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Exactly how I feel about everyone just coming back to life, not only are there way too many main characters who can just use key-blades now, but they all feel so cheep and fake. Really undoes a lot of the emotional weight KH2 had with is story of Roxas and the nobodys. Roxas and nominai residing in the hearts of Sora and Kairi was so bittersweet and perfect and they just took it away to bring them back because fan service lmao

That RC montage at the end was VERY well put together

You awaken some painful memories with the Wonderland Maze time limit challenge! That and the Dustflier were the bane of my existence to 100% the game, but then I went full critical hit damage build for the later and stop worrying! You really need to adjust your gear and skills for specific missions which even thought its gives you strategy options It can be draining having to do it in every mission you get stuck! As much I LOVE 358/2 Days, I can't ignore its flaws and the wasted potential unfortunately! (and many badly designed Bosses) it's admirable h.a.n.d. Inc. tried their best to replicate the PS2 KH:2 combat style experience but... it's one freaking DS come one now, that alone is dragging the game's potential to the ground makes me wish the game was developed on PS2 or PSP instead I get you for Muting the "Vector to the Heaven" soundtrack at the end. That soundtrack makes me emotional!

When I saw vanitas get man handled by sully I was so done with the series heck it’s the only KH game I’ve never replayed or went back to

Kingdom Hearts 3 SHOULD'VE ended in an orgy. Maybe then the Fingering Will wouldve gotten more than 3 minutes of screen time.

My god, a new upload from the greatestest Kingdom Hearts TH-camrerer there ever was! What a blessing on this joyous day! God I love 358/2 Days, and all the abhorrent agonising anguish it entails, watching you suffer so makes me want to crack out the DS and suffer along! I'm also the one British person who appreciates your British jokes and references, thanks for unlocking Devil Finger from my memory and enabling me to annoy all my friends (ha as if there any)

That maze mission was so bad dude went non verbal

I love this 🤣The sigil missions are a big pain at times and you expressed that perfectly here lol

Thank you for going further than I ever dared Mr Dinca, Sir

Oh this is amazing, I'm so glad your still making Kingdom Hearts videos. I'm not going to watch this yet because I honestly get kind of depressed when they are over, (I usually rewind them when they near the end point) but I like to save these for later, like currency. They just feel like a special treat I need to prepare for before I fully watch them. I'm still gonna like and share this regardless!

I’m here watching this fight with the Leechgrave, and the only thought on my mind is: *Why not use magic?* I know you’re using the crit build here, but like… Just use a different loadout? If melee doesn’t work, then fight from range.

I like that h.a.n.d. at least *tried* to create a combo system similar KH2. “Emphasis on the word: “try.” Now that’s a callback.

My goat has returned

HELL, YEA NEW VIDEO OF KH

This is an emotional rollercoaster. Thank you for your service beating this pain.

The one who puts King in Kingdom hearts has returned, and what a glorious moment.

I tried playing this game on my 3ds still to this day, but find it extremely boring.

I thought you were going to suggest "something that will never happen" as Roxas sacrificing himself for Sora's sake or something. It sure is nice to see everyone spending time and research into finding Sora leading up to KH4, and maybe the point is that for once since Sora cares so little about himself, he's suffering so that everyone else can be happy. But if they're going that route, they can't just magically wave away these consequences. I really hope since there seems to be a larger writing team (like the author of the novels) that the story can shape into something not entirely held back by the path leading up to it anymore. Guess that depends on Missing Link though. You hit all the other revival points on the head with the other characters' revivals. That Larxene scene with Repliku was terrifying, I completely forgot about it. We need more of this energy from KH villains. It's kind of sad Larxene has to go the redemption route and not be a bitch anymore, cause that's what we're losing out on for a cardboard cutout character.

Man I love your takes and videos on KH

"What if Sora returned to Destiny Islands, only to find his home in FLAMES..." That would be stupid and more of a transparent plot contrivance for drama than any of the moments you criticize lmao. The same for all the other hypothetical "good moments" you propose, I feel like these kinds of proposals are better left out of analysis videos like this because it makes the assumption that the viewer will agree "oh my god, this is SO MUCH better than the actual writing!!" when nine times out of ten they just come off as embarrassing fanfiction. I agree with the broader point that the series really needs to re-establish some consequence but this attitude of " _I_ could do better!" has always seriously irked me because you usually can't and are just trading one bit of bad writing for another that you personally prefer.

Yo I gave up emotionally on this game after they got Ventus back. When it hit me that it wasn't the halfway point (I had the same assumption as you), I just took everything after as a joke. Endings are hard.

