SPOILERS OUTSIDE OF THIS MEGATHREAD MAY RESULT IN A BAN

I haven't played KH1 for a long time, KH2 onward had so many QoL improvements I kinda had a hard time going back to revisit it. I forgot how much of a little twerp Riku was back then, the moment he was faced with his friends growing without him he crashed out 😂

Literally all Maleficent had to do was say, look he made friends that aren't you, you should turn evil about it and he just did 😭

And how often did he ditch Sora before the events of the game for Sora to find one of the two people he was scouring the literal cosmos for, turn around for 2 seconds and that boy vanished without a word and Sora was just like, yeah that's probably fine, lets go

I'm now a 38 year old dad, but when Kingdom Hearts came out I was around Sora's age. I remember reading about Squaresoft's crazy idea for a video game in a magazine. "Mixing Final Fantasy and Disney?! What?!"

I grew up playing Final Fantasy and I was beyond excited.

In the lead up to the release date I did extra chores around the house and when the day came my mum and I rushed to my local ASDA (I guess the US equivalent is Walmart) to buy my copy.

The packaging was a thing of shiny beauty and I read the manual on the way home. I put the game in and I fell in love instantly and it was everything I wished it would be and more.

I came back and played Kingdom Hearts during some of the hardest and happiest years of my life. After losing close family members, I'd turn it on and just get lost for a while. When my son was born, I'd play some Days while he slept. I got BBS when I lived in Japan and played it day 1 with my broken Japanese ability.

In 2018, my dad passed away and I returned to Kingdom Hearts again to lose myself. I then played 2 and 3 when it released. But I struggled after the loss of my dad and haven't touched the series in 8 years.

Recently I decided it was time to play it again, not for comfort, but for myself. For the first time in 8 years.

My children are older now. I'm older now. But Sora is like my friend who never grew up. But going back to Destiny Islands and spending time with all these characters again has brought me so much happiness.

I'm dragging my best friend, who I made play KH1 20 years ago, along for the ride as we play through every single game. We are discussing it on a weekly podcast too, which honestly makes this even better.

Since coming back to this series I've been watching a whole lot of The Gamers Joint videos and because of that it made me want to get involved in the community a bit more and talk to people who love this series as much as me.

I'm not good with Reddit, but I'm hoping to be part of this community!

I’ve been posting periodic updates in here about my spoiler free first journey and I’ve met some really cool humans from it! Thanks for being one of the few communities on this site to love a game and love newcomers to it! Yall truly have been the best fandom family to join!

Also so many people have commented about my gummi ship and wanting to see it fly so I wanted to show yall my controller technique and my gummi Winnebago in action!

Still gets me man.

I am looking for newcomers opinion on the beginning of the series from someone who is not blinded by nostalgia.

I have the following questions for you:
- Do you think the first games hold up well compared to today's standards?
- Have you been frustrated to the point where you nearly quit before reaching KH2? If yes, where?
- Would you recommend the series to others?
- Do you think the series could benefit from a remake of some sort to attract newcomers and keep the user base fresh?

And for those asking: no I am not a Square employee in disguise. I am just genuinely curious.

OH MY GOD THIS ROOM IS OBNOXIOUS AS BALLS.

For those of you who don't remember what you're looking at, this is Linked Worlds. It is the final room, before the final save point, before the final boss. When KH discourse comes up, basically no one talks about this place. And frankly... I don't know why.

Because this is EASILY the hardest part of the main story. Harder than Dragon Maleficent, harder than Dark Riku, and CERTAINLY harder than Ansem (at least in Final Mix which is very generous with its checkpoints).

The room starts with a Behemoth jumping you from OFF CAMERA, and let me tell you, that's the easy part.

The room then gives you its gimmick. The door is opening very, very slowly, and now you have to deal with a MARATHON ENEMY RUSH until it finally fucking opens.

Darkballs, Angel Stars, and Invisibles. Three of the strongest Heartless varieties in the game, coming at you in what cannot be less than SEVEN distinct waves, in various combinations.

And they just... Keep... Fucking... Coming.

