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As you can see, we've released a major upgrade to KH13! The site is now running the latest version of Invision Community, which comes with a lot of new features, a total revamp of the theme, and a lot of our content sections totally re-done. We will do a proper announcement on socials and everything a bit down the track, but first I just wanted to soft launch it so that people can use it, because there's bound to be a lot of bugs and issues that people discover. It'll also take a day or two for the search index and "activity" lists (eg. on people's profiles) to populate. Let me know if anything else isn't working properly!

none of them. those places have way too many disasters

Destiny Islands has always been my favourite. It hardly ever gets attacked by Heartless or Nobodies, it's beautiful, it's peaceful whilst still having a good community of people and you'd get to hang out with Sora, Riku and Kairi. Plus I want to see what the main island looks like as we've never explored it. Lastly Terra and Aqua indicated that it's a world bathed in warmth and light unlike any other world which makes it sound basically like heaven.

What original Kingdom Hearts world would you like to live in?

I guess I'll vote in my own poll But I'd choose Twilight Town, sea salt ice cream and Le Grand Bistro would ensure I don't have to worry about food, I love the golden hour aesthetic, and it seems like it would be relatively peaceful.

Twilight Town does seem rather nice. but it does get attacked by Nobodies an awful lot

my theory is, and this might sound a little crazy, that it's just a phone

We can hope but it's good to keep expectations low in these types of situations. Like Albert said, it's definitely a possibility, but we don't necessarily have any indications that it will be. I haven't personally kept up with other Square Enix titles all too much lately so hard to say on that front as well. A trailer would be nice and would keep the momentum going though. I still stand by that the reason we got those screenshots was to soften the blow about Missing-Link, I think without that we probably would have seen them at a later time.

I think there is a possibility, but probably not. Recent screenshots lead me to believe that KH4 won't be shown this year at all. I'd like to be proven wrong, but as of now, I don't have any hopes

So I'm currently making a powerpoint presentation for friends about how Japanese Warlord Oda Nobunaga "saved" my marriage. He was a historical figure adapted into many other pieces of media, including a video game called Samurai Warriors Chronicles. I bought the game in 2011 or so but promptly had to return it because my mom thought it was "too violent" so instead I picked up Kingdom Hearts re:Coded. Really weird game to start in the franchise, right? I thought so too. So I played 358/2 Days next and was even more confused but also highly emotionally invested. It was my first game with a real narrative arc and I wanted to know where the rest of that story went. And that brought me here. This was my first taste of online fandom. I fell in love with the franchise, I fell in love with online roleplaying, I fell in love with a person--and that went about as well as any 15 year old's first relationship being online would go in the early-mid '10s. I try not to think about it too much too often lol. So that was a mess, I spent a lot less attention on this site, and ended up redirecting my roleplaying passions towards Google+ of all places. And THAT is where I met someone online (this time at 16!) and somehow, nearly ten years after, that was the person I ended up marrying last year. Ain't that just crazy?

