Overall, I have a pretty favorable opinion of the Kingdom Hearts series, but the gameplay is getting a little old, and it doesn't help that the story gets more boring over time instead of more interesting as new information comes to light.
Aside from being unable to skip cinematics, I liked just about everything about the original KH. I hated the reduced size/scope (literally or otherwise) and the generally lower difficulty of KH2, but the gameplay itself was still pretty good, and the story was at least satisfying. Chain of Memories on GBA wasn't the greatest game, but being able to replay the entire game as Riku was a pleasant surprise, and I enjoyed the whole "memory" gimmick of the story. 358/2 Days actually had an endearing story at times; it was nice to get to know Roxas and his place within Organization XIII. The mission-based gameplay made sense on a portable. Birth By Sleep introduced a whole bunch of new characters that just weren't terribly interesting, and placed within the grander context of the KH mythos, only served to make me shrug even harder rather than get antsy for the inevitable KHIII. The challenge of certain boss fights was appreciable at least.
Just bought KH3D today actually, and already, the plot is boring me, but ah well. The introduction of "sliding" as a gameplay mechanic definitely speeds up how you get around, but as a means of doing combat, it seems like each fight could easily degenerate into me spamming slide attacks until everything is dead. It's like a less practical version of using that off-the-wall downward slash to kill all the enemies in the first Ninja Gaiden on Xbox. Also, they've introduced a Pokemon-esque mechanic of using monsters as your allies in combat, and Jesus do we really need another game with a catch 'em all gimmick?
So, uh, yeah, my initial opinion of the game is not favorable, but I'll probably end up giving the game a score in the 7.0-8.0 range anyway when all is said and done.
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