#revisiting kh1 again

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts

[howdomaddie]

on sora’s time in the sleeping worlds and coming to terms with other’s pain

so, i was recently rewatching a playthrough of the kingdom hearts series from a YT channel i particularly enjoy and had some thoughts when it came to dream drop distance. the player had quite a bit to say about the overall plot of that game, and that seems to fall in line with how i’ve seen a lot more people than i thought view DDD as well--that it’s not that great? i totally get being frustrated with the real organization shenanigans because the planned time travel was a bit much but…idk, i’ve never really been into KH for the villains and their schemes. DDD has always kind of been one of my favorites, so as i was rewatching this playthrough of it, i was thinking over why it gets the flack it does story-wise, and why i still think it’s good beyond that.

i’ve always loved riku’s arc, and i loved sora in DDD, but i was honestly “meh” on it until this current rewatch when i was thinking over it all again, and keeping in mind other things in the series better. and now i think i’ve cracked it--i figured out a nice little piece for why sora’s arc works, even if it’s subtle and possibly not fully intended.

and…bear with me here…but it’s partially because of re:coded

STAY WITH ME, I PROMISE I HAVE A POINT!!! it’s below the cut since this will be long, but hear me out: sora in DDD is going through the same things that data sora did in re:coded, and proving that he will always come to the same conclusion about how to handle the pain the others in his heart have gone through (maybe someone’s discussed all of this before, so sorry if i’m just rehashing a well-known point, but…wanted to share my thoughts, haha)

okay. so, in order to really talk about this, let’s revisit what are probably the most important sections of re:coded, and what they do well on a story-telling level.

in the last quarter or so of re:coded, data sora is brought back to help mickey and friends find the meaning of the second message that’s appeared in jiminy’s journal: “Their hurting will be mended when you return to end it.” data sora ends up arriving at an illusion of castle oblivion, and is goaded along by a data version of roxas to go deeper into the castle. this data roxas taunts him about how he’ll never remember the people he encounters in each part of the castle, poking and prodding data sora along through all the revisited worlds.

in one of the earliest rooms (destiny islands i think), data sora has a conversation with the data version of riku that has turned up. data riku shows him a vision of riku and kairi from the events of KH1. afterwards, data riku asks what data sora would have done if he’d known this. and data sora answers immediately:

[ ID: an image of data sora from kingdom hearts re:coded. he has a determined expression on his face, and his clenching his fist as a show of conviction. the subtitles read: "I would’ve helped you, of course. Both of you! I’d’ve figured out how to undo the hurt." End ID. ]

data riku seems pleased with this outcome, and he eventually goes on to say: “Just follow your heart, and you can change the lives of not one, but many.”

as data sora goes deeper into this version of castle oblivion, he only comes across more pain in his heart as he forgets the people he meets. he may forget the people themselves, but the doesn’t forget that he met someone as he goes through the castle.

[ ID: four images from kingdom hearts re:coded. data sora looks sad and pensive as he says this to data roxas, placing a hand over his heart: “But still, I’m frustrated that I’ve forgotten them. I feel moments of loneliness. You said there would be no hurt feelings, but I AM hurting. When the memories are gone, they just leave a hole. And having that longing inside me hurts.” End ID. ]

data roxas eventually confronts data sora about what he’s come to terms with in the castle: that some of that pain he’s feeling is what helps him connect with others, to truly empathize with them. data roxas sees this as a sign that data sora passed his test, to see if he could come to terms with the pain in the hearts he’s most closely connected to.

data namine soon confirms that the real sora carries around a lot of pain that isn’t his own inside his heart--and that he’s found a way to face the suffering all of these disparate parts of himself had to endure. he’s already equipped to face it and help those he’s met that have been lost.

something that i think i’ve come to appreciate more is that as he’s gotten older, sora has ended up becoming really emotionally intelligent. he’s an extremely empathetic character, and always has been. after all, he gave a piece of himself to someone to fix their broken heart when he was still an infant.

[ ID: an image from kingdom hearts birth by sleep. a four year old sora looks upset as he holds ventus’s heart in his hands and asks, “Are you sad?” ]

we all know that his empathy and ability to connect emotionally to others is kind of sora’s whole thing--his friends are his power! but it makes sense that sora’s able to face the pain and suffering characters like xion and ven went through because he is such an open and caring person.

what struck me as critical in all this as i was thinking over what sora goes through in DDD are the instructions namine gives for how to handle the pain of others that sora is holding onto.

[ ID: three screenshots of data namine and data sora from kingdom hearts re:coded. data namine explains to data sora: “There’s only one way to deal with that [pain]; you face it head-on and then you accept it. And if it happens that the hurt is too great for you to bear it alone, well, then you turn to a friend close to your heart.” End ID. ]

this is less a “do this thing for the first time” to me--it’s data namine reinforcing something that data sora (and the real sora by extension, obviously) already knows very well. there is strength to be found in the bonds you share, and that if you need it, you can always rely on the friends you’ve made. this was made apparent through the entire series but this serves as a reminder that yes, sora has been doing the best thing he can. he has remained true to his heart, and is willing to rely on those he cares about.

we know that being alone and only relying on yourself is not the best thing to do in the series--it’s part of what drives riku to darkness in KH1--so that’s why this is a reassurance that sora already knows how to face this sort of pain.

so. WHAT on earth does this have to do with dream drop distance, you might be asking. well, it all stems from the YT channel i was watching this series playthrough from. the channel is PlayFrame (highly recommend looking at their stuff!) and dan, the one playing through the series, had a good take on re:coded's story: he liked the general themes being played with at the end of re:coded, but was upset it was not happening to actual sora. and that sentiment stuck with me as i got to DDD in the series playthrough, and that’s the lens that i viewed sora’s side of the story through.

anyway. let’s dive (ha) in, shall we?

at the end of re:coded, king mickey writes that letter in a bottle that gets to sora in the post credits of KH2 to explain the revelations from the end of re:coded. sora knows now that he’s the thread that will save people like roxas and xion and aqua and ventus, and he knows what data namine was wanting him to eventually face.

at the start of DDD, sora is aware that he needs to face the pain of others that is currently residing in his heart and find a way to save those that have been lost. he is primed with that knowledge, and likely wants to face it the way data sora did.

why do i think this? well…it's in the true secret ending of BBS, first off. sora acknowledges the contents of the letter (likely mickey explaining re:coded and asking him and riku to meet with yen sid), and knows that he was shaped partially because of the BBS trio and the pain he has in his heart from others.

[ ID: screenshots from kingdom hearts birth by sleep of sora speaking to kairi on the destiny islands. he says, "I have to go. I am who I am...because of them." End ID. ]

i think that the mark of mastery exam in DDD was really a chance for sora and riku to do some self-reflection and consider what may or may not be holding them back from becoming classical keyblade masters. in BBS, master eraqus says this of the mark of mastery exam:

Today you will be examined for the Mark of Mastery. Not one but two of the Keyblade's chosen stand here as candidates...but this is neither a competition nor a battle for supremacy--not a test of wills, but a test of heart. [...] Remember, [ for Aqua and Terra's duel ] there are no winners, only truths, for when equal powers clash, their nature is revealed.

eraqus's words are admittedly more specific to the exam aqua and terra had, but the idea that what's being tested is the person's heart seems very relevant to sora and riku in dream drop distance. they both have a chance to reflect on themselves, and who they truly are.

we know how riku’s arc goes: he finally realizes that he does have the power to protect what matters to him, and that darkness in his heart is not something to fear. it does not make him any less worthy to wield a keyblade, nor does it keep him from being a keyblade master.

[ ID: a screenshot from kingdom hearts dream drop distance of riku and sora. sora’s arm is slung over riku’s shoulder and he is beaming. riku doesn’t seem to believe what he’s saying: ���Really? I’m a Keyblade Master?” ]

but what about sora? first off, i do agree that first and foremost sora never really cared about the results of this mark of mastery--he's never needed the "master" label, nor does he think riku needs it. but he goes through with it especially to help riku finally overcome what doubt he still has.

anyway, outside of Overall Series Plot happening to him in this game and the contrived reason he isn’t also named a master, what does sora come to realize? well, it’s what data namine wanted for him: to face the pain inside him head on, and to rely on those close to his heart when he couldn’t do it alone.

what do i mean by this? let’s go world by world to see.

starting with hunchback, since we visit traverse town twice:

[ ID: a screenshot from kingdom hearts dream drop distance of sora, who is looking at the camera. he appears thoughtful as he says of quasimodo: “He can’t let his heart be a prison.” ]

sora realizes that quasimodo is putting up walls in his heart that keep him from being hurt--walls that, in turn, are becoming something of a “prison”. they’re what keep quasimodo safe, but also keep him disconnected from others and is an excuse for why he doesn’t leave notre dame cathedral. 

at the end of sora’s time in this world, quasimodo has opened himself to others, and decides to not keep his fears from holding him back. as sora processes this information, of course, we have the villains telling him that his own heart is now a prison for someone else--ventus.

i don’t think this is true for sora and ven’s situation, and that the organization is just trying to make sora question himself. sora welcomed ven into his heart willingly to keep ven safe--it’s been a very long time, yes, and sora will eventually need to help ven return to his body, but sora’s heart isn’t a prison.

sora opened his heart when he was very young to ventus--and he has continued to be open and compassionate to basically everyone else. he sees the good in people, and believes in them far longer than others. it can make him too trusting at times, but it undeniably saved ven.

after hunchback, we have the grid and prankster’s paradise, and these should be easy enough to figure out.