A lot of it has to do with where you were in the world and what age group you fell under. I.E Disney had been a worldwide juggernaut for decades by the time KH1 released, but Squaresoft which hadn't yet become Square-Enix had barely made a dent outside of Japan. Most of the Final Fantasy games which were half of the appeal of the crossover aspect of the game didn't do big sales numbers outside of Japan. Indeed if you were in a country where English is the primary language there was less of a 50/50 chance you were familiar with the characters who appear in KH1 from Final Fantasy and more so a 30/70 in favor that you had absolutely no idea who they were or knew one or two of them at best (in some cases by only appearance rather than anything else). If you were a gamer you might know them from gaming magazines. If you were an especially avid one or specifically drawn in by JRPGs; that's when you would be in the camp that knew who all of them were. Additionally for as popular, beloved, and iconic as the Disney characters at the forefront of KH were by then, Disney has never had a good reputation when it comes to games they had involvement in outside of KH and one or two standalone outliers. Having Disney characters in the game should very much have meant sales tanked rather than the game doing well. So when you come across retrospectives on YouTube or Niconico saying KH being a success is a miracle it really is a more apt statement than it sounds. Of course there are a lot of sales that KH1 got and that the series as it continued still gets from parents who have long been conditioned into blind faith in Disney buying their children the games. Moving into the game itself. If you were a little kid (say 5-8 years of age) you probably only experienced KH1 during its initial release as a result of your older sibling(s) playing it while you watched and maybe just maybe giving you a turn with the controller if they got tired of you pestering them for one. While for some kids that little the story will have gone right over their heads or been hard to follow; others will have been drawn in so strongly they would continue to follow the series when it began receiving sequels and plenty of them are probably still fans today. Regardless it would've been a normal part of the equation to have to sit through any of the cutscenes as it wasn't an industry norm for cutscenes to be skippable yet. Squaresoft/Square-Enix during the PS1 and PS2 eras was one company famous for unskippable cutscenes because they used them as 60% of the appeal of their games. Even when their biggest competitors started to normalize the practice of providing the option to skip cutscenes Squaresoft/Square-Enix remained stubborn about it into the start of the PS3 era. And even where they did decide to cave about it they usually kept the FMV cutscenes unskippable. There's also that one horrendous example of forcing you to experience cutscenes for the best possible outcome in that FFX-2 (originally launched on PS2 in 2003, well into a period where almost every noteworthy competitor for Square had started to include the option to skip cutscenes, in some cases even the FMV ones without any kind of penalty) requires you to sit through pretty much every line of dialogue for 100% story completion in a single playthrough. But anyway, the point I'm trying to horribly make with this particular tangent is that unskippable cutscenes were just a thing that you either raged over and broke more than a few controllers because of, or you used the FMV ones as a bathroom/food break while any regular ones got mashed through if they were placed before a boss fight and you were on your umpteenth attempt to get past an especially difficult one. If the game had new game plus you just mashed through regular cutscenes and did chores/took a bathroom or food break during the FMV ones and during the end credits scroll after your first playthrough. Depending on how engaging you found the gameplay and platforming of KH1 you would finish the game or drop it. Common drop points being the worlds based off of Tarzan and The Little Mermaid, but some people regardless of if they were a tiny 5-8 year old or a mid-late teen (16-19 years of age) or fully fledged adults as young as 21 and as old as 60 have also dropped the game as early as when they got to Traverse Town for the first time because of a lack of a map or synopsis. Even when it comes to Destiny Islands some people just could not figure out how to progress. Those are things that were true way back when and are still true in present day. If you were a teenager playing KH1 when it originally released you were of two camps. You either thought it was lame because of the Disney stuff and you were at the age where children begin to reject Disney or you used it as an excuse to continue to support Disney stuff since it had "mature" characters in it from that one Japanese game series (Final Fantasy), you'd seen picking up traction with other teens and that crossover aspect gave you the perfect excuse to insist that Disney was still acceptable even for teens to the teens who were trying to get you to leave it behind. On the other side of the camp you were an avid gamer playing whatever you wanted and cared little for the reputation of the game, in some cases you picked it up and committed to finishing it specifically because it was being trashed on by others. Impersonal experiences (Hearsay/Memories) and Personal Thoughts/Reflections on Back then: Riku being unbeatable on Destiny Islands and at Hollow Bastion: When people say F this fight it isn't for nothing. Back then you could regularly encounter children at playgrounds during recess or on weekends in the park bragging about getting past Riku in Hollow Bastion or successfully winning against him on Destiny Islands (in both the sparring match and the race for who gets to share the fruit with Kairi). Strategies would be discussed in AIM/MSN chatrooms and on forums for websites that don't even exist anymore or purged the forum pages in question ages ago. But honestly KH1 has multiple bosses outside of Riku that were difficult AF for the original playerbase too. They're just not as meme-worthy today I guess. One of the reasons Atlantica is the way it is in KH2 is because of how much players hated combat in it in KH1 and the negative feedback was thankfully actually taken to heart. The climax of the story/the story in general really: In present day most of the KH fanbase doesn't have many nice things to say about Kairi and that very much originated during