History ScrappyMechanic / KingdomHearts

*** ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsIII'' buffed the party quite a bit. They can now stagger humanoid bosses, which not only helps Sora combo the boss but also helps to keep the party from getting smacked mid-attack like they used to be. They're also much smarter about healing, know how to combo enemies. The removal of the ArbitraryHeadCountLimit also helped, as you can have up to five people including Sora in a party at any one time. Several late-game party members are also extremely powerful; [[spoiler:Roxas and Xion in particular are so PurposelyOverpowered that they can solo Saix without Sora's interference]]. However, most of their defenses are still as paper-thin as ever. And the powerful {{Limit Break}}s and Drive Forms have been replaced with Links, which are functionally random, so it's still a bit of a crapshoot. And even then, the most powerful {{Superboss}}es in the ''Re:Mind'' DLC have Sora fighting the battles alone, so none of this will help you in the game's hardest fights, where you'd need it the most.

* [[Franchise/TheLittleMermaid Atlantica]]'s swimming controls were hated in ''Kingdom Hearts I'', so for this game, it was replaced by a RhythmGame. Too bad that this RhythmGame is just as hated. Apart from the questionable quality of some of the songs, the minigame is poorly-designed - the cues are only vaguely in line with the music, and there are too few of them, to the point that you spend the majority of each song just looking at the characters and doing nothing. The whole thing is optional, but it nets you an upgrade to Blizzard magic, some equipment, and you need to complete it to unlock the GoldenEnding. To make matters worse, this game has improved swimming controls that are significantly less awkward to use, so ditching the action combat for a rhythm game was not necessary.

* While the rest of the series has decent camera systems, the camera in ''Kingdom Hearts I'' is [[CameraScrew inexcusably bad]]. It's been half-jokingly referred to as an "anti-camera", since if the function of a camera is to show you what you need to see, the camera in ''Kingdom Hearts I'' seems determined to obstruct it. A player might spend as much time fighting with the camera as they do fighting the Heartless due to the camera's tendencies to weirdly zoom in, get stuck on things, or just freeze in place. Locking onto a target helps somewhat, but not much. This gets especially bad in later levels like Monstro and Neverland, which feature very tight spaces that the camera will frequently get stuck on, forcing weird zooms and pans that obscure what's going on for several seconds at a time, taking your attention away from the fight. Frustratingly enough, the camera issues have not been fixed in any UpdatedRerelease, despite the camera being a chief complaint about the original ''Kingdom Hearts''.

* The Trinity Emblems on the ground in worlds required Sora, Donald, and Goofy to activate them. And you needed to do this, because they usually contained valuable rewards or advanced the plot. Used any other party member? Have fun going all the way back to a save point to switch them out to activate this one emblem. Luckily, any issues with party line-up were confined to the original game; ''Kingdom Hearts II'' allows you to switch party members out at will when not in battle, ''III'' didn't have an ArbitraryHeadCountLimit like the rest of the series, and neither ''II'' nor ''III'' had Trinity Emblems anymore.
** One of the Trinities in the original release was PermanentlyMissableContent - if it wasn't activated before the first Oogie Boogie boss fight, it was gone for good. It was moved in ''Final Mix'' to a location that doesn't go away, but that was something that really should have been caught in playtesting.

* The Demyx fight has a mechanic that makes him ThatOneBoss for the wrong reasons. You have a small amount of time to defeat some spawned water enemies, and not doing it in time is an instant game over. The final version of this attack requires you to kill all these enemies in only ten seconds, which is nigh impossible unless you can get the Reaction Command to fire off just right. GameplayAndStorySegregation kicks in hard here, as the game provides no reason why you lose the fight for not killing all the spawned enemies fast enough; you just lose, tough luck, try again. And the game makes it appear as if Demyx is supposed to be a joke, with Jiminy's journal saying that that Demyx is "not very good at fighting". You thankfully only have to fight him once, but that one time is going to take a few tries because of this needlessly frustrating addition.

*** ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsIII'' buffed the party quite a bit. They can now stagger humanoid bosses, which not only helps Sora combo the boss but also helps to keep the party from getting smacked mid-attack like they used to be. They're also much smarter about healing, know how to combo enemies. The removal of the ArbitraryHeadCountLimit also helped, as you can have up to five people including Sora in a party at any one time. Several late-game party members are also extremely powerful; [[spoiler:Roxas and Xion in particular are so PurposelyOverpowered that they can solo Saix without Sora's interference]]. However, their defenses are still as paper-thin as ever [[spoiler: with the exception of Roxas, who starts his fight with Saix by making himself invincible]]. And the powerful {{Limit Break}}s and Drive Forms have been replaced with Links, which are functionally random, so it's still a bit of a crapshoot. And even then, the most powerful {{Superboss}}es in the ''Re:Mind'' DLC have Sora fighting the battles alone, so none of this will help you in the game's hardest fights, where you'd need it the most.
* In some of the games, you have to defeat bosses through a combo finisher or magic, no exceptions. You can equip skills that increase the length of your combos... and these combos can be interrupted while attacking. This might even potentially mean losing a fight because the boss didn't go down even though you were wailing on it, because the attacks didn't count as a {{finishing move}}. While there's an ability in ''Kingdom Hearts II'' that allows you to use a finisher instantly in the middle of a combo, such a thing really shouldn't have been necessary.

*** ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsIII'' buffed the party quite a bit. They can now stagger humanoid bosses, which not only helps Sora combo the boss but also helps to keep the party from getting smacked mid-attack like they used to be. They're also much smarter about healing, know how to combo enemies. The removal of the ArbitraryHeadCountLimit also helped, as you can have up to five people including Sora in a party at any one time. Several late-game party members are also extremely powerful; [[spoiler:Roxas and Xion in particular are so PurposelyOverpowered that they can solo Saix without Sora's interference]]. However, their defenses are still as paper-thin as ever. And the powerful {{Limit Break}}s and Drive Forms have been replaced with Links, which are functionally random, so it's still a bit of a crapshoot. And even then, the most powerful {{Superboss}}es in the ''Re:Mind'' DLC have Sora fighting the battles alone, so none of this will help you in the game's hardest fights, where you'd need it the most.

*** ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsIII'' buffed the party quite a bit. They can now stagger humanoid bosses, which not only helps Sora combo the boss but also helps to keep the party from getting smacked mid-attack like they used to be. They're also much smarter about healing, know how to combo enemies. The removal of the ArbitraryHeadCountLimit also helped, as you can have up to five people including Sora in a party at any one time. Several late-game party members are also extremely powerful; [[spoiler:Roxas and Xion in particular are so PurposelyOverpowered that they can solo Saix without Sora's interference]]. However, their defenses are still as paper-thin as ever. And the powerful {{Limit Break}}s and Drive Forms have been replaced with Links, which are functionally random, so it's still a bit of a crapshoot. And even then, the most powerful {{Bonus Boss}}es in the ''Re:Mind'' DLC have Sora fighting the battles alone, so none of this will help you in the game's hardest fights, where you'd need it the most.

** The [[LastChanceHitPoint Second Chance and Once More/Withstand Combo]] abilities have been criticized by some fans as crutches on the game's design, as many late-game bosses and {{Bonus Boss}}es are balanced with those abilities in mind. The enemies deal so much damage that your regular Defense and Max HP stats [[ArmorIsUseless do nothing to stop you]] from getting [[OneHitKill one-hit-killed]] anyway. This also turns situations where you can't obtain [=Second Chance/Once More=] (like with [[LowLevelRun Zero Experience enabled]]) into a de facto NoDamageRun on top of everything else.