[ ID: a screenshot from kingdom hearts dream drop distance of sora and quorra. sora is holding quorra back from attacking, and quorra says to sora of rinzler (originally sora’s friend tron), “He’s a program, Sora. Programs don’t have hearts.” End ID. ]

the grid for sora is all about his relationship to tron and making rinzler remember who he truly is. quorra is pretty quick to throw in the towel on sora’s attempts to reach his friend’s heart, but sora keeps trying--and eventually, he does manage to have a breakthrough. he helps tron fight off his reprogramming, and remember their friendship. he’s able to touch tron’s heart and remind him of what’s important--he just has to give tron the time he needs, and eventually help him regain his sense of self.

my, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

[ ID: a screenshot from kingdom hearts three of sora, xion, and axel. sora has his hand on xion’s keyblade, and is persuading her not to hurt her friend axel--trying to remind her of who she really is. ]

there’s one quote from the jeff bridges character that i feel is important to note here:

That’s the thing about programs. Mess with the code just a little, and their whole nature and memory can change.

sora’s time in the grid helps him understand a bit more of what “copies” of him can be going through, and honestly is an important part of why he is able to help xion and roxas in 3 (at least to me). xion’s suffering is tied to how the organization used and abused her, and them tampering with her memories is why she starts off on their side in 3. but sora, good boy that he is, manages to break through to her with a little help from roxas--just like he needed the right thing to reprogram rinzler and help him remember that he was tron all along.

as for prankster’s paradise…

[ ID: a screenshot from kingdom hearts dream drop distance of sora and xemnas confronting each other. sora looks determined as he exclaims, “But if Pinocchio could be given one (a heart)--shouldn’t you be able to have a heart inside you, too?” End ID. ]

the fact that nobodies do actually have hearts is confirmed towards the end of the game, but it’s clear sora has already mostly figured it out on his own. i’ll touch on it a little more later on, but sora knows that roxas has his own heart, living on inside his own--it’s a reminder of how roxas still exists, and how much of his own person he is outside of sora. he respects roxas's sense of identity as of the end of KH2, which leads him to act the way he does when faced with xemnas here.

xemnas is still putting on the show here that nobodies are beings without hearts, and sora knows that is blatantly untrue--why else would roxas feel the things he did if that was the case?

the other three worlds--traverse town, the country of musketeers, and the symphony of sorcery--do the same thing that data namine did in re:coded. they reinforce the things sora already knows about connecting with others, and relying on their strength when he can’t do things alone.

[ ID: a screenshot from kingdom hearts dream drop distance of sora talking to neku in traverse town. when talking about neku denying that he said he needed shiki, sora says, “What? Why? You said you need her. That’s a good thing.” End ID. ]

sora says it directly to neku in the revisit to traverse town: it’s good that neku admitted to needing shiki around. sora has always trusted in people to rely on him and to return the favor, so he sees none of the shame that neku feels in admitting that he needs other people.

[ ID: a screenshot from kingdom hearts dream drop distance of mickey and donald. mickey looks to the camera as he says, “Goofy’s right. As a team, we can do anything!” End ID. ]

the recurring musketeer motto of “All for one, and one for all!” when sora joins mickey, donald, and goofy in protecting princess minnie is another reminder of all this: sora knows the true value of teamwork with his party members, and how important donald and goofy are to him. they are his friends for life, and they’ll be at his side the way he’s at theirs. he reassures them the way they reassure him and always have.

[ ID: a screenshot from kingdom hearts dream drop distance of sora, looking wistful as he talks about riku: “I’ve got a friend out there who will help. He’s always picking up the slack for me.” End ID. ]

sora’s belief in riku is something that’s shown throughout the entire game, and the symphony of sorcery is just one example of many in truth--but sora has never doubted riku or even kairi and the others. even if he can’t see riku, even if his friends are a million miles away, sora knows that they have his back.

[ ID: a screenshot from kingdom hearts dream drop distance of sora in traverse town, looking happy and patting his chest as he says of riku, “Don’t worry. He’s with me--even when it might seem like he’s not.” End ID. ]

for the Overall Series Plot happening in DDD, this is very good for sora to remember--riku becomes a dream eater to protect sora in this game, so a friend helping from afar is quite literal. (i think it’s also important to remember this when thinking about the ending of kh3, and where sora has found himself. he still has people who love and care for him, even if they’re a million worlds apart from each other.)

anyway, now we come to the heart of the matter. has sora ended up in the same place as data sora? can he accept the pain the different pieces of him went through, and help them? as of kh3’s ending we know he’s helped them, but what about DDD? had he done it by the end of that game?

[ ID: three screenshots from kingdom hearts dream drop distance of sora and xion. sora asks who xion is, but trails off before he finishes asking. in the final shot, sora sheds a tear over xion. End ID. ]

sora comes face to face with namine and xion, and while he doesn’t connect with them, really, he does seem to feel their pain.

the most apparent interaction that leaves its mark is, of course, when he encounters roxas.

[ ID: screenshots from kingdom hearts dream drop distance of sora speaking to roxas, saying, “Roxas, you’re you. We’re not the same. I wanted to tell you that.” End ID. ]

at the end of KH2, sora has accepted that roxas had a clear sense of self, and was his own individual in spite of being sora's nobody. because sora is fully aware that roxas has his own heart and strong sense of, sora can firmly insist that roxas is his own person. roxas respects this, and opens his heart to sora, to share the truly terrible things that happened to him. and sora faces it, the way he needs to.

[ ID: a screenshot from kingdom hearts dream drop distance of sora, where sora looks angry and upset about what happened to roxas. He clenches his fist, and asks, “Did they cause all this pain?” End ID. ]

sora has faced roxas’s pain and suffering, at least. sora knows how the organization used and abused him, and how diz did the same. and sora is ready to face the pain the others in his heart are carrying--or, at least, that’s what i believe.

when riku encounters ansem the wise in sora’s heart at the end of the game, what ansem says is something i think kind of ties everything together:

Sora was the only one able to return to his human form without destroying his Nobody. That is a statement to the love in his heart for other people, and the bonds that tie them together. Perhaps…he has the power to bring back the hearts and existences of those connected to him--to recreate people we thought were lost to us forever. [ … ] Sora has a heart like [ a child's ]--uncorrupted, willing to see the good before the bad. When he sees the heart in something, it then becomes real. When a connection seems broken, he may have the power to mend it. [ … ] He has touched countless hearts, he has accepted them, and he has saved them. [ … ] All Sora needs to do is be himself and follow wherever it is that his heart takes him. It is the best and only way.

after the opening section of kh3 in olympus colosseum, what’s the thing that sets sora off on his journey?

[ ID: a screenshot from kingdom hearts three of sora, donald, goofy, and jiminy cricket in the gummi ship cockpit. sora looks determined as he says, “The others are following Aqua’s heart, so I’ll follow Roxas’s heart!”  End ID. ]

his desire for roxas to truly be his own person. during DDD, sora came to truly understand just how hard roxas fought to be his own person, even moreso than knew at the end of KH2, and wants to follow through on what he said to roxas directly. roxas, to sora, deserves to be his own person as much as sora does. and so, following that desire, sora sets out on this final leg of the Dark Seeker story arc.

so many people move mountains to make roxas beign his own person a reality. not even just roxas, actually, but xion and namine too--all because sora understood that roxas had his own heart, memories, and history. he saw roxas’s suffering and still pushed through to make sure his nobody got the life he deserved.

sora faced what pain he could, and did everything in his power to undo the suffering the people connected to him were feeling--and when he couldn’t do it himself, he let others help him. just the way namine (and her creation, data namine) wanted.

im sorry this is so long and kind of rambly--but i feel like i finally get sora in DDD outside of the organization’s plans for him, and that the off hand comment from this lets play i’m rewatching actually ended up being true. if you made it this far down in this silly post thanks for reading, hope you're having a good day ;u;

[e-tan13]

Just finished KH1 and 2 recently and trying to write a YT video explaining my feelings about how critical quality doesn’t matter and whimsy and fun and purity and earnestness are enough to make media good is a hard first writing project to give myself💀

The games are both very good, I enjoyed 1 more but I also spent a lot of time playing 2 like it was devil may cry and I think it made me like the game less so I’ll have to play 2 again sometime to revisit those feelings.

Trying to start a lot of different things after graduating and needing to get a job is hard

[magpiejay1234]

Kind of an interesting note, since most of the world revisits in KH2 involve the Heartless, the Disney villain fights are somewhat overshadowed, though they are also evenly distributed between the Heartless, and the Nobodies.

This is probably why KH3 feels more jarring if you come directly from KH2, since the plot structure requires all major boss fights to be at the end, whereas in KH2 Org. 13 is further built up than in CoM.

Granted, KH2 also has more factions that are important than in KH3. In KH2 you have Hades, Maleficent & Pete, Org. members, independent Villains, and the pseudo-antagonist status of Ansem the Wise & Riku in disguise. In KH3 you have independent Villains, Hades, and Org. members, since Maleficent & Pete only set up future events, and the secret hidden faction of Foretellers don't show up until after the end.

Most of interesting stuff in KH3 happens either in Org.'s structure (Vexen & Demyx doing the replica stuff, Saix in the reports, Luxord's attempts at figuring out Xigbar, Ansem SoD's search for Subject X, Xemnas attempting to re-do Days/DDD etc.), or is caused by lack of coordination between Guardians until the end.

