A Simple (& Clean) Kingdom Hearts Retrospective

kingdom hearts stands as one of my favorite franchises right there with sonic mega man metal gear and what you might know with all of these is that at one point or another they told their stories episodically each game worked off of the story of the last one you needed the context of sonic adventure 2 to grasp some of sonic hero's plot points mega man x1 through 4 makes x5 more tragic and the entirety of metal gear solid 1 through 4 stands as what i'd consider the closest to perfection a multi-game story has gotten these days games focus further on a single product that's updated for a long time such as overwatch fortnite and fall guys now i'm not going to be a [ __ ] boomer and say that this method is wrong i certainly rocked my [ __ ] off for every fighting game update like ultimate mvc3 or persona 4 the ultimax ultra suplex hold so i'm sure some people enjoy the gut wrenching of seasonal updates but it still irks me a tad because we all know that inevitably it just leads to tekken 7 dark resuscitation or whatever the [ __ ] it'll be my point is that these episodic natured stand-alone releases have become less frequent in recent years long-running series don't expect you to have knowledge more than maybe one or two other games it's why so many people think that some of these franchises whether they're a game or not have such a difficult bar of entry the perfect example of that idea is kingdom hearts however kh isn't actually that hard to understand you just have to commit to following it through because if gone through in the order of release kingdom hearts teaches you a new language that reinterprets what you've already known now to make it simple for you guys i want to lay down what i'm getting into here this is going to be a multi-part series i'm doing and by the time this video series ends you should grasp why kingdom hearts methods of telling its story stands apart from other games you should understand that any series of chronological jumps should be gone through in release order with only a few acceptable exceptions and how kh integrates the themes of final fantasy disney and itself to connect a really [ __ ] big puzzle now for anyone somehow not in the know kingdom hearts is a hippie propaganda series that fuses together the characters story elements and ideals of final fantasy disney to create a completely new world the first game came out on ps2 in 2002 and followed a young island boy named sora that was chosen to wield the keyblade after he separated from his two best friends kyrie and riku he then embarks on a fantasy adventure with donald duck and goofy who are searching for the king which they make pretty [ __ ] obvious as mickey mouse now use the mystical keyblade to lock the keyholes of worlds based on disney films and two inspired by final fantasy to stop them from being destroyed by the heartless and the disney villains all the while form a friendship that can't be broken even if they fight from time to time now in a twist as far as disney and most rpgs go it has a somber [ __ ] ending that results in none of our heroes reuniting with who they sought out for and in a ballsy [ __ ] move it ends with a teaser for the next game yeah sequel baiting happens often like with sigma showing up at the end of magnanix 1 or grand tilde talking about seeing us in banjo 3. but this is a full-on cg cutscene that for 2002 would have cost way too much to just slip in without someone in finances noticing if they put this in they had some confidence this series was stacy's mom which is even more crazy when you think about the concept itself mixing final fantasy and disney could only have really failed or succeeded in the most spectacular of fashions and since it did succeed it led to two sequels before no more remember that time is an abstract concept and decided to go back between kind of between ford a little bit really far back on the gba nintendo ds psp 3ds [ __ ] facebook yeah square enix realized that the series was a little hard to follow and spend about half of the 2010s putting them into collections on ps3 and ps4 which eventually culminated in the kingdom hearts all-in-one package consisting of the entire dark seeker saga which includes kingdom hearts 1 chain of memories kingdom hearts 2 358 days over 2 birth by sleep coded dream drop distance point to a fragmentary passage and kingdom hearts 3. now also in the collection coded in 358 over 2 are only represented by cutscenes which is probably a choice to make going through the series less tedious while maintaining the integrity of its story now something not in the dark seeker saga in this collection is the original film kingdom hearts key back cover which pretty much retells all the important parts of the phone game kingdom hearts key now that may sound like a lot of work to keep track of but remember it's all in one game case now not only that but the menus for the collections guide you in what order to play them with the exception of 358 over 2 coming before kh2 which i'll argue the massive problems for later on starting the kingdom heart series is easier than ever as long as you start here with the first game go [ __ ] figure one of the ways kingdom hearts 1 makes itself accessible is by abusing that it's a crossover of two very well known ideas in fact there's only four characters that are 100 original in it everyone else comes from disney or final fantasy of course the final fantasy and mickey mouse characters have altered backstories but that doesn't change that we recognize them the moment we see them donald's allowed quack leon super cool goofy's a goof and yuffie's best girl time doesn't need to go towards telling us who they are since disney is the most well-known brand on earth in circa 2002 final fantasy had debatably the most clean critical slate of any gaming franchise kingdom hearts saw the efficiency in recontextualizing what they already had which gave everyone who's seen a disney movie or played a final fantasy game a bit of a head start especially given that two-thirds of your party are donald duck and goofy who you're gonna have to work pretty hard to not know of well it's not gonna be a focus in this series the reusing goes for gameplay as well which follows a lot of ff staples like item and spell names synthesis moogles summons ff9's ability system etc it's a simple reuse of ideas that's effective if you're an ff fan and it helps that final fantasy uses pretty simple spell names in the first place what the [ __ ] is a and to get the player more invested in the original parts of kingdom hearts it spends the entirety of the prologue introducing us to three of the original characters we have our main character sora the virgil of the game riku and the girl kairi before then sora has a weird tutorial dream at the beginning with a small introduction to some black creatures we fight but after that we really just see the three of them run and banter on the island like regular old friends selfie waka and titus from final fantasy are also here and while their designs are changed pretty drastically they exist more so to flesh out the island's population with characters that don't require a full introduction giving us more time to focus on our main three characters and pretty quickly we understand the dynamic of these three's friendships so enrico arrivals at everything sora and curry have a schoolyard crush on each other and riku wants to prove he can protect kyrie better than sora but it's not really a love triangle unless you mean kinda like this the prologue is mostly just happy fun times between the three besides when this creepo shows up for two minutes to say absolutely nothing of importance to soar that we just don't need to worry about let's go back to happy fun times eventually it ends with a nasty storm of darkness overtaking the island with these black creatures from the tutorial showing back up but this time sora can't fight them this wooden sword means jack [ __ ] [ __ ] and while this is happening we're gonna find riku who's then dragged into the artist and he almost takes sora with him until he's saved by this light which is this giant [ __ ] pipe that kind of looks like a key thus allowing him to defeat the dark creatures then he finds kyrie and she goes right through him followed by a boss fight and then sora wakes up in a new place called travers town which is where stragglers go after their world is destroyed or someone who had too much to drink last night now let's scroll back a bit as i mentioned two-thirds of our main party is donald duck and goofy so interspersed during the intro we see a few scenes of donald goofy and a few other disney short characters learning that the king has gone missing meaning that don and goofy need to find the person with what's called the key stay with him until they meet up with the king and also find someone named leon in traverse town to guide the start of their journey it's kind of neat that the first mention of him here is as leon with no picture because we're going to learn as sora that leon is actually squall from ff8 just going by a less [ __ ] name so now leon as well as yuffie explain a lot of the goings on in the universe such as heartless the keyblade and other worlds to sora while aerith does the same for donald and goofy in the next room over that whole exposition keeps going on until some heartless find them and then they all have to run away then they meet up with each other and then our three heroes realize that their goals align and they stay together forever and now with all three of them standing next to each other i want to point out how [ __ ] well sora's designed this is just such a clean mix of mickey mouse and typical nomura ff designs we got spiky hair whacked proportions mickey's red pants white gloves yellow shoes and we also got this healthy amount of zippers chains and belts but not too many and i just think it really meshes well with donald goofy's ff-inspired redesigns which drives home that sora is the stand-in for mickey in this trio but he's also an original character and while i'm on the topic of character designs riku is just the perfect parallel to sora slightly taller white hair that flows downward no sleeves his primary colors are sora's secondary colors sora's got figureless gloves so riku's gloves are just all finger and a [ __ ] x-over is just to symbolize how his heart's closed to conrad stores open jacket to show how open his heart is holy [ __ ] is this designed great now with a lot of characters gameplay terms and locales coming from something else we can look into what kingdom hearts 1 creates itself which is a lot of terminology and new concepts most of which were going to be introduced to us in traverse town by leon yuffie and aerith and i want to stress that they only introduce these concepts kingdom hearts has an air of mystery that permeates throughout the game sora has no [ __ ] clue what is going on while donald and goofy know very little more and i think the tutorial dream travers town and even the box art prepares you for that air of mystery you are going into this game with a lot of questions and you are coming out with way more what the hell is that luckily the series strays away from using too many made up words and tries to slow itself on latin terminology besides in song names where it goes [ __ ] all out with its redondo nobuyo and limbeto all of our important key concepts are recontextualized english words or words of the translation you're playing now i'm about to lay a lot down here but keep in mind that while kingdom hearts 1 throws a lot at us at once only a few new terms are taught to us per game as the series progresses by the way throwing this in later during that big exposition scene aerith is also going to tell us about kh1's fourth original character ansem who she says used to rule over the world which the final fantasy characters originally came from he'll be more relevant later so we'll leave that as is for now for kh1 the most important concepts we learn are keyblade darkness light hearts worlds and heartless there's a few other important ideas that are brought up but these are the ones i'd say have the most importance for kh1 and all stick for the entire series where it will be played with extensively the closest thing to a completely brand new concept in kh1 is the keyblade which itself isn't real but i'm sure just about any of you can figure out that it's a mix between a key and a blade and the weapon used by sora as far as kh-1 goes this is the keyblade that shows sora as its wielder and he's the only person currently in the realm of light that can use it if anyone not chosen such as leon or riku take hold of the keyblade sora can just take it back because of that we get the implication that the keyblade could have a heart of its own without any confirmation or deconformation of said idea kh1 does everything in its power to emphasize the mysticism of the keyblade while also being the only game to actually properly introduce it however no one sora talks to who has ever seen a keyblade or at the very least no one ever makes it explicit they'd ever seen one before even leon and yuffie when explaining what a keyblade is to sora had never seen one until this point so all we the player know is that it's a big [ __ ] key that unlocks every door and chest it's used on it's selected sora as the chosen keybear the heartless contract sword because he has the keyblade and we need to lock the keyholes in every world to stop the heartless and darkness from going into it to destroy a world let's get into darkness at its core kh1 is a very simple light versus darkness story sora donald goofy and any heroes we meet are light while maleficent jafar and any other villains we meet are darkness it's a very simple heroes of light story at the moment and the only small twist in that narrative is the implications that light needs darkness to exist which is an idea final fantasy is played with since ff3 now there's two realms the realm of light and the realm of darkness most worlds we go to exist in the realm of light which mostly includes the disney world soar's home destiny island and the world that the final fantasy gang come from each world in the realm of light exists almost completely separate from each other with few characters aware of worlds outside of their own mainly the disney villains know and we're gonna talk about that way way later on how they know that but basically it's all because of maleficent conversely the realm of darkness is a completely connected realm but the only inhabitants are the main moocs of the series the heartless there's two types of heartless in the series pure bloods and emblem heartless a pure blood heartless comes to fruition from a heart that's become overwhelmed with darkness losing all sense of conscience and emotion while an emblem heartless are artificially created and only exists when they steal one or more hearts from someone else so despite being called a heartless they do somewhat have one or more hearts at all times and depending on their amount of hearts that also has something to do with their hierarchy that's never fully explained now given that this is a fantasy story the heart isn't the real scientific vessels and cardiac arrests but the more poetic hopes fears and friendships whenever the heroes kill a pureblood heartless they send them back to the realm of darkness where they came from while killing an lm heartless returns the extra hearts to their rightful bodies now in the canon of the story the name heartless comes from a misunderstanding that ansem had about the creatures when he initially thought that they had no hearts at all he later realized a slight error but the name stayed after that and for the remainder of the series personally i also look at the name a little differently instead of a heartless being you know someone without a heart they're a weaker heart a heart of lesser strength you know like a less heart but that doesn't sound as well as heartless now hearts are something that everyone has whether they're a person or a heartless the only question is whether that heart belongs to light or darkness during kh-1 sora and riku show the opposite sides of the spectrum their story has them both separated from each other and leaving their island like they dreamed during the intro of the game riku ends up alone on this mysterious world which is overrun by maleficent in the darkness who takes advantage of his weakness while sora ends up at traverse town where he meets donald goofy and the final fantasy gang who all guide him on how his journey should go even before this point riku is more overwhelmed with what's seen as negative emotions like jealousy and pride when compared to sora who's a lazy bum you're stupid each world plays into a different theme of hearts i know most people talking about kingdom hearts will say that the disney portions are just donald goofy and some anime boy going through the story of a disney film but that's actually a grave simplification while it is true that much of the real plot stuff happens in the original worlds cage one gives a good amount of its lore in world building in the disney worlds of the nine disney worlds in cage one only agrabah actually follows parts of aladdin while monster and wonderland take heavy inspiration from a single scene of their respective films most of the stories in each are original or at the least repurposed to have something to do with hearts for example wonderland toys with the idea of a person who becomes protective of their heart because of their darkness tarzan and agaroba show men that are willing to give in to the darkness for their desires monster and halloweentown explore what constitutes a genuine heart and neverland doesn't count for this list because it's mainly to kick off the game's final act by re-injecting kyrie into the story pretty much all of them also have an underlying message of friendship pulling you through to the end like the relationship between aladdin and genie pinocchio and gemini jack and sally or sora donald and goofy's relationship at the tarzan world i know so many people who like to say that the disney parts in kh games are unimportant but most of the entries actually try their best to flesh out the message of each individual game and in kh1's case open us up to the idea of what this universe's heart feels like now hearts are going to be played with a lot as we go on so let's put those away for a second while we get into the worlds because that's another concept that's