* Atlantica's controls allow Sora and company to move around in 3-D space, but only by pressing buttons to swim up or down. It was hard enough just getting to where you wanted Sora and company to go. Neverland had similar mechanics with flight, but outside of one BonusBoss, flying wasn't a requirement since a player could still land and fight on the ground. Meanwhile, Atlantica featured two boss fights against Ursula, the first of which is considered ThatOneBoss simply because of how hard it is to control Sora when your attention needs to be divided.[[invoked]]

* [[WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid Atlantica]]'s swimming controls were hated in ''Kingdom Hearts I'', so for this game, it was replaced by a RhythmGame. Too bad that this RhythmGame is just as hated. Apart from the questionable quality of some of the songs, the minigame is poorly-designed - the cues are only vaguely in line with the music, and there are too few of them, to the point that you spend the majority of each song just looking at the characters and doing nothing. The whole thing is optional, but it nets you an upgrade to Blizzard magic, some equipment, and you need to complete it to unlock the GoldenEnding. To make matters worse, this game has improved swimming controls that are significantly less awkward to use, so ditching the action combat for a rhythm game was not necessary.

** Commands have a reload time in order to balance their use with combos, but [[FakeBalance that balance is completely shattered by the Haste abilities]], which are very easy to obtain. Having all 5 Hastes makes commands reload faster than you can even use them, making combos even more worthless.
** Commands themselves are hit hard by FakeBalance. Ultimate commands have very slow animations and lack invincibility frames, which just leaves the player open when using them. This makes the hardest-to-obtain commands usually [[JunkRare worthless.]] Meanwhile, the unassuming, yet invincibility-granting and powerful Thunder Surge is the best in the game, with few, if any drawbacks.

*** ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsIII'' buffed the party quite a bit. They can now stagger humanoid bosses, which not only helps Sora combo the boss but also helps to keep the party from getting smacked mid-attack like they used to be. They're also much smarter about healing, know how to combo enemies. The removal of the ArbitraryHeadCountLimit also helped, as you can have up to five people including Sora in a party at any one time. Several late-game party members are also extremely powerful; [[spoiler:Roxas and Xion in particular are so PurposelyOverpowered that they can solo Saix without Sora's interference]]. However, their defenses are still as paper-thin as ever. And the powerful {{Limit Break}}s and Drive Forms have been replaced with Links, which are functionally random, so it's still a bit of a crapshoot. And even then, the most powerful {{Bonus Boss}}es in the ''Re:Mind'' DLC have Sora fighting the battles alone, so it's a moot point.

** Each dream eater had many different abilities, and it's not clear at first glance who has what ability to teach your character. Many of the abilities are also stuck and assigned to the dream eaters, such as [element] screen/boost, meaning that if the dream eater leaves the party, Sora and Riku go without those passive benefits.

* [[WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid Atlantica]]'s swimming controls were hated in ''Kingdom Hearts I'', so for this game, it was replaced by a RhythmGame. Too bad that this Rhythem Game is just as hated. Apart from the questionable quality of some of the songs, the minigame is poorly-designed - the cues are only vaguely in line with the music, and there are too few of them, to the point that you spend the majority of each song just looking at the characters and doing nothing. The whole thing is optional, but it nets you an upgrade to Blizzard magic, some equipment, and you need to complete it to unlock the GoldenEnding. To make matters worse, this game has improved swimming controls that are significantly less awkward to use, so ditching the action combat for a rhythm game was not necessary.

* While the rest of the series have decent camera systems, the camera in ''Kingdom Hearts I'' is inexcusably bad. It's been half-jokingly referred to as an "anti-camera", since if the function of a camera is to show you what you need to see, the camera in ''Kingdom Hearts I'' seems determined to obstruct it. A player might spend as much time fighting with the camera as they do fighting the Heartless due to the camera's tendencies to weirdly zoom in, get stuck on things, or just freeze in place. Locking onto a target helps somewhat, but not much. This gets especially bad in later levels like Monstro and Neverland, which feature very tight spaces that the camera will frequently get stuck on, forcing weird zooms and pans that obscure what's going on for several seconds at a time, taking your attention away from the fight. Frustratingly enough, the camera issues have not been fixed in any UpdatedRerelease, despite the camera being a chief complaint about the original ''Kingdom Hearts''.