This wouldn't matter much if the final fight was a proper conclusion to some of main characters' arcs, but outside of Xion, and maybe Roxas & Naminé, you don't get that either. Ventus has the whole Dandelion stuff, Twilight Town folks have the Subject X, Donald & Goofy have their own Keyblades to look forward to, SRK are divided again, most of the Org. members have their own plotlines to cover etc.

****

The MacGuffins of the series probably also deserve some mention:

**In KH1, the big MacGuffin was The Door to Darkness (a Kanji pun, since the Kanji for Yami contains the shape of a gate, which is also the Kanji for door), which required Final Keyhole to be opened, which required all other Keyholes to be opened, and Princesses of Light to be gathered. Rather complicated, but essentially Ansem SoD wanted to brute force himself to the depths of Realm of Darkness to find Kingdom Hearts. He does, and it destroys him.

He of course doesn't realise this KH is technically a false one.

**In CoM, the MacGuffins are the main trio of SRN. Marluxia desires Sora to become his puppet, Riku is desired by Vexen & Ansem SoD's remnant, and Naminé is needed to manipulate them both.

**In KH2, Kingdom Hearts is still the main MacGuffin, but the approach is different, rather going to where KH is, Xemnas gathers hearts to create an artificial one to absorb the real one's power, though he assumes he is beckoning the real one.

In this mode, destroying worlds becomes meaningless, since they harbor valuable hearts than can weave together the Kingdom Hearts. So the goal becomes causing trouble to artificially expand Heartless just enough to make this possible, but not too much to blow up worlds.

Then we move to the other games:

**In Coded, the MacGuffin is Book of Prophecies, which we later find out can become its own data realm like Jiminy's Journal, which is the setting of most of the game.

**In Days, Xion herself is the main MacGuffin, though Days still has unanswered questions.

**In BBS, the MacGuffin is the x-blade, which can manipulate the real Kingdom Hearts without needing another artificial one.

**In Days, the MacGuffin is Sora himself again, who ends up failing the exam, thus retroactively making himself less valuable.

**In KH3, x-blade returns, the real, complete one this time, and becomes in theory the second default Keyblade of Sora. The secondary MacGuffin of the black box from Back Cover is reintroduced here, and though it is relevant to MoM's plan, it is irrelevant to the broader lore of the series, and most of the game.

[eight-freakin-gids]

Perhaps I should have added "I haven't played Union X," "this was not exhaustively researched," and "I made this in about an hour" as caveats to this poll. My intention was for the sorbet answer to be the correct answer, but it's been brought to my attention that other answers are also correct. Sorry about any confusion.

In any case, here are the explanations:

We don't see anyone's parents in any of the main series games, but multiple poll-goers pointed out that we do see Xehanort's mom in Dark Road. It did take over 18 years for someone's parent to show up, so take what you will from that. While it was not my original intention, anyone who picked this answer is objectively correct.

Only Kingdom Hearts 1 featured a Tarzan world. Even in Chain of Memories (which revisits all the worlds from KH1), all subsequent appearances of the Tarzan world have been removed due to copyright reasons.

Brooms, CDs, and a tennis racket were all used as joke weapons in 358/2 Days by Xaldin, Luxord, and Demyx, respectively. 12 year old me though this was the funniest fucking thing in the world.

While I don't know anything about UX Dark Road, I do know enough about Union X to know that Lariam, Elrena, Ventus, and others have escaped from the cataclysmic past into the future.

My intended correct answer: while Sora can be ratatouilled into making a number of recipes, sorbet is not one of them. Trick question

Another one people mentioned a lot. I failed to be specific enough due to the character limit. Currently Maleficent and Pete are looking for the black box that belonged to the Master of Masters. But before that, in games like KH2 and Coded, Maleficent is looking for a new castle to rule over. We don't know exactly why they want the black box (or maybe we do, idk, maybe UX also cured cancer for all I know), so it's possible their goal hasn't changed. Overall, this one could conditionally be the "correct" answer

Another answer I should have been more specific with. Themes of death, implied death, and outright-happens-but-not-really-addressed death happen in a few different places, but the only instance I've seen where the word "death" was directly used was in Melody of Memory (again, there is a Union X asterisk next to this point. If you picked this and cited another instance, you can consider yourself to be correct as well)

Leonard Nimoy (which I mispelled, whoops) did indeed fuck it up (affectionate) in the role of Xehanort. After his untimely passing, Christopher Lloyd took over for KHIII. He was fine, but Leonard is sorely missed.

In full title Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep – A Fragmentary Passage, it depicts a scene from KH1 of Mickey helping Sora seal a door to the Realm of Darkness. In KH1, Mickey was rocking the classical red shorts, no shirt look, but we never see him wear that for the rest of the series. They maintain this continuity by establishing that Mickey's clothes got destroyed by a Heartless immediately before the KH1 scene.

Thanks for participating! While I dropped the ball once or twice, I had fun making this and seeing everyone interact with it.

I feel like I've seen someone make one of these here, but I want to make one too.

Which of these things did not happen in the Kingdom Hearts series?

Bonus points: no memes I've seen on Tumblr, and nothing from out-of-context video compilations on YouTube.

[minijenn]

Hi so I'm interested in getting into the Kingdom Hearts series but I dont know which games to start, which games to avoid, and whether or not some of the games are canon or not. Could you help me please?

So the best thing you could get if you want to get into the series is this. (ignore the price tag Amazon has on it you can buy it at Walmart for like $20). It includes every game/cutscene movie in the series (except for the mobile game and the recently released Melody of Memory). Either way its the perfect collection to get you caught up to speed (I got caught up back before this complete collection existed so back then there were two collections you had to buy before they compiled them into just one lol). Either way, it includes basically every single thing you’ll need to get the (almost) complete story of KH. When it comes to what you’ll want to experience with it, here’s my take on things (in order of how you should play/watch them and what they are in that collection): 

Kingdom Hearts (full game playable in the collection): Absolutely MUST play, its a great game and its story is the most simple in the series, very fun and charming and sets up some of the major characters (namely our main Destiny Trio) very nicely. Even if its not the first timeline wise, you’ll want to start with KH1 because of how it introduces the series and its concepts and characters in the most simplistic of ways

Chain of Memories (full game playable in collection, but honestly? I recommend just watching the cutscenes online its NOT fun to play through in my opinion): Again experience the story of this one at least. Its the direct sequel to KH1 and its where things start to get... kind of confusing. To fully understand what happens in this one, you may have to revisit it more than once, I’ve watched through it twice now and I’m still fucking baffled by a lot of it tbh but it sets up 2 so for that its worthwhile I guess?

358/2 Days (Cutscene Movie in collection); So you can watch all of the cutscenes in this one on the collection in a few hours. Its a pretty touching and emotional story focused on the Sea Salt Trio though it does have some... kind of confusing tangents in it too tbh. Either way its well worth the time to look into to learn more about certain characters, as well as the inner workings of Organization XIII

Kingdom Hearts 2 (full game playable in collection): MUST play, its fantastic tbh. Its often cited as the fandom’s favorite for a reason; it builds a TON on what KH1 set up, offers some really fun Disney worlds, and its plot is absolutely fucking batshit and I love that about it. Highly recommend this one for some of the character moments in it especially there are some really funny, really touching, and really heartbreaking scenes in this one, its a wild ride

Birth By Sleep (full game playable): MUST play though its kind of not that great to play in my opinion? Then again I suck at KH games so I might not be the best to ask in that regard XD Its story is great though, focusing on the Wayfinder trio and their absolute tragic backstory. Speaking of backstories, this a prequel, set like 10 years before KH1, something important to keep in mind going into it to avoid confusion (though you do see younger versions of some characters that show up in the “present” games so I suppose that helps lol)

Re:Coded (cutscene movie): Ugh... honestly? You can skip this one, it adds fucking nothing and its boring as hell to get through. If you really wanna sit through it, feel free to but its mostly a big old confusing waste of time if you ask me, one that doesn’t really add much to the story at all. 

Union Cross/KHX/Back Cover: Ok so this is where it gets really confusing. Union Cross is the KH mobile game which I don’t recommend playing because from what I’ve heard its very grindy and basically its “pay to win”; so instead, I recommend getting caught up on this one through watching the “cutscenes” or reading through a plot synopsis online; This is another prequel, set waaaaaay before any of the other games and it has some... stuff thats significant mostly for the sake of KH3 and whatever will likely come after it more than anything else; Its story is... fine. Confusing as hell, but fine. Back Cover is a movie that’s on that collection that tells the story of the Foretellers and its boring as shit but I would recommend at least knowing what happens in it to understand the story of the first Keyblade War. 

