Kingdom Hearts initially garnered widespread attention all those years ago for its outlandish premise. Classic Disney characters and settings mixed with original, Final Fantasy-esque characters? It was like nothing that had ever been done before. From letting you play as over a dozen characters with wildly different gameplay styles, to a card-based battle system, Kingdom Hearts was a series that took risks for a while. But 15 years later its long-awaited third mainline entry, Kingdom Hearts III, feels like one of the series’ most conservative installments. And its only planned DLC, Re: Mind, only serves to further emphasize Kingdom Hearts’ current dilemma: that it lacks the desire to make the changes and take the risks that have made other series, like Square Enix’s own Final Fantasy, still exciting to follow after all these years.
Re: Mind is, in theory, supposed to address what many fans were left wanting from Kingdom Hearts III—a little less Disney, a little more diving into the franchise’s fascinating and at times convoluted lore. It’s essentially a retelling of the end of Kingdom Hearts III similar to route B in NieR: Automata, in which slightly different events happen and are witnessed from a different perspective. But that perspective doesn’t actually add much here—it’s mostly just re-doing repetitive boss battles and rewatching cutscenes that have exhausted their emotional weight.
It’s also still largely from Sora’s perspective; like Piper Chapman in Orange is the New Black, he’s the main character who is far less interesting than every person around him. And unlike the aforementioned show, Kingdom Hearts III is determined to focus on him above everyone else, dragging down its most interesting subplots and squandering opportunities for rich character development in the process. Instead of making use of the fact that Re: Mind’s narrative takes place during a segment in which the entire series’ main cast is united for the first time by allowing you to play as each cast member, the game gives you the option of either playing as a few of them or as Sora, highlighting its reluctance to let him go even momentarily.
Another indication of Kingdom Hearts III’s aversion to taking any risk is the constant reiteration of already established lore points. Conversations about how hearts, vessels and souls work in this universe are regurgitated. Not only does this turn characters into mere vehicles for exposition, but it also feels like it isn’t confident enough in its audience’s ability to understand it. Convoluted it may often be, but incomprehensible itultimatelyisn’t. The DLC chooses to do this and provide more questions without trusting in its audience enough to provide answers, and considering it’s been almost 15 years since the last mainline entry, it’s frustrating.