I wanna see the conclusion to that storyline with Clayton and Lady Tremaine so bad! lol

The number of people conviced they had to be going into the mid-game at the end says a lot about how empty the rest of the "story" is

You completely misunderstood time travel and replicas. And sora never died he disappeared due to his actions in remind to bring kairi back.

"Psyche" is pronunced "psych-ee", just a note

Yes, thank you! This is such a wonderful breakdown. I’m happy you addressed how much foreshadowing there was for Lea and Isa getting experimented on. When I played KH3 and their backstory was just “well they KNEW a test subject” I was like “bwuuuuuh???”

Ansem SoD's revival was good, because if they hadn't done that, then we would have had to spend another game without Ansem SoD in it, and I hate that timeline. (What the heck happened to the second Riku, though?? Was it his fate to fully 200% fuse with Ansem? Because the day or so he spent being possessed was the only window of time where Ansem could have been brought back with time trav--)

I. have several nitpicks about your points. I agree with some of them, but disagree with others. But I'm more of an optimist. I'm a fan of happy endings, and I like them, preferring them to sad ones most of the time because my life is already full of sad endings as is despite how hard I continue to fight for the ones that aren't or haven't yet happened. But, I do, very strongly, feel that kingdom hearts 3's narrative potential was squandered (ReMind's story content (not the data fights, the actual story content) should have been base game and we could have stood to get a final mix with even more things in it like a sephiroth fight or a fight with the Cloud of Darkness who just literally broke into reality as a result of Xehanort's and the MoM's combined machinations going a step too far and nearly ending reality or something as an apology for both the game taking literally forever to come out and because FF rep, considering how important of a cornerstone it is to KH as a whole, and really almost any SE rep as a whole was weak as hell after 2, excluding 3D because TWEWY *DESERVES SOMETHING* considering how much SE neglects the hell out of the potential of it, ffs). The Keyblade Graveyard, along with Olympus, feel like they were the only worlds that didn't get horribly bastardized by disney's executive meddling that took the wheel starting with KH2. Basically every payoff could have been better executed. (And considering how backloaded the game's story is I would not be surprised if we were supposed to get our guardians of light back more gradually across the whole game. Larxene effectively being cut from Arrendale along with most of the world plot reeks of that happening to most of the game save for *maybe* San Fransokyo.) There are plot points that should have been at least introduced and addressed (Isa and Lea's whole thing with the mystery girl is my most blatant example here as I firmly believe that it could have been introduced in Days proper, elaborated on in BBS during the ending, and also because there's a ton of things that KH1 was just like "oh well things happened 9~10 years back" and then the mistranslation of Sora being the Keyblade Hero effectively getting cut causing a ton of english exclusive plot holes if you don't know that Keyblade Hero is a title that is GIVEN, unlike Keyblade Master, which can be earned, so there can only be as many Keyblade Heroes as there are keyblades of light/dark/whatever (Mickey and Sora in this case). The Kingdom Key that Sora has is special compared to other keyblades is the point there.) in previous games instead so they could be touched on in more extensive detail here. The entirety of the X/Unchained/Dark Road plot hooks should have been out in the open BEFORE 3 came out. And to be fair? Kingdom Hearts 3 should not have taken as long as it did to get released. But to be fair, KHX (And UX, and Dark Road) also probably held up the release about as much as some of the other aspects of things did (But at least they had the decency with Dark Road to finish it, even if it was late, KHUX didn't even get that luxury, I assume the story quests were supposed to be done and dusted before 3 released because that's what makes more sense, instead of what happened where they released the final quests AFTER KH3 was released, and going "SURPRISE WE'RE KILLING THE GAME NOW! Tee-hee!" alongside said release).

Wow, all this early kh2 hate makes me think that nobody’s opinion on anything even matters

I’m still not done with the video yet, but I’m really glad you mentioned isa’s redemption. I feel like having good guys who are bad people really should be an option for this series, as it would fit isa perfectly. Obviously, by the end of kh3 he feels remorse for at least some of his actions, but you don’t undo the monster saix became over the course of ten years in one montage. Especially since you can tell even when he’s a kid that being harsh and sharp is a core aspect of his personality. I would have loved if saix was embarrassed by his actions and didn’t want to be a bad guy anymore, but wasn’t willing to change enough for the good guys to accept him either. I think it would have been very interesting and satisfying to see saix sad and alone after all the shit he did, but regretful enough to just leave everyone alone. Then, I’d be way more susceptible to a redemption story for him

37:19 tbh I don’t know for sure but I think you have to fill up his command gauge