Dream Drop Distance (full game playable): Absolutely recommend this one, its a delight to play through and has a really fun (but also hella fucking confusing) story (confusing is a word thats very often used to describe KH for a reason XD); Its set after KH2  and follows Sora and Riku and its basically building up towards KH3 and elements that show up there. Again, highly recommend this one its one of my favorites of the bunch 

Fragmentary Passage (full game playable): Though that game is only like 2 hours long. This is sort of another prequel though its also set during KH1 and you play as Aqua, who I’m in love with :) It was kind of made as a KH3 tech demo and that’s why its so short but its pretty fun and its story is compelling enough to keep you going as it continues building the way towards 3

Kingdom Hearts 3 (full game playable): Absolutely play this one; I may have my problems with its story, but its a hella fun time gameplay wise and its story has... its moments where its not fucking stupid. Though some of it is fucking stupid and I just have to deal with that :) Anyway KH3 is the conclusion of what’s called the “dark seeker” arc, which is really just the arc where we have Xehanort and the Organization as antagonists, tho knowing this hell series I’m sure they’ll all fucking come back someday :P Anyway its the culmination of a lot of things throughout the series and while some ends aren’t tied up the best, others are beautifully here. Totes recommend even if I personally have a very love/hate relationship with it ^_^ 

Re:Mind (bonus online purchase): This isn’t a game but its KH3′s DLC and it likely isn’t included in that story so far set. It basically adds more onto KH3′s ending and sets up for whatever game will come next after it (and also sets up MoM) 

Melody of Memory (not included in set): The newest game in the series and a rhythm game at that; its largely just a recap of past games and their events, but the gameplay is really fun and addictive, plus KH music slaps. It does have about 15 minutes of brand new story content tacked onto the end of it, which again, is setting up for whatever game likely comes next, but if ya wanna skip it, I wouldn’t blame you, its waaaaaaay too expensive right now, I’d honestly just wait for a price drop :P 

Dark Road: This is another mobile game and it basically tells Master Xehanort’s backstory; I personally haven’t looked into this one because I don’t give a single fuck about that asshole’s history but ya can if you want more context into his character  I guess :/

And those are all the KH games. There’s a fucking lot of them and I hate them all. I also love them all. I basically love/hate this entire hell series,, so much so that I decided to write a shitty angst fic about it (which I highly recommend if you do actually go through all of the KH games, Keys to the Kingdom is basically an AU of KH3 and also sort of a “fix it fic” of sorts XD its a good, tragic time all around XD (forgive the shameless self promotion)) Anyway, enjoy the insanity that is KH!

[cyberramblings]

Kingdom Hearts BBS, DDD Blind Thoughts

Spoilers for Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and earlier titles in the series. Also warning that I have insomnia and these are utter ramblings on the last 24 hours of blindly binging the Kingdom Hearts series as a total newcomer to the series. Haven’t played three yet and just started Dream Drop Distance. With that warning.....

Birth by Sleep was a ton of fun. We ended up needing to grind a little to make Aqua playable, but that ended up forcing me to learn the game mechanics much deeper, and even my friends leveled up their playing of the game! It was really cool to unlock some of the high tier spells like Triple Firaga and Thundaga Shot, although I do wish we had gotten to chance to unlock even more. I should remember how much more fun the game was after some internet research.

It was very satisfying to unlock the true ending so easily. We had only missed 2 of the 12 required Xehanort Reports. The 2 we needed involved grinding the arena for maybe an hour total and then 5 minutes of finding a treasure chest. We were then able to roll smoothly from Aqua’s finish into the final episode.

Aqua’s fight against Braig was laughable easy, but the final fight against Vanitas/Ventus was slightly tougher. The real challenge was fighting Terra/Xehanort but then the REAL challenge was phase 2 of that fight. I got them all on the first try! It was a really enjoyable flex of my gaming skills in front of the friends.

From a story standpoint, Birth By Sleep had my favorite story of any KH game so far, by a huge margin. I liked certain elements of the KH2 ending (Riku and Sora teaming up, Kairi’s keyblade) but BBS has been the only game where I had any sense of purpose or desire to see how it ends. They did a great job of having each of the 3 routes reveal new information even if played out of order (Xehanort taking over Terra, Vanitas having Sora’s face, Aqua taking care of comatose Ventus).

Obviously it helps to have Leonard Nimoy and Mark Hamill join the cast, plus Aqua’s VA absolutely dominates every scene she’s in. Terra’s VA reminds me a lot of Leon’s monotone edgy boy voice acting (David Boreanaz or otherwise). Of course Ventus shares a VA with Roxas, but the twist of Vanitas being Haley Joel Osmont is really great because he sounds so much older. I think it would have been easier to predict that twist if I had recently heard more of HJO’s Sora voice in Dream Drop Distance or KH3.

Aqua is, of course, the great standout character from BBS. From the start, we got attached to her because of her known prevalence in KH3 on top of her cool design, Arrow voice actress, and the fact that we could finally play a girl (plus one with more human proportions than Kairi). It worked out really well how we saved her for last and had to kind of unlock the secrets of her play style by finally mastering the various gameplay systems.

I much prefer the command deck system compared to the gameplay of KH2. To be fair, these are the only two KH games I’ve beaten. I’ve only barely touched KH1 and Chain of Memories. I felt like BBS did a good job of fusing the action gameplay of KH2 with the (potentially) satisfying deck building of CoM.

Re: Coded is a fucking mess. I might actually go back and play it on a DS emulator just to see the gameplay, but god damn the story is a flimsy excuse for a retread. I almost wish we had skipped it entirely, but just watching the opening and ending worked out pretty well. In the end, it’s literally just “Mickey is gonna give Sora the memories of all the other protagonists” which is badass but probably going to be mentioned again before being relevant. I will say that the ending with Riku and Sora being summoned by Yen Sid for the mark of mastery test is fucking badass and elicited quite the reaction from all three of us. The series is finally starting to have that feeling of “the stakes are high and I want to see what happens with these characters”.

This was expressed most fully in the intro to Dream Drop Distance. Step 1: invoke Disney Magic with a silhouette of magician Mickey. Step 2: Orchestral Simple and Clean. Step 3: use entirely new cinematic footage instead of splicing together an AMB. Step 4: show every keyblade wielder standing side by side. Apparently that’s enough to make me actually cry. We all got very excited by this intro, so it was a bit of a let down to start the game and be seemingly replaying KH1 again.

Of course that’s not the whole game, but I’m still not sure what the whole game is. Riku and Sora have to...wake the seven sleeping worlds to earn their mark of mastery? Are they dreaming all of this, or what? Seeing The World Ends With You was cute for like a second before realizing that I know almost nothing about it. Flowmotion is similarly kinda neat at first but quickly becomes annoying, but maybe it will grow on me with time.

Speaking of fun at first but quickly annoying: Dream Eaters. The Pokémon-esque system seems like a time waster that’s perfect for 3DS but maybe not so much for our tourist play through. The Dream Eater designs are cute when they’re on your team, but strike me as a bit annoying when fighting the same ones over and over. Heartless and Nobodies felt more generic, but that made them feel a little less repetitive to fight over and over. I see the same god damn rainbow colored Panda every god damn fight. To be fair, I think each world randomly contains certain types of Dream Eaters every time you visit it.

Speaking of Worlds, I’m not really looking forward to Hunchback of Notre Dame or Pinocchio world, but at least they’re new worlds instead of retreading Halloween Town, Agrabah, Olympus, Neverland for the millionth time. What I am looking forward to is The Grid from Tron Legacy! I don’t think we’ve seen any Disney world that specifically spotlight a sequel to a Disney world we’ve already seen. We revisit Halloween Town, Agrabah, Beast’s Castle, Olympus, Atlantica but only for some minor follow-up fluff. The Tron world in KH2 meant a lot to me having just seen the film. The Lightcycle combat could’ve been a little more true to the original, but the visuals were so faithful plus having Tron’s actual actor was so fucking cool. Sora and gang getting Tron outfits was so cool too. Also would’ve liked to have a disc fight, but the Sark/MCP fight was spot on. Hopefully we can get both of more in DDD!

It’s a perfect excuse to revisit The Grid since Legacy looks so different from the original. Now, The Grid is not a true world in KH2 but instead part of Hollow Bastion’s computer system. I’m curious if The Grid in DDD is a sleeping world or something that exists within another world, or if it is somehow connected to the KH2 Tron world (which would get real weird real quick if that version of the Grid is a copy of the original, but Legacy is supposed to be set in The Grid 30 years later).

Oh, I like that DDD has the command deck system but I don’t like the pets, I don’t like the link system, I don’t like reality shift, and I don’t like flowmotion. It just seems like BBS with all the RPG features crammed into the pet system with a bunch of gimmick infused into the combat system. Admittedly, gimmick is one of the biggest strengths of the KH franchise, but flowmotion just seems silly. Perhaps I’ll like it more when I get used to it and potentially get to customize the moves.

I’m not sure yet how I feel about the drop system, but I do like getting to play as Riku. I think multiple protagonists is a smart way to stretch the assets and tell 2 stories per world. I rather enjoyed the way Aqua, Terra, and Ventus interacted with some of the Disney worlds. Hopefully we get something similar in some of these worlds.

The dive mini game is definitely gimmicky nonsense clearly designed for the 3DS. In general though, all the games in these collections look great and feel great. I suppose that is why Days, Coded, and Back Cover are cutscenes: to keep the average quality of gameplay roughly somewhere in between KH1 and 2 between all the titles. In fact, I think KH1 is easily the worst feeling out of all the ones thus far. I’ve always complained about KH hopping between systems, but now I can’t really complain about that anymore. My complaint still stands about the games being overly complicated. Plus, the games are clearly taking themselves way too seriously, but that’s very clearly part of the charm.

Really, I suppose the games aren’t that complicated if you heavily condense Chain of Memories, cut out Coded, and try not to think too hard about the phone games. Then it just becomes: Sora defeats the heartless, Sora defeats the nobodies, Roxas backstory, Aqua/Terra/Ventus, training/prep montage, then KH3. Oh, and try to forget that somehow the upcoming rhythm game is canon.