KH1's vanilla release. But it wasn't such an egregious issue how she was handled back then. She wasn't very interesting nor did she do much of anything but she served her role. There wasn't much to judge her for one way or the other. The lack of any substantial meaningful time with Kairi was what made it difficult to really call the climax in Hollow Bastion when she and Sora save one another "Emotional". Even so the original version of this game released right after the Disney Renaissance entered its concluding years. More than enough of the players who were indoctrinated by Disney during the 1990s were still in the right headspace to fall hook line and sinker for the storyline's sequences in Hollow Bastion. From people freaking out over Riku being possessed, crying at Sora's sacrifice, cheering at Kairi's hug changing him back in the lobby. It all got the intended reactions from certain players, while others just scoffed/shrugged/looked on in indifference. No-one ever said the writing in Kingdom Hearts is especially deep so, eh. Now to be fair to Kairi, she's not the only character that was considered to be nothing special back then. Sora and Riku may have been hits with players who had been seduced into loving their archetypes through other media, but they were hardly universally beloved or hated characters either when you look at representative characters for the archetypes they filled within the game. Nowadays we see frequent talk online about why Disney doesn't use the KH original characters much in their theme parks and IMHO this is why. As much as the first game was an unexpected critical and financial success the cast of characters made specifically for the game were not considered anything special by the broader general public. To put it in words that IMHO anyone should be able to understand: Sora, Riku, Kairi, and Ansem Seeker of Darkness didn't do for video games what the likes of the most famous characters from Star Wars did for movies. And even if we narrow things down to RPGs both Japanese and non-Japanese these characters weren't revolutionizing gaming the way Donkey Kong, Mario, and Sonic once did and in some cases would continue to do. Kairi wasn't Barbie or a Charlie's Angel, that sort of effect. It was simply a game that did unexpectedly well and as such they decided to make more of them. Further fairness to them when have we ever seen a RPG series that is strictly based in storytelling rather than gameplay where the same cast of characters gets reused outside of Legend of Zelda? Tales, Mana, Final Fantasy, etc etc. They all come with different casts of characters unless they're doing direct or near future sequels. The ending: There was so much outcry for a sequel to Kingdom Hearts because of the way it ended. I do not have a single memory of anyone being satisfied with the way it ends. I am glad I live in a dimension/timeline where the game got not one but multiple sequels. Because of how far the character of Riku would come in particular. One of my favorite memories from chatrooms and forums about KH1's ending is peoples reactions to Simple and Clean. There was one person who yelled in all caps about how unfitting the song was for the final scenes because its score sounds so uplifting. I think the person must've been a j-pop anti or something similar because they went off on a tangent about "anime BS." in the same forum for several pages. Other Stuff: "I bought this because the cover is really eye-catching." - There were so, SO MANY people in the chatrooms and forums back then who said this. There was a neighbor of mine who had a twelve year old son who she got the game for and when she saw him fighting on Destiny Islands against the heartless on the night of fate she took the disc out and returned the game the next day. Ah the days when parents were so uppity about video game violence. Extra Tidbit: It's not from the days of KH1's initial vanilla release, but from circa the original release of Birth By Sleep. This can probably still be found online if enough digging is done. Around this time there was an uptick in people posting online about discovering new scenes in KH1 if they did certain worlds in different orders than what the game wanted them done in. I thought it was cute how excited some people were at discovering the alternate scenes. Dunno if that was really worth mentioning or not, but thought I'd share anyway. A Confession of Sorts: I'm sure I've mentioned it over the course of my posts on here but I've never played through KH1 from start to finish. I usually quit during the Tarzan world because of the way the camera interacts with the navigation through the world. But even when I've had the luxury of someone completing that world for me I always end up stopping at some point later. Even with the collections I went straight to Re:CoM and KH2FM instead of bothering to ever play through KH1FM where control of the camera is a lot better. Gameplay wise I'm very familiar with the bosses of KH1 in its vanilla form due to being around to help out friends with their attempts to get past them. Even today though, KH1 regardless of version is the KH game I'm the least familiar with as it pertains to the ins and outs of the game itself. GBA Chain of Memories, Days, Re:Coded they've all seen start to finish runs from me at some point in my life since they came out. KH1 if I ever did, I have no memory of it. I do however remember that the first time I ever got to see it through to the end was via a group effort between myself and three of my cousins. And as I already mentioned the ending was not satisfying. Thank you to all that is mighty that Chain of Memories and KH2 happened! PS: An outsider's perspective on what reaction to KH1 might've been like from the Japan side. If you've ever seen compilation videos of Let's Players/Streamers reacting to the Final Fantasy characters in KH1 or to Sephiroth in KH2 on YouTube, I would hazard that is probably quite close to what Japan based players would've reacted like to said characters when KH1 and KH2 first came out, less so in present day where Square-Enix has severely damaged its relationship with its consumers more or less worldwide and Japan in contrast to external territories has had plenty of time to get over how "cool" and "awesome" and "amazing" the golden era Final Fantasy characters are. Suffice it to say the US, UK, and Canada, etc have way more appreciation for FF7R than Japan ever will because of how few people outside of Japan really got to experience the perceived greatness of the original FF7.

