Love it or hate it, there’s no denying that Square Enix’s Kingdom Hearts 3 is an experience unto itself. Commercially, it was the highest selling title in January in the United States as per The NPD Group. However, what’s coming next? Dengeki Online spoke to director Tetsuya Nomura about this, and he pretty much confirmed that Critical Mode, recently datamined from the game’s files, is indeed coming.
“Critical mode has been Final Mix additional thing in the past, so we will release it later. We don’t want to just end in adjusting damage numbers, but we constantly adjust/debug it. We don’t want it just hard, but fun and challenging,” said Nomura. This is good news for some of us who may have found Proud Mode to be bit uneven.
As for post-launch downloadable content, Nomura says that this was previously available in Final Mix packages. However, this this time they’re approaching it a little differently. He said, “We want to add every additional content via DLC. As for free DLC, we will roll out whatever we finish first, but for paid DLC we want to combine a lot of things and release at once, so it will take time. But we want to finish working on the DLC by this year and the team to move on to the next game.” So if you’re still holding out on Kingdom Hearts 3, it may be worth waiting a bit longer for the additional content. Of course, when the DLC could arrive is unknown.
With regards to sales, Nomura admitted that they had exceeded expectations. “As for the numbers, when I saw the exact numbers including DL sales, it exceeded my expectations. Right now we are making the DLC so it doesn’t feel like it’s over. And my sleep time got shorter after the release.”
You can read our official review of Kingdom Hearts 3 here. The game is currently available for Xbox One and PS4.