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Part 2 of our coverage of the Kingdom Hearts 3 Premiere Event! Today we're going to be talking about impressions of the demo!
I was incredibly impressed, first, by how well the event went. I was happy to see how organized everything was and so glad to see such an open venue. The food spread upstairs was very generous, and it was a real treat to get to try actual seasalt ice cream, and demos of Classic Kingdom upstairs. I was also surprised to see a few familiar faces at the premiere that I wasn't expecting! It's also always nice to take a picture with the King.
Tasted really weird, in case you were wondering.
As for the actual demos, there's a lot to say and so much of it has been said before, but here's what I thought.
Olympus
I played a PS4 build for both demos on a PS4 pro. The first demo, Olympus, was very short and only showed the Rock Titan battle. You've all seen it by now, I'm sure. Sora, Donald, and Goofy climb the side of Mount Olympus, avoiding an assault by the Rock Titan. The Rock Titan's attacks are relatively easy to dodge, but I have to say, I was very surprised by the difficulty of this level.
Make no mistake: the game itself wasn't hard. But, it felt like everything was just a tad slower than was acceptable. I really felt like I had to FIGHT to get my combos going. The Keyblade felt incredibly heavy, and the rapid gameplay we've seen in other trailers just wasn't there. I was surprised because it felt like I was working without getting anywhere, really. My first thought was that there was some sort of input lag in this early build. Another thought was, perhaps, that Sora's abilities have been nerfed harder than in previous games in order for him to regain his power later on in that world, as he was supposed to. Though, I feel like it's the former. I haven't seen many other people mention an input lag, though, so perhaps it was just my build.
The Olympus level featured the ability to go into Second Form, which helped a lot with the sluggish Sora I was controlling. He also had the Meow Wow Link at his disposal which reminded me a lot of the Link he had in DDD.
The battle with the Rock Titan was very straight-forward. Hit the legs to knock him over, then leap up to his head to take him out. This is also where we get our first Attraction Flow! Big Magic Mountain railroad was more fun than I was expecting, its mechanic being shooting fireworks at the titan. This demo ended as fast as it began. I have to say, Goofy shouting "look out!" did get tiring. Overall, I liked this demo alright! I don't think it's going to win anyone over to the series, but it was definitely pretty and had some cool concepts.
Toy Box
The real meat of the day was in the Toy Story demo. We were told that the demo represented roughly 30% of the overall world - in which case, oh my goodness. This game really is going to be huge.
The plot is basically what you've been presented. Sora and co arrive in Andy's room to find out that the majority of Andy's friends and Andy himself have vanished. Not just Andy, but his mom and sister and the rest of the world, too. Based on recon from Sarge, the group travels to a nearby Toy Store called Galaxy Toys in an effort to find their missing friends. Once there, they find that the toy store has been taken over by Young Xehanort, who uses his power to cause Heartless to appear and possess various toys.
So, from the offset, the gameplay was a marked improvement from the first demo. I literally sighed with relief. The various Keyblade transformations are fun and powerful. The Link systems are impressive and beautiful, the attraction flow allows for a wide-range of combat. The gameplay is carte blanche, and all the flashy attacks are totally optional: so it's becoming very clear that goal of Kingdom Hearts III is for you to implement your own preferences and create a gameplay experience that suits you.
That's not to say it's perfect, though. Ground combos still take a bit to get going. Some of the special attacks, such as the rocket ruckus, are needlessly hard to control and some attacks leave too little instruction on how to execute their combos and finishers. Crowds can also get a bit hectic, as at times it seems the waves of enemies just don't end in such an open environment. The AI was fine for the party members, though at times too eager. I was at one point trying to bait a Heartless into seeing if the revenge mechanic had made its way back, but my party members took the thing out after I hit it. Still, most of the game is very intuitive and they're pretty close to finding a right balance between hand-holding and letting you figure things out on your own.
The exploration and easter eggs are the highlight of this level. There were so many fun little things to find. Running around on the Pixar ball, finding the Yard Sale sign and tackle box from the second movie, the Pizza Planet truck in the parking lot, and yes the A113 license plate - they're all there. Even Square gets some love with the Dissidia toy display. Kingdom Hearts has always had a fine attention to detail, but this one really takes the cake. The remixes of past songs playing on the battlefield, including Hand-in-Hand and Atlantica's battle theme, were so much fun.
I'd look at something on the screen and wonder "can I interact with this?" and the answer was yes. From swinging on hanging toy displays to kicking loose screws around in the vents, to knocking stuffed animals on the floor -- and even a particularly wonderful interaction with a tank of helium that I recommend you discover for yourself when the game is out. Another thing I really enjoyed was struggling to figure out the name of the possessed doll you fight at the end of the demo. (It's Mysterious Onyx.) My favorite part of the demo was discovering a rock'em sock'em robots game that you can play in the store, quite by accident. At that point, a few people had hovered around our table and when they had seen me approach it and initiate a fight, there was a unified gasp.
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The cut scenes were the best we've seen in the series by a long shot. The only thing I was really unenthusiastic about was how flat Woody sounded, but it wasn't too distracting for me. Haley Joel Osment's Sora is now at a much more natural level, and he's never sounded better. The music, as always, is fantastic. I said a couple of days ago that if You've Got a Friend in Me was the field music that I would be happy, and it is! Graphically, the only hang-ups I had were that Xehanort has some weird texture issues going on, and there is some weird dappled kind of artifact on some of the shadows. I hope that gets straightened out. On the pro, the frame rate seemed to be unlocked but seemed to stay consistently in the 45 FPS range, if I had to guess.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with the game so far. It's got its issues, and still has a way to go before release, but things are looking good. Kingdom Hearts III plays very much like the next logical step in the KH series. An HD JRPG without a lot of the problems that held the past games back. If you've enjoyed the past games in any capacity, I'm very sure you're going to enjoy your time with III.
But those were just my thoughts. All this week we'll be covering the event, so stay tuned!
Thanks to Square Enix for inviting us, and to Disney for taking the time to chat with us.
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