I had to explain to many people

I genuinely hope Missing Link was the last one and they don't try another gacha game with drip fed content and chucked all the ideas into hell

it's freaking me out

During a recent livestream for Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis, Kingdom Hearts series director Tetsuya Nomura, who also works on Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis as creative director responded to fan comments about the latest status of Kingdom Hearts IV: You can view the full livestream below, the mention of Kingdom Hearts IV starts at around 1:54:00 Thanks to @aitaikimochi on X for providing translations. This is the first acknowledgement of Kingdom Hearts IV since Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link's announced cancellation and the subsequent release of Kingdom Hearts IV screenshots following the announcement back in May. What are your thoughts on Nomura's comments? Let us know in the comments below! View full article

see anything works with KH they just need to get the permission sora in smash was wanted for years

Definitely Twilight Town because it looks so peaceful for the most part. I would also like to live in The World That Never Was only because I felt like it was great missed opportunity not to explore more in that city. I mean all those tall skyscraper buildings and we never had a chance to look inside? Sad.

That's interesting! Based on what you said in the video, I would have thought the Hot Rod might not have been too fun. All the Timeless River heartless did seem challenging, they're so specific to that particular world that I honestly wouldn't know where to start on how to re-design them so they might fit elsewhere. The Fortune Teller was interesting too, I didn't notice that it had a more specifically feminine design until you pointed it out, the re-color on that one looked quite nice too. Hope you have as much fun with any future projects that might be in the works!

Hiya folks. I recently made a video where I attempt to redraw a lot of the KH2 Heartless to be more similar to the KH1's Heartless design philosophy. As I state in the video, it's not about fixing them, it's just a fun exercise. I believe people have done similar things within the Pokemon community; making idk gen 5 Pokemon feel like gen 1 Pokemons. Idk, I'm not in that community. Anyways, if that sounds interesting please check it out, and if it sounds boring as hell then feel free to move along lol.

"magic" should be replaced with "alchemy" for this world's command menu, lol

Some really cool re-designs in here! I think my favorites were the fiery globe and ice cube, they looked a lot cuter with your redraws! Also appreciate you outlining your process and the timeline for the entire project, looks like a lot of thought and effort went into it over quite a bit of time. Also neat that your re-draws match the aesthetic of what we might find in concept art/art books. Curious to know if there was one you had the most fun with or were most satisfied with over the others. Thanks for sharing here with us.

there's room for both

He has bi vibes

Clownfish TV is still around? these channels are like cockroaches lmao

Max Goof for kh4

I can finally leave twitter

Companies need to not do that anymore

I think it is worth remembering that while it has been over 20 years externally, internally speaking 20 years have not passed for Kairi.

Lol, you really think Kairi hate in KH4 is a conspiracy theory when 20+years of history says it's the truth. Nomura hates Kairi. And I've seen too many cases of people not liking Kairi actually hating Kairi. I guess pattern recognition is still not a thing in this part of the world. Come back to KH4 and I will be RIGHT. I hate it to happen but what I've been saying is 100% truth.

She is not the main character. She never will be and never has been the main character. She's barely ever even been A character, nevermind THE MAIN character. Also you have a recurring fascination for saying the damsel in distress trope is a Japan thing. That is next levels of inaccurate. They did not create the trope (for that matter neither did Disney despite how one might get that idea from examining the company's history).

Square Enix have released new Kingdom Hearts IV screenshots following the cancellation of Kingdom Hearts Missing- Link. These show Sora in Quadratum fighting Heartless, Strelitzia, a playable King Mickey segment, Sora in a parking lot, and a Darkside Heartless. It's worth noting that while the same screenshots were shared across both Japanese and Global social media handles, the Japanese collection of screenshots contains a slightly different variation of the top first image.You can view the screenshots in our gallery below. Alongside these new screenshots, a message was shared with fans on the official Kingdom Hearts social media handles: What do you think about these screenshots? Let us know in the comments below! View full article

Square Enix's blog recently interviewed composer Yoko Shimomura after she won a BAFTA Fellowship, the highest honor an arts organization can grant. Throughout the interview, Shimomura answered questions about the award, how she came to compose video game music, and her involvement with specific titles, including the Kingdom Hearts series. You can view the relevant quoted portion of this Shimomura interview below. It delves into her impressions of Kingdom Hearts as a project and the creativity involved with both Disney Worlds and original world music. You can view the full interview on Square Enix's blog, which also contains comments about Live A Live and Final Fantasy XV. View full article

Sora and Riku is certainly possible, but it could also be Sora and Strelitzia. I feel like people are forgetting Strelitzia is a keyblade wielder as well, so she could be a party member fighting alongside Sora.