4:58 HOW DO YOU NOT LIKE PEAK

The editing was masterful and overall points it's refreshing to see an essay that isn't "KH3 sucks cause I say so." Specifically when you said there's no breathing room is my heaviest agree! And it actualy lead me to ramble,, this is gonna be long one - I think a huge reason why many think the finale was underwhelming was because of all the scenarios and interactions that "should've" happened according to fandom. Essentially most of us grew up with these sillies to the point having access to the fandom lead to Nomura and Square against millions of fanworks, rewrites, theories, AUs, etc. to compete with for things to be "satisfying". Like prime example I'm still salty about is Aqua and Xemnas never interacting. He had her armor in the chamber all those years INCLUDING her keyblade (did he ever touch it? was he rejected over and over?) and he didn't even recognize it on her?? Would he even admit that he had her armor?? Her reaction to seeing an older Terra?? So much could've been done here 😔 Also Stritz only vaguely being referenced. A simple line from Vanitas like "Oh don't act so pure, Ven" would've elevated things so much more. Or as a massive Nort stan, more of the real Org talking to each other that wasn't strictly the old Org members. The real Org feels like OMX put up a "no fun allowed" sign... I could go on and on here. Big thing in KH3 in general is the characters being strictly in their respective debut games groups, especially the bbs gang. They act like cliques who have trouble letting new ones in, which makes interactions bound to not breach out of thier norm in a way? (not sure how to explain that)

"It's keyblade or death" *Shows on screen several uses of the warp snipe RC which clearly deals damage* Maybe not a LOT, but considering it keeps you out of harm's way of a long lasting projectile you're bound to lose track of (I would know, having given up using the RC during a rando run in favor of pure damage to get the fight over with as soon as possible before it could get too hectic and more often than not getting hit from behind), and to an extent also warps you about fast enough that zigbar isn't likely to hit you much while doing so, and you can use it several times for the same shot...

I think Crit and Lvl1 really made a lot of people appreciate the nuances in the mechanics a lot more. In the OG release, Proud mode didn't really challenge players much, so a game that was already quite easy got a lot easier with reaction commands. It was only with Final Mix that I personally became a way bigger fan of the game, as there were more content to challenge the player and make certain mechanics shine and be more relevant. In a lot of games, I like to pick as hard a difficulty as possible, as it'll often reveal how great or badly designed a game is. With some games, you get to appreciate the mechanics, while with others you realize how broken and badly designed they are. - KH2 FM was one of those "Hey, this game has a lot more depth than I thought" experiences, and I keep coming back to it.

Stop doing it!

When Sora went to Olympus as the first world, i thought *for sure* it was a ruse, and that Xehanort was going to show up and plunge the world in darkness. Think about how powerful it would be to return to a beloved world, one that is one of the most recurring and consistent worlds in the series, and have Sora absolutely powerless to save it. Not only would it scale Xehanort as this insanely powerful threat that towers over the Guardians amd singlehandedly turning Herc into a heartless, but it would set the tone for the rest of the game. I would also say that having that world by blocked off and Xehanort using the destroyed remains as a hub for his villainy would put more salt in the wound. I think Sora experiencing that type of loss and powerless-ness for the first time would really put his character into a new predicament and challenge his role as a savior. You could have Soras excuse goofing off in consequent Disney Worlds as a means of him running away from his problems and responsibilities out of fear that he cant save those he loves. You could have Donald and Goofy question his intentions and going along anyway. It wouldve made for a satisfying end game moment where Sora uses his power of waking to bring Olympus and Herc back from the brinks of darkness and finally earning the title of "true hero" just before his final battle in the keyblade graveyard.

Im tired... so ill just say this: the writing for kh3 was terrible, the disney worlds were all meaningless, and the ending was a nostalgia bait 2 hour fight with unearned dialogue. If anyone argues back against this im not responding because you clearly have low iq so please dont bother, ive already seen people defending this by saying worthless crap like "kh2 did it too" NO it didnt shut up. im tired of y'all.

Storywise, I think what I dislike about KH3 is that it removes all consequence. Everything that carried weight through the series, all the tragedies characters went through, it was all for naught because now "hey, person is dead" "okay, guess we gotta run the extra life machine to 3D print them a new body to possess". By the end of KH3, all mystique the series had was gone, all the potential horror and trauma is meaningless. Sora disappears? Whoop dee doo, we already know he's in KH4 and alive, it's just set up for the next wAcKy adventure. Already pre-loading the next game's reason for why you're level 1 yet again. It feels like whatever idea they started the series with is just long gone. They made KH3 to stop everyone's whining to get a conclusion already, and Nomura just doesn't know how to conclude anything.

