Kingdom Hearts 3 Chronicles - Part 4

Kingdom Hearts 3 Chronicles is my attempt to keep up with my thoughts on
Kingdom Hearts III after every session. Today’s post will cover the 4th
world. Also worth know that I am playing on Proud Mode, the hardest
difficulty available from the start.

Kingdom Hearts 3 Chronicles is my attempt to keep up with my thoughts on Kingdom Hearts III after every session. Today’s post will cover the 4th world. Also worth knowing that I am playing on Proud Mode, the hardest difficulty available from the start.

Today we get to the Kingdom of Corona and ugh. I’m actually not a fan of this world. There’s not really much that happens, it’s pretty same-y in terms of environment, which is just trees and cliffs and junk. Like they took the most forest-y bit from Olympus and made that a whole level. I get it, that’s what the aesthetic of Tangled is and all that, but it’s just not particularly interesting to play through. Especially after how vibrant and unique Galaxy Toys was in the Toy Box world, it’s a let down to play through such a traditional pattern of tree-rock-tree-pond-tree-tree-tee.

That said, I’m excited to see my boy Marluxia is back in town and is ready to hopefully do some crazy stuff. He’s one of my favorite villains in the series and by virtue of being the main antagonist of a smaller game like Chain of Memories, he doesn’t get much screen time or development. Maybe I just like his character design and the fact that he carries a cool scythe, who knows. Now stepping back for a moment, if you listed to the Kingdom Hearts Union Cross talk I did on Brotherly Love Gaming, you might have heard me talking about the big question of whether the character Lauriam in that game is actually Marluxia. This level obviously doesn’t reveal that, but I’m hoping we get some more info later in the game since they brought him back. You don’t get to fight him in this world and I’m assuming that will happen eventually, so let’s keep our fingers crossed that that particular plot line is resolved.

I think another problem I have with this level is that they’ve just kinda pasted some Kingdom Hearts stuff on top of the story of Tangled, and it feels even less connected than it has in the previous games where they’ve done that. I don’t want to compare to Toy Box every time, but in that level you had Young Xehanort interacting directly with all of the characters, and pulled Buzz into the darkness before calling the big boy in to fight. In Corona, Marluxia is in the background of everything, and also Mother Gothel is there, but the plots never really come together in a meaningful way, and Sora does literally nothing to affect the outcome of the Tangled plot. So when Rapunzel says “I couldn’t have done it without you!” at the end...it just feels false.

Ok another good thing to balance it out: the Keyblade you get from Toy Box, Favorite Deputy, is a blast. It turns into a giant hammer, and then again into a giant drill, which makes for some interesting combos and changes to your movement. The boss of this world is a really interesting set piece, because it makes use of Rapunzel’s tower, so you get to climb it in order to attack. So far I haven’t felt truly challenged by any of the boss’s, but it seems like they’re going more for spectacle at this point anyway. I imagine that once the fights against the Organization begin, that’s when the difficulty will ratchet up.

Another positive note: the animation for this level is excellent, and in particular they managed to convince me that Rapunzel looks identical to how she looks in the movie. I’m sure there are differences if you do a side-by-side comparison, but I’m impressed that it looks good enough to make me not question it. It’s especially noticeable during cutscenes that recreate moments from Tangled. Really high quality work done there, you have to hand it to the Square Enix art team.

Finally, post Corona there’s a cutscene that shows Riku and Mickey searching for Even, only to confirm he is missing. Then we get a scene where Saix talks to a cloaked figure about coming back to the Organization, only to reveal it is in fact Even turned back into Vexen. This is an interesting moment because it tells us a couple of things. For starters we should notice that Vexen’s eyes are yellow, a sign that he holds a piece of Master Xehanort’s heart inside him. Next we should note that Saix’s eyes are the same, a fact that I think was not present when we reappeared at the end of Dream Drop Distance. Finally we should put 2 and 2 together and realize that despite being reconstituted into full human “somebodies,” the villains we’re meeting again have decided to become Nobodies again. There was a question over whether Xigbar was Xigbar or Braig, but this scene suggests they all have gone back to being nobodies. There’s apparently no time travel trickery either, they just became Nobodies again. Isa is Saix, Even is Vexen, Marluxia is… well as I said we don’t officially know what his name was previously. Also I didn’t mention that Marluxia’s eyes are also yellow, so he likely has a piece of Master Xehanort’s heart in him as well. All of this raises questions even as it answers them, which is kinda the Kingdom Hearts way at this point.

Stray thoughts: The Keyblade you get for beating Corona is pretty cool, you create mirages of Sora which will then shoot energy blasts at enemies, culminating in a giant animated tower coming out of the ground to shoot even more energy. It’s cool but it doesn’t appear to have a 3rd stage like the previous Keyblade, so that’s a bummer.