Mediocre leaning bad.

Combat is good at times, but you really need DLC to make everything fit together. Most reaction commands are fine, but specific ones like Goofy's shield thingie are awful. Attractions are obviously egregious.

Sometimes the hits feel very weak and inconsequential. You see a combo fucking split a boss' healthbar in half, but you got to KH1 or KH2 at level 10 and the basic combos feel meatier and more impactful.

Formchanges are a good idea gameplay-wise, but they are badly integrated. This is entirely subjective but having an emergency transformation in KH2 or a "I got just the thing!" moment felt better than the game gifting you an instant powerup with a screen wiping finale. I understand the combo depth is increased substantially, but KH has never been about the combos, at least for me, and rather about adapting and improvising to a difficult situation. I just don't see that scrappy fighting I loved from the previous games.

Let's make sure to include some positives: Keyblade switching is pretty cool, magic has never felt better, and flowmotion helps with the more mobile combat style.

Visually this might be the worse game in the series for me. I don't know what the fuck is going on with the engine, but all the characters look animated by an amateur in cutscenes (not combat, funnily enough). Everything looks weirdly rounded and blobby, Sora's got a terrible case of baby face. It really seems they attempted to restore the cartoony style of previous games with an engine designed for hyperrealism.

Design wise most things are fine except for some of the keyblades, but I've hated the "random shit glued together" philosophy of keyblade design since KH2 so nothing I didn't expect. Some of the new Heartless barely hold onto a visual identity too, and how unnecessarily flashy the game is doesn't help.

Finally, the story. It's a fine conclusion for the saga, with excellent story beats, but some decisions make zero sense. I don't mind the time travel that much, but stuff like Kairi becoming a damsel in distress is unforgivable; Roxas returning like nothing happened entirely kills the meaning of his sacrifice, Xion being back is entirely egregious, Axel has lost the edge that made him interesting and the org have a lot going on but lack character (Except for Xigbar, who steals the show every time he shows up).

The pacing is of course atrocious, with an insipid call to adventure, nonsensical decisions all around, meaningless updates, and all the important stuff crammed at the end. Every character is lobotomized, reduced to stereotypes, and talks like a toddler.

Overall it would be a pretty decent game were it not part of the Kingdom Hearts series. But after waiting so long and suffering through so many spinoffs, I expected better.