FadedSparkle

Recess! It could be the new 100 Acre Wood as far as mini-game worlds go! A nice, wholesome break from all the action!

After playing KH2 I probably would have gone for the ethereal blades or Xaldin's lances but over the course of the games since then I think Xigbar's sniper-like arrowguns have really helped him stand out, especially in DDD when he makes his entrance.

May he rest in peace. Big sad. But he left a great legacy behind. The world shall not forget him.

I am not surprised to see Way to Dawn winning. I voted for it too. While the giant car key meme that arose from Braveheart was epic, Braveheart really does feel like a huge downgrade after how storied a journey Riku had with Way to Dawn evolving from his initial trademark weapon Soul Eater. The scene of Rikusem stabbing Maleficent with the Key of Peoples Hearts is always gonna be a fun one to watch. Cold brutal betrayal at its finest.

I think RAX are the strongest overall group of characters. Riku and Sora are better than any of those, but Kairi is a massive anchor on that trio. Besides being one of the worst characters, she and Riku have almost no believable interactions with one another. It's more like they're only "friends" because of Sora being in the middle.
SDG is probably the best after RAX for me.

For as much as fans perceive Chain of Memories as a game that tanked and wasn't popular it actually was quite the opposite if sales reports and reviews from when it was released on GBA are to be believed. The PS2 port was a direct response to its success on the GBA. Not giving it full voice acting more so marks product of the time period as back in those days it was a very special occasion for a video game to release as a Full Voice Edition, even then it was rare for the Full Voice Editions to release outside of the game's original territory. Also going from only a few pieces of voice acting on the GBA release to all of the plot relevant scenes being voiced for the PS2 port was already a massive step up when it comes to adding voice acting.

The short lived trio of Riku, Axel, and Namine is missing from the list of options. I voted for Sora, Donald, and Goofy (mostly to not pour another vote into the Seasalt trio which I'm almost 99% will be the one that comes out with the most votes in the end).

As someone who has never been much of a Star Wars fan I'm not going to care one way or the other if we get one or more Star Wars world(s) or we don't. Whether I end up liking them will depend on how well they implement them.

That actually sounds like grasping at straws for evidence of him having feelings for her of a romantic nature and trailing off could mean he wants to say more (I would imagine the full line he's trying to say there is along the lines of "Kairi...Sora..I'm sorry.").  Although I actually never knew that he calls her name when he dies because I've never had Riku KO'd in KH2 before. Grains of salt all over this though, putting it together with everything else about their relationship it falls apart and acts as a big piece that doesn't fit in the puzzle that's put together from the rest of my observations. I'd have to devote time to slotting that in somehow, but it is a good piece of food for thought. As far as him staying close to them goes, at the end of the day they're still the two most important characters to him. That's consistent throughout the whole first trilogy of games, and all the ones that came afterwards so far. It'd be pretty unlike Riku to not want to be close to Sora and Kairi.
 
This I can definitely agree with. Kairi, Namine, Xion, Shiki, and most recently the Limit Cut episode of the Re:Mind DLC offered up one scene where he was very gentle towards Aqua too.
 
Yeah, the novels and manga do help with this one, so long as one views them empathizing and sympathizing with each other's loneliness and guilt as signs of more than a budding friendship. There's an essay posted to AO3 by someone that basically has its core point being that because Riku and Namine were like that in the KH2 novels it means there's a basis for them as a ship, thus the general consensus that the ship came out of nowhere and they just got lumped together in that one scene at the end of KH3 is false. I don't know how canon or non-canon the novels and manga continuities are according to the series owners themselves, so I simplified things in my head and just put everything into its own canon (the novels have their canon, the manga has its canon, and of course the games have theirs). It's just too much of a headache to try combining all three so I choose not to.

