. Anyways, the reason for all of this? The original teams of those movies were like "what, no, we told our story and it's complete, so we don't want you to fuck it up, so you either recreate this scene by scene with minimal changes or leave it out." And honestly? Fuck them. I don't respect that at all lol. It sucks, because Frozen should have been a no brainer as a KH world, it was honestly a perfect setting with perfect characters to showcase what KH was all about, but they couldn't do that.
And, unsurprisingly? The worlds that were done better in KH3 were the ones not owned entirely by Disney. The two Pixar worlds and the Marvel world. While I still don't think these worlds were done to their fullest potential, they were far, far better than the previous three. And with the Pixar worlds, it's because Pixar had the opposite approach for similar reasons: they also were like "hey, our story has been told, so if you're going to use our world, we'd rather you set it outside the events of what we've done." And honestly, I love the direction that took those worlds in. Toy Story's world was set between Toy Story 2 and 3, and took on its own little unique story, which allowed for more direct interaction and development with the characters. Same in Monstropolis, they set it after Monsters Inc., so you actually got to interact a bunch with Randall (though not as a boss unfortunately, he could've been cool), and Vanitas actually had some slight interaction with Randall and the others. As a cute side effect, Pixar said that setting the worlds in this way means that Sora and pals could totally be canon in those movie timelines, since they appeared outside of any screen time we've had. Similarly, San Fransokyo took on its own story line as well, which was awesome.
Unfortunately, even though those three worlds were done better, they still had no bearing on the main story, so all of the relevant shit happened between worlds and then got jam packed into the last few hours of the game in the Keyblade Graveyard and whatnot. It made everything feel drawn out and rushed at the same time; it took forever to get to the actual story, and when we did get it it was so hurried. That hurts, honestly, because there was so, so much potential in this game, and they just simply didn't live up to it. The combat and visuals were still great, but I did still have my gripes with those as well.
Back to Pirates, it wasn't as bad as Frozen and Tangled, but they still copied too much of the movie with limited interaction. There should have been more encounters with Davy Jones and the other villains, more interaction with Luxord, no stupid Jack clone that was literally there to be like "hey I'm distracting you while the rest of the movie plot happens off screen, again." The second game let you fight the cursed pirates as a fun, unique enemy. Why no Jones' crew? Sure, the naval combat was different and fun (and very Assassin's Creed), but it didn't have a point. Also, Sora kept repeating the words from Calypso about freeing her the entire world, but then didn't do jack shit about it at all lmao. It was such an irrelevant red herring. (Plus Jack promised to get his hands on Sora's keyblade next they met in KH II, so it's disappointing he forgot that promise lol)
Then there was the KH characters themselves, who . . . well, many simply had a lot of their character development thrown out or disregarded, because they fucking rushed all of that story. Master Xehanort's motives changed so that they could turn him into a misunderstood villain, Axel and Kairi were fucking useless despite all the hype around them (and reverting Lea's name to Axel for the fan service was dumb), and it all could have just been handled so much better, and that bit is entirely on Square and Tetsuya Nomura, since Disney had no hand in those characters or plots whatsoever.
As far as the combat, I was extremely let down by the lack of magic (give me my reflect! or any utility magic whatsoever, please), and the flowmotion was awful. I didn't use it at all. The triangle abilities were excessive (especially the attraction flow, which was fun but weird) and often broke the flow of combat entirely (especially the attractions), which is unforgivable in a series like KH where one of the main focuses has always been the combat and how well it flows. You were constantly being pulled out of it, and the inability to scroll through the available triangle commands to skip some or use the ones you wanted to was awful. The keyblade combos were cool, but, again, the transformations were loaded with animations that just destroyed the flow of combat and made it far less enjoyable.
The lack of Critical Mode is also a let down, since . . . well, any mode lower than that is too easy, especially with all the added combat stuff. Luckily they've already confirmed that they'll be remedying that by adding Critical Mode as free dlc, but I wonder if they'll be able to fix anything else?
Granted, there is one thing I'm still excited for . . . I had been saying since KH 3D came out that Shibuya better be a full world in KH III, and when it wasn't I was livid, but then . . . that secret ending . . . oh my FUCK I live for that secret ending so much, confirming that Shibuya is coming back and in such a greater capacity than I'd even hoped for. I'm so fucking excited for that that I'll honestly forgive a lot of my other gripes about the game if they do it well lmao
