Yesterday the Kingdom Hearts Orchestra -World of Tres- concert revealed new information on Kingdom Hearts 3's upcoming DLC. One of the new reveals, the Premium Menu, will allow players to adjust the difficulty of the game more precisely than they can now. It will do this by way of two options called "Fast Pass" and "Black Code."
Fast Pass will make the game easier for players; Black Code will make it harder. New information on how exactly these two options will change the state of the game has come to light.
According to Twitter user mel_lifluous3, Fast Pass will provide several options to make the game easier for players, such as allowing them to stack up on multiple spells and attractions in the combat menu. More importantly, however, it will apparently allow players to one-shot enemies. Whether or not this includes bosses remains to be seen, but considering the feature's design works to get players through KH3's story as quickly as possible, it's very likely. There will probably be some trophy and achievement restrictions implemented when this is in use, though.
One of the new specifics mel_lifluous3 talked about for Black Code claims that it will allow players to choose how many HP they have. From the sounds of this description, players will be allowed to give themselves only 1 HP if they're feeling masochistic. Critical Mode already limits the amount of HP a player can acquire throughout the game, so using this feature of Black Code in addition to it could end up being just as much redundant as it is challenging.
Currently, the only control players have over the difficulty of Kingdom Hearts 3 lies in the "Zero EXP" ability, 4 different difficulty settings, and self-imposed restrictions. From easiest to hardest, Beginner, Standard, Proud, and Critical Mode make up the four difficulty settings. The Zero EXP ability does what its namesake implies and prevents Sora and friends from gaining any experience to level up. Self-imposed restrictions are self-explanatory and probably inspired the additions of Fast Pass and Black Code.
It's unknown yet whether or not the Premium Menu will be usable in every difficulty setting in the game. It may be a Critical Mode only feature since, by design, Critical Mode manipulates the difficulty of KH3 more extremely than the other three modes.
Kingdom Hearts 3 is available now for PS4 and Xbox One, with the Re: Mind DLC set to release sometime this winter.