There's also a distinct lack of characters acting like themselves consistently throughout all three adaptations. To mention one glaring example I'll just point to Kairi in the KH2 novels and manga. In the games I don't recall any scene where Kairi was mean or rude (save for when she's teasing Sora about being lazy/slow in the head/naive) outside of the line in KH1 where she wanted to take the raft with Sora and leave Riku behind, during a scene with a serious tone to it. The way she treats Demyx in both of the other continuities though; is really contradictory to her game counterpart and served to make me hate her more than I already do. I should probably use hate loosely as it's difficult to hate a character who only has so much life in her. All three adaptations would have to do a better job with her for me to actually like her, and it's more like hate for how she's handled than hate for her specifically because there's only so much "her" to like or dislike/hate. I hope I'm making sense.
If she does, she has one very contradicting line in the KH2 prologue "Roxas, you were never supposed to exist." It's comparable to the amount of callousness she displays when it comes to Repliku and really brings out the truth of Larxene's "Oh so cute, but beyond this pretty face, you do awful things." line from Chain of Memories. Now this could have everything to do with the way that Namine came into being, but Roxas is right to react with anger and disbelief at her line there when he retorts with, "Even if that were true, how could you ever say that?" I don't want to seem like I'm giving Namine a harder time than I should, but a lot of her prospects for romance are in the realm of one-sided.

She wants to replace Kairi in Sora's heart in Chain of Memories (and takes the fact she's being coerced to mess with his memories as her chance to do so, even if she backtracks and stops trying to in the end), she wants to be close to Roxas because Kairi is close to Sora (essentially wanting him to be the Sora to her Kairi due to them being Sora and Kairi's Nobodies), she wants to be the female companion who ends up with Riku in a quartet made up of herself, Sora, Riku, and Kairi; because Sora belongs to Kairi, her Original/her Somebody (we can infer this way more than just slightly, from the drawing of the four of them she makes in Chain of Memories, where she draws herself next to Riku and Kairi next to Sora because deep down even she realizes that Sora would never choose her over Kairi). I'm really not left with anyone to ship Namine with, without feeling uncomfortable about the pairing in some way.

@yamibakura - The worlds have more or less always been just sandboxes. Even in KH3, they dolled the worlds up more than ever before, but they're still empty outside of the storytelling bringing them to life. In Chain of Memories there's a gameplay meets storytelling tragedy to Sora having to go through worlds filled with illusions of the people he met in KH1 born of his own memories of them. Aerith's self awareness is essentially Sora's brain trying to warn him of how he's being manipulated, but Sora being Sora brashly chooses to keep on going in hopes of finding Riku and Mickey, and then of course to save Namine the more she messes with his memory.

This gameplay meets storytelling tragedy continues in the Riku campaign Reverse/Rebirth in a different way; as we get Maleficent playing the same role as Aerith does in Sora's campaign, but in reverse, where Aerith is Sora's brain trying to warn him of how he's being manipulated and he chooses to ignore it, Maleficent is Riku using his own brain to berate himself through the avatar most familiar to him from his time under the influence of darkness. The voice that he keeps chatting with in Hollow Bastion is another example of this. It's left ambiguous who the voice belongs to, but it's easy enough to guess that it's Ansem SoD (namely while he was just a sentient heart inside the brown robe). Then Riku goes about mowing down the versions of the villains he allied with in his efforts to get Kairi her heart back in a very blatant reflection of his private self loathing for his prior actions, as he tries to reunite with Mickey, come to terms with the darkness that still lingers in him plus what to do with it hereafter, and find out who/what landed him in Castle Oblivion to begin with.

@RugratsNappiesFanatic - The sandbox worlds of Recoded actually feature a lot of design depth that helps them feel less like a collection of corridors which is actually way better than what was done for Chain of Memories in the both the original and the remake. For starters KH1 is known for being one of if not the most platforming and puzzle heavy KH game and Recoded really doesn't shy away from following up on that. Chain of Memories very much does.

Particularly true for the remake where not much of anything is going on in the rooms of each world unless those worlds are story related (it really shows in Reverse/Rebirth in particular since Riku never really took any time in KH1 to bond (for better or worse) with any of the villains he allied himself with in his efforts to get Kairi her heart back (outside of Maleficent and Ansem) thus he's literally going through the memory worlds mowing down these characters he wishes he never had anything to do with once he reaches their boss room). However Chain of Memories is the finest example of hardware and game type limitations come to life. It was something of a side scroller in the original version so no real need for platforming or puzzles (outside of customizing Sora's deck) was present nor needed. In the remake we still have a gameplay puzzle element at play in that we still get to customize Sora's deck, but now we have the bare bones minimum tools for platforming and puzzle solving in a springboard here and there to jump on and an object to slide or place into specific places.

