Scsigs

Saw that too. Nice.

This game's gonna be as easy as Spider-Man PS4 to platinum on PS4 & 100% the achievements on Xbox.

Agreed. Everything about the games is very poorly balanced. The whole Unknown boss fights are ones I skipped over because I saw footage of them, said, "screw that", & went on my merry way. The games are NOT worth it when you have BS like that nonsense. I'm at least glad that Osaka are amending their previous mistakes with KHIII, where they're at least seeing why KHIIFM is seen as the golden standard & are adapting their programming to match that standard. It won't be an 100% match to what we expect, but I'm already impressed by the trailers & gameplay footage I've seen from the game so far. It's definitely a HUGE step up from what we've previously seen.

1. If you haven't played the game on Critical yet, please don't try to condescend to someone who has. I know you may not have intended to do so, but that's how what you said feels like. Proud only has you take more damage & lets you do level 1 runs. Critical also halves your damage output so fights take longer, enemies flinch less often (they already didn't, or hardly ever did, when it comes to the bosses), bosses activate desperation moves earlier than normal, & allows Risky Winds to happen more often. You can't really compare Proud to Critical because it's literally only introduces 2/6 of the stuff Critical does. Please get back to me after you've actually played Critical Mode in this game so you can have a better understanding of this situation. 2. You completely misunderstood what I typed. None of that is trivial, it's understanding the game's broken mechanics. I'm talking about is how all of these things come together & don't mix well. Yes, you CAN tell most of the time when Ansem is gonna do something. However, that doesn't apply to the rest of the bosses where you can't. It also doesn't solve the timing issue, or lack of "I" frames. I said that, even though I was doing everything right that I was supposed to for avoiding his attacks, he still managed to hit me when I should've had invincibility. A lack of those hurts trying to survive a boss. His lasers also, as I said, went off a bit after you'd expect & aimed where you were going rather than where you were & took too much health. I would have full health when getting hit by those things & they'd 2-shot me because, since your movement speed & reaction times are so slow in the game, that I can't dodge out of them when being shot by them. Yeah, brilliant design. One thing I forgot to mention above is that the game is also designed to prioritize the enemy hitting you over you surviving, with the "I" frames being a dead giveaway, so, even though I'm timing everything right, there's absolutely NO flexibility for you on the higher difficulties. The randomness of the attacks from bosses is also indicative of this, as Ansem can do one thing, then immediately do another thing & catch you completely off guard, giving you ZERO time to react to his attacks. The lack of "I" frames is also viewable in the KHIII promo material, as Sora STILL doesn't have them when he should during some attacks that they programmed to be long & arduous. The only difference I can see is that the combat style is based on KHII's combat style, so there's more to work with when it comes to your moveset than what's in DDD. 3. You assume I didn't raise any dream eaters. I don't know where I would give that air, but ok. This is where you're wrong. In an attempt to make the game more manageable, I DID. I specifically spent close to 12 hours or so grinding Sora & Riku when a few bosses required me to cheese the game because the game's designed really poorly. I specifically did the grinding to raise their levels when they were under-leveled. I also made some Dream Eaters & trained them up too to get their abilities. By this point, I have Second Chance, all the HP boosts, the Magic Boosts & Hastes, & most of the defense boosts. I'm also roughly where I imagine the game wants you to be at. The commands I have are Bloonga, 3 Balloonras, & 3 Curagas. They didn't help much outside of doing damage & providing me extra cheesing with "I" frames, since I also have Leaf Bracer. Literally this was all luck. Very little of my skill was used here. I tried, but by the end, it was all up to the game's terrible RNG. I can link you the videos I'll have uploaded to my YouTube channel at some point int he near future if you wanna analyze my gameplay. No. I already knew it was terrible. The gameplay is shit & the story is just stupid setup for III. It's COM all over again. Same. It makes the game horribly unbalanced. BBS was at least fun to Cheese because it had more to explore & the mixing system was great. DDD is just boring. Recommend Proud mode at best, my guy. Yep. That one. I'm in the mid-40s with Riku & it is AWFUL. Probably gonna have to grind more with him before Young Xehanort, but that takes a LONG ass time, especially for the higher levels. KH is only cheesable in COM/Re:COM, BBS, & DDD. The main games actually have good balance to them.