only properly introduced in kh1 as mentioned before kingdom hearts is the realm of light and the realm of darkness what's interesting about worlds in the realm of light and the realm in between which you can probably figure out what that's about is that you get to them in a spaceship to find something with a planet-like shape although despite that shape each world has its own set of rules and guidelines closer to an alternate dimension instead of a planet each world also can't know about each other because that would break the world order it's a fairly important idea that becomes a throwaway or even a gag line in every subsequent game now the whole world order idea allows for the drastically different disney worlds the gang goes to because of the almost meaningless battle levels kh1 wants you to go to wonderland first which is probably to make sora donald and goofy see that a world's order can be [ __ ] opium going from traverse town to wonderland is going to be a drastic change an important aspect of these worlds is that each of them have their own hearts just like a person's heart they can succumb to the darkness as well which is why the heartless goal in every world is to bring them to the realm of darkness however it's not done in a well thought out manner but purely by instinct and because of that disney villains can abuse the lack of awareness for the heartless to help serve their own goals in each world as well mainly kidnapping the princesses of heart and just flat out [ __ ] with sora to take a world to the realm of darkness heartless need to find a world's keyhole which acts as a bridge to the world's heart locking the keyhole is one of the primary jobs that only the key bearer can accomplish locking a world's keyhole doesn't necessarily end heartless from wreaking havoc on the world but does prevent them from taking the world itself into the realm of darkness what used to keep heartless off of worlds of light and other worlds of light from being connected are invisible barriers in space but because of the increase of rampaging heartless during the events of kh1 the barriers that normally keep these worlds separate have gone weak meaning that anyone with a ship can get to any world they want luckily no one in the disney worlds actually know of the keyblade or about other worlds except for the disney villains who have weekly t sessions and king triton in atlantica who tells sora that he needs to stop meddling in the affairs of other worlds because the keybearer only brings ruin wherever he goes and that's a scene that foreshadows so [ __ ] much of future titles despite coming from a disney character which typically that's not how it goes anyways with the whole barrier business restoring them becomes one of the gang's primary goals which can only happen by beating the squaresoft video game kingdom hearts 1 for playstation 2. interestingly a lot of the worlds in kh1 and in cliffhangers of varying sizes monster ends with us not knowing where pinocchio and geppetto went oh wait there he is nevermind let's let's move on and then agribo in wonderland which are about saving allison jasmine ends with the two of them getting captured which we will get back to later and then olympus also ends on a cliffhanger that's not looked at again until kh2 and actually i didn't mention it at all so olympus is mostly about soradal and goofy proving themselves as real heroes it involves beating enemy gauntlets and it's mostly optional what makes it one of the most loved worlds in the game is that cloud comes in with this raw as [ __ ] design that engages every fiber of my edgy brain and keep in mind that this is before the compilation of ff7 so cloud being here is [ __ ] wild i mean look at this guy you might notice this design does not have his usual deal he's got vincent's gauntlet the scarf and this demonic wing which is either a reference to vincent's transformation into chaos or as a parallel to sephiroth's blue angel wing which actually first appeared here before moving into later compilation of ff7 games anyways his story here is that cloud has struck a deal with hades where if he kills hercules in the usually non-lethal coliseum hades will reconnect cloud with who he's looking for and to do this cloud took up the use of darkness and only stopped himself from falling too far because of sora and hercules assistance now the rest of this is all optional but there is a secret boss of sephiroth who after defeating we get clarification that he's who cloud was looking for with hades now there cloud calls sephiroth his own darkness while sephiroth admits to being untainted by light it's an entire plotline that only makes full sense with the context of cloud and sephiroth's relationship from final fantasy vii after their little talk they fight each other but we never see who wins since as every piece of ff7 content has emphasized the two of them will always be each other's nightmare it's a pretty fancy allusion to the genova's cells and genova reunion that you've really gotta display ff7 for or maybe watch my video about remake back to jasmine and alice they're actually two of the seven princesses of heart that maleficent and her gang are looking for these seven girls possess hearts completely devoid of darkness and are the key to opening what jafar refers to at the mid game as the door the seven of them were taken by maleficent to the world known as hollow bastion which leon cloud and the rest of the final fantasy characters came from and riku's journey started at as i said earlier riku and sora have been going down completely different paths during the story but their one shared goal is to reunite themselves with each other and kairi their differences converge first after finishing the initial set of disney worlds when riku learns of sora's new role as the key bearer and how he's been chilling with donald and goofy this whole time which maleficent uses to swag the jelly nelly into thinking that sores abandoned him to have a keyblade and brand new friends they meet up two more times at monster and neverland which for all intents and purposes are soaring riku worlds with a disney paint job on him at monstro riku [ __ ] with sora because he misses him and wants to learn why pinocchio has a heart as you might recall from the movie pinocchio is a regular puppet which should be an empty body you know nobody but he has a heart within him and riku says he needs to find out how he gained one so he can help kyrie jump to neverland and hears riku again who has kari's body and is just showing it off purely to [ __ ] with sora riku kind of scurries off and then captain hook tells us after we beat the [ __ ] out of him that rico and maleficent fled to hollow bastion which not even he dares go to now hollow bastion is a world that's more inspired by final fantasy than disney it is pretty original don't get me wrong but boy is this not disney it's somewhat of an inverse of traverse town since that world has a closer look to a low-tech town like nars or calm while hollow bastion resembles one of the more technologically advanced locations like esther city or bavella however hb has become infested with an insurmountable degree of darkness and heartless so it's a bit of a [ __ ] wreck and in that wreck we find riku fighting beast who's come to hollow bastion to save belle by sheer [ __ ] willpower like by the rules of kh1 in every subsequent game beast should not be here he's just too [ __ ] angry to follow physics anyways when sora meets up with riku he makes a really big reveal that the keyblade didn't actually choose sora but instead only picked him as the delivery boy to bring it to riku you see once riku fell into darkness on destiny islands it just went to sora next because he's the guy that was there i guess it has some kind of location rule to it but anyways and riku's infinite wisdom he tells us how there can't be two keyblade masters so soros is taken by riku leaving him defenseless and it's only made worse because our boys donald and goofy's orders were to follow the key so they have to begrudgingly leave sora fast forward a little through the short puzzle section of the sword and beast and now we have sora caught up to riku where we see that riku has begun to control some of the darkness and in his rage attempts to hurt his defenseless best friend holy [ __ ] what the hell riku the only thing that saves or was his heart's power nah just kidding it was goofy thanks to goofy and a little bit donald i guess sora realizes that his power doesn't come from a keyblade but his heart that gives him power because all of the friends and experiences he's allowed inside of it as long as he and his friends keep their memories of each other he'll stay strong leading to the now famous line and say it with me a bunch of lamers which seems pretty cheesy now okay it was pretty cheesy then but this idea of connections with others reshaping ourselves is the most important through line of each kingdom hearts game we just have it told to us in a very cheesy disney way but also ignoring the heart again this big statement leads the keyblade to warp back into sora's hands so hee hee hoo hoo let's bash on riku who after the fight runs off and then he talks to that shadowy figure we saw in the tutorial [ __ ] forever ago who convinces him to give in completely to darkness and later on after a first fight with maleficent the now double voiced riku appears with despite what he said impossible there can't be two keyblade masters a second keyblade whoa holy [ __ ] however this one's not a traditional keyblade this was created by the hearts of the six princesses of heart they already have and it has the capability of unlocking a person's heart unleashing all of one's darkness instantly which he used to turn maleficent into a really hard dragon form and boy did i not set myself up right for this run now the keyblade itself i actually really hate the design in most aspects but i do really like the teeth on it because it has this unfinished heart shape which is to represent that there's still one more princess of heart missing from it because whoa who could be our seventh and oh boy it turns out it's kyrie the reason she's asleep is because her heart's been inside of sora the whole time kyrie's inside me hey yo what the [ __ ] and since riku shouldn't be that smart and also has that weird creepy spooky voice don't you see yet the princess's heart is responding he puts together that this isn't riku and we learn that riku's body has been taken over by ansem the seeker of darkness if you recall from way earlier eric claimed him as a great ruler and researcher of hollow bastion yeah it turns out he's actually like totally really evil so anson was mentioned near the beginning of the game and goes almost unmentioned during the middle except for a few secret reports he has lying around that explain his research and it also turns out he was this ghastly feature we briefly saw at the start and has been living rent-free and riku's head like the way a2 lives in mine anyways ansem had actually been secretly leading maleficent onto the plan to find the princes of heart since the seven of them were required to create the final keel on hollow bastion to act as a door to darkness once soarin riku and some fight which is actually probably the toughest mandatory battle in kh1 sora realizes he can't lock the keyhole because it's not technically finished because all the princesses of heart are needed to create it so he stabs himself with ansem's keyblade to free kyrie's heart and also destroys said keyblade to return the other princesses hearts of course this made sora [ __ ] die so kyrie don and goofy run away from a reformed and some seeker of darkness while the keyhole still radiates darkness while it's unlocked what's happening to me falling falling into darkness anyways now that our main character's dead we move into playing as a completely irrelevant heartless we have never seen before and start traversing to the bottom of hollow bastion getting down there doesn't take too long and we eventually catch up to donald goofy and kyrie who realizes that it's actually sora's heartless carry hugs them which turns them back to normal rendering that whole four-ish minute section completely [ __ ] pointless since the four of them are back together they run back to traverse town to reconvene and get kyrie's keychain the oath keeper before coming back to hollow bastion again to seal the keyhole and get riku's keychain the oblivion sealing that keyhole allows the final fantasy characters to finally return to hollow bastion for the first time in nine years they tell us that if we defeat ansem we'll return the barriers between worlds and restore all of the worlds devoured by the heartless including sora's island but there's a bit of a caveat that also requires disconnecting the worlds again so they do give a pretty sad goodbye here however earth gives us a fun little world building thing no one i ever talked to brings up so i briefly mentioned that you find some of ansem's reports throughout the game and at this point you could potentially have five of them all of which tell a positive story of ansem that reinforces that he's a good man but if we go to the library eric gives us four new reports that show just how [ __ ] up his research was the whole time including human tests and some freaky deaky [ __ ] going down in his basement [Music] so forgetting those little reports the ol sdg heads to the end world of kh-1 end of the world which is made up of the parts of broken worlds since worlds have hearts this is meant to be the combined heartless of every world swallowed by darkness and since all of those worlds are going to go back after we defeat ansem this world's going to turn to nothing end of the world is a changing mess of pieces that don't belong and has this weird unnatural organism look this whole world is a giant heartless with little structure in its biology i actually forget about this world when i'm going down the list in casual discussion because oftentimes i'll think of it as closer to an action than a location i think it's the perfect embodiment of the mysterious atmosphere around kh1 especially because there's not a lot of cut scenes here besides at the start and the end it's almost all combat with a bunch of gauntlets of moocs a boss against the devil from fantasia and then there's also this appearance of this brand new room which looks totally important that we can now officially say did [ __ ] nothing throughout the dark seeker saga but who knows maybe it's the missing link to the next saga to book nkh-1 the gang finds themselves in the broken darkness ruined version of destiny islands there we find ansem who tells us that destiny islands is a prison telling us to the heart-seeking freedom this island is a prison surrounded by water and so this boy sought out to escape from his prison and he opened his heart to darkness riku don't bother your voice can no longer reach him where he is his heart belongs again to darkness in the end every heart returns to the darkness once it came you see darkness is the heart's true essence that's not true damn sorry you sure you know a lot about them hearts don't you buddy it's almost like you had a whole [ __ ] adventure about it zory claims that no matter how dark it gets there's always going to be a small bit of light thus beginning the final battle between the strongest being of darkness and three boys taking turns holding their brain cell it's one of my favorite final boss gauntlets in any game but we gotta skip on past this first part because i'm losing topic pretty wildly here and now before his final phase we fight next to the true door to darkness which once opened will reveal the heart of all worlds kingdom hearts which holds not even the slightest glimmer of light according to ansem so then really cool final phase totally badass boss design and after the battle ansem tells us that no matter what we do the keyblade alone can not seal the door to darkness prompting ansem to reach to the door and nicely requesting that kingdom hearts fill him with the power of darkness well then sorry go kingdom hearts is light light and the light of kingdom hearts vanquishes ansem seeker of darkness however the boys still need to close the door to darkness because when they look in we have our first glimpse of the realm of darkness in the series which sadly can't be closed from only one side thankfully since riku had lost his heart to darkness he's on the other side to help however the realm of darkness has a lot of [ __ ] heartless in there which makes all seem hopeless until holy [ __ ] it's mickey mouse now sora let's close this door for good yet the very last moment our man who didn't show up in any part of the game mickey mouse shows up with his own keyblade minimizing the threat of the heartless and helping to seal the door to darkness sealing it leaves sora dolan goofy outside in the realm in between while mickey and riku are locked into the realm of darkness since the door is closed and ansem's defeated that means that the world peace is making up where the boys are start to break off to go back where they belong magically putting kairi here to give a quick goodbye to sora since she's supposed to go back to destiny island and even though sora also belongs there him having the keyblade and closing the door leaves him stuck with one road to walk with the boys leaving the game on a really [ __ ] big cliffhanger especially when pluto shows up with a letter with the king seal and the secret cg ending that we'll talk about in part 2. [Music] when it comes to updating our concepts from the ending i think the most important thing from this ending is a no matter how dark things get some light can still exist because despite kingdom hearts lying in the realm of darkness it still prevailed as light for at least long enough to defeat ansem which lets us believe that mickey and riku have a chance to survive in the realm of darkness and b mickey has kicked riku and the dick and shown us that two keyblade masters can exist which leads us to wonder who can and can't wield a keyblade especially with the aforementioned secret ending having a boy wielding two keyblades kingdom hearts one recontextualized disney and final fantasy elements to create a fleshed-out disconnected world that somehow works well it leaves nearly everything unanswered but still tells a story that holds itself up powerfully by itself while later games are still heavily rooted in disney and final fantasy we're about to start