Kingdom Hearts III demo was available to play in either Xbox’s show floor or Square Enix’s Show area!!

Kingdom Hearts has come a long long way, it started out as a very basic adventure action RPG game with a rather interesting story and the main draw being it having both Square Enix and Disney characters. Then the second entry improved it in many ways such as the addition of reaction commands and the shortcut system and a lot more. And then as we at the same time wait patiently and impatiently, they made spin-offs or side story games that has entirely new systems. Then what about Kingdom Hearts III you ask? Well wait no longer because I’m going to tell you that right now.

So first of all, there are 2 version of the demo, one is the Toy Story world demo and the other is the Titan fight demo. The Toy Story demo has a lot more cutscenes and exploration to it and the world gimmicks, while the Titan demo is pretty straightforward: you make your way towards Titan and fight him. I chose the Titan fight demo.

The demo starts with a cutscene basically telling that you’re going to fight Titan. Basically he’s shown up on top of a mountain, he throws rocks at you, and you can simply conclude that you have to fight him, The cutscene is not too long but you can skip them all, unlike a certain other demo. Now how do you get to Titan? Here’s where I talk about movement.

Moving around in Kingdom Hearts III feels perfectly like moving around in the Previous Kingdom Heartses. I lack the words to describe them but if you try playing Kingdom Hearts II that’s exactly how it feels like. In addition to that, the flowmotion system from Kingdom Hearts DDD is also applied here, thus your mobility options both in and out of combat is far superior than Kingdom Hearts II. There is however, one new feature which is wallrunning. Basically Sora can now run up walls. Now I would say that this is a very awesome thing if it’s not for the fact that Sora is locked to running on the wall in the basic directions, that is to say straight ahead, left, or right, not omni-directional like for example Spiderman can. I find this especially weird because they managed to do wallrunning properly in Dissidia Final Fantasy (the PSP ones). This Is made somewhat worse because during the wall running segments Titan is throwing rocks at you and you have to either dodge it or hit it (which I keep failing at, but that’s my fault I’m still learning the ropes).

 

Combat is fun. If you ever played the 0.2 demo, it feels exactly like that except that you play as Sora instead of Aqua, and I have to say that it makes a noticeable difference. Sora’s moves are perfect for going in for a hit, you can miss and the combos still go on and Sora will accordingly keep moving towards the enemy while you’re at it, making it very safe even if you whiff. Aerial combat is especially fun with the addition of flowmotion, which basically helps you launch yourself to the enemies to go for a hit. One segment is even filled with a lot of flying enemies in addition to ground ones so you can try the system out.

The chain system, which is improved from the one in Birth by Sleep, gives access to many actions such as more powerful versions of spells or your form changes or combination attacks with Donald or Goofy. For example if you chained several fire spells within a chain, the prompt for Firaga will appear. The chain system is also used to access the form system. In the Titan fight demo, you are given access to the Second Form and Third form (that is actually what they are called), and in the Toy Story demo Sora can change weapon forms such as into a hammer. The Second and Third form gives you access to skills that were in the previous games such as Sonic Blade and according to some reports also boosts to your stats (though which stats is still unclear), and the weapon form change will entirely change your moveset.

One new system in the game is the Ride system, as in Disney theme park rides. I am not sure whether they are area specific but it seems that they work similarly to summons except that they are also related to chains. Of course summons are still in the game and can be summoned from the Link option in the action menu as usual. Combined, everything above gives a lot of things you can do in battle to use to your advantage or just simply enjoy the sight of.

Kingdom Hearts III was a fun game to try. Amidst the stylish, jam-packed action of Devil May Cry V and the intense duels in Sekiro, Kingdom Hearts III stands out for being fun even if you don’t try to make it so. Even with its shortcomings such as the wallrunning (which by the way you’ll spend over 35% of the Titan demo on), the demo was still good fun, with everything being as you remembered it and more.