After Kingdom Hearts III’s Re:Mind DLC launched in late January, one thing about its reception became very clear.
Players who had no interest in fighting superbosses often criticized the DLC as not having enough content, while players who enjoyed superbosses generally found the DLC to be fantastic.
Now I’ve finally finished playing Re:Mind in its entirety.
The DLC is divided into three major parts: the Re:Mind story scenario, the Limit Cut, and the Secret Episode.
(Plus the Data Greeting feature, which lets you pose characters to set up your own scenes for a ton of creative potential. I messed around with that for a while, although I was disappointed that some of my favorite characters like Vexen weren’t available for it.)
Each unlocks after the previous one, so you begin with Re:Mind. The start of the scenario is a little bland, since it largely retreads the final part of the game, with new context and content.
I enjoyed the changes to the cutscenes, but it is a bit repetitive. After that, however, things become more interesting, as Re:Mind gets into new content and lets you finally explore that certain area in Kingdom Hearts III that felt like it should have been an explorable world. The latter half of the Re:Mind scenario has some pretty cool moments, and I enjoyed it a lot.
I took my time exploring, and so that part took me about 5 hours.
Then I unlocked the Limit Cut episode and realized that not only were the superbosses a good portion of the DLC’s content, but I would also need to fight them if I wanted to see all of its story.
The first boss I attempted immediately destroyed me. I was tempted to call it quits there and look up the cutscenes online or even play through the main game again to use the newly-added EZ Codes to make the fights easier (the DLC also added Pro Codes, which make fights harder), but after waiting so long for Re:Mind and finally experiencing a Kingdom Hearts game when it came out instead of years later, I decided to give the fights an honest try.
And so I leveled up until I hit level 99 and started fighting the Limit Cut bosses. It’s strange, but while each boss has its own pattern and style for you to learn, I also felt like I had to learn how to fight superbosses at all. I’d never beaten a Kingdom Hearts superboss before, and they all felt impossible at the start, but there was a certain point where it clicked and I understood how to learn the fights.
Countless deaths and hours later, I’d defeated all of the Limit Cut bosses and unlocked the Secret Episode, which presented me with the most challenging boss I’ve ever faced.
I don’t want to think about how many hours I spent on that fight. Certainly more than 10. I’d sit down in the evenings and fight for an hour or two, dying over and over but slowly learning how to deal with each attack and gradually getting better, until I finally won.
As for the story, I’m confused about everything, but I’m ready to ride this wild ride to the end and see where Nomura is taking us in the next Kingdom Hearts saga.
Re:Mind left me with some satisfying story moments, many hours of death entertainment, and a sense of accomplishment from beating all of those fights. I’m one of the people who found Re:Mind to be an excellent conclusion for Kingdom Hearts III.