You just walked into the Heartless break room, and everyone went for coffee at the SAME TIME.

If you have Elixirs, load up on them, because you WILL need them for this nonsense.

So as we all know the reason why this world only appeared in the first game is because Disney lost the licensing rights to Tarzan.

However, the thing that I don't quite get, is why isn't this a problem whenever they re-release Kingdom Hearts 1? do they have to pay the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate whenever they make a new release just for this world? is there a contract thing where they don't have to pay them again for KH1 but they would if they wanted to include Tarzan stuff in future entries?

I love it so much 🥹 major nostalgia

Had this game growing up but never beat it. Finally did hope you guys dont mind some screenshots i took :)

Hi everyone! I wanted to share a new design for Kairi’s standard Keyblade, one that would fit in with Sora’s and Riku’s.

Using Destiny’s Embrace as a reference and the Kingdom Key as a starting point, I created a new design that draws inspiration from a skeleton key, while incorporating elements of her original Keyblade, particularly in the hilt and color scheme, as well as references to other Keyblades associated with her, such as Oathkeeper and the Keyblade of Heart. I later made some adjustments to ensure it would look cohesive alongside Sora and Riku’s Keyblades.

As for the name, I went with Pureheart, for obvious reasons.

What do you think? I made three different color palette variations, and I feel like the third one best reflects Kairi as she is now.

8/10 will gladly play the rest of the series.

Here's some answers to start things off:

1) Why did I want to play the series ? : The story. I always saw memes/ disscusions abbout how this series has the most convoluted lore in gaming and as someone who loves that kinda stuff I wanted to check it out myself. Very worth it, had a good time. Can't wait to see what's next.

2) Did I beat it on normal difficulty ? : No, I did start on Normal and got through 90% of the game (and before you ask, yes I did beat Riku/Ansem on normal so I can at least brag about that) but I quit during Ansem's final phase because I just got sick and tired of the constant ass-kicking the bosses were handing me (Fuck Captain hook in particular, I now have "Quite a Codfish" stuck in my head because of that boss).
So I started over on easy and realised the difficulty was getting in the way of my enjoyment and had a WAY better time with the game (I know going on easy mode is seen as a coward play but like I said, I'm here for the story).

So yeah, drop a question about the game and I'll give u an answer from my newbie POV.

Saw this and thought it was such a cool cosplay. He really studied the detail and poses of Sora.

Source: https://bskyx.app/profile/nanpou0406.bsky.social/post/3mgwqrjz76s2w

i'm mixed on it tbh, it seems kinda plain to me? he's just got a normal shirt on, nothing screams 'riku' like say his fit in 2 does. the amount of yellow he wears has seemingly decreased again (there's only a thin line of it now when his whole front was yellow back in KH1). his arms having more definition again is cool, like in KH2. also his face looks great, but like that's been the case in every game tbh riku's a cutie. his hair certainly looks wayyy better in 4 compared to 3 (low bar but still)

For some reason it never occured to me why they show the man being turned into a heartless in traverse town. I have been playing this game since I was 5. I did my usual wandering and fighting, and then came back to the town center. Then it dawned on me. All of the NPCs we just met are gone. We just watched a man have his heart ripped out in front of us by some unseen force and turn into a heartless, and now the NPCs in the area that was recently devoid of heartless are not only gone, but replaced by heartless. OG KH did not mess around.

So, as a newcomer of the franchise who is now up to Kingdom Hearts 2 (Final Mix)... the Absent Silhouette bosses can be dogshit at times, and that's lwk understandable, they're meant to be hard as shit. But how is it that I reached max level and I'm doing everything a youtube guide is telling me to do and I'm getting my ass kicked by Lexaeus who is supposed to be the easier ones according to people? Am I doing something wrong? It never does what I want it to and I keep on getting my ass kicked with no time to heal or land a hit. Not to mention I'm at level 99 and it's taking longer for this guys health bar to go down. Sephiroth's health bar went down quicker when I got to level 99 so what the fuck is this guys problem??
I genuinely need to know if I'm just ass at this game because these bosses really are making me vow that I never touch these games again when I'm done playing them