seeing it develop its own identity in part 2 i'm gonna be looking at chain of memories in kingdom hearts 2 to see how exactly it did as such and reach a reasonable conclusion to kh1's story [Music] the wait for kingdom hearts 2 felt like one of the longest for any video game cage 2 and final fantasy 12 is what i'd consider the start of when square enix began having notoriously long wait times between entries in their series it was nearly four years between kingdom hearts one's release and kingdom hearts 2's release in north america i know that might not sound like a lot by today's standards but keep in mind that the release dates between final fantasy 7 and 10 are only a little over four years in fact the sixth generation of consoles was when we started to experience the long wait between entries and ambitious franchises not everything took forever i mean sonic could still have a mainline entry every two years maximum with many spin-offs in the middle and oh [ __ ] there's a big old buzzword we're gonna have in this video that we'll get to pretty soon during those four years kingdom hearts 2 became one of the earliest games i got hyped for and bought at release and it was a hype well worth it turning kingdom hearts 2 on for the first time was magical seeing square enix rather than soft a brand new rendition of dearly beloved sora's new black outfit and he upgraded to some ice cream instead of a [ __ ] fishbone i was about to reunite with the magic of kingdom hearts 1 without knowing that this was fixing to be one of the fullest rpgs hack and slash and general stories to ever come from the medium well that may sound like a bold statement i am fully committed to that and you'll have a hard time changing my mind i played cage 2 when i was pretty young and i feel the need to make my biases clear especially because a i think bias transparency is always important in any kind of writing and b i'm about to get critical for a bit and i don't mean in the difficulty i picked four years is a long time so kh2's intro cg nicely recaps mostly important parts of kh1 in a very jojo ops way where if you played it you recognize everything if not you'll find yourself confused we see our three islanders islanding sora donald and goofy arriving at hollow bastion fighting riku ansem sealing the door to darkest and kyrie going home to destiny islands where she transforms into her kh2 design to signify the passage of time since the first game a simplistic recap after four years oh wait a minute blonchik stairs riku coats and some femboy why sword going into the pod and who's this blonde guy that i'm suddenly playing as well all of those but the last one is answered by kingdom hearts chain of memories rated e for everyone [Music] yep in 2004 square enix released kingdom hearts chain of memories for game boy advance and if you know anything about when a game series goes from a home console to a handheld that normally means it's an 800 skippable spin-off like the non-canon ghost babble the barely cannon grunty's revenge or it's a watered-down cash grab like [ __ ] attack of the twinkies well chain of memories is a direct sequel to kingdom hearts 1 that takes place 25 days after sora stabbed himself in hollow bastion thank you 358 for your timeline chain of memories is the important link that chains together the stories of kh1 and kh2 however most people that played cage 2 skipped out on chain of memories originally it was a gba spin-off they're unimportant it's not like mega man xtreme was ever mentioned in the mainline x games a small number of people eventually did play the ps2 remake that came out two years after kh2 in north america and that's the version put into the collection which means it's the one i'm using for hd footage there is debate on which version of chain of memories is better but i have no intention of partaking in that debate today as it's mostly related to gameplay aspects and i'm not [ __ ] playing this twice today you kidding me i think square enix knew most players would skip chain because jumping forward majorly sora donald goofy and jiminy who i never mentioned is the navi in the series or in part one have their memories wiped at the end forgetting the events of everything that happened in this game because of that chain of memories is not an important story for the four of them but is for the player and all the other major actors like riku miki and a few of our 8 spanking new characters yeah remember how last time i mentioned that kh1 only had 4 characters well the stupid gba game tripled that number but as a bridging entry to kh2 chain doesn't aim to answer who any of these new players are aside from their baseline character archetypes unless the answer comes in the form of a question there's a lot of those this time those would be the saint maria giving the basic premise of calm the gang follows a stranger and a black cloak into a place called castle oblivion where they're told that they will remember old memories long forgotten and lose ones they had which gameplay wise is immediately used to put our characters back to level one since comb was designed for the gba they couldn't really replicate the ps2 gameplay and the battle system relies entirely on cards for every single attack and thank god this retrospective is focusing on story because this [ __ ] is intricate and we'd be here a while the gba limitations from card systems shape some of the story as well cards are how sori gains access into all of the worlds from kingdom hearts 1 in the form of their memories of those events although deep jungle is missing because of rights issues and there's one new world that comes from the memories locked in the other side of sora's heart the rules are a little loose in the returning locales because sometimes the gang remembers the last visits while other times they act like it's a new location memories are [ __ ] and there's no rules to it and i know last part i mentioned how some of the entries try to tie each disney world into its overall message which in chain of memories is about how our actions and emotions are shaped by our memories so basically the disney worlds take the kh-1 story and replace some of the old nouns with memories and then cut out half of the story cloud is looking for memories instead of sephiroth dr finkelstein is trying to create some memory doodad instead of a heart and i kinda zoned out for most the rest i honestly plan on defending this during part one but it's actually thrown together pretty shoddily and not worth focusing on because of all the returning disney worlds castle oblivion has 13 floors and only two debatably four are actually important for sora's story everything of real importance occurs between floors see chain of memory structure goes like this see important cutscene play world see new important cutscene with a boss fight repeat the higher you go sora begins remembering about his old friend namine becoming obsessed with her while also forgetting about kairi over the course of the adventure sora fights four people in black hoodies that offhandedly mention that there are no buddies in some kind of organization we have vex and the scientists luxian the [ __ ] marluxia the long-haired final boss and axel the sketchy cool bro popular character each of the four have their own goals that don't fully align with each other like scene and marluxia's aim is to overthrow the organization by wrecking sora's memories enough to turn him into their slave they accomplish this not by the castle itself as introduced but a special power that namine possesses see they don't hide this too much but soran never really knew namine she's a self-described witch who can alter people's memories to her or her captor's wishes what she's doing is essentially replacing all memories of kyrie with herself since story doesn't know that he vows that he's going to save her no matter what even after she reveals his memories are fake all stories since 2001 are secretly sa2 rip-offs and you can't prove otherwise mexin's goal is to test out his new replica program which he hopes can be used to clone entire beings hearts and all he tests this program with a replica of riku that has also been mind crush by nominee forgetting that he and sora made up at the end of kh1 you fight repliku like four times and sora only gets more confused by it each go now axel's motives are vague through most of the story he sides with marluxia's plan for most of it even going so far as to kill vexin to gain marluxia's trust though later he frees namine because of a strange bond he feels towards sora that's hinted at when sora defeated him and with all four of them killed namine put sora donald and goofy into these pods for one year so that their memories can be restored with the major repercussion of forgetting everything and everyone introduced in chain of memories allowing players that went from kh1 straight to cage to an easier point of entry you still miss out a lot by skipping chain of memories but you still possess the same knowledge sora has meaning we can now go straight into kingdom hearts chain of memories reverse rebirth yeah once you beat chain of memories of sora you unlock a second campaign as riku that's about one-third the length of soras riku's story takes place after a glimmer of light released him from the realm of darkness into the basement floors of castle oblivion despite his defeat rihu can still feel a lingering part of ansem's darkness within him and riku strives to vanquish it to help him on his quest is mickey with his brand new nomura design beginning their close friendship lasting throughout the series there's also a mysterious man in red cloth known as diz who has a hatred for the organization and wants riki to accept darkness to defeat it riku's enemy during his story are two more organization members known as zexian and lexius riku replica again and the remaining piece of ansem i mentioned a minute ago zexting and lexis kind of do jackal for development in this game and i think lexi has had less than 10 lines in the whole franchise so i'm gonna ignore him during just this entire retrospective the important part of them is that during a battle with zexion riku is told by a kairi ghost later revealed as namine that darkness will always be within him and as long as he doesn't fall completely to it he can use its power in tandem with the light riku's arc began as a journey to remove the darkness and led to him learning not to fear it and use darkness responsibly for the rest of the series an idea he could only truly grasp with the light of namine's guidance and mickey's unwavering friendship making mickey the only person riku trusts in the period between chain of memories and kh2 back to the villains riku defeats alexis on his own while axel finishes the job on zexion though axel doesn't appear in the rest of riku's story he really just appeared to confirm he survived his confrontation with sora similar to sora's story riku replica shows up intermittently during the campaign first after one fight with vexin which he needed to get riku's data despite this being the same replica riku from sora's story he is actually aware he's a fake during riku's which is a neat contrast to his persona and sora's story it's like if riku had even more existential crises added onto the ones he has because i'm you no i'm me i'm me he says [Music] either way riku beats repliku at that weird location from earlier and since he's a replica that's not meant to live at all his defeat implies that he's absolutely dead for good with no chance of even going to the realm of darkness since every organization member except axel is defeated riku can safely visit namine who's watching over sora in his pod she offers to let him sleep in a pod to completely remove his darkness as well though riku refuses the offer since the darkness has become a part of him and removing it will affect who he is meaning all riku has left to do in the castle is defeat ansem and a ludicrously hard final boss that i've gotta grind for on just about every run riku actually almost falls to the darkness again afterwards but mickey saves him from the darkness one more time even after all that riku still senses ansem within himself which is why he still doesn't feel ready to go home allowing reverse rebirth to end with riku and mickey walking between light and darkness which they call the road to dawn with some cool new black hoods given to them by their strange new benefactor dis which should keep them out of the organization's sites now for as quickly as it seemed i went over a chain of memories i want to clarify that i only skipped unimportant stuff chain of memory's point is not to further expand our main party's story but to expand past them make riku more heroic the introduction of this mysterious organization a true balance between light and darkness question who dies and nominee might be and most importantly bridge the gap between kingdom hearts 1 and kingdom hearts 2 in an interesting way that lets people jump between only those two titles and while i am stressing how that's possible now chain of memories is going to become way more important when we reach days so don't think this is the last time i'm gonna bring up some of its new topics like memories replicas and most importantly for today's video nobody's another dream about him [Music] so [Music] now we're back to kingdom hearts 2 with all of those questions answered mostly by more questions none of which answering the identity of the blonde kid well this is roxas and he's who we play as in kingdom hearts 2. just like how the introduction of kh-1 was spent introducing the destiny island trio the intro of cage 2 introduces us to roxas and his friends haner pence and olette roxas is on his final week of summer vacation in the slightly familiar twilight town living his best life just as he and his friends always have they worry about looking cool to the rest of the town getting even with some bullies and eating sea salt ice cream on a clock tower they shouldn't be allowed on roxas is living the dream a completely carefree lifestyle [Music] where am i at least that's what it should be roxas has been having strange visions and flashes of events he doesn't remember with people he doesn't know despite his confusion roxas ignores it since he needs to live summer vacation to the fullest made hard by cipher ryzen and fujin from ff8 as well as vivi from 9 who's been making roxas's gang look bad one of the ways they do this to them is by spreading rumors across town that they're the ones that have been stealing the recently missing photos in actuality it's someone far more vile a white person after chasing the white creature to a familiar mansion roxas finds he can't hurt him with his foam struggle bats lucky for him it somehow transforms into the keyblade that's right in kingdom hearts 2 roxas is the new chosen key bearer giving him the power to defeat the white creature revealing the photos it stole which all had roxas inside of them pondering the question of if the monster was trying to steal the real roxas rather than just the photos summer vacation only gets weirder for roxas with guys and black coats showing up to impede his fun more visions he doesn't understand time stops caused by this girl in a white dress who wanted to meet him at least once and another attack from the white creatures it's a lot of stuff that makes no sense to roxas and culminates into a dive into his heart though what we see on that mural is not roxas but sora and his four closest friends once finished namine introduces herself properly to roxas and asks if he remembers his true name once roxas wakes up from that dive things go back to normal for a bit with roxas taking part in a big competition it goes swimmingly until he defeats a noticeably overpowered vivi his world suddenly stops again with axel showing up to spout what roxas recognizes as [ __ ] nonsense axel tells him that this world is his creation and is saddened by how number 13 roxas doesn't remember him after that fight with axel diz shows up to tell roxas to ignore axel leading roxas to his own mental breakdown before life goes back to normal and right now is a good time to keep this in mind everyone we've seen so far is either new to kingdom hearts 2 or from chain of memories no matter what this introduction is meant to leave the player in question but jumping in straight from kh1 will do so even more roxas is a hundred percent that player his knowledge of chain of memories is non-existent and thoughts of kh1 are blurred because it came out four years ago the time span considered long in the mid-2000s even the final fantasy characters used here aren't exactly popular ones besides vivi chain of memories players have a slight connection with axel d's and namine but their motives aren't clear in this instance we understand that axel wants to bring roxas home with him and reawaken some memories within nominee desires to spend time with him and dis doesn't want either of the two of them influencing roxas it's only made more confusing when someone in a black coat helping dizz reveals his identity it's handsome oh [ __ ] all of these people seem to know who roxas is and have someone they want him to be well roxas himself doesn't only continuing his confusion is a strange mind link he suddenly has with a noticeably older kyrie who's on destiny islands and through this link we find that she doesn't remember sora anymore after all that weirdness roxas still insists that he needs to just have a normal summer vacation day with his friends no matter who he is he just wants his summer vacation but after one last abnormal day roxas had to learn who he is from namine at one point he was axel's best friend inseparable from him as a member of the organization though at the same time he's also holding on to half of sora's persona in order for sora to wake up from his slumber roxas cannot exist roxas shouldn't exist leaving roxas with an ultimatum he can go back to being axel's best friend or accept his nothingness by returning to sora and in one more flashback with knowledge that roxas is part of sora and had a spot in the organization we learned that he was the dual wielding keyblade user in the kingdom hearts 1 secret ending fighting against a long-haired riku roxas then wakes up one last time in twilight town to find that he can't interact with his friends anymore he knows that it's at this point he has to accept who he is but to axel's disappointment he still doesn't remember him resulting in roxas running to the mansion to find namine