When you think of the series as a whole, you probably think of the convoluted plot. It’s a deserved reputation, as the sheer amount of time travel and half-Xehanorts is enough to confuse even the most confident minds. Each game in the series includes important characters, plot details, and complex lore, all of which you’ll need to take a mental note of for events that occur in later games. Unlike other long-running franchises like Final Fantasy and Assassin’s Creed, you can’t just play the numbered entries and understand what’s going on - each game is important to the whole story.
One of the biggest TV and movie tropes in the last decade has been the multiverse, the idea of exploring multiple dimensions to uncover alternate versions of existing ideas. From both a business and creative perspective, it makes sense why established franchises are shaking things up in this way.
However, there aren't many video games latching on to this trend, as rendering multiple worlds in real-time is a difficult feat and the medium is relatively young in comparison to its contemporaries, making crossover opportunities more difficult. Still, there are a few great titles that manage enough to overcome these challenges, and here are some of the best examples.
While I love someone mentioning Planescape, not really multiverse. Planes and dimensions, yes. But, they are typically their own locations and are very rarely tied to another 'verse' let alone another plane. The only things that are directly tied are the ethereal and material planes. Otherwise, they are dimensions created of their own design and goals by the creator/owner and not comprised of 'their own version of another dimension'.
NP: “When I played through Final Fantasy XVI, I occasionally found what I believed to be evident Kingdom Hearts gameplay inspirations that I’d rather not detail here due to spoilers. Still, with it having been previously confirmed that Kingdom Hearts staff was working on this title, the notion wasn’t all that surprising.
However, I didn’t realize how truly instrumental Kingdom Hearts team members were in developing Final Fantasy XVI. After digging through the title’s credits, I found crucial Kingdom Hearts development staff who played significant roles in ensuring the combat design excelled.”
Kingdom Hearts has become notorious for its strange and often confusing narrative. However, it makes perfect sense when players know what to look for.
Oh so it’s our fault?
No…it’s a convoluted mess because Nomura doesn’t know what he’s doing for the story
No it doesn't, and I've been paying attention. The story is plagued with continuity errors, and inconsistencies. All the spin-offs add more to the story rather than simply being self contained explanations of events that when you really think about it never needed to be told. I can make sense of the story but only by cutting more than half of it out. That's just plain old bad writing.
Even if that is true…which I highly doubt… it’s still horrific story telling. A good story teller doesn’t burden the audience with understanding a needlessly complex plot. This is a series that literally defines itself by throwing a ton of characters together that have no business ever existing in the same universe with one another and then justifying it with a mess of convoluted dialogue.
The only game in the series that succeeded at story telling was the first one because it kept the overarching story fairly simple and focused on developing its central character.
By the time you get to the second one, you have a variety of hooded anime figures dumping exposition to justify their edition to the plot. It only gets worse from there.
KH really went downhill on the nintendo games and the third games.
KH1,2 and Birth by sleep are the only good games. 3 was just atrocious on how bad the story was, on how easy the combat was, the lack of humanoid enemies/bosses (till the dlc), the way everything was just a super attack. It felt more like dynasty warriors than the first 2 games.
Such a shame because i loved the series so much. Also the third game made a big mistake being like the first in the regard it that you go to a world to see a botched version of the disney movie......kh2 did it way better where it was an original story with those characters instead.
I’ve never enjoyed these games, and actually don’t understand why they deserve all the hype