KH Should Not Demand Perfection

Something I've been noticing mroe adn more is that KH games seem to think they have better gameplay than they actually do; they expect you to react to crazy anime attacks, and punish you severely for mistakes.
The thing I've found with KH is that it has always been more about spectacle than balance, KH1 and KH especially understood this. But after playing DDD, I started to pick up a pattern since then, of demanding things the player simply couldn't do.
KH LOVES its lengthy animations, full of flashy graphics and elaborate acrobatics. What KH2 understood was that these moves took control away from the player for far too long to be fair, so they granted invincibility frames during them. These invincibility frames slowly made their way out of KH, until they all but disappeared in DDD.
See, KH seems to be under the impression that it's 'fair', but anybody who has been knocked off a building in tWtNW by an Aura Lion should know otherwise.
KH is full of unfair combos, offscreen potshots, and attacks that are more about being cool than actually having a practical way of being avoided, yet it seems the developers are slowly forgetting this, and demanding more and more from players. Demanding something they can't deliver on.

I mena, it really says something that when playing DDD I never once felt like it was MY fault for dying. It was always 'gee, it sure would have been nice if that gianta attack didn't suddenly appear on my screen taking off half my health' and the like.
I dunno, maybe it's just me, thoughts?

 

I've not played Dream Drop Distance so I can't form an informed opinion on the matter but I don't think it's uncommon for there to be a difficulty spike between games. If you're playing the sequels, they assume you have at least played one of its forerunners--therefore, the gameplay should come more naturally to you, and they need to hike up the difficulty to keep players challenged.

The problem here is that the gameplay in each title has changed very dramatically--more so than a lot of the games I'm using to compare. The difference from Kingdom Hearts to Chain of Memories alone is jarring, but if you go from (say) Kingdom Hearts II to Dream Drop Distance, you're in for a lot of readjustment. That's where the "the sequel should be harder, gameplay-wise" logic falls through: players don't have the luxury of returning to a system or bosses that is entirely familiar to them. It's good and bad--results in some frustration on the users' end, but it does keep the games, to some extent, fresh.

 

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The combat is not too difficult in nearly any KH game. If it didn't try to be unfair in places there would be almost no challenge in the game, not satisfaction when overcoming the challenge, and all rewards would be easy to obtain and there would be no pride in having items such as Proofs, Ranks, and Ultima.

The only area that I think needs to be toned down is the recent secret bosses that are just impossible to beat, and require luck to win. Such as MF and VS, for me it was like luck of the draw with winning those, some I would win on the first try, and some would take me countless times to beat. LS in KH2FM is an example of a satisfyingly hard secret boss.

 

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Nah, it's not just you. I vaguely remember that the energy beam's attack in the Delusive Beginning was annoying while you're trying to flowmotion around. I guess invincibility frames would of helped there.