again there roxas remembers his past life roxas time in organization 13 was not exactly fun in games he betrayed organization 13 and as it turns out they're trying to create kingdom hearts before nominee can explain roxas's fate dis appears to state that nobody's have no rights and that his fate is sealed and as he takes namine away she says that they'll meet again even if they don't realize it roxas then accepts his fate he needs to wake up sora which leads him to learn that he's been in a simulated twilight town ever since riku beat him in combat this entire prologue we played was in a fake data reconstruction of twilight town with his memories fully restored roxas summons his two keyblades for one last fight against his best friend to put his organization 13 days behind him afterwards promising each other they'll meet up in the next life walking into the next room roxas finds donald and goofy who are still fast asleep in their pods and he has the slightest memories of them in the room housing sora's gigantic pod roxas has one last confrontation with diz confirming that dis wants to rid all of the realms of the organization which can't happen as long as sora sleeps with the opening of sora's pod roxas's summer vacation finally ends looks like my summer vacation is [Music] over finally beginning kingdom hearts 2. this is one of the most controversial prologues of all time mainly from its length i've played kingdom hearts 2 countless times and know the stress to get through the prologue quickly it still took me two hours without skipping any cutscenes and i can fully understand why some people are turned off by it it's a story of accepting your past your actions and your identity so you can use those to shape your future actions roxas comes to terms with himself so he can finally move on we don't even play as roxas for a tenth of the experience but as we'll see it shapes the entire narrative going forward it's one of the greatest prologues i've ever played through and i wouldn't change it this summer vacation was meant to raise questions solve mysteries and produce a tone for kingdom hearts 2 but just like a real summer vacation memories of it blur away as our three party members have no clue about the events that transpired with any of roxas's existence fallen deep into sora's heart as he's found and accepted who he is [Music] and it's funny now because we are changing our tone dramatically i mean we go directly from one of the most somber scenes in the franchise to sora donald goofy and even jiminy being their dumb old selves and as far as they know and how they treat the game is that they just finished ansem similar to honey pop 2 there is no time spent on recapping they just go for it the only abnormalities they recognize is that they've been asleep for a while and that jiminy's journal only has one line in it reading thank nominee who none of them know and since they have no clue who that is they go back to their primary goal find riku and find the king which actually goes pretty well because when they find haner pence and olette who keep in mind are the real ones meaning they never knew roxas pence tells the gang that a guy with round ears was looking for them which begins one of cage two's giant teases when do we get to see mickey at the end of chain of memories mickey and riku got the coats and as such they both wear them for a while in kh2 and for people that didn't play calm or dumbasses like me who turned off their game boys without knowing about reverse rebirth until a few years later they still had not seen mickey in the kingdom hearts series and here in twilight town the gang finally meets with mickey after finding the white guys and he keeps his face hidden body in the coat and just gives the gang instructions on what to do next as well as a money pouch and crystal that roxas had in the data world this teases a neat way to pull you along and also ludicrously funny since this is the most recognizable fictional character on earth and speaking of recognizable mickey sends the boys out on a train with a design that's clearly inspired by fantasia not so much hiding a secret that we learn once we get to the location where pete tells us that this is master yensid's tower when this universe used to be a keyblade master and trained mickey oh wait pete pete here was banished to another dimension a long time ago by the king which is actually retconned to mini doing it in birth by sleep but that's we'll get to that in part three maleficent broke him out of that place leading to pete swearing loyalty to her and any of her causes pete however doesn't realize that maleficent died in kh1 so he's kind of sending heartless around all willy-nilly he doesn't have to do that too long though because maleficent is revealed to have come back to life in a way not explained until union cross so we're just ignoring that in this retrospective maybe someday and now the two of them and the heartless will act as one of the enemies the gang encounters and notice there just one of the enemies once we reach the top of the tower jensen explains that sora's quest is far grander than just finding riku and the king of course we the player know that because diz chain of memory is axel and just literally everything else but sora is still out of the loop so we have two different factions to face the first being the returning heartless led by pete maleficent and a few disney villains jensen clarifies that the gang's achievements in kh-1 did slow the spread of heartless significantly but because of the heartless's origin of the darkness within hearts the only way to read them forever would be to rid all hearts of darkness which is gonna be pretty tough it's essentially an explanation to clarify why they can exist in every game taking place after ansem's experiments now getting to our second enemies we have the white creatures finally titled the no buddies when someone with a strong heart and will becomes a heartless the body they leave behind becomes a no body thankfully the strong will and heart part means that the number of nobodies does not match that of heartless making heartless the more common mook in the adventure as only a body nobodies do not have hearts and as such no true emotions their actions and goals are led by the memories of their emotions in some ways making them more thought compared to the instinct of the heartless as for their name again it's not meant to mean they lack a body given that this is all they have but rather that they shouldn't exist the nobodies are not creatures of the dark like the heartless or of light such as our heroes they exist in nothing making them nobody while they do act on thought rather than instinct they're not exactly too intelligent as it's possible for stronger nobodies to order them around said stronger nobody's being organization 13 and if you're smart enough you might be able to figure out that the name comes from the amount of members which keeping in mind the five who died in chain of memories and the removal of roxas there's only 7 left in kingdom hearts 2 including axel leaving us with 6 more identities to uncover and their motive still lost to the gang since that reveal occurred during the roxas portion and now we have our three factions sets sora donald goofy and other heroes of light they meet speeded maleficent with their heartless army aiming for universal control through darkness and organization 13 with their covert nobodies aiming to create kingdom hearts for a yet unexplained reason this scene's final purpose while not explicitly stated is to cement the suspicion most players might already have by now roxas was sora's nobody and it's not just his story that gives it away there's pieces of his design such as the predominantly white color palette as well as the added pieces of black to symbolize his betweenness many of the nobodies we see have the same palette though there's also a bit of a pink scale on some of them to set our party on the right path yensid reunites the gang with their gummy ship and has the fairies from sleeping beauty set sora up with some new duds since he's too big for the old ones it still possesses all of the mickey colors i praised from the first design but now the predominant color across the fit is black it sets the mood that sora has matured and parallels the primarily white drip that roxas wore by the way it's not actually just sora's size that grew his voices also changed in the year he slept sure don't mention it not because they changed voice actor but because haley joel osment the voice of sora went through puberty it's kind of just convenient writing-wise since there's a time skip though the cut scenes in re-chain and memories are a bit awkward because they were recorded after kingdom hearts 2. so we hear post-puberty osmond on a younger sora back to the fit it has a power within that lets sora transform into five different drive forms that actually have some story meaning so i'll rush right through them three of the forms allow sword of dual wield keyblades which looks really badass allowing us to finally do what we saw roxas do in the secret ending and there is no reason for his capability to do this let's not worry about it it's just badass the first form you get here is the red valor form which represents sora's raw strength and relies on his friendship with goofy the blue wisdom form which you get around the one quarter point represents his magic and relies on his friendship with donald a little before the midway point you get limit form that represents sora's past which makes his color scheme that of kh1 and gives access to some kh1 abilities like ars arcanum and sonic blade then master form comes a little after the midway point representing the fusion of valor and wisdom form thus relying on his friendship with donald and goofy though guest party members can be subbed in i don't bother much with this one though because the physical combos aren't quite as good as valor and magic never reaches a finisher like with wisdom and i'm gonna wait until near the end to talk about the fifth form because it has some important story connotations and yeah that's an interesting thing with drive forms it's one of the few bits of story cage 2 tells through gameplay especially the 6 punishment drive anti-form occurring when you use dry forms too often it turns sore into a heartless like form representing the darkness in his hearts his abuse of his power stains him resulting in him allowing it out there's a handy chart on the kh wiki to explain when it happens because it's a really in-depth algorithm and i'd recommend keeping it in mind when you're doing a play through auntie forms an interesting reminder that despite how much he battles for light soros still has a bit of darkness he has to defeat within and i'm hoping they eventually explore this further because as far as today goes they still haven't explored this outside of anti-form and a similar form we'll see in kingdom hearts 3. let's get back into worlds because we talked about them for a while last time and they work a lot differently this time now that they're not turbo screwed by ansem so as you'll recall the gang could traverse the various world in kh-1 because the heartless weakened the barrier between them and defeating ansem restored those barriers disconnecting our boys from the outside world while in kingdom parts 2 and every game onwards invisible ties connecting the hearts of the worlds have sprouted around and using the keyblade sora can unlock roads created by them so now instead of locking keyholes in each world sore's got to find an item in each world that unlocks the road to new ones i'll be honest it's a little bit of a weak explanation totally needed though because you can't have a franchise based around traveling various worlds continue if the main characters are stuck on one world now what is an interesting theme of the worlds we're going to get into in the first act is reunion with one exception every world in kingdom hearts 2 has some connection to our heroes some straight up returning worlds like olympus halloweentown agrabah and hollow bastion which is now inhabited by ff characters while other worlds like beast castle pridelands and land of dragons just have characters our heroes met in the first game now when they met beast is pretty obvious but pride lands in land of dragons is pretty interesting because actually in kingdom hearts 1 you could summon simba and mushu which yeah i know i never talked about someone's in kh1 but i am now so whatever and what i will mention in this one chicken little's a summon in this game and god he's so dated he doesn't have any story purpose and i feel like it's one of the few things in the kh franchise based on a agreeable bad disney movie i mean he feels more dated than the pirates of the caribbean world speaking of pirates is the one world that doesn't have any connection to kh1 so it does stick out like a bit of a sore thumb during the first act i've always felt that it's here a bit more to show how cool the ps2 is for having realistic humans even though final fantasy 12 is gonna blow it out of the water in just a few months maybe i could say it fits the idea of reunion be a sore is also an island boy but that's a bit too far of a stretch for may oh and island life kyrie actually has her own little story going on turns out that during the year when sora donald and goofy slumbered kyrie and everyone else forgot about them there's an explanation along the lines of memories are connected to hearts and all hearts are connected but they didn't play these rules all that consistently because riku the king axel and the rest of the organization showed no signs of forgetting them maybe you could argue riku and the king's vicinity denominate kept them safe and the organization don't have hearts to forget it's a plot point more meant to connect with us as a player it is only ever brought up by kairi leon yuffie and i think dis mentioned it in passing it's only really actually important to kairi though is during the prologue there was a scene of her and selfie talking about how riku's been gone for a year and kyrie recalls another boy that always played with him they don't remember his name until after she writes a letter to him when she has the conviction to believe that it'll reach him right sora carries then unmentioned for the next seven hours since sora assumes she's gucci on the islands while his boyfriend is not and well sorry you know what they say about assuming it makes an ass of you and not me because guess what kyrie ends up leaving the island with pluto ending up at twilight town during a period of the game the gang isn't capable of going back there there she meets up with haner pants and olette bonding over knowing sora a bit then ultimately getting kidnapped by axel a little bit before sora can get there putting her is just a damsel in distressed again for most the rest of the game disappointing because they built her up a bit here but it is still disney and final fantasy princess need a savin all right back to our main party despite the first impressions twilight town isn't our base of operations in kh2 rather hollow bastion from the end of kh1 fills that role hb is nothing like it used to be the area we explored in kh1 was just the castle of hollow bastion as the rest of the world was too overwhelmed by darkness to explore hence that miasma we saw at the bottom with the threat of darkness minimized the ff gang has set up a restoration committee to fix their home like they set out to do at the end of the first title we come back to hollow bastion a lot throughout the journey and unlike traverse town it's an important location to the villains as it's where ansem conducted his research which is why our first visit is when the six remaining organization members show themselves completely hooded though so not really to sora only one guy claiming to be not just any old dude compare sora to presumably roxas we as the players get the reason but sora is just confused because only one me you're an idiot now we get to the meat of cage two's first act i consider the roxas portion act 0.7 if no more is going to give [ __ ] stupid titles then so will i act 1 of kh2 has a structure noticeably similar to kh1 nobodies show up in very few stages and the only times an organization member shows up is a quick appearance by one in a hood at beast castle and a brief run-in with demix at olympus coliseum where he yet again calls sora roxas in an attempt to change the dominant persona besides that it's more disney adventures where as i said earlier we reunite with those we met in the first game and fight the disney villain or heartless who's accompanied by pete or maleficent it's a pretty even mix of if you fight a heartless or disney villain since we've got the dark thorn here hydra here fat bastards in the desert and the worst boss at halloweentown i had a rant in the first draft but this is a long enough video a more striking world we go to is disney castle and timeless river the reunion here focuses more on donald and goofy when the eyes of some people in universe are just as important as sora that's why whenever they see the three they say sora donald goofy sora donald and goofy sora donald and goofy sora donald goofy sora donald goofy okay i'm gonna stop the compilation here because i put them all together and it was like two minutes we the player are playing as sora and see things mostly from him which shapes our perception even if we do know more than him this time as well each of the rooms in disney castle actually have the same layout as from the cut scenes in kh-1 allowing us to see the full room designs while interacting with mini and daisy the reason you come here is because disney castle has what's called the cornerstone of light within it this protects disney castle from any form of darkness which is why it's going to be just a mini-game world in birth by sleep and thanks to the magic of time travel keaton maleficent can sneak some dark thorns around the corner stone by going back to a period of time before the castle existed let's not think too long about how time travel works why this happens is just so the kh team could put in a fun world based on the black and white mickey cartoons with a nicer pete fighting the big bad mean present pete because remember mickey was kind of a [ __ ] dick in the black and white cartoons upon finishing a botched kyrie save in twilight town a new episode unlocks in hollow bastion upon arrival we find a bunch of nobodies roaming about causing