[psychopomp-namine]

KINGDOM HEARTS 3.9 BUT IT'S VENTUS, KAIRI, AND LEA AS A TRIO. it'll be a short 15h game and it's just the whole kairi and lea training arc with aqua. they can even revisit the kh1 worlds (again) if that's what it takes. ventus and chirithy tag along and somewhere along the way, they uncover more mobile game lore and bring it into the present

kingdom hearts 3.9 and it's just a 3 hour game of the heart hotel doing missions or training or something and trying to adjust to living again but of course everything feels off

basically I want something like kh 0.2 but with ventus, roxas, and xion missing sora. maybe they help aqua train kairi (and lea?) and have absorbed some of sora's skillsets

I just want a heart hotel game man

[kitsoa]

I'm still waiting for a trailer for it to really sink in the Kingdom Hearts tv series exists. I'm curious over what the series will be? Retelling of KH1? Seems most likely. Not that it's nessecary for newcomers to enjoy. Everybody and their grandma (literally) knows about KH. I know people who don't even play video games but religiously watch YouTube walkthroughs of the games because they enjoy KH. It's like how Detective Pikachu didn't even need Pokemon in the title. Everybody knows pokemon. -

might be why I also like the idea I read about the series taking place post KH3 with the leads being Mickey, Donald and Goofy revisiting all the Disney Worlds Sora's been to. We'd get all the Disney goodness, some possible FF cameos and maybe apperences from Riku and others. But that's just if it's an original work. I'd also love good retellings of the games if done right. I only want the characters/lore/fight scenes to be given justice/respect. Whoah. How does this fit into your meta theory?- KH is a videogame, a novel series, a manga, a mobile game and now a cartoon. KH is covering all it's bases in media. All we need is for Normura to dig his claws into the series and put in even more reality confusing elements. It's like Sora's traveling through all this different levels of media until he gets closer to reality itself (lol when we all first thought it was going to be live action. Now that'd be unsettling).

Let me level with you. I... don’t know how to hype responsibly. So to be frank, I not only believe the rumors (I was watching them unfold and I am no stranger to following leak and speculation scenes for fun) I am... ecstatic about the idea. Scared excited. But man, I’m a dreamer first and foremost. I’ll live with the disappointment when it finally lets me down.  Could it be hot garbage? Totally, but a lot of my initial fears have been soothed by the rumor mill. My list was basically: no live-action, animation please, gimme some square involvement folks. And based on the reports we have that covered. I am okay with a little new vision coming into the fray because I will always give it a chance as long as the creative philosophy is guided properly. I think there’s some level of quality control on both sides of the agreement. And as long as the Disney+ folks understand that this is essentially Disney’s break into the anime market, then we can trust they will at least aim in the right direction. But I’ll be very clear-- I’m almost 100% sure this will be a retelling and any suggestion otherwise is laughable. Here is why: 1. This was D+ idea-- (the ‘mysterious 3rd project’ pitched to Nomura that he mentioned in his interview is almost certainly this meaning it wasn’t a part of the original plan) They aren’t anywhere near Nomura’s thought process of stories to tell within the timeline. 2. D+ has an insanely large and average consumer base-- barrier of entry cannot be high. There is no way you can engagingly infodump any of the lore or series of events in a way that doesn’t make executives and producers nervous. I know it’s different for everyone but from my perspective KH is rather still niche to the larger public. It’s well known in the gaming sphere as an icon but even to Disney fans it is either entirely new or simply elusive to attempt an understanding. I mean, it’s basically introduced to people as a meme because of this lack of general understanding. This isn’t lost to a network with their fingers on the pulse. 3. D+ approved of the KH brand-- harder to explain but basically, the identity and success of KH is most definitely the aspect that ensured the survival of a tv series into development. That identity comes almost exclusively from Sora, the keyblade, and world-hopping shenanigans. Keyword being Sora. The only story that fits the franchise identity is the first story.  4. Evidence has Disney VO cast returning and also a current casting-- meaning we have Disney characters serving an important role (as they do in kh1) and the need for original characters. While this might suggest a brand new story idea, both of these points together wouldn’t make sense. Sora hangs with the Disney crowd. No one else. Coupled with the above points I’m almost certain our boy is getting recasted. This would bother people (and believe me I adore HJO) but consider that HJO cannot do young Sora in a believable way anymore. KH fans can tolerate it, but not a grander audience. If it’s just a child-voice match then that’s all the better but new creative visions require new, marketable talent. (Think of the FF7R recast drama).  ----- I personally want nothing more than for it to be a retelling. Mainly because it’s just a charming story with an interesting world and great characters. I like seeing how it would translate and what would have to be changed to make it more palatable to the medium. That and I think cinematics and great character acting can recontextualize an entire work in wondrous ways. If anything, a retelling almost certainly adds to that experience regardless of other shortcomings. To tie things into a meta reading, I would not put it past Nomura to take advantage of the series to slip in something to the hardcore base. Mind you, not something required for understanding, but something simply meant to imply what is to come. A little trippy thing or subplot that merely confounds the average viewers into a dead end but spins the heads of theoriest like me. If he’s simply acting as an advisor, then, of course, he can get away with something small. The first thing on my mind was the “KH3 Loop” Theory. The idea that Sora is experiencing his entire journey from the beginning, over and over again. The beginning of KH3 where we are playing as KH1 Sora and it’s got this double meaning of ‘seven hearts to save’. It’s hard to explain, but a retelling of the story is a great way to allude that this story has happened multiple times, with multiple variations. Be it due to how a player plays the game, or the manner in which the story is consumed (cutscene movie, manga, tv show)-- it has occurred countless times and Sora is simply a plaything of fate.

[mellz117]

Let’s move on from Olympus and Thebes, San Fransokyo, Arendelle, and give us new and more interesting worlds.

(face it, Arendelle was the weakest world in KH3. let’s never do it again, this isn't a hate boner for Frozen, the film was fine, that world was just bad)

I want the world of  ATALNTIS! Kida would be SO BADASS, also another female companion we sorely lack in the series. The world design could be amazing. It’s an underrated movie that can be brought back into the mainstream if Square Enix does it right.

I want the world of TREASURE PLANET! STEAMPUNK. ALIEN.  PIRATES. I’m just getting so giddy thinking about all the enemy deigns and character interactions. Get rid of that robot. Another underrated film, absolutely gorgeous, fun character design, and well, you know... STEAMPUNK??

I want the ORIGINAL Star Wars trilogy! Yeah Han and Chewy are cool, Luke is an obvious contender for a companion, but LEIA? To me it seems out of the blue but also AWESOME! She made friends with forest critters, SHE’S A DISNEY PRINCESS, and she can hold her own in a fight. So, please? Now let’s not forget we can have multiple companions now, so any combination of those 4 would be rad!!

OOh, but how would one go about travelling is outer space themed worlds? Did BbS tackle this with Stitch? Idk, don’t tell me about it. Spoilers.

If we could revisit the Deep Jungle from Tarzan I’m sure it would be utilized much better with the abundant Flowmotion opportunities. KH1 implemented that world so poorly, it was the worst thing about that game. I know it isn’t new but IF Square Enix could use it again, I believe it could be fun. The question would be, what story can they make for it?

Last but not least...

Open, explorable Twilight Town. KH3 robbed us of that.

[memaha19]

Things I Want(ed) From KH3 That Re:Mind is Probably Not Going to Fix

 AKA, a brief interlude from Frozen 2 posting because Kingdom Hearts was on my mind this morning.

AKA, I’m excited for Re:Mind but still...

AKA, KH3 disappointed me and I’m still salty about it almost a year later.

AKA,  there are many “my problems with KH3″ posts/discussions floating out there on the internet and many are probably worded better than mine but, as I said, the game was on my mind this morning.

Just...the worlds. The Disney worlds in KH3 bothered me. There were so few of them but they were so so LONG. Some of them were painfully long. Toy Box felt like the longest experience of my life. Every time I thought that level was coming to an end, BAM, another trek to another area. And Arendelle...though I love Frozen, there’s only so many times I can trek up the mountain only to get thrown off and have to climb back up again. There were so few worlds, only seven, I believe, (because we’re not counting Twilight Town or the 100 Acre Woods, more on those later), that I think they could’ve given us a few more worlds and made the levels a little...shorter? A little more detailed and charming? The levels were huge but empty and devoid of the character that previous Disney worlds had in other games. The previous main games had about 10 or 11 worlds, not including the throwaways (like Atlantica in KH2) or the final worlds (TWTNW and End of the World), so there could’ve been some more! Birth By Sleep had numerous shorter worlds and I vastly prefer that to slogging through the same world for hours. Even the way that KH2 had us revisit each world would’ve been nice.  What’s more, they could’ve taken some of the massive time and space devoted to the empty, excruciatingly long Disney worlds and given us more time in Twilight Town or the Keyblade Graveyard, or put a playable Radiant Garden in the game. Those non-Disney worlds always served as nice interludes in the other games and it’s sorely lacking in this one. (And yes, I have heard that Re:Mind is going to let Scala be a playable world, so I’m excited for that!)

Related, I also wanted some worlds from older Disney films. I know the other games have had worlds from older films, but almost all of KH3′s worlds were so jarringly...current. I would’ve liked to see some of the older Disney film worlds rendered in the beautiful graphics of KH3, but, instead, the oldest film represented was Hercules (1997). Three of the worlds (maybe four, actually, with the Pirates world) were from movies from this decade (Corona, Arendelle, and San Fransokyo).

