UNENDING BOREDOM
I am angry.
A couple of years ago, in a moment of weakness, I bought the hundred-dollar Kingdom Hearts: All-in-One Package on the PlayStation Store. It contained the entire series in one form or another, including the then-new Kingdom Hearts III. I had seen the review scores—excellent. I had seen screenshots and trailers—spectacular.
Some YouTubers were disappointed, but YouTubers are a hard crowd to please. My reasoning was simple and embarrassingly childish: Kingdom Hearts III looks great, therefore it must be great. So I bought the whole damn thing.
It cost me roughly a thousand Swedish crowns—around a hundred dollars. The most I have ever spent on a single game purchase. Then I spent hundreds of hours playing through the entire saga, entry by entry, just to arrive at Kingdom Hearts III with a proper grasp of the story.
And to my absolute disgust, Kingdom Hearts III is unbelievably bad. Not just disappointing. Not misunderstood. Bad. And boring.
The great irony is that even after finishing the entire saga (so far), I still have no real understanding of what is actually going on. There are too many characters, too many versions of the same characters, and absolutely no sense of consequence. The series never establishes firm rules for what is possible or impossible within its universe. Villains die, then return. Again. And again. And again.
It’s like watching a children’s cartoon trying to retrofit melodrama into slapstick logic. Imagine Road Runner suddenly insisting on a tragic, canonical explanation for why Wile E. Coyote is evil—and how he survives being crushed, exploded, vaporized, and flattened every episode. Who cares? The joke is the point. Tears are not.
Kingdom Hearts desperately wants to be taken seriously, but it is structurally incapable of supporting seriousness. No amount of swelling music or whispered monologues about “light” and “darkness” can fix that.
To be fair, the franchise is not without merit. Some earlier entries featured genuinely challenging combat systems and interesting skill progression. A couple of them were even excellent action games on higher difficulties. But playing one or two would have sufficed. Playing all of them feels like hundreds of hours wasted on incoherent storytelling and relentless button-mashing.
And Kingdom Hearts III is among the worst offenders. It is allegedly the finale of the “Xehanort saga”—though that doesn’t mean much, since Xehanort (voiced here by the late, great Rutger Hauer) has already been defeated multiple times, only to return through narrative sleight of hand. This time, we are told, it’s the final confrontation between light and darkness.
You once again control Sora (Haley Joel Osment), the ever-cheerful Keyblade wielder, starting in Yen Sid’s tower. The goal is to rescue three missing Keyblade masters from Birth by Sleep. Sora’s personal task is to “rediscover the power of waking.” What that means is never clearly defined. How he does it is even less so. It’s a quest that propels the game forward while going absolutely nowhere.
From there, you travel between disconnected Disney worlds in your Gummi ship. Technically, these worlds are impressive—large maps, crowds of enemies, interactive environments. For the first time, they feel inhabited. NPCs walk the streets. Objects react to your presence.
Narratively, however, they are disposable filler. Each world loosely reenacts the plot of its respective movie, awkwardly squeezing in fragments of the main story. Sora repeatedly forgets his actual mission so that he, Donald Duck (Tony Anselmo), and Goofy (Bill Farmer) can get sidetracked by Disney spectacle.
Earlier games leaned on classic animated films like Alice in Wonderland, Pinocchio, and Fantasia. Kingdom Hearts III instead showcases modern CGI and live-action properties like Toy Story, Big Hero 6, and Frozen. These worlds are new to Sora and disconnected from the series’ emotional history. Old allies—Peter Pan, Simba, Jack Skellington—are sidelined in favor of brand synergy.
The opening hours are genuinely impressive. The early worlds look stunning, bathed in dramatic lighting and rich color. Combat feels fresh as new abilities are introduced in rapid succession. But once you reach the sterile corridors of Monstropolis, the illusion collapses. From there on, it’s a steady descent into monotony.
All meaningful combat skills are unlocked early. After that, progression becomes an illusion. You cycle through the same overpowered abilities, gradually relying on the most efficient ones until combat devolves into spam. Levels simply increase your stats, enabling faster, flashier button-mashing against tougher enemies.
Any semblance of challenge is gone. Instead, you are handed an ever-expanding arsenal: spells, form changes, shotlocks, summons, team attacks, flowmotion, and even screen-clearing theme-park rides. Bosses appear in greater numbers but never pose a threat. Defensive mechanics like dodging and parrying are unreliable, making all-out offense the safest strategy.
Visually, it is spectacular. Explosions of color, gravity-defying acrobatics, magical effects layered over gorgeous environments. It’s intoxicating—briefly. Then the boredom sets in. All spectacle, no substance.
Each world introduces pointless minigames: rhythm sections, mech shooters, naval simulators. They function. They are rarely fun. And they have zero impact on the story or characters. Their sole purpose is padding.
The Gummi ship segments are now a full open world, complete with combat, mining, and ship customization. You can sink hours into it. All of that progress only improves the Gummi ship. Nothing else. A self-contained time sink of cosmic proportions.
Worse still, the game constantly interrupts itself with interminable cutscenes. Sora, already slow-witted, is now written as utterly oblivious. Every scene exists to explain what just happened, then explain what will happen next. Characters speak, pause, turn, pause, speak again—like PS2-era mannequins incapable of multitasking. Exposition replaces drama. Repetition replaces storytelling.
“Light” and “darkness” are invoked endlessly, stripped of meaning through sheer overuse. Whatever thematic depth the series once aspired to is drowned in melodrama and vagueness. The result is not profundity, but unintentional comedy.
And yes—I am angry at reviewers who handed this game glowing scores. Of course they loved it. They love it for the reasons I despise it: nostalgia, sentimentality, the idea of childhood wonder rather than its reality. They praise the writing not for coherence, but for vibes.
I am also angry at myself for not realizing sooner that Tetsuya Nomura is an excellent character designer but a deeply flawed storyteller. His ideas rarely survive translation into playable form.
If you want a story about friendship unraveling, play Red Dead Redemption II. If you want meaningful struggle between light and darkness, play Dark Souls. If you want excellent Kingdom Hearts combat, play Kingdom Hearts II or Dream Drop Distance on higher difficulties.
But whatever you do, stay away from the rest. Kingdom Hearts III is an overwrought, visually stunning tech demo—empty at its core, and painfully aware of it.
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