Is there really more detail to the worlds in Re:COM? Also to be honest BBS's gameplay is something you need to learn to understand. Yes you level up your abilities, but maxing them out is not enough. You also need to learn the attack patterns of the bosses you encounter and take advantage of their openings to fell them. BBS is one of the few games in the series where mash x to win just doesn't work out. Especially so if you don't just pick a lower difficulty.  Beyond that the capabilities of the PSP were not exactly any lesser than the PS2's, in fact being somewhere above that of the PS2 and bellow that of the PS3. And lastly 99 is the max level in almost every RPG, but the maximum level you should need to be for most RPGs regardless in order to 100% them is Level 50. BBS falls well into that range.

Roxas and Olette was the way I leaned too in the KH2 days. Who cares if the Olette he knew was made of data? Definitely not me. Roxas/Namine is one I've never quite understood. They barely interacted in a positive way so I couldn't get behind them in the early days of them being shipped together and I still can't really get behind it now. It also feels like Namine very much feels a connection to him, but Roxas doesn't feel that same connection towards her.

And I can't really tell if she wants to substitute Roxas for Sora or is actually drawn to Roxas. The scene on Sunset Hill that was added to KH2 through the Final Mix has her looking at a drawing of those two and talking about how there's someone she wants to see, but much like in Chain of Memories where she gives off a yearning to replace Kairi in Sora's heart she comes off like she's hoping for Roxas to be the Sora to her Kairi in this scene from KH2FM.

Incidentally this is also why I can't really get behind Namiku, another popular heterosexual ship born circa the days of KH2. There's the whole can of worms that is Repliku in this equation, plus Riku ending up with her comes off as lumping Sora's best friend with an alternate version of Sora's girl (and I don't even like Sokai so it's extra awful to have Namiku as a possible endgame ship after that one scene in KH3). Like I'm not going to cry over spilled milk if they pull the trigger on them after the tease at the end of KH3, but the more blatantly implied sympathizing and empathizing with each other's loneliness and guilt over their past actions towards Sora in the novel and manga continuities do not a romance create IMHO. End of the day the priority for both is still Sora. If anything they went from acquaintances working towards a common goal to budding actual friends working towards a common goal off screen during that year between Chain of Memories, 358/2 Days, and the KH2 prologue.

Roxas and Xion feels more appropriate, but their friendship is so beautiful that I would fear for how a romance between them would be written by someone who does romance as badly as Tetsuya Nomura does. There are little scenes here and there in the 358/2 Days game itself that are not in the cutscene compilation movie that help this one along in being a friendship that could evolve and tip over to romantic seamlessly if handled with the right care though.

Then we have the elephant in the room: Xion is also popularly shipped with Riku and I just can't understand that one. He treats her kind of like a little sister in 358/2 Days after their first meeting on the bridge of Beast's Castle (heck even then he's kinda doing it, warning her to find a new crowd to hang with because the Organization's bad news). It really reminded me of how he was with Kairi. In KH1 they keep trying to push this idea that Riku also has a crush on Kairi, but he comes off more like an overprotective big brother over the course of the game. In the prologue on the Islands he's trying to urge Sora into earning the right to share the paopu fruit with her by pretending to want to share one with her himself, and evidently he's become so suffocating in some way or another to Kairi that she wants to take the raft and leave with just Sora (she wants to get away from an overprotective and overbearing Riku).

After he realizes Kairi didn't end up where either he or Sora did once the Islands fell he resolved to find her and then to get her heart back for her. In Hollow Bastion during the climax of the story he urges her to run again showing the depth of his protectiveness for her. And we get another hint at Kairi not really liking this side of him (of him expecting her to do as he says/wants like an overbearing big brother) in her body language before she agrees to run. Of course at the end of the game we get him telling Sora to take care of her (an unspoken "because I no longer can" lingers in the air here). It bleeds over to KH2 where he has Pluto watch over her for him in the open and watches over her himself from the shadows then goes to rescue her when she gets kidnapped by Saix who he shows a great deal of aggression towards (We see a repeat of this aggression towards her kidnapper(s) in KH3 against Old Man Xehanort after she gets shattered).