* The party members in games that have them. While the characters' involvement in the story is generally pretty good, using them in battle is much more iffy.

*** ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsIII'' buffed the party quite a bit. They can now stagger humanoid bosses, which not only helps Sora combo the boss but also helps to keep the party from getting smacked mid-attack like they used to be. They're also much smarter about healing, know how to combo enemies. The removal of the ArbitraryHeadCountLimit also helped, as you can have up to five people including Sora in a party at any one time. Several late-game party members are also extremely powerful; [[spoiler:Roxas and Xion in particular are so PurposelyOverpowered that they can solo Saix without Sora's interference]]. However, their defenses are still as paper-thin as ever. And the powerful {{Limit Break}}s and Drive Forms have been replaced with Links, which are functionally random, so it's still a bit of a crapshoot. And even then, the most powerful {{Bonus Boss}}es in the ''Re:Mind'' DLC have Sora fighting the enemies alone, so it's kind of a moot point.
* In some of the games, you have to defeat bosses through a combo finisher or magic, no exceptions. While this can be annoying if the boss has only one HP left, just remember that you can equip skills that increase the length of your combos... and you can be interrupted while attacking. This might even potentially mean losing a boss fight because the boss didn't go down even though you were hitting him left and right, because the attacks didn't count as a {{finishing move}}. While there's an ability in ''Kingdom Hearts II'' that allows you to use a finisher instantly in the middle of a combo, such a thing really shouldn't have been necessary.

** A few titles have Scan as an equippable ability, which shows enemy HP. Why a player would ever turn this off is anybody's guess; outside of a SelfImposedChallenge, there's really no reason why you wouldn't want to see how much HP your enemies have left. Later in the series, Scan stopped being optional, but why such a thing would ''ever'' be optional is a mystery.

* The original ''Kingdom Hearts'' was criticized for having unskippable cutscenes, which was especially irritating when they came before a difficult boss fight, forcing players to rewatch the scene each time they lost. Fortunately, the option to skip cutscenes was added in the game's UpdatedRerelease ''Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix.'' All subsequent releases of the original ''Kingdom Hearts'' have also kept the option to skip the cutscenes, and every game after the first one lets you skip cutscenes by default, meaning the Scrappy mechanic only applies to the original [=PlayStation 2=] release.
* The first game's Gummi ship sections were widely hated for being slow-paced. While they're all rail shooters in the vein of ''VideoGame/StarFox'', there were too few enemies who attacked far too slowly to be any fun. Not helping matters was that until you obtain the Warp Gummi, you ''had'' to play through these segments every time you want to go to another world, which is a colossal waste of timer. The developers [[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap thankfully fixed this]] by revamping the Gummi sections entirely for the sequels by making them much faster and more dynamic.
* While the rest of the series is generally much better about this, the camera in ''Kingdom Hearts I'' is inexcusably bad. It's been half-jokingly referred to as an "anti-camera", since if a camera shows you what you need to see, the anti-camera obstructs it. A player might spend as much time trying to see the enemy they're fighting as they spend actually fighting it due to the camera's tendencies to weirdly zoom in, get stuck on things, or just freeze in place. Locking onto a target helps somewhat, but not much. This gets especially bad in later levels like Monstro and Neverland, which feature very tight spaces that the camera will frequently get stuck on, forcing weird zooms and pans that obscure what's going on for several seconds at a time, forcing the player to try and correct the camera and taking their attention away from the fight. Frustratingly enough, the camera issues have not been fixed in rereleases, despite the camera being a chief complaint about the game.