Related, they did the 100 Acre Woods so dirty. It was disappointing and short. It used to be a fun little interlude between the big worlds in previous games, a time to chill and play a mini-game and not have to fight a big boss fight. This was like “hello, here’s one mini game, goodbye.”

Related: all that Twilight Town exploration we got in the other games and this one gives us the forest and the town square area and that’s it?! We can’t even go to the clock tower or inside the mansion? When we first got to Twilight Town I was like “wow this is gorgeous!” and then quickly disappointed when I realized we couldn’t go anywhere.

Related, I’ve seen others say this and I agree: the Disney worlds seem like they’re just there, oftentimes, to get in your way. They feel like obstacles to the actual plot because they didn’t bother to place much/any relevance to the plot into any of the Disney worlds. Sometimes we get little snippets of the big story, like Marluxia and Larxene hanging around in Corona and Arendelle just to say cryptic things without ever being a real threat (that in itself is weird too, I spent ALL of the Corona level bracing myself for a fight with Marluxia only to fight...Mother Gothel’s heartless?) but it feels like two different games: The KH that wants to still be about Disney worlds and the KH that has gotten so deep in its own world building that it doesn’t have time for anything else.

Related, again: KH3 has an abundance of Disney worlds where Sora being there doesn’t make any difference to the plot. The most fun Disney worlds have always been the ones that have an original story that we’re actually involved in. Corona is just the plot of Tangled with Sora and co. tagging along. Their presence or lack thereof make no difference to the story. Arendelle is the same way.

The boss battles in the worlds were...lame. I understand that it maybe doesn’t make sense to fight someone like Mother Gothel, who never shows any physical fighting power in Tangled, but we can’t fight Zurg? We’re in a literal toy store and we can’t fight Zurg as the boss? We have to fight a weird doll and 800 robots? We have to fight Hans’ heartless? Not Hans? We fight Mother Gothel’s heartless? Not Marluxia, who’s been harassing us all level long? I understand that they held the KH characters back because of the whole “assembling 13 pieces of darkness for a big final battle” thing, but we had to fight Xemnas like ten times in previous games, they could let us fight Marluxia twice.  I feel like the other games were a lot better at having us face a combo of heartless/nobodies/unversed AND Disney bosses. But, as the game has really zero interest in making the Disney worlds a part of the plot, they throw these cheap (and endless) unversed/heartless bosses at us and they’re all so EASY. They could have, and probably should have, let us fight the Organization at the end of each world and then let us fight them again in the Keyblade Graveyard, similar to the way Chain of Memories had us fight each Organization member a couple times.   

When you finally do get through the Disney worlds, the ending is like “here’s all these characters that have been missing from the rest of the game” and the Keyblade Graveyard flings boss battle after boss battle at your face without much rhyme or reason. And while some of them are fun, some of them feel like “let’s just pair these characters together and make you fight them at the same time so we can save some time because we didn’t bother to put any of these fights into an earlier part of the game”. I’m looking at the Luxord/Marluxia/Larxene fight in particular. I would’ve understood pairing the last two together, but then Luxord is also there like they didn’t have any other place to put him.

This game is too easy. I’m not great at video games. I’m good-ish. I’m into stories more than anything so I hate when a game’s difficulty keeps me from completing it and keeps me from seeing more of the story. But I still like a little challenge. I have not-so-fond memories of yelling at the TV as I died time and time again fighting Ansem/Riku at Hollow Bastion in KH1, but I also have fond memories of finally beating him and what a rush it was! I didn’t get any of that in KH3. I’m not sure I died more than once or twice, if that.

The way they just let the Organization members hang out in the worlds and do nothing has always seemed weird to me. They’re big parts of the overall plot but now they just stand around and verbally harass Sora? As I said above, I spent all of Corona thinking I was going to have to face Marluxia at the end. Instead, they stand around in the worlds and then they stand around in the Keyblade Graveyard in the cutscenes and just talk. Also, okay, maybe I get the reasoning behind why Luxord was in the pirates world and why Vanitas was in Monstropolis, but Marluxia seemed like he was shoehorned into Corona solely because of the connection between the magic flower and his powers, which was stupid. And Larxene had zero connection to anything going on in Arendelle.

All the characters we’ve been waiting for (Ventus, Aqua, etc.) don’t appear until the very very end, which is a problem with the story pacing. They tease us, very early, with Riku and Mickey trying to find Aqua and then immediately drop that plot point to give us some empty Disney worlds. (Side note: this 100% tricked me into thinking we’d be switching back and forth between what Sora was up to and what Riku was up to and I was sorely disappointed as I played and realized it wasn’t true.) They dither in this “Sora needs the power of waking” to avoid giving us Ventus until the very end.

Just...the story pacing in general, which kind of ties into everything else.  This game has a beginning, because it had to, and something they wanted to end with but they weren’t really sure how to fill the space in the middle. You spend most of the game just chilling in the Disney worlds with very low stakes. This big battle waiting at the end is always there in the background but, partially because the Disney worlds feel like distractions that don’t add to the story, the middle of the game never really feels like it’s building toward the ending, or anything. And then, when you do get through the Disney worlds, about 75% of the plot is thrown at you in the last hour or two of the game. It reminds me (a lot of this game reminds me, actually) of FFXV. I love FFXV dearly, I’ve poured A TON of hours into gathering ingredients and taking photos and doing side quests, but it has the same plot issue. The majority of FFXV is a light-hearted journey about four bros on a roadtrip, only for everything to take a VERY dramatic tonal shift about 3/4 of the way through the game and then stay very very SAD for the rest of the game. KH3 does something similar, with the way we spend most of the game traveling through Disney worlds and cooking food with Remy, only for the game to suddenly remember at the 11th hour that it’s supposed to be wrapping up this big 10+ year long story and thrust you into battle after battle and plot-heavy cutscene after plot-heavy cutscene.

To the pacing point: yes, I’m aware these games have always had slightly funny/back-loaded pacing. However, a main thing the other games had that KH3 lacks is that Radiant Garden/Twilight Town/Traverse Town interlude world that helps push the plot along. Without that in KH3, we get a ton of long Disney worlds where we’re like “when is the story going to happen?” and then the Keyblade Graveyard where suddenly ALL of the story is happening. Previous games have let us experience the Disney worlds for awhile before bringing us to an interlude world which furthers the plot, a la the big Radiant Garden section in KH2 that happens midway through the game.

Anyway, I think Kingdom Hearts 3 was a gorgeous game, graphics-wise, and I’ll still be shelling out money for Re:Mind come January, but after waiting for 14 years for a continuation of the main story line, this game just feels like, after everything, Nomura still wasn’t sure how to end it? It feels rushed and underwhelming and incomplete as hell. 

TL;DR: I have all these thoughts about KH3 that I’ve waited 11 months to express.

[greetings-inferiors]

I thought I finished all of Ricky’s story but apparently I didn’t

All of Riku’s Disney worlds are C-tier

Twilight town, destiny islands and castle oblivion also A-tier.

Anyway, ONTO DAYS

Days uses a mission format, so I’m mainly ranking them on how much I enjoyed going to that world for any given mission. If a world has my favourite mission in the game but the rest of the missions are awful, it won’t rate as high as a world with consistently just alright missions.

Twilight town (days): A-tier. These missions are the ones I look forward to. Twilight town is just a treat to explore and navigate, and the missions themselves are never irritating. Also the best story happens here, easy A-tier.

Agrabah (days): B-tier. A good world, the cave of wonders segments can be fun and exploring (most) of kh1 Agrabah is fun enough. The story with genie is actually pretty cool!

Beast’s castle (days): A-tier. The castle is a treat to explore, seeing Xaldin have a massive crush on beast is hysterical, it’s the best Disney world in the game by a long shot.

Neverland (days): C-tier. Idk man I really want to like this one but it just doesn’t do it for me. The heartless are really annoying to fight, the flying mechanics are awful (why is the jump button down?????), and the missions where hook is shooting cannons at you from afar are contenders for the worst missions in the game.

Wonderland (days): B-tier. The mazes are pretty cool and the rest is just kh1 map design so it’s pretty alright. You’d think the boss would be annoying but it was actually a pretty fun fight.

Halloween town (days): B-tier. The heartless being hidden is an interes ing gimmick, but it really sucked when I had to do the side quest to find all hidden heartless on one mission, it took forever and I had to use a guide. Also yeah the boss kinda sucks. Not infuriating, I did it on the easiest difficulty so it wasn’t exactly difficult as much as it was annoying. The scarecrow from kh2 Halloween town being based off of Roxas is a cool detail.

Olympus coliseum (days): can this world be bad? Well in CoM yeah, but here it’s pretty cool. A-tier. The barrel destroying minigame was frustrating at gutsy but once I got the hang of it it was actually really fun. And the GAAAAMES was really fun too, the xigbar fight was cool, just a fun cool world with nothing wrong with it really.

The world that never was (days): D-tier. This world is somehow a minigame world. I’m not including the cutscenes, grey room, or endgame non-mission stuff, which honestly on their own are S-tier, but the missions in the world that never was are so bad. Just surviving nobodies or testing your luck. Bad missions. But the cutscenes, grey room, and endgame stuff are incredible. Y’know what overall it’s an A-tier, but with the criteria of “how happy am I to receive a mission in this world” it’s an easy D-tier.

