Kingdom Hearts 3, another reveal!

Hello everybody and welcome back to this little, slightly delayed blog of mine. The school holidays are upon us here in merry old England and so my brood has monopolised my attention. Speaking of my little monsters, one game they really enjoyed watching me play was Kingdom Hearts. They instantly fell in love with Sora, Donald and Goofy and would often role play the characters, fighting Heartless with their make believe Keyblades.
My kids have been watching Pixar movies for a long time, but only a year ago they had started to get into the older Disney movies such as The Little Mermaid, Aristocats, Nightmare Before Christmas and Alice in Wonderland. In fact Kingdom Hearts developed in my children an interest in other Disney titles; such as Winnie the Pooh and The Lion King. 
Something I had never considered all those years ago when I was playing Kingdom Hearts, was that I would be sitting with my children one day, exploring and discovering new worlds.  

My children are perhaps the most hyped, excited, hysterical and ecstatic fans to have watched the Kingdom Hearts 3 trailers. More than anything it's because my son has seen Woody and Buzz and my Daughter has seen Tangled. Neither of them have seen Monsters Inc, though now they want to. 
I do hope for my children that there may yet be a chance for a Cars world or a Frozen world, both films are my children's favourites but it'd be silly to expect Square would stuff Kingdom Hearts 3 to the gills with all Pixar movies and omit the classics, which will always have a place in the Kingdom Hearts universe.

In myself however, this recent trailer is another crumb off the table. Square did this with Final Fantasy 15, dropping grams of information and benign footage of photo-realistic hair and food for over a decade had only diminished my excitement for the game and rendered me inert. 
I don't want, nor mean to sound like an arrogant 'not bothered' type person but I do wish developers would show some restraint when it comes to building hype for their game. If you showed me a trailer one day and it ends with "releases in three months", now that's going to get me excited, have me counting down the days! 

Waiting on Kingdom Hearts feels like, well put it this way; if I was doing a countdown for it on my bedroom wall, the wall would look like a prison cell. Scrawled with usual four lines and vertical slash that indicates five days have past. And like a prison cell, will drain me of my hysteria, joy and happiness. 

There are also the worries that come from any game that has been in development for a very long time. We all know the high profile failures that couldn't deliver an experience that matched the wait. But then, are we wrong to assume time equals quality? But that's a discussion for another blog.
I have no idea how long Kingdom Hearts 3 has been in production for, but general opinion is that it began in 2013, though there are rumours it started far earlier, as far back as after the completion of Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix! But no doubt what ever concept was formulated then, probably became one of Kingdom Hearts many spin off titles.

So far, the game looks gorgeous. I thought the HD remakes we're beautiful, but the graphical fidelity of KH3 is nothing short of breath taking. Toy Story's characters and worlds look just as good as the films and the team have made the right decision in moving away from the cartoony look of previous games. 
Gameplay wise, it looks very similar to Kingdom Hearts 2. Lots of showy effects and over the top combo finishers, link attacks and summons. It's great viewing, but I found Kingdom Hearts 2 gameplay felt soulless in comparison to Kingdom Hearts 1. Lots of features and abilities, but ultimately everything came down to spamming combos and using Reaction Triggers when required. Kingdom Hearts 1 is by no means a high standard when it comes to action RPG's, but there was a flow to it and natural combat opportunities that come with thoughtful play rather than reactionary play. 
I was also not impressed with the plethora of battle mini-games, such as destroy thirty water clones in fifteen seconds or get an instant game over. Those were tiring, frustrating, irritating and above all else, boring. Please Square, no more! 

Kingdom Hearts 3 is scheduled for release this year, but I wouldn't be surprised if it gets pushed back to 2019. If we do see it this year, then a Christmas release is going to be the likely release date.
Here is hoping the long development time is in no way indicative of troubled development and that Kingdom Hearts 3 will be a grand, colourful and joyous game to play. I know I will enjoy the bonding time with my chrildren. But I do dread the effect Sora has on my son, not long after watching me play he'll find some sword-like toy, point it towards me and yell "I'ma beat you heartless!" and then proceeds to swat at me with a fury in his eyes that even Sora lacks in the fiercest of his own battles.

That's all for today, I hope you all have a great week and if you enjoy the blog then a +1 or Follow are greatly appreciated as always. Goodbye!

Oh, by the way: I'm just about to wrap up my FF7 run that I was doing for my ABC game guides on YouTube. I'm very much looking forward to recording all the dialogue and sharing it with everybody very soon!