Kingdom Hearts 3 doesn’t care if you’re not caught up, and that’s great

If you’re a newcomer to Kingdom Hearts 3, you may be intimidated to get into the series, due to its reputation for excessively complicated storytelling and being hard to follow even for devoted fans. But don’t worry, you’ll still enjoy it — you won’t have a goddamned clue what is going on, but you don’t have to.

[PhoenixUp]

How does anybody new to the series keep up with this plot?

I’m honestly curious

[PhantomS42]

Very easy: The play games and have basic comprehension. KH3 even gives five or six short recap videos that give you the basic information you need to follow the plot.

[Kiwi66]

Google ?

[gamer7804]

Honestly he story of the game is really simple, there's just a lot of character. You don't need to have played the other games to have the idea of what's going on , they did that on purpose for #3

[rainslacker]

There is a "story so far" primer one could watch included with the game. It covers all the games and most of the relevant events up to that point.

That said, even people that have played the other games, could easily be lost with the plot if they missed one or two games in the series. Hell, the plot is all over the place, so even if you played all the games it'd be easy to get lost. I played the whole series last year, and forgot who some of the people were, or why the characters in the current game are doing what they're doing.

That said, it's probably good they don't try to get people up to speed in the game. They do a bit of this, without over explaining who everyone is, or their relevance to the plot, and it already has a ton of exposition in the form of cut scenes. Couple that with the overly long cut scenes for most of the disney feel good because of friendship or love moments, and the overly long wrap ups complete with after school cartoon laughter over something that isn't funny, and it makes it where you just kind of want to get back to the game.

[Xaevi]

"you won’t have a goddamned clue what is going on" then how's that great at all? Not that playing the previous games even matter. Half of what happens in the previous games is either completely forgotten here or rewritten. If you're getting into the series don't bother trying to catch up on the story cause you'll understand it even less.

[rainslacker]

They've retconned stuff with each game, the first game isn't really that important anymore. Not even sure KH2 is really that important to the plot, although my recollection on the order of the series of events is a bit fuzzy now. Seems most of the main events being dealt with in KH3 come from the Nintendo portable releases of the series.

[Xaevi]

No cause Xehanort was first introduced in Birth By Sleep, and the Nobodies were teased in the first Final Mix, and introduced in Chain of Memories and furthered shown in Kingdom Hearts 2. All the games are important and are being dealt with with this one as he's tried to connect them all together. It's just he's added so much due to so many unnecessary entries into the series that things have became needlessly confusing. The artbook that comes with the deluxe edition even has a note explaining that he "had quite a tough time writing the story this time around", and it shows. I love this series, but my love for it won't make me blinde to it's mistakes. Kingdom Hearts 3 isn't a horrible game, but it left me disappointed. Perhaps I was expecting too much and my expectations were high because KH2 was and still is an amazing game. However now with the Xehanort saga ending he can start somewhat fresh. The secret video pulled me right back in and I'm excited to see what's next despite my feelings on KH3

[rainslacker]

I often think most of the plot points in this series aren't really important to the main series. I think a lot of the issue is that when they started doing the spin offs, they didn't want to tie it so closely to the main story as to become confusing, but in doing so, tied it so closely to the main story, that it became confusing. If that makes sense.

The whole thing about when they started separating hearts from bodies, or splittings one's hearts, or how split hearts couldn't exist at the same time, and all that stuff about hearts is mostly just padding which doesn't make sense unless you really pay attention, and then you try and figure out the place of nobodies or replicants, and who or what exactly the heartless are.

The first game wasn't particularly that complex in story, although it's revelation about what KH was was kind of pointless because they never made KH seem like it was supposed to be some tangible place, then it was....sort of. The rest of the story was pretty straight forward, and I think most of the convolution came after the first game.

[FalconofLucis98]

I think if you're going into KH looking for an intricate, extremely well-written plot. You're in for disappointment and you probably deserve it. KH is all about the ride. Sit back, relax and enjoy it. Don't overthink it and enjoy it for what it is. For you won't find it anywhere else.

[HeisenbergX]

And then you have a dumbass like Dunkey giving the game 1/5

[NukeDaHippies]

Did he? I agree with him for once......This game is horrible. And that's coming from a long time fan. Even if you were here for the gameplay. It's unrefined compared to 2 in many, many ways. With all the worthwhile optional content cut.

[HeisenbergX]

Well i don't agree i think the game is awesome and super fun and nostalgic .. before i started KH3 i got up to speed on every previous game and i'm really enjoying the game.

And for someone like Dunkey who's always ''let me get to the fun part'' and always saying how where is the fun i don't know what was he smoking on this one.

Unrefined ? what was cut ?

[thatguyhayat]

I honestly think you need to play the other games first. It explains much more. Youtube the cutscenes

[no_more_heroes]

Kingdom Hearts to me seems to be the one case where needlessly complicated is still somehow extremely enjoyable. Slowly trying to figure this shit out over all the games has been part of the enjoyment for me lol!

[rainslacker]

About the only time one has to pay attention is when they're talking about the Riku/Sora dynamic, and Xehonort. The rest is just filler, and what ends up happening to any character other than Riku/Sora is pretty irrelevant to the point plot anyways.

[Iltapalanyymi]

its like people don't understand what continuity is anymore. if you are interested in a game series, why not just play everything?

did you also start watching game of thrones from S5? no? then play all the KH games in release order