CHAD Riku Puts RED HEAD KAREN In Her PLACE!!! ---------> ⭕️ "B-But, I wanna go! 😭" "no." 🔥🔥🔥

As an OG Kingdom Hearts fan I'll say this is definitely for the best. Plus, it was a HUGE mistake trying to make this game on the Mobile Game in first place. Nomura and this development team should've know that Missing-Link on the phone was never going to work. Missing-Link should've been on the console in the first place just like Final Fantasy 14 Reborn. I'm honestly not sad about this at all. After the incredibly slow and weak progress of Unchained X and Union Cross I consider this good news, in my opinion.

ARE WE EXERCISING JRPG AS A TERM OR NOT

Dude, comparing Sakura Haruno to Kairi is an insult to Sakura. Their development is significantly different in terms of handling even if Sakura still comes out at the other end nowhere near the same level of OP as Naruto and Sasuke. Also "This is a warning." - What are you five? Plenty of franchises have survived characters like Kairi. Especially when said characters aren't the protagonist (which she isn't, despite being the leading heroine, yes there is a difference). Your ramble about Mary Sues is hilarious. You're saying Kairi fans want Kairi to be a cliche OP Mary Sue going forward because you're tired of waiting for the culmination of her development. But they precisely backpedaled on how OP she was in Re:Mind to continue developing her character rather than stagnate it at the finish line of an OP Doesn't Need Anyone Else Girl Boss (which contrary to your diatribe has been proven again and again within media to be a hated thing not a loved thing).

Vegas native here, Pokemon Go phone overheating was the norm. Icebag on phone meta I've already got down pat

Hiya! I recently made a video where I analyze the general Heartless designs and discuss their motifs, and also compare KH1's approach to designing Heartless with how KH2 handled it's various Heartless. If that sounds interesting to you feel free to check out the video!

I hope to the Lord Almighty that they completely scrapped the mobile game plan because I am sick of amazing lore being in mobile games I meant to reply to this lol As much as I love UX’s and Dark Road’s story, I disliked the fact that they were in a freaking mobile game And not to mention the battles would have been so epic in 3D with VOICE ACTING UGH

https://hard-drive.net/hd/video-games/sneak-peek-at-kingdom-hearts-4-reveals-photorealistic-sora-travelling-through-dozens-of-remakes/ (Disclaimer: P A R O D Y)

Doing the dirty work, I respect the hell out of it Illty

You know what would have been cool? To get a mobil egame while waiting for kh4. No. Not ML. Something more simple. I replayed re:coded and liked the olympus world turn based combat. A kh turn based combat mobile game.

With Berserk being such a popular manga in Japan (though I've never read it) it's quite possible that some inspiration was taken from it, whether intentionally or not. In turn, I think the manga Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle took inspiration from Kingdom Hearts. Both are about a 14 year old boy from a sunny, sandy world whose childhood friend and love interest (that's also a princess) loses her heart when dark beings invade their world from another dimension, causing him to go on a journey across many other worlds with a magician and a royal guard whilst meeting characters from other stories, in an effort to save her. Also both boys are voiced in Japanese by Miyu Irino.

May I just say that the following makes me really happy indeed! Whether you are a teacher yourself or just any other person, you should always truly help people think critically! Needless to say, this kind of thing needs to be constantly spread, because it always truly makes the difference between what is truly Right and wrong no matter what no matter how otherwise it may seem https://www.dailywire.com/news/utterly-brilliant-viral-video-shows-the-moment-student-realizes-his-claim-of-j-k-rowlings-bigotry-is-unfounded

Trombone Marluxia

New Hyrule Warriors Scans Show Ghirahim, The Imprisoned, and Skyward Sword Stages: