If you had to describe Kingdom Hearts in just a few words, what would those words be?
“A JRPG with action gameplay” This is not wrong, but quite vague.
“It’s a Square Enix game” while true, that’s really only the half of it.
“It’s a Disney game!” eeehhhhhh, that doesn’t quite cut it.
To this day, Kingdom Hearts as a whole is still described by the short sentence that was used to market it way back in 2002.
“Kingdom Hearts is a Final Fantasy x Disney crossover”
Upon hearing this you can immediately envision what the series probably looks like; spiky haired dudes running around with Mickey Mouse in amazing worlds as the backdrops to an unraveling, mysterious journey, probably combined with some light-hearted Disney magicTM.
And you wouldn’t be wrong! With a magic system lifted straight out of the Final Fantasy games, nostalgic Disney characters taking the place of huge, hulking beasts as summons, and a fast-paced combat system to match, Kingdom Hearts is a perfect mixture of all things FF and Disney.
Well, it was…
Starting with 358/2 Days, a game beloved by many and hated by just under that, the Final Fantasy inclusion in KH games has been…… lacking, to say the least. Many fans understood that the sacrifice for Kingdom Hearts being on a handheld, and one as *relatively* powerless as the DS, would be apparent. Yet out of the whole series, it’s Days, the game released just after KH2, that has the lowest amount of Final Fantasy inclusion present, featuring one, lowly, Moogle.
Of course, if ever there was a KH game that I could understand this lack of inclusion, it would be Days. A game that chartered the course for KH to become the insular mess it is now. It would create loopholes within loopholes if Roxas did interact with any FF characters in his game, as they would certainly recall that even if Sora’s memory was lost to them. So, its understandable, and not even regrettable in this instance.
So that was 2009, the first time we had seen a new KH game since KH2 released three years ago. Even though Days started the downplayed FF trend, it by no means codified it. That honour goes to:
Birth by Sleep
The definition of broken base. This game kickstarted what I can see as two different sides of the community, the ones that defend this game, and subsequently all of the franchise, to the hilt, and the flipside, the side that found this game lacking, in gameplay mostly, but retroactively in plot.
To use an example, here’s a quote from @Dio Brando (altered slightly for posterity’s sake) that highlights this split perfectly, and is from January 2017, when the split was becoming markedly more pronounced, and rapidly so:
Quote
] That and I wanna add a Number 5 which is what I call the "Y U HATER YOU CRITICIZE AND NITPICK SO MUCH NOTHING PLEASE YOU"
For whatever reason the KH community perceive any sort of criticism,no matter how civil it is or the fact that it's coming from a legit fan,they will latch and hurl personal insults towards people just because they said they don't like one thing or two about a game or didn't like something like Birth by Sleep
I tried to have my complaints and reasons as civil as possible without insulting people yet I get dozens of messages and comments telling me that I'm a hater and I should leave this site,or that I'm a crybaby unappreciative manchild that loves to get angry all the time
If I hated the series,why then did I buy a 90$ playart kai figure of Sora last year,why did I plan to purchase 1.5+2.5 when it comes out once I knew the load times would be fixed?Or better yet why am I following KH3 news if I hate the series so much as people claim?
I may fell out of it but it doesn't mean I hate it,I just don't agree with some of the directions taken with it that's all.I've been with the series for over a decade now and I'm willing to see the first saga all the way to the end.
But hey guess I'm not qualified enough according to some people cuz I don't like Birth by Sleep
The most contentious point of BBS is it’s Command Deck, a format that was then used in the next two games, Re:coded and 3D. It might be hard to believe now, but for quite a while there was still a very vocal group of fans that wanted to see Command Deck be used in KH3. I’m glad we’re past that stage now. So glad.
If ever there was a KH game that desperately needed to be made for a console, it is Birth by Sleep. A Kingdom Hearts 0 in all but name, having BBS on PS3 over PSP may have eliminated a lot of factors that people find unpalatable about it.
For one, the only reason command deck was created as a system was to fit in with the limitations of the PSP. D-Links, as useful as they are broken and unbalanced, were used in place of summons, due to the limitations. And finally, Final Fantasy characters. We were supposed to see younger versions of Cloud, Leon, as well as Laguna in BBS. Supposed to.
Due to limitations, however, all we got was Zack Fair. I say this like it’s a bad thing, but Zack was a joyous inclusion in BBS, and thinking of what could have been had this been a home console game, makes me rather annoyed.
For one, whether people accept it or not, Birth by Sleep was *the* turning point for the franchise. Introducing the Big Bad of the series, and tying together the villains of the previous games, it created a narrative moving forward that future games had to adhere to. Where Days was insular and self-contained, BBS went to lengths to ensure that all games could now be tied into the sticky, tangly web that is Kingdom Hearts.
