Three Hours of Kingdom Hearts III Podcasting

If for whatever reason you want to hear my voice and the voice of other people, here's what I've been up to this week. I recently bought a new (overly expensive) microphone and wanted to try it out. 2,000 words in the Kingdom Hearts III review were apparently not sufficient. Instead I talked for nearly the length of 1997's smash romantic disaster hit movie Titanic about the game across two sessions on two shows. SPOILERS ahead.

First up, on a podcast called C&C Bros hosted by a former FFWiki friend of mine, I guest starred for the first time:

Secondly, on the FFWiki itself, I hosted a discussion with some pals:

Non-audio content is also coming at some point.

Kingdom Hearts III - A Happy Ending, Finally

We live in a year I'm told is called "2019". But you would never guess that playing Kingdom Hearts III. During the decade and a half wait since Kingdom Hearts II, we've jumped two console generations. Everything seems to have changed in gaming. AAA titles are now enormous open world leviathans. The big studios make multiplayer games with infinite loops built around loot and cosmetic microtransactions. The action-adventure genre is dominated by Souls-likes. Combat is now supposed to be punishingly hard yet sophisticated and precise. Kingdom Hearts III refuses to acknowledge that any time has passed. It is proudly a PlayStation 2 game on a PlayStation 4 disc.

You look back at all the hallmarks of gaming history and it seems like director Tetsuya Nomura hasn't played any of them. Dark Souls, The Witcher 3, Mass Effect, Skyrim, they've all had nearly no influence on the long-awaited final product here. Kingdom Hearts III's combat is floaty, button-mashing nonsense. The worlds are single-player, mostly linear, and lacking a galaxy of sidequests. Loot is not the goal, you barely craft, and there are definitely no microtransactions. Instead you jam on the X-button, beat up Heartless, watch a few cutscenes, and then break up the action with a minigame. You don't see games like this anymore, and I love that defiance of all trends that Kingdom Hearts III represents.

It was fitting that a game I cannot believe actually exists at all is one that is utterly inexplicable in today's AAA landscape. I've been waiting for Kingdom Hearts III for so long that the wait itself has become a fundamental part of my being. How many times have I complained in E3 posts about the lack of Kingdom Hearts III? Now that it is here, I feel like a whole phase of my life has passed. And considering the epic mountain of hype I build around Kingdom Hearts III, it seems inevitable that the game would disappoint. I waited eleven years for Versus XIII and got Final Fantasy XV instead. It's 2019, the Starbucks guy wants to be President Centrist, Tom Brady won the Super Bowl for the ten thousandth time, and Bohemian Rhapsody is about to win Best Picture. We aren't allowed happy endings.

Or are we?