World of JRPG's

I have been on a KH marathon, which I started sometimes back in May after beating Metaphor Re: Fantazio. I am just about to play BBS -fragmentary passage- and KH 3, and will then watch the fandub of Union Cross part 2, and potentially play Melody of Memory since I do like rhythm games. It's been a doozy, I've played literally every game in the series besides Re:Coded (I justed watched the cutscenes), and I've had fun but been also very frustrated with every single one.

The controls are my biggest gripe, they change every game and so I feel like I can never get good at fighting, but so far BBS has had the best controls (God bless L2 and R2 buttons). I think my favorite in terms of gameplay + difficulty so far has been Chain of Memories, as I feel I struggled way less with that game besides a few bosses (Larxene and Marulxia...), meanwhile all of KH 1 was a struggle for me on normal mode, and proud mode KH 2 was actually pretty boring, except for a few ridiculous boss fights (I literally only beat Zexion out of the other absent silhouettes 💀) which makes those boss fights extremely frustrating. I also hated having to use the forms constantly to get abilities cause I'd forget about them, and I thought limit mode was a pain to navigate until I realized at the literal end of the game that you could use the shortcut button to navigate Limit mode instead 🥀 I might be stupid, but I just wish KH had better tutorials or something.

I fucking hate Olympus in every game (even 358/2!), I just never like the tournaments and having to win multiple battles in a row. It's slightly easier in KH2 but I still fuck up the "don't drop orbs" cup.

Dream Drop Distance was pretty fun, but once again, controls (am I dumb? I just hate having to use D-pad to scroll through the menus, and I fuck it up all the time) hold the game back from being a favorite. It also loses a shit ton of points for the fact that when you die, you basically reset to the beginning of whatever room you're in, and so all those levels you gained got wiped. It makes this frustrating feedback loop of dying over and over again because I know I need to level up, but I don't want to because I've fought in the same area for the 5th time.

Overall, I love the story and characters, and am having a way better time than my mom who unfortunately didn't play the side games (cause back then Square said it wasn't necessary, which was a lie lol), and so I'm excited for 3 since I will actually understand what's going on and all the characters they show. But the controls and game difficulty really make me dislike these games, and it feels like they are forcing me to grind much harder than I want to. Other JRPGs like Metaphor and the Tales of series have felt way less grindy to me, or so well integrated with the story that I didn't even realize I was grinding. Also I just loved the controls of Tales of Vesperia far more than any KH game, it was a blast to play through, and I miss it.

TLDR: Kingdom Hearts marathon since May, I suck at controls and most of the games are hard for me, but I love the characters and story.