As the title says, what are your favorite worlds in terms of the design? Not factoring in story or characters, purely the environments you walk around in and sometimes interact with. Maybe it's just really fun to wander around in, or it's a faithful recreation of your favorite Disney film. Perhaps it's ambitious in terms of what you can do or how you move about.

Dream Drop Distance is quite good at this, with the help of reality shifts. The Grid where you can manipulate coding (and the code that appears upon completion of the reality shift makes logical sense in computer terms), or Symphony of Sorcery's unique soundscape and the way Melody Catcher opens up new paths. Atlantica, mainly the first game is a world I admire the ambition in because while the underwater controls and combat aren't entirely intuitive, it's at least ambitious and makes the areas more three dimensional without resorting to platforming. Not to say that platforming is bad, but swimming offers variation. For sheer size and beauty, the Caribbean. It properly feels like exploration and you immerse yourself in the islands and the water. The islands are visually distinct, it's not the same basic asset copy and pasted for quantity over quality.

Going chronologically:

KH1’s Hollow Bastion’s labyrinthine structure and puzzle mechanics stay with me even after 2 decades. Hard to beat.

KH2’s environments aren’t particularly noteworthy, but Twilight Town and TWTNW absolutely nail a sense of place-making. They’re both highly believable and immersive locales. I would’ve liked to spend more time in them.

Can’t say I remember BBS’s maps well enough, as I haven’t actually played it in some time.

DDD’s Symphony of Sorcery may well be my favorite KH world in terms of design and mechanics. It’s an absolute joy to explore, and everything from the musical sound fx replacing normal attack fx, seamless integration of flowmotion into its vast and vertical environments, and the way new areas open make it pretty magical IMO. I also love DDD’s take on TWTNW, it’s so vast and surreal.

KH3 - Toy Box takes the cake. Really imaginative, varied, makes you actually feel like a kid in a toy store. 

ReMind’s Scala also set a new marker for the franchise in terms of sandbox exploration IMO, though I feel like they could have done a little more with it mechanically. The traversal railways are really neat though.

EDIT: I just remembered Space Paranoids, that definitely belongs here. The Grid is pretty rad too.

Edited March 19, 20214 yr by bambii

Halloween Town KH2 - I loved seeing how they recreated one of my favourite films in Kingdom Hearts. I really like how they matched the locations in the film and for the parts that weren’t in the film they definitely fit in with the rest of the world. I also really the idea of Halloween Town and Christmas Town atmosphere being complete opposite of each other while still being apart of the same world and not feeling out of place.

The World That Never Was-I just like everything about the design of this world and it actually hard for me to think of one specific thing I liked as I really liked all of it.

KH3 Tangled world - It’s just so much fun to explore as the environment looks really nice.

KH3 Pirates of the Caribbean world - I think the underwater parts were really well designed and I really like how explorable the parts where you were on the sea travelling to all the different islands felt.

KH3 Keyblade Graveyard and Scala ad Caelum - I just love the design of both of these worlds and how they definitely suit the role of being the final two worlds of the game as the worlds atmosphere feels like it really matches the situation that is happening.

KH3 Final World - Although there wasn’t much in this world the environment just looked really pretty.

 

Cavern of Remembrance is a lot of fun to travel through, even if that Air Slide+Aerial Jump bit can be tricky to pull off. It feels more like KH1's Hollow Bastion than any other world in KH2 does in terms of how twisty turny it can be as you enter to and exit from different points in the mineshaft, as well as in the platforming you do (a far more engaging use of the Ride the Wind reaction command than Land of Dragons achieves in the overworld), as platforming is something that was toned down in KH2.

Space Paranoids is a world that's aged really well visually because of how it's emulated the visuals from the Tron film, and the foley effects like reverberating footsteps help it to stand out. Things like curvature of walls look gorgeous and it genuinely feels other worldly.

The level design needs to be completely overhauled, enough with these linear PS2 corridor walking simulator movies, we’ve hit breaking point with KH3 & Final Fantasy 7: Remake.

Scala Ad Caelum and Daybreak Town. I just love their designs. 

i think ill go with symphony of sorcery, particularly riku's side. cause the night time, autumn and winter forest are fantastic. though i do love galaxy toys in toy box

Most of my picks have already been mentioned  

Toy Box - like someone else said above you really get the feeling that you’re in a toy store, I also loved how you could interact and manipulate items you normally wouldn’t even think of as being useful if you were just regular size going through the worlds.

The Caribbean - it was a big step up from KH II’s Port Royal, it looked beautiful and at times reminded me of Caribbean islands in real life, it was also fun to explore the different islands scattered across the world with each of them being uniquely designed, it really felt like you could explore it endlessly. I also liked the underwater exploration, and how there were hidden areas beneath, or that you needed to dive underwater to get to another part of the island you’re on.

Symphony of Sorcery - I’ve said it here before but fighting enemies to the sound of classical music tracks in the background is oddly satisfying. It was unexpected but a pleasant surprise.Each of the different environments in the world were so colorful too.

Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden - it’s not that this world does anything super groundbreaking in terms of design, I just like that it’s one of the few that we get to see change throughout different points in time of the series, whether we get to see new areas of it that weren’t explored in previous entries or familiar areas that have just been altered based on what the world has been through. 

The Realm of Darkness from 0.2 - again, nothing super groundbreaking, I just liked the atmosphere they created for it, seeing fragments of the worlds that had fallen to darkness with things being all messed up, out of place, and empty, along with the field theme that plays throughout really gave a sense of loneliness, despair, and endless wandering. 

mine would be hollow bastion from kh1 

there is just something unnatrual jet quite alluring about this place starting with the waterfalls going the opposite way to the castle with its strange shape that looks just plausible enough to be real. In that way its to me the perfect representation of kh1 the seriousness of Final fantasy and the cartoonish elements from disney in one building. and than there is the inside of the castle which is just the perfect evil lair followed by the dark jet also beautifull chapel and finally the strange machines on the highest tower 

All of mine have been said for pretty much the same reasons as why I liked them, except one. Timeless River was probably my favourite. It had an unusual charm to it, and there's not another world like it. The black and white colour palette, the music and the incorporation of making all those characters 3D but still old school style was a memory I'll never forget. Also love how Mickey just comes up to you, shakes your hand viciously and moseys on over to the next area, that feature made me laugh every time  

7 hours ago, Moogle13 said:

All of mine have been said for pretty much the same reasons as why I liked them, except one. Timeless River was probably my favourite. It had an unusual charm to it, and there's not another world like it. The black and white colour palette, the music and the incorporation of making all those characters 3D but still old school style was a memory I'll never forget. Also love how Mickey just comes up to you, shakes your hand viciously and moseys on over to the next area, that feature made me laugh every time  

youre right it is great looking world and a real stand out among them all