I'm sorry to rain on anyone's parade here, but Dream Drop Distance's combat is just awful, especially on a higher difficulty. However, the second form Ansem battle is what truly opened my eyes to how bad it gets. I know people like this game, but both it & Birth By Sleep, which uses the same combat engine, have outright terrible gameplay when examined under a microscope. I spend 2 hours fighting Ansem in his second form (his first, though still tough, was easy enough to deal with) & it revealed to me how awful the Osaka team's philosophy before 0.2 actually was & why you should never expect KHII-quality gameplay from these people no matter how much they've improved in the last 7 years. Now, I know that they've been harkening back to KHII with KHIII, which I'm happy to see in the various trailers & gameplay videos that have been put out in the last almost a year, but whoever designed this messy, broken, disjointed combat system needs to be either fired, or moved to another position in the company away from gameplay design for everyone's sakes. That is legitimately how bad this gameplay is. Now, the list, in no particular order, is as such... Boss attacks being randomized a LOT with this game's RNG. Like, there's no rhyme or reason to their attack patterns. They just do whatever they want whenever they want. Best example with Ansem's second form. He starts off doing some normal energy attacks to try to chip away your health while you try to chip away his. All fine & dandy until he pushes you far away & you need to run back to him (which can happen pretty early in Critical Mode, since the bosses activate their desperation moves faster than normal). Then comes the bullshit. He brings up these 2 energy orbs. What they do depends on his hand & arm movements. If he raises them above them, he's just gonna shoot easily dodgeable energy attacks at you. You can dodge them or deflect them if you're fast enough to react to them. Fine. However, he can also point to you, which then activates 4 lasers shooting at you, which can 2-shot you on Critical Mode because of how much damage the enemies do to you. You CAN dodge these, but the problem is that they lock on to where you're going & not where you are & they always come out half a second later than you expect, & I mean "half". I timed it myself as I played this over & over for 2 hours. Then they can suddenly switch up attacks on a dime & you have 0 time to anticipate or react to something until it's already happened. Which leads me to my next point... You NEEDING to be frame perfect with your dodges, or else you're not getting "I" frames, or are wasting the few you DO have. You are give little to NO "I" frames at all when dodging or jumping. I say jumping as well because, even though I timed my jumps enough to avoid his energy attacks at the start of the round, some of them STILL hit me every so often, even though there SHOULD be invincibility frames for more than a millisecond when I go into a jump, double jump, or dodge roll. When Ansem does that laser attack, you CAN roll out of it. You'll either take all the damage, because it aims where you're going & not where you are like I previously typed, none because you just barely have it not hit you, or half to way too much, but not all, which happens more often than not because of the god awful amount of "I" frames you're given. Then the next part... Stagger. No boss in this game does that despite the fact that they SHOULD & you stagger TOO MUCH. This is only something I encountered in Re:COM, which I hated there too. You take TOO MUCH hitstun from enemies. Oh, sure, you're given a recovery...that never works ever because something's wrong with the button inputs, so you can't get out of a boss' attacks long enough to get a good shot out, or heal yourself. Which leads me to my next 2 points... The enemy attacks doing a LOT of damage, & you doing jack all, & you move too slowly. This is especially noticeable on Critical, where your damage output is halved & the enemy damage output is doubled. Who designed THIS part? Because they deserve to be fired. I get taking more damage, but doing less? Who's THAT fun for when it's both at