I have mixed feelings about Osaka team being behind KH3. At least we should have a little better perspective next month when 0.2 hits.
As much shit as I give BBS it is actually really fun game for a portable system and a technical marvel to boot. For their first original game (not counting re:CoM) it was a damn fine one.
DDD kinda soured peoples opinions on the studio since it fixed none of the problems BBS had and removed pretty much all the best parts of it. But at the same time as you say DDD screams a rush job when they barely just had BBS finished with all the tweaks and bonus content for western and FM releases. For a game that had a ton of new systems made for it in such a short time it could have ended up being much, much worse.
With KH3 they certainly have more than enough time to iron out the base mechanics if they have the talent for it. And the fact that it is mostly based on KH2 (with MP charge ect. instead of just stacking multiple curagas and invisi frame heavy commands) I hope they can balance it much better.
But I swear if they screw this one up I'll just jump on the outsource everything to Platinum bandwagon.
I don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole and get a little OT, but I think you can argue that a bulk of BBS' boss battle woes stem from the structure of the combat system. Designing bosses (secret endgame ones especially) around a fully customizable ability load-out must be an
absolute nightmare, because the KH games aren't shy about giving the player overpowered tools (HP/MP refill w/ drive forms, Reflect spells, Duck Flare from KH2, Shootlocks, mines, command styles, and other crazy abilities in BBS, for example) if they make the player feel strong and feel fun to use.
However, the break between KH1/2 and BBS/3D/whatever else is that encounters can be designed around a generally constant growth system in 1/2 (player capability only grows, and the core toolkit doesn't change) while two players could have wildly different loadouts in the latter two. While there can be variation from player to player in 1/2 - unlocked drive form abilities, for example - the consideration to be made for the strongest abilities is that either the player has it or they don't, whereas in BBS/3D you have to think about if the player is using X, Y, and Z, or using X
instead of Y, or forgoing anything else and using three Xs instead. Further compounded by the crazy variety of abilities and what they can do. It seems they responded to that problem by going "Fuck it! We'll do it live!" and falling on the side of letting the OP skills be.
We'll see how they handle designing around a more consolidated toolkit.
_/¯