It's also in KH2 where we see Riku make a shift in how he sees Kairi. He gives her a keyblade to fight with because he's stopped seeing her as someone who needs to be coddled and kept away from the potential dangers of the adventures he and Sora have become so caught up in (when they were younger everything about how treats the older Kairi in KH1 has echoes to him wanting to make sure she doesn't involve herself with dangerous things; she races with Sora and Riku but is significantly slower than them and later plays referee for them instead of racing with them; an implication that she doesn't often race with them at all), and she's also the only kid on the Play Island who doesn't engage Sora in practice combat/sparring (Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie are positioned as NPC set pieces/supporting cast members at best for Destiny Islands and yet they all fight Sora where Kairi, a main character, the female protagonist, does not), so it's not a far cry that as little kids after she washed up on Destiny Islands Riku took on a role of keeping her from getting involved with more dangerous forms of play. Anything that could've gotten her bumps and bruises, or cuts and scrapes he would have objected to her joining him, Sora, and the others in.

But in KH2 he's willing to let up a little and let her fend for herself. This is nicely brought home in Dream Drop Distance where he's the one sent to bring her to the Mysterious Tower to begin training as a keyblade wielder, and again in 0.2 where he's encouraging about this development as opposed to condescending and also not trying to convince her not to do it. They fall back on showing his overprotective nature towards her in Melody of Memory though, when he reacts poorly to her expressed desire to come with him to save Sora, but you can see the shift in their relationship with each other in how she responds; she takes it for the concern it is instead of an elder brother's condescension and lack of faith in her, admitting she needs to stay behind and focus on completing her training.

Looping back to Xion as I've gotten way off base, but it all still works to support what I was aiming for as my point: Riku approaches Xion with a great deal of gentleness after their initial meeting. He could have incapacitated her and taken her back to the mansion in Twilight Town at any time but explains to her what's going on, doesn't react violently to her incredibly harsh line "So, do you hate me for keeping you from your friend?" although he'd be perfectly justified to be, is even honest about how he feels in response to that question; "Nah, I guess...I'm just sad." he tells her, and then chooses to let her decide what to do and gives her time. Time Sora realistically doesn't securely have because there is no guarantee the organization won't find where he's been hidden. All of it combined makes me wonder where people got romantic vibes from these two in order to birth the Rikushi ship.

@yamibakura - The worlds have more or less always been just sandboxes. Even in KH3, they dolled the worlds up more than ever before, but they're still empty outside of the storytelling bringing them to life. In Chain of Memories there's a gameplay meets storytelling tragedy to Sora having to go through worlds filled with illusions of the people he met in KH1 born of his own memories of them. Aerith's self awareness is essentially Sora's brain trying to warn him of how he's being manipulated, but Sora being Sora brashly chooses to keep on going in hopes of finding Riku and Mickey, and then of course to save Namine the more she messes with his memory.

This gameplay meets storytelling tragedy continues in the Riku campaign Reverse/Rebirth in a different way; as we get Maleficent playing the same role as Aerith does in Sora's campaign, but in reverse, where Aerith is Sora's brain trying to warn him of how he's being manipulated and he chooses to ignore it, Maleficent is Riku using his own brain to berate himself through the avatar most familiar to him from his time under the influence of darkness. The voice that he keeps chatting with in Hollow Bastion is another example of this. It's left ambiguous who the voice belongs to, but it's easy enough to guess that it's Ansem SoD (namely while he was just a sentient heart inside the brown robe). Then Riku goes about mowing down the versions of the villains he allied with in his efforts to get Kairi her heart back in a very blatant reflection of his private self loathing for his prior actions, as he tries to reunite with Mickey, come to terms with the darkness that still lingers in him plus what to do with it hereafter, and find out who/what landed him in Castle Oblivion to begin with.