the same time? It's especially egregious when the enemies are damage sponges who have randomized attack patterns & you aren't. The enemies also still move like it's KHII, but you still move like it's KHI, or Sora in Limit Form, which is STILL better than this game's combat. Then there's the next point... Flowmotion not giving you "I" frames. I thought this was part of the game's design. Turns out, NOPE! You still take damage if an enemy hits you in Flowmotion. Ain't that great? Never mind that you're enveloped in a purple energy moving at a fast speed, never mind that you have a LOT of attack power, never mind that you SHOULD be given some amount of good "I" frames. Flowmotion is USELESS as a means of defense. If an enemy hits you while you're in Flowmotion, your last kind of special attack in case you don't have any others, you're outta luck for a last line of defense. Hope you've got enough time to charge your command abilities. Next, some serious things with the command decks. While a neat idea, it clearly was NOT intended for this kind of combat system, where the enemies are fast & frantic, while you aren't. It charges rather slowly unless you have the right Dream Eaters & doesn't fit a lot, since you only get a certain number of slots. The systems converging also has an unintended side effect, especially on higher difficulties. The games encourage you to cheese them, especially DDD. With how fast & frantic the bosses are, as well as how hard they can hit, it's almost requiring you to have higher level abilities than would normally in these games. However, this can get you into trouble. With physical combos also being next to useless, you NEED to rely on powerful abilities like these as well. See where I said the game encourages it? But, where BBS was fun to cheese, since you could experiment for a while with the commend melding system, DDD...doesn't. They took the melding system out...for stuff with the Dream Eaters. Stuff that isn't fun, if you catch my drift. I would've been more than glad if they kept in the melding system, but for the ingredients for the Dream Eaters if they were deadset on not letting us meld commands anymore like they seemed not to be. With how BBS was taken & how DDD was as well, I think it could've needed it. There's also the attributes being tied to Dream Eaters. This makes no sense to me. In BBS, once you unlocked an attribute, that was it. It stayed on you when you got it. in DDD, only more permanent upgrades like Once More & the like stay, but the rest...don't for some reason. Instead, you need to keep certain Dream Eaters in your party...for some reason. I get that they're one of the new things for the game, but this is incredibly stupid, honestly. I don't get why they changed it. The Dream Eaters are also somehow being even MORE useless than Donald Duck. Now, they're more flexible, since they can use different types of attacks from Donald, but they're somehow less useful. With Donald, I can at least count on him to do something other than chip damage, but the Dream Eaters really aren't that useful outside of maybe some slight chip damage on enemies. Otherwise, it's you putting in all the work. All of these problems are also in BBS, but that game felt like it was programmed around the limitations of the gameplay for the most part, while DDD doesn't. Oh yeah, the boss arenas are also inconsistently scaled. Some of them are the right size (a decently-big area) for a boss fight, but then some areas can be HUGE with objects that block your attacks if an enemy hides behind them, then there are the areas that clearly weren't designed for boss battles that are too small & clausterphobic. TL;DR: Disperate combat systems that don't work well together, limiting combat, terrible enemy AI, & just a mess of a system. How any of this passed game testing, I'll never know. All I can say is, I'm glad the Osaka team is hearkening back to KHII to base III off of because this system isn't good whatsoever. If you want flashy combat, do that. If you want randomized enemy attack patterns, do that. Don't just try to mash them together with no balance checking, especially for the higher difficulties.