trouble as well we reunite with cloud who's now sporting his advent chill trip since they were developing at the same time as this i'll get him this time we settle it me and the one who embodies all the darkness in me cloud does some emo vague tweeting and later clarifies he means he's planning to find sephiroth cloud is seemingly part of the restoration committee as well or at the very least he's actually interacting with the ff gang speaking of that gang sid tells the party that leon found the computer that ansem used and it may have information about the organization nobodies and the realm of darkness where they believe riku kairi and the king are on their way to meet up with leon the gang runs into the goal wings okay so 10 2 was pretty recent when kh2 started development and 10 as a whole has some interesting representation in kingdom hearts so far waka and titus were pretty far from their original characters and oren's not too off but is only in olympus and then boy we got these goings and that's an interesting take yoona payne and riku have close personalities to their ten two depictions with a bit more mischievous antics added in and then their bodies are these small fairy versions of their 10 2 designs while i haven't played much of final fantasy 10 i've put a good chunk of hours into 10 2 when i was younger and i would have liked to see all of them especially pain have more representation like i figure yuna's hard to do right when they already threw titus as an island boy and funny thing with riku originally the role yuffie had in kh1 was attributed to her then the team realized that maybe having a character named riku and riku playing major roles would be confusing so they swapped yuffie into that role instead i totally get why the three ended up with a subdued role just a little awkward anyways they want to know what leon's gang is up to since they worked for maleficent and after storage just tells it to them they just leave [Music] going forward they discover the castle portion from kingdom hearts 1 though it's in a significantly different state than previously on arrival aerith tells us how the king as well is interested in what's on ansem's computer furthering the hype to meet him and the computer no one's in ansem's room as the gang arrives because i guess leon just stepped out for a minute maybe i'd use the bathroom or at least until thief is looking for a guy with pointy hair which yeah it's obviously cloud but sora don't know that he never played final fantasy vii after tifa leaves leon comes back from his piss break to show us the secret passage that has ansem's computer these of some fiddling by that funny little dude stitch it's shown that the computer doubles as a world based on the cult classic steven lisenberg film tron starring jeff bridges while inside tron says that he's the copy of a different program that his user found at some point after some didn't shenanigans tron tells us to gain a password from his users so we can access the dtd which houses all the important and secretive files that the user didn't want exposed the one big issue with this search for the user isn't asking the wise was the user oh wow who would have guessed the gang and leon feel a bit disheartened at the idea that they probably can't get the password on account of killing ansem in the last game but tifa shows up and does one more sweep around the room where she picks up this portrait of ansem in the same way i wanted to pick up me revealing a diagram reading at tron door to darkness or dtd say fellas did somebody mention the door to darkness jesus christ is mickey mouse mickey finally shows up with a visible head to the gang still has the coat on but were reunited with king mickey his majesty figures out that the dtd password is the seven princesses of hearts and says that if we access the dtd we can find out where ansem is oh wait what mickey you got some splayman to do and he almost starts if it weren't for leon having the party go back to help tron real quick [Music] now the boys check the computer to find no information about kyrie nobodies or the organization all they get is a picture of a white guy who mickey suddenly comes in to call ansem the wise oh yeah the splanin the party's just as confused as we are about this because hey this and this are not the same guy in actuality there's two ansems ansem the seeker of darkness was the heartless of ansem the wise's apprentice and some seeker of darkness stole the name of his master after banishing him and the king has been trying to find out where ant from the wise has been hiding as well the leader of organization 13 is the nobody of ansem's apprentice connecting ansem's and the organization's plan in some ways this twist might seem just straight out of nowhere but it does have some basis in kh1's backstory leon's gang described ansem as a wise and great ruler while ansem seeker of darkness is just about anything but good and within the secret reports we're going to find in kingdom hearts 2 it's retconned that besides the first one in kh1 every single report was written by the seeker of darkness and not the wise though since sora wants answered this moment he asks about riku but mickey says that he can't tell us about his whereabouts especially because here's when the big mid game climax happens and all the major players start to converge the heroes of light maleficent and the heartless the organization and nobodies the goalings who join the heroes of lights now and says he's looking for cloud and repeats some stuff i said in part one about being his darkness and all that which also leads into one of my favorite parts of the entire series all of the final fantasy characters and stitch work at fighting this gargantuan amount of heartless just straight up it is badass especially when we get to see cloud and leon interacting together think you can handle this many well [Music] it's just [ __ ] cool the main series is yet to utilize its final fantasy characters as well as this scene since not to say it lacks ff element sense here just the literal characters from final fantasy appearing in front of you hasn't happened like this we wouldn't even see intra-final fantasy crossovers again until dissidia and i never owned a psp sephiroth also appears once more to bully cloud for going to the light of the present and rejecting the darkness of his past in this case sephiroth is the metaphorical manifestation of stephie almost gets to him here if it weren't for his light showing up which just like the rest of us is tifa back to the player party they'd go against mickey's wishes to ignore the ongoing battle by rushing into a fight against the same organization member we met earlier named demix he acts a bit like a wimp which the party bullies him for as well as his lack of a heart leading to one of namora's 5d chess lines oh we do too have hearts don't be mad on account of sora being a traitor demix begins a fight that's one of the biggest difficulty spikes for new players but again not the focus of today's video once demx falls a heartless blast of boulder toward the king only missing because goofy takes the hit for him proof that not only does he hold a shield but that he is one himself sadly goofy falls in the process leading to the moment four years in the making they'll pay for this everyone finally gets to see mickey in his brand new kingdom hearts outfit with his keyblade ready to fight like i said many people skipped chain of memories and even those that did might have not gotten to the middle of riku's story i sure didn't this is the big moment everyone was waiting for mickey donald and sora charge in to avenge their friend fighting side by side with all of the final fantasy characters again one of the series greatest moments so great in fact that goofy comes back to life because of it and there was much rejoicing [Music] just in time to finally meet with not ansem's nobody whose appearance sparks mickey's memory ansem's young apprentice was xehanort while his nobody is xemnas and to reach him sora needs to kill 1 000 heartless as in you actually fight 1 000 heartless the party's finally gonna get all their answers once they confront xemnas though he says he knows nothing of kyrie and that mickey knows more of riku than he does and before mickey can explain himself he decides to jump in after xemnas's dark portal and the fun don't stop here because axel shows up to reintroduce himself to sora and let him know that every heart he's released from the heartless hasn't been going back to reform a body instead they've gone to the organization for a reason sora doesn't know yet maybe you can put together two and two at the same time sora learns that the organization kidnapped kairi while another member syex shows up to say that axel is gone rogue and consoles and on his knees sora that kyrie is at least being fed three times a day zais decides to attack sora with a horde of heartless leading to maleficent of all people coming to save him since she believes kingdom hearts to be her destiny sending sora to the realm of budget ran out where a cloaked figure gives them sea salt ice cream and a picture with roxas who soar is capable of naming because of roxas's slumbering memories [Music] act 2 continues our previous missions through revisits to the various worlds while the first visit focused on reunion the second have more focus often on self-discovery which you can see pretty quickly with the movies picked mulan finds her place as a chinese warrior jack is the spirit of halloween iago as not a dick act one was sora reuniting with the world while act 2 is a parallel to roxas's story of finding himself as an organization member and a piece of sora just as roxas ran from his fate during summer vacation many of the disney characters have their own summer vacations they run for simba hangs out with timon and pumbers jack robes themselves in the garments of christmas and hercules undergoes a big old depression episode when he assumes olympus is done with them and i should be clear it's not exactly a clean act one is reunion and act two self-discovery type deal mulan's done with her story of self-discovery after visit one but most of the worlds don't reach their conclusions during the first act such as hercules who is just in a horrible depression when we leave the first time as well these second visits don't have the same enemy each time some of them have organization 13 as the conflict maybe a disney character and others just a random heartless type beat in worlds where the story concluded a bit less during act 1 the antagonist takes a bit of a back seat letting the warriors of light take focus for example beast castle has a fight against another organization member named zalden and while that may seem like call for focus on him it instead pushes the narrative for beast to find himself which is with belle zolden exists to push beast to his final limits remove his summer vacation from him by robbing him of his rose and forcing him to come to grips with himself not with who he used to be but who he could at the end of their discovery each person has someone waiting for them mulan has li shang simba has his pack hercules has megra it's the combination of both the reunion and discovery that sora and roxas go through roxas finds himself as part of sora while sora wants to reunite with all of his friends especially kyrie and riku and a proper reunion can't happen without a found self at this point sora and kairi seem to have found that but what about riku during the second act there's a part in mulan where it's implied riku had the perfect chance to reunite with sora and he chose not to instead he aided the party from the back by informing the chinese monarchy of the organization we even have a fight with who seems like a really tall riku yet he doesn't just stop to say hey sora it's me yeah boy which only adds to this mystery and if you haven't noticed by now we're yet to see riku's face a single time since kh2 started the closest was a flashback to the secret ending where he still has his eyes shrouded by a bandana riku works as somewhat of a fill-in for mickey's role in kh-1 an entity we're waiting to see everyone knew who mickey mouse was during the course of kh-1 just as everyone knows who riku is during the course of kh2 they are the big payoff that we won't get until the end and before we get to the end of the game there's one last important visit to hollow bastion on our final visit the mcp has found a way to create more heartless through ansem's data wrecking the town the journey itself has soared teaming up with tron on the inside while we also see the final fantasy gang trying to help from the outside on sora's end they find tron has a sense of humanity despite being an ai perhaps himself having a heart will the ff gang retake control of ansem's computer on their end and with all the work they've done starting to pay off they reclaim and remember the town's original name radiant garden [Music] show me your strength [Music] now as one more last last thing to do in radiant garden sephiroth appears as a super boss just like in kingdom hearts 1. he himself is more powerful than his kh-1 incarnation but so is sora so it's debatable which one's harder upon beating him he says that the only one capable of eliminating him is cloud however the true point of cloud's motives hasn't been to eliminate his darkness represented by sephiroth it's closer to him fearing going completely to the light which is what tifa has wanted him to do cloud on his own even realizes that he cannot defeat sephiroth leading to tifa coming in to give him some of her light at this point cloud hasn't lost his darkness but has light protecting him running somewhat parallel to riku's story and chain of memories as well as tifa's role during the scenario and cloud subconscious from the original ff7 though while there it resulted in tifa and cloud finally reuniting cloud story ends here with him and sephiroth going off to face a great battle somewhere else that's yet to be concluded in the series given the narrative of clouded sephiroth's unending battle in the compilation i don't think it will end in the kingdom hearts series either upon completing enough areas a strange energy emerges near twilight town sparking reason to go back especially given the strange picture of roxas with the twilight town gang and since this is the real twilight town gang they don't recognize roxas there they do feel a small connection with them however which seems illogical since this pence and that pence are different pence's but 358 explains this so we'll get to that in the next part as well the pouch and crystal mickey gave them at the start of their journey were both one of a kind meaning that copies can't exist then all meet up at the mansion where they fight nobodies and meet up with mickey who tells them that ansem the wise is in the organization's stronghold and accidentally lets it slip that he promised riku not to reveal his whereabouts to sora within the mansion they find dizz's computer which they believe ansem used to sneak into the organization and they put together that the password is ansem's favorite ice cream flavor sea salt ice cream with the password enter sora donald goofy and the king are able to make it to the dark realm where they can finish off organization 13. there's only one fight left with too many nobodies for the party to handle that can only be defeated with the assistance from a suddenly appearing axel who puts his entire being or maybe lack of being into clearing a path for the party watch this [Music] ending his non-existence in the process well subtle in cage 2 or subtle as cage can be at least axel is near the organization's bottom rung his lackadaisical mannerisms make him unrespected we see marluxia psychics salt and zigbar and even xemnas show this towards him demix is disrespected too but he proudly calls himself a chicken axel's only friend in the organization was roxas the happiest moments he can remember are when it was just him and roxas freeing nominee putting sword asleep fighting roxas at the start kidnapping kyrie saving sora here all of that had one selfish reason reunite with roxas only issue it's kinda hard to reunite two people that don't exist axel's final mark on sora is letting him know that he just wants roxas back a thought that sits with him as he walks into the world that never was we have finally reached the area teased in the secret ending of kingdom hearts one and rather than being a realm of darkness as our heroes thought this is a realm of nothing a world that never should have been and this isn't just cut scenes or teases of this world we are walking in the same distorted city infested with the same heartless we saw in that ending and on the exact same floor we saw who we now know as roxas his will begins a duel within sora's heart to fight for supremacy of their being his last ditch effort and yet again we see him wielding oath keeper and oblivion the keyblade forms representing sore's relationship with kyrie and riku as well as light and darkness two people roxas has barely met and two powers a nothing can't belong to this isn't a true physical battle but an internal one inside of sora's heart with the same mural we saw at the beginning of the game having riku kairi donald and goofy people close to sora that roxas doesn't really know and perhaps this isn't purposeful but this is a heavy contender for hardest mandatory fight in the game which i feel drives forward that an internal struggle will often prove more difficult than an external one we don't want to accept who we are this battle doesn't end when sora wins it ended when roxas decided to lose ending with a flashback to when xemnas gave roxas his purpose and one final scene where roxas and axel see each other at the end on the same clock tower from earlier with sea salt ice cream where they used to hang out after work wondering if the two of them and her presumably namine have a heart at all roxas goes back to reunite with sora while axel seemingly goes away for good allowing axel a ceremonious end but not a happy one [Music] give me strength now that roxas has once again accepted his place in sora's heart their potential has unlocked with the final form it's pure white color floating keyblades master magic and long combos give the idea that this is how a keyblade master should look sora has reached his peak right when he needs it the most powerful form you can reach with a keyblade our heroes of light are going to siege the castle that never