And that’s the days rankings! I know how excited you all were for them! It’s honestly a really good game that, unlike CoM, actually does something unique with its Disney worlds instead of “just kh1 again”, and it being a transitional period between kh1&2 makes the worlds so interesting to explore. But none of them are S-tier, they aren’t really fully explorable, there’s nothing to do but collect chests, they’re only accessible through missions, and they are on the ds, which does impact everything in days. For what they are they’re great, but nowhere near even the weakest S-tiers in the numbered titles like… idk actually they are S-tier for a reason I can’t call any of them weak 😂

I’n thoroughly enjoying kh2 and am just starting the revisits, so expect kh2 rankings soon! It won’t be all at once like days but as I complete the revisits like with kh1. Ciao!

I should start doing a tier list of kingdom hearts worlds across the series

So far:

S-tier: Traverse town (KH1) (one of my favourite worlds in the whole series, it feels like home)

A-tier: Destiny islands (KH1) (I love destiny islands but they aren’t really an actual world… more the tutorial. Very good tutorial! But still), wonderland (very good world!!)

B-tier: agrabah (KH1) (would be A-tier but half of its bosses are awful (genie jafar and pot scorpion are two of my least favourite bosses in the whole game) and the others are just alright)

C-tier: deep jungle (not a bad world, but not a good world either. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t enjoy my time there)

I haven’t beaten Olympus (KH1) but it’s either A or S tier. Mainly just deciding whether to include the cups or not. The world alone? A-tier. With cups? S-tier. I also haven’t beaten 100 acre wood (KH1) yet but it’s easy S-tier, maybe even S+? Idk I’ll think about it.

Projected rankings for kingdom hearts 1:

Halloween town: S

Monstro: B

Atlantica: A

Neverland: A

Hollow bastion: S

End of the world: A or S. leaning towards S.

[queerdraws]

Kingdom Hearts: Guiding Light

Concept for a Kairi-centric Kingdom Hearts game set after KH1 and partially replacing / rewriting CoM 

I moved this to its own post since it’s so godly long and tbh pretty boring

writeup after cut

So... here’s the thing.  I really did not like CoM / Re:CoM.  My basic review is:

Pros:

Establishes castle oblivion

Introduces the concept of nobodies and org13

Introduces replicas

Introduces Namine and Repliku

Establishes some character motivations for some of the nobodies

I liked when I had a sleepover at my friend’s house & I had insomnia, my friend gave me permission to play their game to collect points spheres (?) and I’d collect as many as Sora could physically hold.  Fond memories.

Cons:

Not a fan of the card mechanic

Organization members are introduced too rapidly, too many at the same time

Too difficult to differentiate the characters and their motivations

Namine and Roxas are incredibly confusing as a concept

The whole story feels like you spend a great deal of time fighting and then you set Sora back by several years (why bother?)

Game only revisited worlds you’d already seen

I PROPOSE:

Kingdom Hearts: Guiding Light

Sora Donald and Goofy are lured to castle oblivion.  Sora is quickly knocked out n held hostage.  This serves to 1) Give him time for Roxas to complete him before he wakes up again for KH2

2) Avoid redundant gameplay of castle oblivion so the story can be developed in a more exiting way

So: Roxas is disturbed by the organization’s actions.  Them conking out Sora is the final straw.  He knows Namine hates it there too, and he stages an escape with her.  Axel catches them on the way out & they fight.  Axel loses (with the implication that he let them win and is on their side), and Namine and Roxes escape.

Without Namine, the organization can’t get to Sora in his sleep pod (can they?  let’s say they can’t.  If they could they why didn’t they between CoM and KH2?).  They spend the game seeking her and Roxas.

GOALS OF THE GAME:

Introduce nobodies and org13

Establish Kairi as a keyblade weilder and give her some characterization

Establish princesses of heart can change over time

Have someone rescue and reform Sora

Explain Roxas and Namine sufficiently (please??)

Give us time to care about Roxas and Namine

Have Kairi interact with Axel to foreshadow their later friendship

Introduce Repliku

Character Motivations:

Kairi: Wants to find / save Sora and Riku and take down Organization 13 since they seem like bad news, and they keep messing with her and her new friends.  She wants to be strong enough to help people, and strong enough protect herself and her friends (strength enough to protect...Kairi do you have...some darkness in your heart?).  By the end of the game, she wants to find a way to keep Roxas and Namine as their own people, even if they have to merge with their original hearts for some time before a permanent solution is found. Roxas: Knows there’s something wrong with Org13.  Wants to do the right thing, but doesn’t always know how.  Wants to find out who he is.  Wants to protect Namine, who is one of the few people he feels close to.  He’s curious about who Sora is and why the Organization cares so much about him, he wants to rescue Sora to make things right (he feels responsible for Sora being captured).  Ultimate goal is taking down Org13 and peacefully living his life afterwards (oh, honey...).  Doesn’t really want to be a hero but feels drawn in to it by circumstances.

Namine: Knows Roxas is a part of Sora.  Knows she’s a part of Kairi.  She doesn’t have the heart (har har) to tell either of them.  She isn’t especially bothered about existing as her own person.  She wants to help Kairi rescue Sora to make things right, and once things seem safe, she’s content to return to being part of Kairi.  Over the course of the story she becomes more conflicted about wanting to be her own person.  She feels that helping Kairi is her duty, like a knight.

ANYWAY...

Still brainstorming what worlds would show up.  I’m assuming this would have come out in 2002-2005 so it’d be limited to disney, pixar, & squeenix properties before then.

I also had a thought while I was writing this all up: what if it was Xion, Namine, and Kairi?  Team Me Myself and I.  I really don’t understand the deal w Xion so I don’t know if that’s like....possible.  But, I also get the feeling that nobody understands it, including “fly by the seat of your pants and retcon what you have to” Nomura

[nyctospoilers]

The Power of Waking and how I believe it affects Sora, Young Xehanort, Luxu, the Master of Masters and destiny.

So I was GOING to say all this in an answer to an ask. But I decided to post it as it’s own so that I can cover more topics then the question itself. And then, I’ll go back to questions in my inbox and answer them with reference to this post.

—————————–—————————–

Sora and the Power of Waking

Before I say anything, I want to list off the rules of time travel stated by Young Xehanort in Dream Drop Distance

First, you must leave your body behind to do it.

Then, there must be a version of you waiting at the destination.

Upon arrival, you can only move forward as per the laws of time.

And you cannot rewrite the events that are destined to happen.

The Power of Waking has let Sora reverse time and change events that were fated to happen. This goes directly against the fourth rule. Young Xehanort has always been able to travel with his body intact, and that goes against the second rule. So how are these laws, these restrictions, able to be broken? I believe that the Power of Waking is a power that allows you to break the restrictions of time travel, and it is a power that Young Xehanort has used (or still uses) himself (and possibly forgets about when he returns to his own time to grow into Master Xehanort, as MX never mentions it once ever). Let’s see word for word how Young Xehanort describes the Power of Waking after Sora fights the Lich:

“It’s for traversing hearts to reach worlds, not for traversing worlds to reach hearts.”

Something we need to ask ourselves is- how does YX know this? Even Yen Sid describes the Power of Waking as simply that- the power to awaken people’s hearts. But YX clearly knows more about how it works and how it can affect other things.

Let’s take a look at each technique. “Traversing worlds to each hearts” is what Sora had just done before this conversation. He traverses the Stations of Awakening of worlds to reach his friends’ hearts and recovers them. That in turn, saves them from the destiny of “light expiring” like the prophecy states. I think it’s important to note that the worlds he arrives in may not actually be those worlds though, but rather something similar to say, the world revisits in The End of the World in KH1. I’ll expand more about KH1 in the next paragraph.

Now let’s take a took at “Traversing hearts to reach worlds”. In my opinion, this is like Sora opening a portal in Master Xehanort to reach Scala ad Caelum. But I don’t think that was actual Scala ad Caelum, but rather a memory or dream of it. Similar to Riku opening a portal in Sora to reach his memory/dream of Destiny Islands. [[ And I also think this is similar to another instance of KH1: Sora having a flashback to Kairi in Hollow Bastion with her grandmother. I recognized instantly from KH3 the Sora gliding through the star field sort of thing. I said “Hey this is like when he see’s Kairi’s memory in KH1!” and sure enough, later he does it and once again is joined by Kairi herself. My point here is, these two scenes of Sora gliding through that space in KH3, I believe is Nomura trying to hint at us that Sora traversed through Kairi’s heart to reach her memory/dream of Hollow Bastion in KH1. In other words, Sora’s been able to use the Power of Awakening since KH1 ]]

—————————–—————————–

The Master of Masters and Destiny

Before I said that the Power of Waking has let Sora change events that were fated to happen. Sora changed destiny, and supposedly there were repercussions to that. But why? Let’s look at what Kingdom Hearts defines destiny as. One of the best examples is Xehanort during his final speech in KH3:

“The World needs someone to stand up and lead. Someone strong, to stop the weak from polluting the World with their endless darkness. Someone to dictate their destiny.”

This connects to Xehanort’s past revelations in his reports:

Xehanort’s Report IV excerpt: And when Kingdom Hearts is complete, it is said the one who opens its door will bring about the creation of the Next World. Such a feat is above any human. Or, to put it a different way: whoever opens that door will be reborn as something far greater than human.

Xehanort’s Report VI excerpt: And, as stated before, opening this door arguably gives that person control over all worlds and all people.

Xehanort’s statements say that the person who opens Kingdom Hearts will give them supernatural powers, allowing them to oversee the World and it’s destiny.

Now tell me, who does that sound like to you?

I could be wrong, but at the moment I believe that long ago, the Master of Masters was the last person to open Kingdom Hearts, and since then has overseen destiny. This is backed up by various lines of KHX, Ava asking Luxu if this was all the Master’s “intentions” the whole time. In Luxu’s Observation excerpts, asking “Are these new events just another phase in the Master’s grand plan?”

Taking this into account, Sora defying destiny and changing it is seen differently. Sora isn’t defying some insentient force. Sora is defying a person- a person with a plan that they desire to come to fruition.

And I think that is the repercussion. I believe, that Sora won’t just fade away because it’s the law of the universe that if you disobey destiny too many times you’ll be punished. I think that when the MoM returns, he himself will punish Sora for defying his will. That is what Young Xehanort is playfully warning him about.

—————————–—————————–

Young Xehanort and Luxu

So what about Young Xehanort? He’s able to time travel with his body. He knows about the potential of the Power of Waking, and he warns Sora about repercussions [not to help Sora, but more to amuse himself], and not at all worried about himself.

I think Young Xehanort is purposely following the Master’s destiny rather than defying it like Sora. I think somehow, Young Xehanort has a piece of vital information that he forgets when he returns to his time. So there is something that Young Xehanort knows, that Master Xehanort does not. And I believe it is Luxu who tells him, possibly during the time that YX traveled with him during DDD.

I think for this, it’s good to refer back to Luxu’s Observation excerpts form KH3:

Observations excerpt 2 “Somewhere in this cyclical history of bequeathings, a chosen one will appear and reenact the Keyblade War. When this scapegoat arrives and takes my Keyblade in hand, that will be the time to take the stage and finish my role.”

Observations’s third excerpt is interesting to me, as it seems to be written at different points of time. Here is the entire excerpt. I will bold important words.

Observations excerpt 3 It seems this body, this name will be my last. The lives I have lived over the ages could fill volumes, but for now I must focus on what matters most.     The Keyblade has been successfully passed down, generation to generation, and it seems a Keyblade Master devoted to the darkness may finally arise. Until now, I have watched over the course of events from a distance. Perhaps the time has come to intervene. I need only play the role of a fool desirous of the Keyblade’s power. I will don the mask of his ally in order to keep watch over my Keyblade from close by.      The Gazing Eye: a Keyblade forged from the eye of the Master of Masters. He passed it to me, as I have to others, and through it he can see the future – all that will ever come to pass. Spanning the ages in body after body, life after life, my task has been to keep vigil over the Eye as it passes from hand to hand. It has been a long time. Longer than I can express.     But now at last the Keyblade War has begun, and Kingdom Hearts will open – a true and complete Kingdom Hearts, born of the clash between darkness and light. I will soon be reunited with my old companions, and in that moment my long vigil will reach its end. He will return…

Excerpt 3 starts off sounding like it’s written during BbS, when Braig meets Xehanort. But then it says the Keyblade War HAS begun. Perhaps Braig is only referring to when Terra, Ven, and Aqua are fighting in BbS’s ending. But I think Luxu knows better, I think he knows it’s the next battle at the Keyblade War that reunites him with his old companions.

I think this Observation was written around the time of Re:Coded’s secret ending, titled ‘Destiny’. That cutscene takes place during DDD, before Lea and the others wake up as somebodies again. However, the Braig we see is his BbS appearance, not his DDD appearance as Xigbar. So we know this Braig time traveled, and being accompanied by Young Xehanort, we can assume they traveled together (notice neither had to give up their hearts). I believe that is why Young Xehanort appears in Birth by Sleep as the Mysterious Figure, to visit Luxu during the time of BbS. And it is AFTER Young Xehanort’s visit in BbS is when ‘Destiny’ takes place.

Why do I say after and not before? Because in BbS Young Xehanort does not use a keyblade (We are given a keyblade when beating him, but it is noticeably different). In ‘Destiny’ Young Xehanort says him having MoM’s No Name is yet to be a reality. BUT, Young Xehanort DOES have a keyblade in DDD, which, like I said, takes place soon after ‘Destiny’. And not only that, his keyblade (notably also named No Name) in DDD is the one we recieve from him in BbS- but now has decorations similar to that of the MoM’s No Name- a goat head and the gazing eye. After ‘Destiny’ Luxu (as BbS Braig, not DDD Xigbar) gives Young Xehanort that keyblade.

THAT is when Luxu writes Observation 3. “Keyblade Master devoted to the darkness may finally arise.” Refers to Young Xehanort, even if he’s in modern times. “I need only play the role of a fool desirous of the Keyblade’s power.” Refers to the way he behaves in ‘Destiny’ and in BbS when he returns. And “But now at last the Keyblade War has begun” refers to the situation of all 12 darkness being assembled (think back to his line in Destiny when he says “The party’s already begun, huh?”).

This is what leads me to believe that whatever Young Xehanort learns that Master Xehanort does not, he was taught to it by Luxu. And what was Young Xehanort taught? We see in KH3 he now knows about the Power of Waking, he continuously teases Sora about his dark fate. I believe Luxu tells Young Xehanort about The Master of Masters and the role he gave him. Even if Luxu returns back to the time of BbS, YX remains with this new information until Sora defeats him near the end of KH3.

We MUST remember this however: Young Xehanort was still able to time travel to BbS in the first place as the mysterious figure. Which means there is an event during the times of Young Xehanort and Young Eraqus at Scala ad Caelum that sets all these events in motion, as Ansem the Seeker of Darkness did not make it so YX could time travel like fan speculation suggests. I believe all Ansem did was give YX the opportunity to cross worlds, leaving Destiny Islands and arrive in Scala ad Caelum.

We must also remember that Xigbar (not BbS Braig) says in DDD that he is already half Xehanort, with an emphasis on his golden eye. We never completely defeated Xigbar in KH3, and he still has his golden eye in KH3′s epilogue. So, Young Xehanort could very well be able to travel forward past KH3. If we find out that he for sure does, it will explain why YX knows so much about Sora’s tragic fate that he warns him about many times in KH3.

—————————–—————————–

The conclusion 

I practically spent all day writing this post. I understand that the Young Xehanort/Luxu part is by far the longest, and for that I apologize. I wrote the other two sections a couple times before in drafts (now deleted) so I already had a better idea on how to condense all that important information. I was realizing things about YX and Luxu while writing this, and that’s why those details seem much longer.

I have a headache now so I’m not really in the mood to properly close this off, I hope you’ll forgive me :’) but now, i WILL answer other asks about this. So if you want more, look at my tag #analysis 

[psychopomp-namine]

yes!!! KH1 maleficent was such a good villain!!! she was manipulating riku but I like to think she wanted him to be her evil protege. he wasn't a "tool" to be used like namine was to marluxia. it's kinda funny because in castle oblivion namine mostly sits in a chair and isn't allowed to leave, but riku did have his own room and maleficent let him travel from world to world and control the heartless and make his own decisions, even if she twists them to her own ends. the entirety of monstro was mostly riku being riku that maleficent even questions why he cares about sora so much, but ultimately she lets him handle the situation

I actually love her with pete lol but I agree she's something else when she's on her own. after seeing her in khux, I'd like to see her show up more in the games. I feel like kh as a series can't end without them revisiting the events of kh1 in some way (destiny islands and hollow bastion in particular), so I'm very optimistic about seeing her again in that context, but with a more grown up riku. kh really made a good decision choosing her as the "main villain" of the disney worlds imo

sometimes I think about that line in kh1 when maleficent said riku was like a son to her. and in the stream I'm watching the streamer was surprised that riku actually had his own bedroom in hollow bastion.

the riku-maleficent relationship was really neat tbh. I'd love to see riku meet her again in but this time he's more confident in himself and also he's holding hands with sora and maleficent is like both extremely pissed off but also secretly kinda proud of him

[peony-pearl]

Hi there. I used to really love Children of the Heartless... I read it a long time ago and never finished it. I've been very ill. Despite how long it has been, I would love to finish it. Would you be willing to put it back up? It really was a lovely fic...

Hello there ^^ this response is long overdue and if you see this, you have my apologies. First I hope you’re doing well! I’m so sorry to hear you had been ill. 

Also, thank you for your interest in CotH! However, I put the story on a flash drive, and that was several computers ago. None of my word processors on my current computer recognize the text; and lately that flash drive has been telling me it needs to be formatted. So I’m not really sure if I’m going to have that story available to be republished. However, I took it down because I was starting to dislike some of the ways it was written. I was constantly updating bits and scenes, and I finally just took the whole thing down after frustrations with it. (2005-2007 were strange years for me and I think I wanted to distance myself from writing I had done during that time; even though I have very fond memories of beginning and writing the fic in 2004, but in ‘05 my OCD worsened and it was a bad time for a while )

I’ve been revisiting Kingdom Hearts with one of my friends, and we’ve been redoing our KH lore, and Lucinda and Trigger are going to be re-imagined, but with their core identities preserved, like Trigger being Lucinda’s snarky shadow BFF (with his own improved background) and Lucinda and Riku having their genuinely awkward flirting (only this time it’ll span from KH1-KH3). 

I’m sorry I don’t have an immediate fix; and I thank you again for reaching out. I miss CotH dearly, but parts of it I admit bring back memories I’d rather grow further away from. But I may be posting updates of the new version like art and some drabbles in the near future! I would love to hear feedback from those who remember CotH : ) Take care!!