If there was a lack of Final Fantasy in a game as important to the series as this, what hope would there be for future instalments? A whole lot apparently. Because of the information of the cut Final Fantasy, and the fact that there was still a tangible connection through Zack, fans on the whole, whilst understandably disappointed, still weren’t mad.
There was just an expectation, that Kingdom Hearts 3, the ultimate unifier, would bring them back in all their glory. Take a look at this thread made around the time BBS released -->
If you had to describe Kingdom Hearts in just a few words, what would those words be?
“A JRPG with action gameplay” This is not wrong, but quite vague.
“It’s a Square Enix game” while true, that’s really only the half of it.
“It’s a Disney game!” eeehhhhhh, that doesn’t quite cut it.
To this day, Kingdom Hearts as a whole is still described by the short sentence that was used to market it way back in 2002.
“Kingdom Hearts is a Final Fantasy x Disney crossover”
Upon hearing this you can immediately envision what the series probably looks like; spiky haired dudes running around with Mickey Mouse in amazing worlds as the backdrops to an unraveling, mysterious journey, probably combined with some light-hearted Disney magicTM.
And you wouldn’t be wrong! With a magic system lifted straight out of the Final Fantasy games, nostalgic Disney characters taking the place of huge, hulking beasts as summons, and a fast-paced combat system to match, Kingdom Hearts is a perfect mixture of all things FF and Disney.
Well, it was…
Starting with 358/2 Days, a game beloved by many and hated by just under that, the Final Fantasy inclusion in KH games has been…… lacking, to say the least. Many fans understood that the sacrifice for Kingdom Hearts being on a handheld, and one as *relatively* powerless as the DS, would be apparent. Yet out of the whole series, it’s Days, the game released just after KH2, that has the lowest amount of Final Fantasy inclusion present, featuring one, lowly, Moogle.
Of course, if ever there was a KH game that I could understand this lack of inclusion, it would be Days. A game that chartered the course for KH to become the insular mess it is now. It would create loopholes within loopholes if Roxas did interact with any FF characters in his game, as they would certainly recall that even if Sora’s memory was lost to them. So, its understandable, and not even regrettable in this instance.
So that was 2009, the first time we had seen a new KH game since KH2 released three years ago. Even though Days started the downplayed FF trend, it by no means codified it. That honour goes to:
Birth by Sleep
The definition of broken base. This game kickstarted what I can see as two different sides of the community, the ones that defend this game, and subsequently all of the franchise, to the hilt, and the flipside, the side that found this game lacking, in gameplay mostly, but retroactively in plot.
To use an example, here’s a quote from @Dio Brando (altered slightly for posterity’s sake) that highlights this split perfectly, and is from January 2017, when the split was becoming markedly more pronounced, and rapidly so:
The most contentious point of BBS is it’s Command Deck, a format that was then used in the next two games, Re:coded and 3D. It might be hard to believe now, but for quite a while there was still a very vocal group of fans that wanted to see Command Deck be used in KH3. I’m glad we’re past that stage now. So glad.
If ever there was a KH game that desperately needed to be made for a console, it is Birth by Sleep. A Kingdom Hearts 0 in all but name, having BBS on PS3 over PSP may have eliminated a lot of factors that people find unpalatable about it.
For one, the only reason command deck was created as a system was to fit in with the limitations of the PSP. D-Links, as useful as they are broken and unbalanced, were used in place of summons, due to the limitations. And finally, Final Fantasy characters. We were supposed to see younger versions of Cloud, Leon, as well as Laguna in BBS. Supposed to.
Due to limitations, however, all we got was Zack Fair. I say this like it’s a bad thing, but Zack was a joyous inclusion in BBS, and thinking of what could have been had this been a home console game, makes me rather annoyed.
For one, whether people accept it or not, Birth by Sleep was *the* turning point for the franchise. Introducing the Big Bad of the series, and tying together the villains of the previous games, it created a narrative moving forward that future games had to adhere to. Where Days was insular and self-contained, BBS went to lengths to ensure that all games could now be tied into the sticky, tangly web that is Kingdom Hearts.
If there was a lack of Final Fantasy in a game as important to the series as this, what hope would there be for future instalments? A whole lot apparently. Because of the information of the cut Final Fantasy, and the fact that there was still a tangible connection through Zack, fans on the whole, whilst understandably disappointed, still weren’t mad.
There was just an expectation, that Kingdom Hearts 3, the ultimate unifier, would bring them back in all their glory. Take a look at this thread made around the time BBS released -->