was to reunite with kairi riku and ansem the wise and maybe one more as namine comes to save kyrie and pluto because pluto is also here those three are then almost stopped by psyx then they're all saved by a cloaked man kyrie calls riku [Music] riku you're really here [Music] oh [ __ ] that sure does motivate us to run further but in this one big room we're reminded by psyx that oh [ __ ] there's three more organization members left before xemnas sykes points towards a heart-shaped moon that's watched us the whole world to tell sora that it's actually a kingdom hearts created by the organization through the hearts soray has released during all of his adventures and he believes that once completed it will grant hearts to the organization as psych summons a boatload of heartless kairi riku pete and maleficent all walk in from different entrances to see it happen with riku having his own new keyblade and giving one to kyrie yeah this one little gift is when the keyblade mystery i emphasized in part one kind of starts to die but it's more relevant in part three so i'll leave it alone for today's concern of all people that old dude from the beginning identified as zigbar during the second act stops the heartless from attacking sora so they can duel it out but not before confusing sorry by calling him roxas again and saying that he doesn't even make half the hero the other keyblade masters did a statement that's meant more and more with each new entry you would not believe but right now it means jack [ __ ] because he dissipates like a lamer on the floor and while that went on mickey actually did his own thing mickey finds a struggling dizz who then removes his bandages to reveal that he was ansem the wise this is racism for nobody this is a hatred for nobody stemming from the betrayal of his apprentices and the failure he's felt as a master to them within and some secret reports which are written by ansem the wise this time it's revealed that the first six members of organization 13 were all apprentices of ansem as well it reveals their human names whenever they became nobodies their names were rearranged and given an x which is why sora changed to roxas and interestingly xemnas is an anagram of ansem rather than xehanort since the heartless of xehanort considers himself ansem as dis and ansem have such little screen time i'd consider reading these reports essential for understanding the psyche of the man during the course of all three games just make sure to read it in a christopher lee voice for accuracy as ansem is reunited with his old friend they take a machine of his to a high point of the castle so they can destroy the artificial kingdom hearts at the same time sora finally catches up to riku and kairi after over a year most of it where she forgot him kyrie sees sora again and while confused sora does have to give thanks to ansem the seeker of darkness despite all the bad he's done which i think is a great moment for showing sora's compassion even if kyrie tells sora how it's actually riku right afterwards as riku refused to let namine rid him completely of darkness and chain of memories he always had that chance for ansem to take hold again which in the time between chain and two happened giving him a sense of guilt even while sora searched for riku he didn't want to reunite with sora in his state he accepted this form so that he could protect his friends and defeat the organization riku wanted to get out of this form himself first but sora reassures him that everyone will help him out of it growing our party by two for the final three organization members starting with a one-on-one fight against luxor where he turns our whole party into cards bruh by the way sorry for skipping talking about luxor for navy luxor fans but let's be real he's done nothing in any of the games so far as he's falling he pisses sora off by calling him roxas once again just as psyx does before their final confrontation as well as put a wall keeping riku and kyrie out of the fight friends y'all are my power what the [ __ ] upon his defeat sayx reaches for kingdom hearts one last time begging for a heart leaving sora in confusion yet again as to why people keep calling him roxas but then finally jesus christ riku looks at sora and tells him that roxas was his nobody brought into non-existence when he freed his in kyrie's heart at hollow bastion during and explains that after roxas betrayed the organization riku used that as the prime time to capture him for unification with sora and since riku couldn't beat him on his own he had to release his dark power in the most chewy [ __ ] way possible i have to release the power in my heart the dark power that i've been holding back [Music] riku theorizes the reason roxas betrayed the organization was just to meet sora which in the end happened permanently as ansem's machine reaches the fall of its power he warns mickey that it's likely to self-destruct just as sora and the party arrive for ansem to apologize to roxas riku and the rest of them for his foolishness a foolishness zemnes only comes in to rub in his face which ansem can only accept while pointing out how the apprentice knows only as much as the master making both of them the fools leading into the machine's destruction destroying much of kingdom hearts releasing hearts back to their heartless form or reuniting with a nobody perhaps to become whole again and for some reason it turns riku into his sexy guy form he's just a sexy guy only explained with ansem did say anything could happen which explains nothing but who gives a [ __ ] riku is finally in the same party as sora with his own keyblade just for them to go fight xemnas while pete and maleficent deal with the hordes of heartless attacking the castle xemnas tells the three keyblade users because i guess kyrie's done with it that they should be more tolerant of those who live in between light and darkness being racist is uncool which almost seems reasonable but riku calls him on his [ __ ] because remember they've been [ __ ] up all the worlds which zemnes claims to do because his lack of feeling prevents him from feeling remorse for his actions just as every nobody he only does what he remembers wanting to do which for xehanort the apprentice was claim kingdom hearts sparking xemnas's first phase by the same skyscraper from the city in a one-on-one battle against sora a confrontation paralleling the one riku and roxas had who were both forms of xemnas and sora in a certain way with zero options left for xemnas he attempts to become one with the unfinished artificial kingdom hearts a move sparking the final door into a new plane spawned by xemnas where the final battle shall occur this door can only be opened by the three keyblades sora's from the realm of light mickeys which he found in the realm of darkness and riku's keyblade known as the way to dawn representing the state between interestingly it still resembles his soul leader sword he used in other appearances as that weapon was meant as an intermediary between when the keyblade considered him unworthy and now when he's regained his worth as of this point in the series these are the only ones we've seen will to keyblade as auroxis is a separate version of sora and by god do i have a hard time counting kyrie it's now time to end the final remnants of ansem's research all five of them attempt to walk in but xemnas forces mickey and kyrie out of the door leaving only sora donald goofy and riku in the distorted plane which consists of one of the most stylish bosses of all time beginning with a run towards the mechanical dragon controlled by xemnas on a cityscape sora slices through followed by a complete destruction of the dragon's engines and then one last phase against zemnes in a mysterious nobody armor surrounded by the weapons used by organization members a beautiful and exhilarating final boss though noticeably easy i need more rage i need more hearts xemnas there's more to a heart than just anger or hate it's full of all kinds of feelings don't you remember unfortunately i don't wow that's a bit of a [ __ ] you to us well the gang's defeated xemnas and they can leave right as the castle begins to crumble like in any good game since riku himself no longer belongs to the darkness he can't open dark portals anymore meaning that namine appears one last time to open one for the gang though she's ghostly and no one can see her by the way pluto's here now the reason they can't see her is because she's fused back with kyrie as she was her nobody created the same moment roxas was and namine's initial gravitation towards roxas was because of their origin and as long as sora and kyrie are together they can be together again ending kingdom heart what [Music] [Applause] oh [ __ ] yeah sometimes there's the reason that [ __ ] is easy everyone gets out except sora and riku so the two of them the ones most affected by ansem and xemnas's desires take one final fight to xemnas destroying the world that never was in the process and ending in a true realm of nothing where sora and riku vow that even if darkness light and nothing are eternal xemnas won't be starting a final fight i consider damn near perfect xemnas has full control of the nothing they're in while sore and riku are the light and darkness forcing their way in he has the upper hand at every corner during this fight the only thing pulling through is sora and riku's friendship culminating in one of the greatest feeling and looking final attacks in a ps2 game [Music] fatigued the two boys stumble through a door to darkness ending in a beach on the dark realm where the two find solace with each other and the knowledge that the realm of light is safe for everyone else sora and riku both admit their respect for each other and love for having each other as a friend it's one of the most human scenes of the series showing the relief they both have as long as they're together sora and riku are reunited and nothing can come between them now their peace is a selfish one gained through their time with each other and their time apart however selfishness leaves some people out and they'll be forced back by one item the letter kyrie wrote to sora during the prologue shows up on the beach which upon reading a door to light appears that causes sora to fall into the ocean as he did during the kh-1 intro but this time with riku by his side which means they're finally back on their island where they see kyrie and the disney gang for the first time in the series sora donald goofy riku mickey and kyrie are reunited and at peace which by extension means roxas and namine found peace everyone is home ending kingdom hearts 2 in the entire kingdom hearts saga on a triumphant note the journey our heroes set out on has come to completion [Music] at least that's the way it could have been after the end of the credit roll which showed the impact sora's party made in every world they touched kyrie comes to a relaxed riku and sora with a letter from the king implying one more call to action for our heroes in kingdom hearts 3 trumpets ablaze implying a more upbeat adventure than the ones before followed then by yet another vague secret ending with text scrolling three keyblade wielders in battle armor in the keyblades used by sora riku and mickey gathering dust around thousands of other keyblades implying our heroes long gone most likely done in by a keyblade war as that's one of the vague words shown on screen while someone who may be the new villain of the next arc appears shrouded in darkness this vague scene and letter are the only two things westerners experienced in kingdom hearts 2 that hinted towards a new game there was nothing left to uncover however one year after the release of kh2 in north america japan received kingdom hearts 2 final mix it tweaked gameplay added new items introduced limit form and inserted new cutscenes previously from the kingdom hearts 2 novelization most of these scenes have something to do with the organization and personally i think they're placed in the main story a tad clumsily the only ones i'd consider absolutely kino are the ones around sora's fight with roxas and his reunion with axel that scene in the actual fight with roxas were not in the original any of the additions i consider essential to kingdom hearts 2 story i mentioned during the meat of the video though there are two other scenes essential for later games i want to talk about both scenes being placed back to back right in the middle of the hollow bastion heartless battle scenario and they just don't really fit there one begins with a cloaked figure walking into a secret area past ansem's computer once we hear his voice it's clearly xemnas who sits down to greet who he calls a friend that we can see is one of the armors from that secret ending and then one following scene where zigbar and zexian discuss said room as the chamber of repose which is the opposite of a alleged second chamber within castle oblivion known as the chamber of waking what's more important here is the confirmation that the keyblade wore actually happened in the past not the future and xehanort showed up with amnesia afterwards making the brand new extended secret ending more questionable with a bald man batshit crazy fight choreography kingdom hearts rocks us within one of the suits of armor and an appearance by mickey mouse this is the true teaser for the tale kingdom hearts is about to tell one sora has no clue about unless the one secret boss fight can be considered canon [Applause] [Music] this is a battle against lingering will a piece of the armor we saw that lacks a wearer it only persists through raw emotion and a will to succeed no body and no heart as lingering will is a keyblade user from what we know as an era past it shows abilities sora never even thought of mainly morphing the keyblade into other forms as much as it seemed vinyl form and dual wielding is not mastery of the keyblade lingering will is that mastery not only is that shown by design but difficulty as well on critical mode this is the hardest boss fight i've ever beaten period no stop i have not beaten anything harder than this it took me six hours of practice to beat him here's a link to the video of when i did it on my second channel this is the power of a keyblade user at their max potential and what we will see in future titles i'm gonna be honest it's a strange feeling when there's more after kingdom hearts too i'm not one of those fans that think the series should have ended here i love most of the upcoming games and the stories they tell i'm glad they exist it's just that the nice wrapped up bow is almost immediately taken away from us and it tears me up inside even writing this script now i was tempted to end the video before bringing up the credits role there's a sense of completion at that moment that as of now kingdom hearts has not reached again our main heroes had their happy reunion but not quite everyone else did come back in part 3 where i'll discuss kingdom hearts birth by sleep 358 days over 2 and recoded a trio of kingdom hearts games announced and planned at the same time as each other after kingdom hearts 2 the series could have gone down any avenue the journey that began in kingdom hearts 1 ended riku kairi and sora went on an adventure to see other worlds and then reunited back together donald and goofy brought the king back to disney castle in the attempts by ansem and xemnas to gain the power of kingdom hearts were stopped so what's left for kingdom hearts 3 what is the purpose for sora and riku to journey off their islands again well to understand that we need to go back both in the series and to the 2007 tokyo game show square enix had a really big presence here they showed off the new project the city of final fantasy trailers for already known projects in the fabula nova crystallis series advent children complete crisis core and the biggest most relevant to this video announcement was the reveal of the new kingdom hearts project consisting of three games birth by sleep for psp taking place ten years before kingdom hearts won three five eight days over two for nintendo ds starring roxas while he was in organization 13 in an episodic game known as kingdom hearts coded explaining the contents of mickey's letter for japanese mobile flippy dippy phones where a data reconstruction of sora goes through jiminy's journal that's actually the most simple one different teams handled each of them with h a and d handling 358 square's osaka team making birth by sleep and some internal square team doing coded i can't find who but probably not a big one it was for flip phones similar to chain of memories these three games were meant to lead us into kingdom hearts 3. but unlike chain of memories these entries told their own stories at the same time in fact early in development for the three nomura actually said that these could be introductory games for new players but i guess no one else on the teams were told this because boy howdy that does not happen many concepts are gonna fly right over your head without kingdom hearts one two and even chain of memories at many instances the story and knowledge of the past three games are connected to these ones which we can assume will lead into kingdom hearts 3. all three of these games were rapid-fired and released with episode 1 of coded coming out in 2008 358 in 2009 birthed by sleep in early 2010 the last episode of coded late in 2010 and the ds remake of coded in 2011 which was the only version released outside of japan the flip phone version is also vaporware at the moment with to my knowledge no way to play it without a supported japanese phone that already downloaded it before 2013. whether you play 358 or birth by sleep first really doesn't matter but coded pretty much has to go at the end since its final chapter references characters from 358 and birth by sleep or don't play coded we'll get to there at the end before i get really started talking about 358 i want to explain the footage on screen within the new collections 358 encoded were not remade completely instead they made hd cutscene collections that try to portray the story as best they can in my personal opinion the 358 viewer cuts out a lot of the nuance the original ds game had in its narrative as well as missing scenes that are just straight up important and it's mainly caused by just being cut scenes so say a boss fight here we're just given a wall of text saying hey here was a boss fight another important boss fights they don't even mention was there you'll understand enough of