@RugratsNappiesFanatic - The sandbox worlds of Recoded actually feature a lot of design depth that helps them feel less like a collection of corridors which is actually way better than what was done for Chain of Memories in the both the original and the remake. For starters KH1 is known for being one of if not the most platforming and puzzle heavy KH game and Recoded really doesn't shy away from following up on that. Chain of Memories very much does.

Particularly true for the remake where not much of anything is going on in the rooms of each world unless those worlds are story related (it really shows in Reverse/Rebirth in particular since Riku never really took any time in KH1 to bond (for better or worse) with any of the villains he allied himself with in his efforts to get Kairi her heart back (outside of Maleficent and Ansem) thus he's literally going through the memory worlds mowing down these characters he wishes he never had anything to do with once he reaches their boss room). However Chain of Memories is the finest example of hardware and game type limitations come to life. It was something of a side scroller in the original version so no real need for platforming or puzzles (outside of customizing Sora's deck) was present nor needed. In the remake we still have a gameplay puzzle element at play in that we still get to customize Sora's deck, but now we have the bare bones minimum tools for platforming and puzzle solving in a springboard here and there to jump on and an object to slide or place into specific places.

Sora and Riku are often used as the origin for many staples of the series that then get used for other characters which leads to them no longer feeling unique for those things. For example Sora goes from "The Keyblade Master" to one of three prospective Keyblade Masters in the very first game thanks to Riku and Mickey. Sora (and Xehanort) also both feel less special the more they introduce new versions of them. By the time they introduced Ventus and Young Xehanort the whole idea of a new Sora or Xehanort felt stale and it was easy to just stop caring about their newest versions.

Kairi especially suffered from that thanks to Namine and Xion, but she never felt special to begin with creating the opposite problem (just because the devs insist on calling you special doesn't mean you are they need to do something with her that makes it clear she's special for her to feel special) in that Namine and Xion felt special and unique while Kairi still felt like someone "special because the devs say so" instead of because she had actually done something to construe her as actually special. Apologies to those who like Kairi I'm just telling it like it is.

Riku has his whole Warrior of the Dawn arc going on which would be a lot more special if Terra hadn't come along in Birth By Sleep (though it's partially alleviated in that they're different enough that they still feel special in other ways). The Recusant Sigil can also be traced back to first displayed on Riku before it was ever a thing within series lore. Also it could have been one off artistic design choice, but I always wondered about Riku having wings never really coming to fruition in KH1. Merging with a winged dream eater in DDD felt like they took an opportunity to resurrect a long dropped idea of winged Riku.

Then there's the matter of Xion evolving from a special replica to a nobody to a somebody which made her progressively less unique and special although in that case it's what most of the fans wanted for her. Same applies to Roxas having to merge back with Sora. As perfect an execution of a tragic tale as Roxas having to merge back with Sora was none of the fans wanted that to be his end, but Roxas becoming his own somebody instead of Sora being his somebody took what actually made Roxas a unique nobody away. All the others are their own somebodies rather than someone else's. To quote SuperButterBuns from her DDD for Beginners "Axel who is not Axel, but low-key is still very much Axel."

Sora and Riku are often used as the origin for many staples of the series that then get used for other characters which leads to them no longer feeling unique for those things. For example Sora goes from "The Keyblade Master" to one of three prospective Keyblade Masters in the very first game thanks to Riku and Mickey. Sora (and Xehanort) also both feel less special the more they introduce new versions of them. By the time they introduced Ventus and Young Xehanort the whole idea of a new Sora or Xehanort felt stale and it was easy to just stop caring about their newest versions.

Kairi especially suffered from that thanks to Namine and Xion, but she never felt special to begin with creating the opposite problem (just because the devs insist on calling you special doesn't mean you are they need to do something with her that makes it clear she's special for her to feel special) in that Namine and Xion felt special and unique while Kairi still felt like someone "special because the devs say so" instead of because she had actually done something to construe her as actually special. Apologies to those who like Kairi I'm just telling it like it is.