I’m playing the series on steam now, the ending to KH2 makes the entirety of 3 feel like a slap in the face, cause Sora basically lost all that he was fighting for throughout 15 years, I would have rather have a shorter game that ties up the rest of the loose ends, I’m skipping 3 and just watching the cutscenes

37:35 On the topic of flowmotion, DDD made it far to overpowered and KH3 made it underpowered and they both are bad in their own way. However, there is one easy fix, tie it to a gauge. That way it punishes spamming it by not letting you skip harder sections and rewards you for managing it by letting you skip a segment you're having trouble with, or use it to deal with enemies better.

YOU NAILED IT. HOLY FUCK. The design, the story telling elements, the function, the strategy, and, screw it, the rule of COOL. All these things make up why reaction commands are a genius gameplay mechanic. Dare I say, it may be one the most well implemented gameplay mechanics ever created for an action RPG. The removal of them left a hole in KH that attractions, and team links just can't fill. The question is, can the team recapture their beauty in the upcoming title? I can't wait to find out, and this video only made me more excited to see it through. Amazing edits, awesome structure for breaking this down, and just the right amount of cheeky humor. Instant subscribe.

The beginning looks like a teaser from a new game, brilliant, perfect, superb.

I know that this video is almost one month old, but I'd like to add my two cents as someone who had a tumultuous love-hate relationship with this series. I loved KH1-CoM-KH2 as much as everyone else, but was IMMEDIATELY turned off by Birth By Sleep. My reaction to the Wayfinder trio protagonists, the plot of that game and the way the story was delivered was equally as visceral and negative as the one a lot of people, Duncadinca included, have to the X/Union Cross stuff. I was one of those kids that watched the epic secret ending of KH2 featuring the 'keyblade knights' and not only assumed it to be a teaser for KH3 (as we all did at the time) but imagined this epic tale that would take us back to a remote time in which there was an order of keyblade knights, an entire keyblade wielding society even, with its mysteries and machinations, all leading to an unavoidable tragic battle that put an end to a golden age. Child me wanted the plot of X and Union Cross starring a brand new cast of characters, not a billion boring Xehanort clones upstaging charismatic villains like Ansem and the Organization that I loved so so dearly. What I am trying to say is that I don't think that 'the mobile stuff' is the problem. The problem is that, as Dunca aptly detailed in this video, what had been established and wrapped up with a nice bow at the end of KH2 has been slowly but inexorably watered down, undone and at worst made completely pointless. Am I a stupid gacha phone game apologist? Yes, I am :P. UX, and Back Cover in particular, is what got me back into the series after so many years spent looking at it from a safe distance while shaking my head at how they massacred my boy(s). I guess there's still time for the final character assassination of Demyx.. but once he's accounted for, we're FREE! And by free, I mean that they'll have to bring in new characters instead of redeeming and resurrecting old ones. (PS: I think the 'Luxu thing' worked well for Xigbar because of how different he is from his original younger self. Not everyone liked the reveal but I personally really enjoyed it. I guess I am a sucker for the extremely specific trope of the death-cheating body snatcher asshole who used to be a cinnamon roll but that's a trick you can't pull more than once. And I highly doubt it will have the same effect if they try to do it with Demyx.) Maybe the moral of the story is that when you're not enjoying how a franchise is being handled, taking a break from it and a step back like I did oh so many years ago when I first laid eyes on Birth by Sleep is the best thing to do. For a long time, the ending of KH2 was the REAL ending of KH for me. And it still was when I replayed all the games, including the dreaded BBS and the other titles I missed before the release of KH3 (DDD wasn't nearly as bad as people said it was, that was a relief). Going into KH3, I didn't care to see any of the previous games stories being 'resolved' because the KH2 ending already took care of all the characters I cared about. I was there for the same reason Nomura was there: getting it done once and for all, giving the fans all the sappy reunions they wanted so he could finally move onto the story he has been dying to tell us for decades which ironically requires one final, unexplained and probably unnecessary resurrection... that of Versus XIII. LET'S GO BABY!

I will say and have happily said for the last 5 years that Kingdom Hearts should have ended at 2. 3's ending did not satisfyingly conclude and felt like a kick to the guts for fans that had been following since the beginning. I can't say I got too into the hype, because although I watched every trailer, having major story moments spoiled in each one of them kind of dulled the enjoyment.

The Sora Kairi moment did not hit at all. Like you say, it was about sharing 1 paupu fruit. Don't know why they had two other than to tie it into picture in the Secret Place