the story just enough to care about the characters and be ready for the next game but for the full experience you really gotta play the game as well which is a tad disappointing because your fun mileage will vary a lot if you're not into mission structures which i'd land in that category the rest of this retrospective hasn't focused on gameplay or even my own personal opinion but i feel it necessary to mention because general opinion on 358's gameplay and structure trends negatively my own thoughts should show as we string along but for a general idea on it this was my first full playthrough since it was released and while i'm glad i replayed it i won't do another full playthrough anytime soon unless it's maybe for a stream or i lose this footage and need it for a future project bottom line that's why you'll be seeing a mix of hd cutscene footage and upscale ds footage i captured with melon ds i'd like if the game itself is actually remade eventually because most of my gripes have to do with the limitations of it being a 3d action game on the ds and some extreme difficulty spikes at some of the bosses that it'd probably be easier if i could play these 358 days over two analog sticks given where 358 is in the timeline we already know how roxas's story will end he's going to betray the organization fight riku and end up in the simulated twilight town a potential paradox or god forbid a retcon is ready to keep the writing team on track we already know riku fought roxas to reawaken sora just not why roxas betrayed the organization of course the organization is evil but how did roxas realize that if it's all he knew and what did his relationship with axel look like why were they so close these are some of the main questions 358 is going to answer starting our story seven days after roxas joined the organization or seven days after sawyer released his and kyrie's hearts in hollow bastion since sora turned back into a human so quickly roxas has just been a heartless memoryless and therefore emotionless nobody that doesn't speak or do anything all he knows is that he's number 13 in the organization and that his name is roxas which he only knows because xemnas told it to him his first moment of interest in anything is when the brand new 14th member of the organization named shion joins their ranks oh [ __ ] i don't remember her in kingdom hearts 2 this can't end well shihan as well as an emotionless nobody not even showing her face and is the driving force for roxas later in the story but let's put her aside for now because axel needs to get roxus out of his shell for a bit so he can start actually working for the organization beginning the seven day tutorial featuring the chain of memories characters where they very explicitly explain his purpose organization 13 needs hearts to make kingdom hearts roxas is in organization 13 roxas is a nobody roxas wields the keyblade only the keyblade can gather hearts for kingdom hearts by defeating heartless therefore roxas defeats heartless to gather hearts for kingdom hearts so that he succeeds in his purpose for the organization roxas lines those pieces up slowly because of his lack of any experience with the organization members telling that information to him bluntly since they have no memory of caring for a roxas thus they do not care only axel really tries to act friendly towards roxas teaching him what a friend is in the process friends eat ice cream together and talk and laugh about stupidest things which through axel's explanation registers to roxas as people that laugh and eat ice cream together thus setting roxas and axel's new after work tradition of eating ice cream together to prove their friendship hanging out with axel after work becomes the one thing roxas looks forward to each day making roxas lose any joy once axel leaves for castle oblivion on day 23 for the events of chain of memories now he starts getting paired up with shion who still stays under her hood and says nothing to roxas until her third mission where she finally shows that her face is similar to kyrie with black hair meaning that there are now three flavors of kyries walking around this is the best flavor and we see that she too can use the keyblade making her keyblade wieldery her identity and why she's not in kingdom hearts 2 one of the core mysteries around 358 but roxas isn't worried about that he just realizes hey this can be someone i can eat ice cream with again meaning he can still have a friend with the rest of the narrative after this consisting of a revolving door if he eats ice cream with axel xion or all three of them together depending on who's at home the repetitive way they do this same thing day by day gives a sense of security if roxas is alone on the tower things aren't okay if only shion shows up she's okay if axel's missing axel's conflicted about something if all three of them are on the tower eating ice cream then they are best friends it might sound like a simple explanation but it's the only way roxas can understand friendship any information a nobody receives is taken literally unless they have a memory to decipher the emotion behind it axel initially said friends eat ice cream to mean it's one of the things they do but for roxas that's literally all they do until he sees something otherwise so now roxas has two purposes day by day perform tasks for the organization and eat ice cream with his friends to solidify their friendship so let's talk about this daze thing unlike other entries in the series 358 works on a mission structure instead of a continuous journey 358 starts around when kh1 ends and ends when cage 2 begins and on each day roxas walks into the lobby sykes gives him his mission you do the mission either with a partner or on your own eat ice cream and then go back to base to repeat the process for various reasons it's not actually 358 missions it's actually 93 and not all of them are mandatory though the game's tough and you'll want exp so do most of them it feels repetitive but serves the narrative needed to get into roxas's headspace especially because roxas isn't exactly curious to make in-depth hunts through a location unless asked of him roxas wants to leave as fast as possible so that he can go back to eating ice cream with axel and xion so as soon as he's completed his task he tries to get out of there because of that there's some missions finished after only walking through one or two rooms letting you discover more of the field later although all of the worlds are somewhat returning from kh 1 and 2 so we the player have a general idea of how much of what we're seeing 358 has twilight town agribo wonderland beast castle neverland halloweentown and olympus however neverland is almost completely original with the actual islands rather than the boat and clock tower seen in the first game now unlike sora's party in kh 1 and 2 the organization is trying to stay as covert as possible because of this they take more roundabout paths than sora's party would have such as backdoors in beast castle the roofs in agribo or the subway system in twilight town in keeping with the covertness roxas never interacts with major characters from the disney worlds he'll interact with tinkerbell instead of peter pan or zero instead of jack the most important people he talks to are probably genie or phil but it's not like roxas himself is furthering a disney narrative on purpose him killing heartless does have domino effects on the worlds just not what he intended beating the antelone in agrabah stops the prevalent sandstorms and just [ __ ] around gives jack some ideas for next halloween not exactly any grand stories in the disney world besides when he stops pete from finding jafar's lamp and starting a big heartless army in neverland the entirety of this plot thread was removed in the cutscene viewer and nothing was lost for the worlds in cage 2 it's interesting to see how exactly they got to their position agarba's design change is actually explained by a bad sandstorm in the area phil mentions that hercules is getting really tired because of the lack of other heroes and zaldan actually has a whole side story delving into his interest in beast and his rose setting the stage for why he's there in cage too it became somewhat of an obsession to zalden which is an engaging lair added to him developing organization members is something that i think 358's narrative excels at for the kh2 members at least i mean tutorial ends and the chain of memories characters immediately go to castle oblivion but they'll get some time to shine in kingdom hearts 3. the only two that got shafted were demix who's still just comic relief and lux sword who only joins roxas for missions in wonderland of which there aren't really that many it fits his character with the cards and all but doesn't exactly add to him the main focus is on the hardships of roxas axel and xion's friendship with syex acting as a foil to that by just being a general dick though psyx is given more depth through his relationship with axel as it seems psychs and axel have their own motives in the organization separate from xemnas's goal of attaining the power of kingdom hearts in fact it was psychs that wanted axel to ensure the elimination of all the castle oblivion members including vexin and zexion he also wanted axel to find the chamber of waking in the castle we heard of last time as it may have secrets even xemnas doesn't know about there's strong tension between the two throughout 358 and i'll go ahead and spoil it now birth by sleep shows that they were childhood friends as humans with some strange interest in ansem's castle speaking of castle oblivion 358 really likes to test your knowledge of chain of memories as much of the rest of the story relies on its concepts starting first when on day 26 roxas falls into a slumber which should roughly be when sora fell asleep in chain according to xemnas and psychs he should reawaken once all of sora's memories are stripped out of him because of that he wakes up on day 50 and on day 51 it's back to work as normal on which he's told by psychs it's likely the entire castle oblivion team died 20 more days later axel comes back the same as ever immediately eating ice cream with roxas though at the same time shion has gone missing so the two start searching for her and a few days later find her in twilight town a chance meeting with our boy pence sets us up on the right path to find her where she's struggling to gain hearts because she's lost her ability to use the keyblade prompting a period where xi'an and roxas go on all of their missions together so the organization doesn't notice xi'an is gaining zero hearts only made possible by axel using his masculine wiles to woo syex into allowing it they know it can't last forever though so axel tries his best to keep sykes off their ass at least until shion regains her keybladery abilities which she couldn't do without roxas's pathetic stick wielding roxas that's a stick i'm sorry i was too nervous to ask any women to voice this this portion in some ways is a micro version of the whole story roxas does not want anything to change nor does he really understand that things could change he wants to continue performing tasks for the organization and eat ice cream with his two friends he doesn't remember having a heart having other friends or suffering from job applications rejecting you he does start to have quick flashes of sore's memories after his coma kind of like he did at the start of kingdom hearts 2. though he again doesn't think of them too often and interestingly they'd only show up on the bottom screen of the ds creates the illusion that us the player are experiencing the recollections of sora which is a nuance lost pretty drastically in the cutscene viewer a day where roxas's routine faced the largest hurdle is his day off with no idea of fun besides sea salt ice cream he has a slight crisis where none of the other organization members can help him he ends up just hitting a ball with haner pence and olet in twilight town letting him experience something new and explaining why they felt a connection to him in kingdom hearts too this is probably the second most important scene they removed in the cutscene viewer and the manga adaptation as it leaves a mystery from kh2 unanswered expectedly roxas ends his first day off on the clock tower like he always does are the kids here on summer vacation already nah can't be it's much too early summer vacation what's that it's a dream come true that's what where they get a whole month off a month off i wouldn't know what to do with that much time i could deal with seven days maybe while roxas is deaf to the idea that this may all end axel and xi'an know that it won't last forever pretty soon after their day off shion has an encounter with an organization imposter aka riku who beats shion pretty badly it kicks off the plot of finding out who shion is with axel and xion finding out about it separately from each other and then keeping the knowledge away from roxas axel found the truth far before xion within vexin's secret research journal and attempted to keep the knowledge from her as well because axel knows that the moment she learns the truth things can't go back to the way they are unlike roxas and xi'an axel knows what life is outside of missions and sea salt ice cream he doesn't want that life or more exactly he doesn't want life without roxas and xi'an his last friend before them was psyx and as we see in 358 their relationship is currently rife with mistrust axel is the only one that knows what will happen when xi'an learns that she too is a piece of sora remember riku replica from china memories well he wasn't the first or only replica vexin had an entire replica program he worked on which xi'an or project number one was a part of xi'an is a failed replica of sora that had no clear identity when she began interacting with roxas the nobody of sora shion began absorbing sora's memories that were meant to go to roxas which is why roxas is seeing some of sora's memories but can't make heads or tails of it recall that a nobody is the body of a somebody with only their memories while roxas has the body somewhat while she on is receiving the memories now since sora's strongest memories are of kairi xion has taken her face and just like roxas and kh2 shion needs to return to sora so he can wake up making reuniting shion with sora riku's quest in 358 so do you hate me for taking your friend away from you no i guess i'm just sad at one point shion runs off with riku for a few days to figure out her feelings with only axel and roxas searching for her as the organization doesn't need both keyblade wielders the two of them are only caring because she's their friend and psychics just straight up rejects xion because he's clearly jealous of their friendship with axel once excellent roxas find her axel violently brings her back as a moment that puts the big pin in the cogs of their friendship all three of them are back in the organization again but their friendship is rifted as well as their power because xion is accidentally absorbing roxas's energy to ensure only one extra version of sora exists sora is attempting to be whole and it doesn't matter to the organization how he does so xemnas and psyx even set up a sham battle between shion and roxas to hurry the process which axel puts the stop to because even if they fought they are still best friends the organization's sham battle cements the disillusionment all three of them have in the organization's plans afterwards three have what roxas doesn't realize is their final session of eating sea salt ice cream together as much as axel has prolonged it either roxas or xi'an have to cease their non-existence what's important isn't that we hang out with each other every day as long as we keep each other in our thoughts we'll never be apart right we've got it memorized axel good [Music] i'll have these moments memorized for a long time forever [Music] me too forever upon the following day shion and axel are paired up with zigbar for a mission in wonderland there zigbar gets in a fight with shion because when he looks at her he sees something far different than kairi because the truth isn't that she only looks like kairi but that different people project a different look onto her any scene where she's hooded means that they don't have a projection yet xion wins the fight against zigbar and axel allows her to leave after seeing something under her hood hidden to the player roxas is pissed off about the ordeal after he hears about it and after one more mission the next day where he places a strange device by the agrabah keyhole he decides to leave the organization on the following day which interestingly is the only mission where you go through the castle that never was and finish it with a fight against psyx who's by all means been the major foil to roxas throughout the game there's next to no emotion between the two of them before or after the fight rather than fighting out of pure rage they're going through the motions of what they believe has to happen afterwards leading to a scene we know pretty well from kingdom hearts 2. you can't turn on the organization you get on their bad side and they'll destroy you no one would miss me that's not true i would unlike before this moment holds far more weight with the fully realized relationship of the two nobodies we know the extent to which axel is going to miss roxas and not only did he lose one friend here he's lost two best friends and has to bring both of them back or else he'll be destroyed something about this just stinks it's for the good of everyone but how do you know that everybody thinks they're right this is right they're gonna destroy you please don't hold back axel promise what's your problem [Music] you both think you can do whatever you want well i'm sick of it go on you just keep running but i'll always be there to bring you back axel brings xion back to the castle for the final time falling in the process from exhaustion there xemnas takes her for reprogramming so that she'll absorb all of sora's memories and desire a final battle with roxas with so much of sora's memories she's begun to look like him instead of herself you know for at least a few minutes because she turns into this armored warrior immediately afterwards this is a tough fight not because of difficulty or annoyance it's difficult for the player's heart we know xi'an is someone not making out of this game there's not even a metaphorical visual hint about her in kingdom hearts 