Riku has his whole Warrior of the Dawn arc going on which would be a lot more special if Terra hadn't come along in Birth By Sleep (though it's partially alleviated in that they're different enough that they still feel special in other ways). The Recusant Sigil can also be traced back to first displayed on Riku before it was ever a thing within series lore. Also it could have been one off artistic design choice, but I always wondered about Riku having wings never really coming to fruition in KH1. Merging with a winged dream eater in DDD felt like they took an opportunity to resurrect a long dropped idea of winged Riku.

Then there's the matter of Xion evolving from a special replica to a nobody to a somebody which made her progressively less unique and special although in that case it's what most of the fans wanted for her. Same applies to Roxas having to merge back with Sora. As perfect an execution of a tragic tale as Roxas having to merge back with Sora was none of the fans wanted that to be his end, but Roxas becoming his own somebody instead of Sora being his somebody took what actually made Roxas a unique nobody away. All the others are their own somebodies rather than someone else's. To quote SuperButterBuns from her DDD for Beginners "Axel who is not Axel, but low-key is still very much Axel."

The dark inferno is a invisible who found roller skates and another sword
and then he went "this'll be fun"

It is highly unlikely that they wouldn't release it for Xbox One. And even though the previous games have been put on PS4 as a collection and KH3 is on PS4 the series has never been a PlayStation exclusive thing. Relax. If you can worry about anything in regards to it it's whether it will come out at the same time as on the PS4 or some time after. That part of the equation could be in question. The west in general should worry if at least Japan doesn't have the Re:Mind DLC in December because if they don't get it in December it means they're getting it in January 2020 or later which means the west will probably be waiting until Summer 2020 to avoid interference with the launch of FF7R which they'll want to capitalize as much as possible on off the western audience who didn't swallow up the original release of FF7 back 1997 the same that Japan did and are the real ones who've been anticipating the remake since the explosion of popularity the FF7 cast has gained in the years since the original game's release with the rise of other Final Fantasy titles. It's my personal theory that they'll hold the launch of Re:Mind for simultaneous release give or take a few days much like with vanilla KH3 until specifically a year after vanilla KH3 launched so we'll see come January 2020 if I'm right or if they pull the trigger sooner with at least Japan getting lucky in December 2019. They did say this winter in the teaser trailer, but then Nomura and Yasue both specified that they're aiming for before FF7R.

The criticisms toward Dream Drop Distance are honestly much too harsh:

1: Plot Takes a Nosedive.
 -This is a myth. There were several hints in previous games that Nobodies could either grow a heart or had hearts all along. Turning back into a Somebody after your Heartless and Nobody get destroyed is hardly the shocker that the fans tend to make it out to be when they first play this game and this is revealed to them. Time travel is a necessary evil and honestly a long time coming. There was simply no way they wouldn't tie the era of the original keyblade war and the current one together somehow and the mysterious origins of certain characters was all pointing towards time travel. Nevermind Xehanort himself doing it to play puppet master over so many individuals and lend himself more and more credibility as a big bad for the saga as a whole, time travel was essential for the future of the series itself.
-Within the confines of the game itself the plot is operating by way of natural progression and makes sense. Xehanort's Heartless and Nobody have been destroyed thus the return of Xehanort himself is eminent so it is time to put Sora and Riku through the Mark of Mastery exam. There is nothing wrong with that base. It's a perfectly logical place to go after KH2. The twists that arise are perhaps jarring at first especially if you haven't been able to keep up with the plot of all the previous games, but not anything so out of this world that they couldn't be anticipated and they do exactly what they were intended to do which is set things up for KH3 while bringing all the previous games together in one neat little package.

2: Nevermind the gameplay being difficult to get used to or the fact that sometimes what I elected to do was cancelled out by the enemy, the drop gauge makes it unplayable.
-This is a flat out lie. In the case of enemies cancelling out what you're trying to do I notice from personal experience with the game and from watching many a let's play that it mostly happens in boss battles. The standard enemies don't normally give trouble with cancelling out what you're trying to do. And then there is the drop gauge. This is honestly not an issue. Drop Me Not and Drop Me Never are a thing. Furthermore there is zero negative consequence to dropping unless you're stupid enough to head into a boss fight when you're low on time. The majority of the bosses in this game are located seconds away from a save point for a reason. If you don't think you have enough time to beat the boss don't go fight it during your current session. Drop to the other character and then come back.

