KINGDOM HEARTS III + Re Mind (DLC)

[h1] Masterpiece with some flaws for last gen Gaming but Stunning and Gorgeous Pixar-like Graphics [/h1] [h1] The Good [/h1] This game is well-optimized on PC compared to its other remastered counterparts like Dream Drop Distance (DDD). It runs smoothly with g-sync/vrr at a locked 60fps throughout most of the segments/worlds in the game. Pirates of Carribeans world was a treat. Graphics resembled a live-action film in real-time gameplay despite not using modern implementation of ray-traced lighting. This world's graphics still holds a candle even after 7 years from its initial launch. Transition and Loading Times are quite fast on a ssd compared to last gen consoles using hdd. I was really happy that Big Hero 6 and Monster Universities Inc featured an original sequel in this game that follows after its film. Despite it being built from the ground-up for last generation of consoles, the graphics, maybe because due to its artstyle, still looks very eye-popping. Sometimes, I forgot I'm actually playing a game. I'm also really relieved that the Sea-Salt trio and Wayfinder trio managed to get their happy ending after their countless suffering at the hands of Xemnas/Xehanort in the previous entries. I'm truly glad that remind managed to fill up a lot of the much needed emotional and tear-jerky scenes that were not present in the base version of the game. I felt so thrilled that I was able to play as different characters throughout the dlc especially Roxas to beat Xemnas for example. I would say remind changed my entire perspective of Kh3 itself. The dlc was able to bridge all the issues I had with the main game and refined it. I personally appreciated that remind gave me a tough but rewarding challenge for the story bosses and made them harder than they were in the base game. The part where everyone needed to fight armored Xehanort dropped my jaw too. The OST, the characters interactions with each other and the cinematics gameplay were significantly a game changer and brought back the high stakes feeling I felt when I fought Roxas in Kh2 final mix. I haven't had the time to grind for the limitcut episode data bosses which provides a significant added challenge of 13 different data bosses (similar to previous games) along with a secret boss which I have yet to attempt. [h1] The Bad [/h1] Unfortunately, I still mostly felt the same as I did when I first played Kh3 (base game specifically) years ago. The disney worlds were mainly filler (unlike the previous Kh games), Sora's actions didn't influence the narrative much, and some of the worlds were honestly badly designed. Looking at you Arendelle. Climbed up the mountain to go to Elsa's castle only to be yeeted down and forced to climb back up again without much manual save points only for a lengthy cutscene and snow boss to bombard me. The Olaf minigame infuriated me a lot too as it broke the momentum of the story. Even after all these years, my feelings for Arandelle has never changed and I felt we were robbed of being given an opportunity to explore Elsa's castle after watching a long cutscene of her singing Let it Go. Another thing that can be made optional/removed is the Disney Attractions. Because I played the game on standard difficulty, there wasn't an option even in the ez codes section to manually toggle/disable the Disney Attractions mechanics. I generally felt that this made the game too easy and broke the flow of combat. I hope in Kh4, there would be a manual toggle to disable this. Thirdly, I still don't understand the reason for Sora travelling to the disney worlds. In Kh1 and Kh2, his reason was to find Riku and Kairi but in this mainline title, it was supposed to be helping him unlock the power of waking which he only did when he was at the Keyblade Graveyard after visiting all the disney worlds so I personally felt that it undermined the reasons for travelling to those worlds. I also didn't like that the main story was rushed at the very last part from rescuing Aqua, to Ventus and so on. I was a little bit disappointed that majority of the keyblade casts conclusion was brief and they weren't given enough screentime. I hope Kh4 doesn't sideline the seasalt trio again even though I am aware that their story has already reached to a conclusion in this game. Lastly, there were a lot of repeated cutscenes in remind that were already in the base game but with the added scenes which really added more emotional weight to the story and I genuinely appreciated that a lot. [h1] Overall Verdict [/h1] Overall, I would highly recommend giving this game a shot on Steam if you haven't played remind before as it solved a lot of issues I had with the base game despite the flaws this game has as in terms of graphical fidelity, this game still pretty much in my opinion competes with base PS5 titles and it gave a much needed conclusion for the characters who suffered tragically in previous entries like 358/2 days, Kh2.5, bbs and 0.2. Overall Rating for Kh3 Base Game: 7/10 Overall Rating for Kh3 and Remind: 8.5/10