Really don't get why they can't be redeemed early, even if the downloads aren't available right away. They put out the codes early, so they SHOULD be able to be redeemed early, y'know?

I mean... https://www.amazon.com/ask/questions/Tx1KDY9AT1YTSD/ref=ask_dp_dpmw_al_hza

No. This was before the trailers came out that I saw these people saying stuff like that. Youtube & I think Twitter are where I've seen that being thrown around. Even some people on TV Tropes when they delete anyone's edits saying their reason for doing so is that "we don't know that yet." Well, now we do. No it doesn't. It doesn't even remotely sound like Nimoy. It's not just the rasp. The entire voice tone is different. I mean, the guy could've at least tried, but then again, Nimoy's voice was naturally raspy with age. It's NOT Hamill. What proof do you have other than hearsay? First of all, if Hamill's playing any character, it would probably be old Eraqus. Second, that voice sounds too distinct to be Hamill, it doesn't sound "just like him". Third, not really. It's a completely different flavor than Nimoy's voice, who's tone was so distinct. Hell, James Patrick Stuart has a much closer ranger to Nimoy, & is even doing a sort of impression of his voice for Xigbar, as evidenced by one of the trailers. They should've gotten him to do it.

No, but it's more than likely that they have by now. David & Jesse have been voicing their characters for more than a decade now. i can't imagine that they'd stop having them back after they recorded for 1.5 & 2.5's cinematics for 358/2 Days & Re:coded. Derek Stephen Prince's voice is too iconic to try to get a voice double, especially when he's probably very easy to get. He said he wasn't months ago, but it's more than likely him, Jesse, & David are under NDAs & can't discuss being in the game until either the game is out, or Square or Disney announce they are, or they get the go ahead. I mean, a few VAs have confirmed their involvements on social media, but the rest that we have confirmation of we've either heard in the trailers, or Square have announced them, or we can guess by the characters' most recent actors. Hell, some things on the IMDb page I linked for this game weren't added till after I posted this, which leads me to think that I may have influenced that, since those VAs haven't been confirmed yet. I mean, why wouldn't they get DSP back? Just because the character hasn't had speaking lines in 6 years doesn't mean a voice actor won't come back. Billy Zane was replaced out of necessity, though. He starred in a controversial Turkish film that demonized the American troops in Iraq, as I explained up top. The only actors to be replaced before III were done so out of necessity because either the actors died, like Christopher Lee & Leonard Nimoy, or retired & so they had to find voice doubles. These few won't be replaced, honestly. They're too distinct & known to be replaced. Wayne Allwine was Mickey since the 80s & you don't know who the guy was? Shame. Anyways, maybe they will, maybe they won't. As far as we know, the only names that'll be included are 300 people's usernames from Union X. We don't know about anything else.

This is something I see online like on YouTube & TV Tropes. Why do so many KH fans seem to think he did? First of all, he died in 2015, 3 years before the dub was recorded & 2 years before translation started for it. Then the trailers show someone who sounds like Gowasu from Dragon Ball Super's dub. The way these productions go, while Xehanort's Japanese VA might've recorded his dialogue before he died, Nimoy didn't. Hell, Nomura might not have had a finished script for the dialogue by 2015. So, why do people think Nimoy did?

I mean, all voice acting is hard to do to some extent. Considering he has to pull out that manic voice, I don't blame him for saying so. However, it's not like he doesn't do these projects unwillingly. He HAS to sign new contracts for all of these completely separate projects & I doubt he would if he didn't want to.

That's fine. You have a right to be disappointed. I'm just in the mindset of it not being much of a big deal, given the circumstances of this game & its dub.

Sounds a bit too much like Gowasu from Dragon Ball Super's English dub & not enough like Leonard Nimoy for my taste.

Zane HAD to be replaced, though. He starred in a Turkish film that demonized American troops who got sent to Iraq after 9/11. No matter what he may have thought about the war, you shouldn't demonize the troops, who're only there to do a job they were specifically trained to do. Not to say Zane was bad in the role, but what's done is done. When it comes to Stoner over Panettiere as Kairi, Hayden has literally not voiced Kairi since Birth By Sleep in a cameo, then voiced Xion in DDD again in a cameo. While I don't mind the effort they went through, the shifting VAs for them is just stupid. I mean, I'm not against either voicing Kairi, but pick one, don't just flip-flop. And if Stoner's Kairi's main VA now, I'm not gonna lose sleep over it. She's worked as an actor for Disney for over a decade, so it makes sense that they'd go with someone already under their pay already, which is generally what they do for most things anyways. Different strokes for different folks, but I thought she was fine. No and no. It doesn't even remotely sound like him, so I don't know where people are getting this nonsense. Also, if it was, I'd have posted it here with proof. No bullshitting here with me. Meh. She's fine. Nope. Nimoy died in 2015, as did his Japanese VA. While it's entirely possible the script for III was finished before then, only his Japanese VA would've recorded dialogue out of the 2 of them. The dub literally JUST started being recorded either late last year . or earlier this year, so I don't know why some people think Nimoy might've recorded the translated dialogue. Yep. Otherwise they'd have an actual recording of Nimoy in the trailers. Can't imagine why they'd use a completely different VA for a trailer, then use the real one for the final game, especially with trailers that are coming out 1-2 months before the game No. He didn't say he was retiring. Hamill has literally been saying he was retiring from The Joker for the last 3 years. His latest appearance of the character was in Lego DC Super-Villains.

Anyone else think that Xehanort's new English VA sounds like Gowasu's from Dragon Ball Super?

Pretty sure it'll be Kassir, since they try to maintain as much vocal consistency as possible for these games.

