This review contains spoilers for both Kingdom Hearts III and the Re:Mind DLC.
Re:Mind contains a good deal of content for people who want more Kingdom Hearts III, but its price-point makes it hard to recommend for anyone but devoted fans. There are lots of great boss fights and fanservice included, but one can’t shake the feeling that this content should have been part of the original game.
Kingdom Hearts III: Re:Mind
Developer: Square Enix
Price: $30
Platforms: PS4 (reviewed) and Xbox One
Though I overall enjoyed Kingdom Hearts III, I (like many) felt that the narrative and ending left a fair amount to be desired. The long-awaited DLC package, Re:Mind, is now available, and it sets out to fix the ending while providing players with plenty of highly-requested new content. But does it succeed? The answer is nearly as complicated as the story Re:Mind presents.
In Re:Mind, Sora enlists Chirithy’s help to travel through time in order to alter the events of the last act of Kingdom Hearts III. By sending his future heart to his past self, Sora is able to better understand the hearts of each Keyblade Wielder. After re-battling the true Organization XIII, future-Sora’s heart is sent to Scala ad Caelum before his past self, which gives him the chance to restore Kairi’s heart after she is slashed by Master Xehanort. This leads to a whole new battle between the other Wielders and Xehanort’s goat-knights, while Sora and Kairi battle Xehanort himself.
Then Sora and Kairi make some minor alterations to the ending sequence, and somehow, Sora still dies. And that’s just the Re:Mind story, which is followed by the included Limit Cut and Secret Episode stories, which show Sora’s friends (including Final Fantasy characters) attempting to find him while a digital Sora battles digital recreations of Organization members, and the real Sora battles Yozora, the fictional game character from Toy Story’s world, in Shibuya, Japan.
“These Data battles are surprisingly challenging, which is a welcome change from the very easy base game.”
If that wall of text (which is as brief a summary as possible) confused you, you aren’t alone. I’m someone who has a pretty decent grasp on the surreal fever dream that is the plot of Kingdom Hearts, but Re:Mind threw me for a loop on more than one occasion. Whether or not Sora really had much of an impact on the events from Kingdom Hearts III still somewhat eludes me, as that plot device seems as though it was included more to let players redo battles with new characters, rather than to change the plot in a particularly meaningful way. Though the Re:Mind story does provide some exciting and moving moments for fans of the series, it doesn’t do much to change the controversial ending.
Playing as those new characters is a lot of fun. Getting to play more as Aqua and Riku, and getting to finally dual-wield with Roxas and do something as Kairi makes replaying the Keyblade Graveyard far more enjoyable. I may have some bias, as Roxas has always been my favorite Kingdom Hearts character, but Roxas feels like the most fleshed-out character. His moveset includes plenty of neat tiny references and callbacks to his attacks in 358/2 Days, which I greatly appreciate. Finally playing as Kairi is a lot of fun as well, as her playstyle feels different from the other characters, but suited to her character.
Limit Cut, which takes place after Re:Mind, picks up a year after the ending of Kingdom Hearts III. Everybody is searching for Sora, including the previously-missing Final Fantasy characters. Riku goes to Radiant Garden to meet with Leon, Cid, Yuffie, and Aerith, to see if they’ve made any progress in their search. Riku learns that Cid made a data-Sora and data versions of the true Organization XIII. By using Data-Sora to defeat the data-Organization, they may learn more about where Sora could be. It’s essentially a thinly-veiled reason to have Data boss battles like in Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix+, which I don’t mind at all. These Data battles are surprisingly challenging, which is a welcome change from the very easy base game. Many of the unique mechanics that these bosses had in their debut games (Marluxia’s doom counter, Luxord’s time-based minigames) return, which makes these battles unique and familiar for longtime series fans.
A small part of Limit Cut is the Data Greeting mode, which is essentially a photo-mode where you can play with and pose character models. A lot of people are recreating memes with Kingdom Hearts characters, or using it to make absolutely terrible, cursed images that I dare not link on a professional review site. Anything’s possible in Data Greeting, but I see it primarily as a fun diversion.
” […] I’d go as far as to say that Yozora is Kingdom Hearts III’s real secret boss.“
Finally, there’s Secret Episode, which consists of a boss fight with a few cutscenes. The fight against Yozora is fantastic, as it strikes an excellent balance between extremely challenging and incredibly fun. I was also frequently surprised by how creative the fight was. Out of nowhere, Yozora stole my Keyblade for about a minute, leaving me defenseless with only dodging and items at my disposal. Then, after getting my Keyblade back, Yozora stole all my healing items, changed the scenery, and sent giant Verum Rex robots after me. It’s madness in the best way, and I’d go as far as to say that Yozora is Kingdom Hearts III’s real secret boss. Throw in different cutscenes depending on if you win or lose, and you have a genuinely intriguing Secret Episode.
So where does the total Re:Mind package stand in terms of overall quality? It does a lot for hardcore fans of Kingdom Hearts, but if you left Kingdom Hearts III feeling disappointed, I’m not sure that Re:Mind will change your perspective. Other than bringing in some missing characters and laying down some vague hints for Kingdom Hearts IV (assumedly), Re:Mind doesn’t add much to the story of Kingdom Hearts III. The boss battles are all fantastic, and the picture mode is a fun distraction, but whether that’s enough to validate a $30 purchase comes down to if you don’t mind receiving minimal narrative progress in exchange for more great gameplay.
The Final Word
Re:Mind has a lot of great boss battles and some wonderful moments of fanservice, but its lack of overall importance to the story of Kingdom Hearts III makes it hard to recommend to anyone other than major fans of Kingdom Hearts. If you’re in it for the gameplay, you’ll be pleased, but anyone hoping for some real plot progression may be let down.
MonsterVine Rating: 3.5 out of 5 – Fair
