Pahrak Model ZX

Well no, I don’t mean they should’ve had Sora sit out or anything—we all expected they’d bring Sora and co along for a new journey with new motives and new stakes.  II ended a chapter of the saga, and then we got BBS to recontextualize it as part of a larger story, then 3D to push things forward a little, and III was being billed as the next resolution.  A big problem for me is that they’re already partway through recontextualizing the saga as part of a bigger story again before this chapter of the saga is even over—so III has to somehow balance being a resolution and a prologue, which is just…such a weird state for any story to be in.

I am glad to see the Wayfinder Trio back together again, but the final stretch of that road sounds like it was rough as heck.  Aqua being corrupted by darkness honestly ruins the character for me (someone able to endure so much was actually kind of inspiring, but in the end none of it mattered and she just got screwed over for WOW factor before someone else saved her), what I’ve heard about Terra’s return makes little sense, and Ventus is now tied up in that recontextualization problem. (Though with Ven I didn’t personally care much for him even before that.) But honestly, when I watched the ending, those three having a final reunion with Eraqus was the one part that felt genuinely touching, and them being active again could certainly add something interesting going forward.

As for the Twilight Trio…honestly, they’ve been at the center of a lot of my personal problems with the series for a while.  I don’t feel like Xion really adds anything to the story.  Lea getting a Keyblade was the first time I actually felt they were being handed out too easily.  And Roxas…like, I love Roxas in II.  Maybe even more now than I did when I first played II.  And I also really loved the resolution that game provided him and Namine: they were able to go back to being who their true selves and found peace in that.  So when the later games started laying the foundation for them being made separate entities again, well, I feel like that really undercut that resolution.  I know a lot of people are happy about how things went down for these characters, and more power to them.  For me, it just…doesn’t really hold up, I guess?  I don’t know.

The series continuing isn’t necessarily a problem.  The problem, I feel, is really in how they’ve gone about it, recycling characters and concepts while always aiming to add more and more and more material while only superficially utilizing what they’ve already got, rather than taking a deeper, more thoughtful look at it.  They frame it as “everything is connected”, but to me it just feels…lazy.  Forced.  There are pieces of the story that I still think could be interesting, and since it’s going to keep going, I hope people are able to keep having fun with it.  But I just…I just can’t.  The gameplay, sure, the gameplay looks fun as ever and they’ll probably be able to keep that going, but the story?  Nearly everything I’ve learned since the end of 3D has been, in my eyes at least, super disappointing, and that only continues to be the case.  I want this series to be good, and if it succeeds in that regard I’ll be thrilled.  But right now, almost everything I see about III confirms that I have nothing to gain from following the series in its current state.  And that just…makes me sad, honestly.  Though now I feel like I’ve wandered quite far from TMD’s point and should probably stop there. Sorry.

@JMJ Gotta disagree with you on the comparison to KHII's ending.  II has what's really the best "ending" in the series since it actually wraps up everything that's happened prior: the driving force of the first game was Sora, Donald, and Goofy searching for Riku, Kairi, and Mickey, and II ends with all those people back where they belong and every villain we know about being defeated (bar the ambiguity of Maleficient and Pete's fate).  The letter was little more than "hey we can still do a new story if we want", which is why there was so, so much speculation revolving around the super-vague secret movie.

III's ending might try to reflect that in certain ways with (almost) everyone getting their Happily Ever After, but by keeping something integral totally off-screen, ending on a real cliffhanger, and spending time working on plot threads that have nothing to do with this game and are solely there for what comes next...I'd argue there's no real closure here.  Just "get hyped to buy our next game".

And I feel like that's one of Kingdom Hearts's biggest problems: it's not really concerned with providing closure, it just wants to keep stringing you along.  Every game says "it'll make sense next time!", but next time they just say "it'll make sense next time!" again.  It's all buildup and no payoff.  And considering Nomura's idea of payoff seems to be "Xehanort just hands Sora the X-blade and ascends", that's a problem it really can't fix.