3: The Virtual Pet Aspect
-The Dream Eaters you can make to have as allies on your team are treated as an inherent problem when really they're just a pet peeve. Some people simply didn't appreciate having a dose of Pokemon/Nintendogs/Nanopets/Gigapets/Tamagotchi built into a Kingdom Hearts game. I always found it quite silly that this was something to hate about this game. Mainly because you only need to make a handful of Dream Eaters at best to get through the game.

4: Sora's character does a 180.
-This one just always makes me laugh because Sora is so Sora in this game that it hurts.

I'd love to see a revisit to the La Cite de Cloches by Riku where he can bond with the real Esmeralda, Quasimodo, and Captain Phoebes. Better yet if they stick with the whole idea that the bonds formed with others never really fade away and those three remember him to some degree. Also we simply must see the gang from The World Ends With You again. I am sure that a lot of the old Disney property worlds still have plenty of life in them for Kingdom Hearts and since most of their original stories were already exhausted and they're older works I can easily imagine them being some of the better worked in worlds where Disney lets Nomura get pretty creative with the story told in them and how the characters will bond with Sora, Donald, and Goofy or whoever happens to be in the player party when visiting them. I worry a lot for worlds like Arendelle and Kingdom of Corona story wise after KH3. They just were not good worlds from that particular angle and they highlight why having mostly newer IPs in the games would be a big mistake.

^Kingdom Key D also keeps me theorizing based on some in game happenings. I wonder if Riku and Sora weren't somehow destined to claim both Kingdom Key and Kingdom Key D on the Night of Fate. Stands to reason that given the location of Kingdom Key D in 0.2 A Fragmentary Passage Riku would've come across it when he opened the door to the heart of Destiny Islands, but rejected it in some way much like he rejects the Kingdom Key later; thus leaving Kingdom Key D unclaimed and open to be found by Mickey and Aqua and Kingdom Key moving on to the person with the next strongest heart, Sora. It appeals to that sense of best friends doing everything together and especially the ongoing narrative of Sora following where Riku leads and vice versa like a perfect yin and yang circle.

Here would begin a narrative of Riku giving up one Kingdom Key to Sora and keeping the other and both starting a journey to the outside worlds together rather than what actually occurred. Some of Mickey's dialogue even sort of hints at the fact that they weren't supposed to just get one of the keys in 0.2, but that's clearly retcon if ever the series has had any that is easy to point out considering KH1's own narrative by Mickey in his letter and the whole "there can't be two keyblade masters" thing which is quickly outdone even in the vanilla release of KH1 because if that's true what does that make Mickey if Sora's meant to be The Keyblade Master rather than A Keyblade Master. Still it is a very interesting thing to ponder over. Much like how Riku got his hands on Destiny's Embrace to present to Kairi in KH2.

That's an interesting way to look at things!

Well as far as we know Sora  was never bequeathed a keyblade of his own and the Kingdom Key has throughout the series on a few occasions still answered to Riku even after choosing Sora over him in KH1. I.E At Memory's Skyscraper under the guise of Oblivion. Because the original form of the Oblivion keyblade Roxas loans Riku to fight off the heartless together here is Kingdom Key it for all intents and purposes should reject Riku, but it doesn't. And this was before Soul Eater had evolved into Way to Dawn. Then in Dream Drop Distance after the battle with Armored Ventus Nightmare Riku uses Kingdom Key twice without any trouble. It's like Sora is Kingdom Key's primary user, but secondary owner.

Oh dear. When thinking about it Old Man Xehanort was a great mastermind for the rest, but the others were far more interesting and memorable than he was IMHO. Maleficent was cool with the whole villains council in KH1 and even though she's been reduced to a comedic relief villain since then she's still always fun to watch. Then there's Ansem Seeker of Darkness and Xemnas who had such nice arcs devoted to them in the saga. I voted for Ansem Seeker of Darkness. That arc with Riku was really just something special and their final goodbye in KH3 reduced me to tears. Honestly he and Xemnas were a treasure whenever they were on screen and even when they were just being talked about.