Square Enix released Kingdom Hearts 3 last year to some pretty mixed reactions. We gave it a 9/10 in our official Kingdom Hearts 3 review, but plenty others felt that it lacked cohesion throughout, and was sorely missing certain elements.
For a series that once prided itself on weaving Disney characters and Final Fantasy characters into the same story, it was odd that Final Fantasy characters were largely absent. In addition to that complaint, many longtime Kingdom Hearts fans also felt that a sense of challenge was missing.
Tetsuya Nomura and co. have attempted to address most of these complaints in the official post-release DLC for Kingdom Hearts 3, called Kingdom Hearts 3: Re:Mind. The execution here is competent, filling in some of the story gaps left at the end of the original game, but the meat of this new adventure may not be what many of the more casual Kingdom Hearts fans are looking for.
Kingdom Hearts 3: Re:Mind Review — One For the Fans
As a package, Re:Mind feels pretty split up. Once you’ve beaten the original Kingdom Hearts 3 campaign, you get access to the first episode that’s offered in this DLC, called Re:Mind, which is essentially a director’s cut of the handful of hours leading up to Kingdom Hearts 3’s ending.
Once you’ve beaten that, you get access to a second episode, called Limit Cut, along with Data Greetings — the best in-game photo mode I’ve ever gotten to play around with.
Without spoiling the original ending, it’s safe to say that some of the things added and addressed in Re:Mind are worth seeing if you have any investment into the Kingdom Hearts story. Certain fan-favorite characters are finally available to play with, albeit for a limited time, and you finally get to spend some time in one of the series’ most visually stunning zones. It’s short on its own, but the ending of Kingdom Hearts 3 sits better after having played through this short extra episode.
Next comes Limit Cut. A handful of Final Fantasy characters that were ever-present throughout the Kingdom Hearts series (but were utterly absent in the main Kingdom Hearts 3 campaign) have arrived once again to help Sora and crew. It’s unfortunate then that they barely have much screen time at all. Most of Limit Cut has you fighting a series of 13 “impossible” bosses without much dialogue or story movement in between. However, signs of what’s to come for the series are supposedly hinted at for those who manage to make their way through each boss.
Let me say that my Level 45 Sora could barely handle even just one of these bosses, so I never managed to make it through Limit Cut. It’s definitely aimed for those hardcore Kingdom Hearts players who want a reason to level Sora up to 99 and unlock Ultima in the base game, and it seems like it does a great job of reintroducing a significant challenge into the series, though the sudden spike in difficulty from Re:Mind is a bit unwarranted.
Data Greetings, on the other hand, is a fantastic addition to Kingdom Hearts 3. It feels like the best post-game reward for us casual players who just want to sit around and play with our favorite Kingdom Hearts characters like toys. You can set up any kind of camera position, lighting, or effect you want. And you can position characters in utterly hilarious ways if that suits your fancy.
It’s great fun, and I’d much rather play with this photo mode than grind out a much higher-level Sora to tackle the rest of Limit Cut.
That said, it’s not like Kingdom Hearts 3: Re:Mind doesn’t give you that option. You can take your Limit Cut Sora back to the world map where you’ll find that “battlegates” are freshly strewn throughout familiar locales. These battlegates are leveled combat arenas that allow you to face off against smaller bosses and groups of opponents. By entering them, you can grind away and earn loot more quickly than by running in circles for combat encounters.
It certainly isn’t what I’d prefer to spend my time doing, but it’s good that you’re given a hand in working your way up to the Limit Cut bosses if you’re severely under-leveled.
Kingdom Hearts 3: Re:Mind Review — The Bottom Line
Pros
- One fantastic photo mode
- Competent story conclusion for the original Kingdom Hearts 3 campaign
- A truly challenging new endgame
Cons
- Story additions are short
- Content is broken up into several parts that don’t feel directly related to one another
- Seeing everything will cost hours and hours of grinding before you even reach the difficult bosses
Kingdom Hearts 3: Re:Mind fills in some story gaps, adds one of the best photo modes around, and introduces a gauntlet of challenging endgame bosses for hardcore Kingdom Hearts 3 fans.
But the latter half of this already short DLC is inaccessible to those who didn’t spend hours leveling up and doing every sidequest beforehand.
[Note: A copy of Kingdom Hearts 3: Re:Mind was provided by Square Enix for the purpose of this review.]
Published: Feb 1, 2020 12:50 am