If there was ever a piece of media so utterly devoted to confusing its dedicated fan base and actively pushing away those who didn’t choose to invest their time in playing nine previous instalments, it's Kingdom Hearts III Re Mind. The base game's one and only piece of major DLC is probably the least accessible expansion of the PlayStation 4 generation -- arriving a year after the title's hotly-anticipated release and throwing you in at the deep end with new lore, story sequences, and a long, long list of characters to catch up on. It's not necessarily a bad piece of downloadable content, but it is wholly designed for the most hardcore of Kingdom Hearts fans.
Re Mind is a slice of DLC which ditches the Disney in its entirety, focusing instead on the events leading up to the original game's ending and telling the tale of what happens directly afterwards. It's something solely for the most devoted of followers, proven by the structure it takes.
While Kingdom Hearts III allowed you to explore extravagant Disney worlds full of classic characters and memorable locations, Re Mind is essentially a boss rush. A handful of short gameplay stretches do allow you to rummage through some of the base game's later areas, but they don't feel like anything more than a vehicle to the next boss fight. The vast majority of the four-hour playthrough will be spent in battle with some of Organisation XIII's deadliest members.
They're certainly no pushovers, either. Every encounter is going to test your combat abilities to the very limit, to the point where those who only just managed to scrape through the base campaign without too much grinding are going to have to level Sora up rather significantly. It's easy to see how these do or die fights could quickly give way to frustration and that's before you’ve even set foot in the Limit Cut chapter. A second episode unlocks following the conclusion of Kairi’s story -- one that contains some of the most ludicrously difficult boss fights we've ever come across.
Seriously, Square Enix made a choice here. One of the few criticisms leveraged at Kingdom Hearts III was that compared to the rest of the series, it's all too easy. A Critical Mode update somewhat fixed that post-launch, although the fights to be had here are on a different level entirely. Once again, these are designed for the most hardcore of players -- those that know their Sora's from their Roxas'. They do make for some seriously impressive set pieces, however. From the Keyblade Graveyard to Scala ad Caelum, Tetsuya Nomura and co cannot be faulted when it comes to scope and grandeur.
Even if you don't have the foggiest clue of what's going on, however, Re Mind still gives you another excuse to appreciate its slick, enjoyable combat mechanics. Alongside new moves and techniques, Sora is free to employ a full range of abilities to get one over Organisation XIII -- making for some of the most frantic and intense battles of the entire franchise.
And all of this can be yours for $30. It's a significant asking price for what amounts to roughly six hours of content across the two chapters, and that’s probably going to turn a lot of people off. Sure, some minor additions have been made to the original campaign alongside the addition of secret boss battles, but is this enough to justify half the cost of a normal AAA game? We're not so sure.
Conclusion
There are video games designed for the fans, and then there's Kingdom Hearts III Re Mind. The expansion is sure to satisfy die-hard fans as it explores what happens after the events of the game's ending in the most convoluted way possible, leaving its casual audience behind in the process. That appears to be intentional, making way for fanatics to enjoy tough, climactic boss battles they've been waiting years for. It's ridiculously difficult to fully understand, charming in all the right ways, and enjoyable to play in the moment -- there probably never will be anything like Kingdom Hearts.
Comments 31
Guess I'll read a Wiki or watch a playthrough.
I really enjoyed Kingdom Hearts III, but at that price and the increased difficulty, I don't want the stress of playing Kingdom "Souls" with so many other games in my backlog to get through before April.
Yikes. Just hand the reigns to someone else.
Even as someone who is a hardcore KH fan and who dedicated a day to going through this DLC, it's not worth $30. A good majority of the content is slightly expanded stuff from the vanilla game, and that's unacceptable. The best stuff in this DLC is the finale to the Re:Mind episode (which shows how great Nomura is at bombastic spectacle) and the really cool story teases for the future in the Limit Cut and Secret episodes. But the rest is either really lame or masochistic. So, yeah, my two cents are it's not worth the $30 at all unless you're someone who eats up the KH lore like candy.
Another thing I'll say is that Nomura is clearly not gonna let a certain baby of his go, and I'm all for it.
EDIT: Yet another thing I'll say is that the new music is INCREDIBLE. Yoko Shimomura continues to outdo herself with these new remixes and original music. The secret boss' theme is particularly gorgeous.
Jeez, I was somewhat excited for some real difficulty but I really don’t want to grind. I completed the base game at about level 25, mostly by accident as I was somewhat breezing through on Proud and then seemed to randomly be at the final boss. It’s incredible just how refined the game felt but still managed to remove all charm, difficulty, fun and the semblance of a plot. The fact this is so ridiculously expensive also doesn’t work in its favour.
$30!!!! SE has been getting greedy with their DLC. That's half the price of the full game at launch. They did the same with the World of Final Fantasy expansion price.🤦🏽♂️
6 hours of content for $30??? That's brutal. Glad I didn't pre-order. Going to have to wait until it drops to $10 or less to justify the purchase.
@3Above To be fair WoFF DLC was only $12 at launch for those of us who already had the base-game "at least in the US".
