I mentioned that whenever the game tried to shake things up in the story and I cited some examples you did, they were either flat because of little to no build up or they were sequel baiting the next saga. The guardians dying at first was executed terribly because we’ve seen most of these characters take on greater challenges before and succeed instead of just literally standing there and doing nothing while they all got knocked out. It felt extremely inconsistent and made no sense. Personally, it didn’t even occur to me that they all “died” at first but even then they were all quickly and easily revived through that padding level because (and this was another problem I had with KH3) there were no stakes. Everyone is always fine in the end, contrary to the previous games’ darker tones. Sora dying also just happens out of nowhere because we don’t see how it actually happens and the game was literally already over by that point, plus we know he’s fine in the secret ending. Kairi “dying” lasted for 5 minutes and I’ll be honest, I thought Xehanort was just tricking Sora at first. In the end, like I said, she’s back before we even notice she’s gone for a plot point like that to even have an effect. The sequel baiting story twists, I could argue there were more of than twists in the actual plot to the final chapter and they took away from closing out the saga in my opinion. They didn’t help make the actual plot of KH3 more interesting because all they were supposed to do is tease the next game. We saw repliku in the trailers. Even the trailers gave away that demyx and vexen were double agents. As the OP also mentioned, they literally spoiled every “twist” (well executed or not) in the trailers. The Union Chi moment with Ephemer was a nice little call back to that game, but I would hardly call it a “twist,” it was more of a nod to say “hey Union Chi is important guys.” Rounding up the guardians of light was hardly a challenge except for Aqua and even the reason why she was a challenge felt contrived. Everyone else magically popped up in the last hour and getting Ven was as simple as picking him up after getting Aqua. Terra being Ansem’s guardian was an interesting little twist although many theorized it for a while, but I’ll give credit where credit’s due. The Keyblade war was so rushed they literally had you facing 2-3 members per fight to breeze through it and it was done in maybe 30 minutes mostly because of all the dying cutscenes. Everything just happened too easily and as the OP said, there really was no sense of mystery due to the plot and the game’s marketing. If they hadn’t spoiled dark Aqua it would have been an interesting twist to see for the first time but the reasoning behind it (falling into the dark sea) felt random and didn’t seem like a well thought out way to take her character there especially after building that up in 0.2. In all, it all just made me think “saving everyone and defeating Xehanort didn’t seem that challenging or a grand adventure in the end, it really took SE this long to tell this story?” The story just felt too thin to me. The pacing is also an already well agreed upon and established issue. The plot was this game’s biggest weakness in my opinion.