Added 2 voice actors who's characters are in the new trailer. Scrooge McDuck & Stitch. Pretty sure it'll be John Kassir as Scrooge, but maybe they'll get David Tennant. I hope not, though, to keep vocal consistency with Birth By Sleep by getting someone who sounds like

All right. I just wanted to make a record of any supplemental information that Nomura has elaborated on from the games that aren't told in the game proper, since we all know he never includes every bit of info he should for some things in the games to completely make sense. Note: This doesn't include stuff that's elaborated on in later games, like 358/2 Days giving Roxas' backstory, or Birth By Sleep explaining why Roxas doesn't look like or sound like Sora, even though he's his nobody, or stuff. This includes facts like such: Why Namine exists & how she was a witch being that she was created at the same time Roxas when Kairi's heart was released from Sora & that the Organization gave her her mind altering powers. How Kairi's heart got inside of Sora's in the first game being that it took refuge inside Sora for protection when she gets pushed to him, then vanishes. How the Keyblade changes shape being through the keychains put onto it (seriously, I never knew this until someone pointed it out in a YouTube video because the games don't explain this themselves). How time doesn't flow normally in the Realm of Darkness or doesn't flow normally between worlds (which was always hinted at, but never fully stated in the games themselves). Why Xion's appearance changes depending on who's looking at her being that it depends on that person's relationship to her, Sora, & Ventus. That Nobodies eventually grow new hearts over time if they're not reunited with their original ones, explaining why they have emotions, despite saying they don't. That Sora and Riku are sent back in time, for some reason, to enter the dream realm to begin their Mark of Mastery exams. That Lea was trained to wield a Keyblade by Merlin & the 3 fairies in DDD in a Hyperbolic Time Chamber/Room of Spirit & Time kind of place, which is why he can now do it. If there are any other pieces of information like these, please let me know. There seems to be no official guide to this supplementary info anywhere, so I'm looking to make one. And I'm looking for info stated by Nomura himself to be what's in the games, not the manga versions of the stories, as those are most likely an alternate continuity of the games.

They have. They just haven't announced them yet for whatever reason. They wouldn't just not bring them back after having them come back for 1.5 & 2.5, plus 2.8 for David Gallagher.

She's in, don't worry.

That's an overreaction. I'm seriously doubting someone's seriously gonna break into the game through the encryption process on the games.

As I said already, I was calm. Just because a response is long doesn't mean that I'm not calm.

I was perfectly calm. YOU were the one who wasn't. Don't turn that back on me, dude. Read your original post back to yourself. I know that you're entitled to your opinion. However, swearing, even censored, at the fact that something's happening that you don't like isn't really indicative of someone whose opinions are really made to be reasonable. If you react like that with, & I quote, "That's bullsh*t" (which, nice editing your original statement to come off with a different tone after I told you to calm down, but a little too late), then proceed to say Panettiere is the real Kairi & this news is, "the worst casting news", I think my response is justified. And? Disney doesn't really have any obligation to call her back in. Neither does Square. They just needed a suitable actress to play her, which Stoner is. Square DOES have a tendency to get as many original actors & actresses back as possible & even cast based on factors like certain ones having dub actors in anime in the West (like how they wanted Chris Sabat to play Garland in some of the FF spin-offs because he played the same character the Japanese actor did in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood; Major Alex Louis Armstrong), but they don't always do that. Alyson's a good actress anyways. You said it's not a deal-breaker, so what's the problem? Should the have gotten Panettiere back? Maybe? Should anyone lose sleep over her not being called in? No. And, they didn't just replace her out of the blue. They replaced her a LONG time ago. First with Re:Chain of Memories, then 358/2 Days, then 0.2, now this game. Adding up all of the places where both actresses have voiced Kairi or Xion, Stoner's got her beat on the Kairi front, since, like I said, Panettiere las voiced Kairi in 2009/10 for BBS & even then, Ariel Winter had more lines than her as young Kairi in that game. This decision isn't one they made cold-heartedly, nor one out of spite. They probably just thought Stoner was the more logical choice for the game, since she has a more close working relationship with them & Disney. By the way, she's not a bad actress either. If you consider her bad in these games, blame the voice direction, which is often hit-or-miss. As you said, though, you're done with this. I'm just clarifying my points.

Stoner originally voiced her in 358/2 Days, then Panettiere voiced her in DDD.

So, how's everyone doing with the announcement for Stoner as Kairi?