@3Above @TowaHerschel7 The price was available from launch day and lasted for a week or two.
@3Above I agree $30 is insane for what you're getting and will wait for it to drop to $10 during a sale before purchasing.
@Tasuki Could you please merge the messages. ^
I keep editing them, but the edits are turning into new messages when using my PS4 browser.
I enjoy Kingdom Hearts but I'm not a fan of the overarching story being so needlessly convoluted.
And they go on a bit too much sometimes about Hearts, shadows and light, etc. One of those situations where someone can talk for an hour without actually saying anything.
Hope they improve on that when KH4 comes out in 10 years.
I gather that if I was confused by the ending of Kingdom hearts 3 then playing this won’t help.
€30 for some digital stuff keep it.
I had a feeling Disney was out...which means so am i.
I kinda wish the DLC had a couple new worlds to explore with the Final Fantasy characters mixed in instead of just being a boss rush.
The DLC to me is not worth 30 bucks, when it gets a deep discount to 10 bucks then I will jump aboard and I say that as a big fan of the series.
@RBMango great to hear about the music. Quick question - do the final boss fights of ReMind have new Yoko music too? That would make me so happy haha
@Miles_Edgeworth Sadly, no. All of the boss fights in Re:Mind and Limit Cut are either reused tracks from KH3 or (really fantastic) new remixes of past music. The only wholly original new music is in the Secret Episode.
Already watched the whole thing in YouTube because I don't like to waste my money but I wanted to know the answer that the vanilla game didn't give us, and whatever the creators (especially Nomura) smoke they need to stop because I don't think it's helping them to improve the story instead they are making it worse and creating more questions
Sounds like this is what KH3 should had been.
Do you need the main game to play this?
@eltomo Yes, you can't even access this DLC until you've finished the game.
Unpopular opinion: this series is one of the worst series out there.
I like how the majority of the review seems to be finding different ways of saying "This isn't for casual fans"; not sure why that's the case, but you could probably make a drinking game everytime the idea/phrase is brought up.
Anyways, I do agree that the asking price is a bit steep considering what we get is.....somewhat lacking. I mean, when you break it down, all we get is: 13 data fights, a photo/diorama mode, a separate secret boss fight, a difficulty customiser, a single new area that has little to do in it, and a few cutscenes and set-pieces scattered throughout a remixed ending sequence. If this were half price, or it included more substantial content, I'd probably be fine, but as it stands, it's not really value for money (unless you really like the data fights).
This definitely isn't worth 30 bucks. The additional boss battles are neat, the data battles are fun but ridiculous. Like each boss is in desperation mode the entire fight. I will say that the ending has me hype for the next game. Like very hype considering how much I was looking forward to vs xiii
I really liked the Data Fights in 2 Final Mix, and this fixed my main issue with KH3. These fights have been a blast.
But yeah, that asking price is high. I was happy to pay it, as for me it salvages KH3's post game...but I get that i'm definitely who they're aiming for with this DLC.
As a KH fan, I'm living for Remind. The Data Battles are all I asked for, and I still didn't beat the Secret Boss. Now, it is pricey. It's Pokémon SwSh all over again. Better buy a 30 bucks expansion than another full game. The most angry part of the fanbase says that this is cut content that should already have been on the original game, but tbh these people need to chill a bit. Game development is not so black and white.
@Shirayuki Okay, brace yourself... In KH3 there's a minigame called Verum Rex. It's actually a fictional videogame within the game and before you play it you see a trailer for it. People have noted the resemblance the setting and characters have to Versus XIII. The main character is called Yozora which means "night sky", which seems to be referring to Noctis (meaning "night", of course). The female character has a star necklace which you could take as a reference to Stella, the original female lead in Versus XIII before she was replaced with Lunafreya. She also resembles her.
There's the below picture of Yozora sitting on a throne with his sword nearby that's very similar to promotional artwork of Noct. Finally, Verum Rex is Latin for "true king". You could take that to mean that Yozora is the real deal, not like Noct (and the rest of the game) ended up being after Nomura was taken off the project.
The reason it's probably more than just references and Nomura sniping at Square Enix is that in the secret ending of KH3, Sora ends up in a new place. Yozora is seen watching him. The KH games always have a secret ending that gives hints about the next game and where the series is going. People think Nomura is going to basically turn KH into what Versus XIII would have been.
Never been a fan of any DLC and I have bought very few of them.
@Shirayuki Well to a certain degree KH3 wrapped up a big chunk of the story so starting with 4 shouldn't be as bad as if you'd started with 3. It could also be one of the non-numbered KHs which can mean they're somewhat more standalone, kinda. I definitely think he'll get Yozora to be playable. There's quite a lot of KHs where you either don't play as Sora or where you do but you can also play as someone else.
I don't think it'll be a totally separate game since the whole point of Nomura making it so the ending has Sora going to the Verum Rex world is to justify using those characters in a future KH. Would be cool if it was separate, though!
Should have been in the game.
@TowaHerschel7 And how exactly am I suppose to do that?
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