2. for the past few hours of the game we knew roxas and xi'an can't both exist and to make it worse is how namine mentioned not long earlier that since shion is comprised of memories everyone will forget about her after her demise as she fades away in roxas's arms he and everyone else in the world slowly start to forget her with roxas grappling onto the moments of her more than she on herself reuniting with shian was roxas's last grasp for friendship after abandoning axel and now she's leaving shion who else will i have ice cream with as funny as this line is on its own taking it by itself loses some of its nuance roxas isn't some selfish child worried about eating sea salt ice cream with someone he's a lonely boy worried about having no friends while roxas has at this point experienced fun times with shion and axel outside of the clock tower that's still his primary metric to gage if he has friends to know that he's not on his own and right now he's let one of his friends fall to his own hands and ditch the only other in a fit of rage even if roxas has lost xion he maintains memory of her final request destroys xemnas's kingdom hearts taking her keyblade with him so he can dual wield leading right into kingdom hearts one secret ending allowing us to actually play the scene i seem to mention pretty often while it's technically the same scenarios before we now have the full context of what's happening roxas has lost the little he had and thinks this is the one way to get his life back not grasping that there could even be a better life for him roxas doesn't even know why he's desiring to destroy kingdom hearts anymore he just knows that's his purpose which in some ways riku helps to fulfill by defeating him and starting kingdom hearts 2 showing us the start of his summer vacation in one final shot of the game where roxas reunites with sora roxas's entire journey from birth to reunification is now chronicled with three five eight with the exception of axel and science's strange motives and zigbar's perception of xi'an as this dude who kinda looks like roxas 358 over two days fits very tightly within the confines of the first three game stories adding significantly to anything relating to roxas and axel though i can't say it affects anyone else in kh2 what it has done is give a greater notoriety to memories and replicas from chain of memories which connects that game to the greater narrative more than cage 2 did which of course comes back together in kingdom hearts 3. so let's move over to the most popular of two days games in some ways you could argue that the past three games were based upon adding a context and story around the secret ending of kingdom hearts one chain introduced our black coated enemies cage 2 clarified who the fighters were and introduced the world that never was while 358 clarified the fighter's motives birth by sleep moves away from that and is instead the story of kingdom hearts 2 secret ending set 10 years before the events of kingdom hearts 1 where we play as the three keyblade warriors we saw in that expensive cg we can just assume that part where they lifted sora riku and mickey's keyblades was metaphorical and not to be taken literally especially because a younger mickey is even on the box art but let's not get too far yet birth by sleep is the most important of today's three games for the story going forward in fact it would have not been out of place to name it kingdom heart zero when it first released this world is just too small bbs first begins with a young disheveled white-haired man on destiny islands wanting to leave it which then fades into an older gentleman leaving a knocked out boy that looks identical to roxas this is one of our three protagonists for birth by sleep named ventus currently his heart is fractured causing his vegetative state a brand new heart from the islands joins their hearts together to keep him safe reawakening ventus and allowing him to wield a keyblade forward two or three years into the future inventis now lives at the land of departure with his two closest friends aqua and tara forming the rest of the trio of birth by sleep the three of them all living together as close as siblings under the tutelage of master ericus training to become keyblade masters the three are meant to parallel sora riku and kyrie pretty heavily even from the names we can see it since sora kyrie and riku roughly translate from japanese to sky sea and land while ventus aqua and tara follow the same trend but in latin their friendship isn't near as endearing as the destiny islander sea salt ice cream trio and that's a bit of an issue when friendship is so important to the narrative i think one of the main reasons for this is that the prologue portion is really short like 15 to 20 minutes compared to cage 1's 40ish minutes and cage 2's just [ __ ] bahangalunga size which just does not really give us enough time to get engaged with them and let's talk about who they are our trio live at the land of departure where they've been training all their life to achieve one dream being a keyblade master is all i've dreamed about yeah they train to wield keyblades let's talk about this for a bit so remember how sora was the chosen keyblade master well this is the point when the idea of only one keyblade is completely killed off within the first 20 minutes we've more than doubled the amount of keyblade users with our three protagonists their master ericus and the villain xehanort we'll get there soon it's important to keep in mind not a single person who's explained to keyblade to sora actually knew what it was riku leon and yuffie were proven wrong about it and to our knowledge the only people that had seen one before kh1 were maleficent king triton and zigbar zigbar even claimed in kh2 other wielders were more powerful and king triton claimed the key bearer as bearing ruin the only implication we've had was the whole one at a time thing which was more of an assumption than anything especially after mickey and riku had their keyblades i did like the idea that sores was from the realm of light mickey's darkness and riku's the realm between but that was always something people assumed rather than confirmed to us even in cage 2 yen sid was often referred to as mickey's teacher it was assumed he taught mickey magic like in fantasia but birth by sleep early on confirms that yensid is also a retired keyblade master that trained mickey in using the keyblade and interestingly mickey used the star seeker keyblade that yen sid gives you in cage too and right now i also want to bring to light the term master we've heard that term a lot in the past few titles and actually characters used it wrong just having a keyblade does not make you a master rather passing a mark of mastery exam makes you into one which by the end of cage 2 only mickey had done as such meaning anytime someone called riku or sora master was a misnomer on the end of the character at this point technically birth by sleep has not retconned anything about the keyblade just did something i don't personally agree with and i'm not gonna be a big baby about personal preferences besides one point in dream drop distance it was honestly about time to start answering mysteries of the keyblade birth by sleep is the fifth or sixth game in the series depending on how you look at it and new keyblade related mysteries are going to begin sprouting up soon so let's jump back into the story wow our journey begins one day before aqua and tara take their mark of mastery exam with the trio watching shooting stars and exclaiming dialogue at each other i can't help it you two would make the weirdest brothers what the [ __ ] do you mean aqua shows the two that she made friendship bracelets for the three of them to wear and they serve the very grand purpose of being friendship bracelets mantis looks up to aqua and tara a lot since they're a few years older than him and really hopes that they succeed in their mark of mastery while terri and aqua look at ventus as a little brother type i really wish i weren't simplifying what we're given here this night ends with all of them looking at shooting stars promising to be friends forever and ventus wishing and aqua will pass their exam which is a fun little exam because on the day tara and aqua take it their master erikas and his old funny finger keyblade master friend xehanort watch it the two apprentices have to fight some glowy light balls to prove themselves when the funny balls go darkness mode oh geez let's hope that keyblade master candidates and little venti wenti can take on a tiny bit of darkness you'll understand why i'm making fun of this in the dream drop video ericus is proud of their tiny achievement and has them take upon the second part where they face each other in combat ericus clarifies that winning the fight doesn't award the mark of mastery in that neither or both can still earn it however midway through the fight tara has a small spark of darkness show from within him and while tara kept it under control ericus decides to only award aqua the title of mastery from here the stories take upon a sonic adventure 1 structure where we pick one of the characters and follow them along to the end on separate connected journeys technically the decision was right before the mark of mastery but that scene doesn't change between characters instead of explaining it character 1 character 2 character 3 i'm just going to talk about them all at the same time in chronological order and i'll tell you now while you can pick them in any order you want you should really go in the order of a terra ventus then aqua as it results in a more coherent story and the most clean transition into the final story like i said essay 1 structure i mainly recommend this because tara is the one that pushes most of the narrative forward and that should become clear as we go along especially because the first thing to happen after the exam is zaynar putting the idea into tara's head that maybe darkness good that's a good thought he'll figure it out later he doesn't have time for that when erica summons tara and aqua so he can set them up for the game we need to play ericus just got off a skype call with yen sid who said that the princess of heart are in danger because of a new threat born of negative emotions known as the unversed erikas wanted to talk to xehanort about it but he couldn't reach him and fears that he may be missing due to a possibly related incident which uh [ __ ] you just got off the phone with yen sid when did you call him also he was just here so ericus decides to send tara and aqua to investigate the situations and he wants tara to see this as a second chance to earn his mark of mastery as he sees him as a son and wants to award it to him in an instant especially because he showed the proficiency of a master he just needs to get his darkness in check motivating tara to get a move on however during aqua's story he gives her the extra task of making sure tara doesn't succumb to the darkness he showed during their exam and let's jump over to the ventus's side a dude in a knockoff darth vader outfit comes to bully the poor boy and tell him that tara's gonna leave him forever vengeance then rushes to see tara just as he transforms into a familiar-looking keyblade armor to begin his journey thus leading to ventus following after him resulting in ericus giving aqua one more job of bringing ventus home starting the story of birth by sleep [Music] as hinted by ericus the first three worlds our heroes visit are the worlds inhabited by the princesses of heart that we didn't go to in kingdom hearts 1 meaning worlds from sleeping beauty snow white and cinderella all three fight unburst with tara arriving first where he accidentally gets tricked by a disney villain besides the cinderella world and then fights back once he realizes he got duped ventus then shows up second besides cinderella where he's first and looks for tara while helping out with a side character from the movie and finally aqua arrives last to wrap up any loose ends the princesses worlds are noticeably guilty of just going through story beats of the worlds they're from though a twist on the formula makes them feel fresh since we're going through each world as three characters at different times often with focus on different characters it creates a story focused upon understanding within these three worlds the heroes have no knowledge of what each has done besides what disney characters tell them usually a villain such as maleficent portrays that information making them a bit of a faulty narrator though not completely lacking in truth as maleficent is the first one to imply xehanort is less than good to aqua which that part also confirms that xehanort taught maleficent about outside worlds and the seven princesses of hearts to set her up for kingdom hearts 1 which is why maleficent forces tara to steal the hearts of princess aurora don't worry ventus gets it back because of the information they have our heroes need to trust that each other are doing fine as aqua only meets up with ventus and tarot once each and terra never meets up with ventus during the three princesses worlds and even then aqua meets tara at the start of her journey and the end of his visits to the princess worlds while ventus and aqua are both near the end of their visits when they meet up they have literally no clue what tara's done other than what they're told and have to keep their trust in their friend right after the princess world tara goes to yensid's tower to seek guidance where he very briefly sees mickey use an item yen sid gave him called the starshard that allows him to travel to different worlds though it's not as precise as our hero's keyblade armors yen sid warns tara that it's really likely that the unversed the masked boy ventus mets and master xehanort are all connected though he's unsure how terra doesn't want to believe it's anything negative so we confront xehanort at the keyblade graveyard recognizable from the fight against lingering will in cage 2. xehanort admits to tara that he was the one that created venetis by removing the darkness from ventus hearts when he trained him not long before the start of the game xehanort trained ventus before ericus and claims he removed the darkness from ventus to save him from a horrible accident and then left him with ericus because of the guilt he felt xenort as well explains how the unversed are the product of venitus's rampant negative emotions and asks that tara assist in stopping the wrong he's brought into being it's clear as [ __ ] day to us xehanort is lying but there's little reason for tara to distrust his master's closest friend so he accepts the request agreeing to go to radiant garden when venetis should strike next meanwhile ventus meets up with venitus who tells him that the terror he knows is soon going to be long gone and challenges him to a keyblade duel one he can't win until mickey accidentally appears after leaving yen sid's tower allowing ventus more time before he needs to face venitas again which keep in mind ventus is still unaware that vanitas is a part of him after a quick introduction between ventus and mickey his starshard goes wack and sends both of them to separate parts of radiant garden ventus tries to find mickey again which results in him finding scrooge who's allowed to ignore the world order since he's filthy [ __ ] rich while chasing mickey ventus then ends up at the steps of ansem's castle where ansem's still human apprentices prevent him from entering so he just leaves to chase an unversed he saw as he's on his way out and shortly after that aqua shows up at the same spot looking for tara when she meets a young girl version of kyrie [ __ ] i didn't talk about this in the first part uh carrie is actually from radiant garden and ended up on destiny islands with amnesia after it was lost to darkness this was known in the first game moving on the unversed are attacking kairi since she's a princess of heart leading aqua and mickey to save her from the danger once she is saved and mickey introduces himself to aqua mickey warps away and aqua casts a spell on kairi that will make it so when she's in danger her light will be led to the light of another explaining why kyrie's heart ended up in sora carrie then walks away with the master of master harry then walks away with her grandma to not be seen in the game anymore and oh look aqua it's it's a it's a unversed she follows it to meet up with ventus and tara to fight one giant unversed with ventus and tara you do it in all three stories and you can think of it like the chaos four of this game except it's not total [ __ ] dog [ __ ] [Music] once they defeat the boss they agree how they make a good team invent his shares with his oni and oney-chan the tickets to disneyland scrooge gave him earlier followed not even 20 seconds later by them getting into a fight because tara and aqua think it's too dangerous to ventus to be away from home aqua thinks tara is being too reckless with darkness tara thinks aqua and the master have no trust in him and ventus thinks that aqua has allowed the rank of master to go to aqua's head that verbal disagreement leaves tara in worry and he walks away as he thinks to himself how xehanort is the only one he can still trust oh and hey what a little kawinkidink a funny guy named greg the human version of zigbar tells tara that he's holding xehanort hostage in the outer gardens to which tara says uh uh no way master xehanort is super strong he goes anyways just to prove him wrong and upon arriving he finds master xehanort tied up by brag and the following scene is almost entirely plagiarized from revenge of the sith with tara's anakin and xehanort being the guy that says dylan wins the fight by succumbing to darkness in the process taking one of greg's eyes and leaving a scar on his cheek after winning tara feels a strong regret over his use of darkness to win and fears that between that and his stealing of princess aurora's heart he can't return home anymore to console him xehanort tells tara that his use of darkness was like really badass that he can now become his pupil instead of that lame light lover ericuses even going so far as to call him master tara to convince him to join his side oh man this really is just revenge of the sith and of course because we know zayn or the bad guy we see a scene afterwards where he and brig have a casual conversation since they were in cahoots throughout the entire course of that kidnapping greg's pretty pissed about the damage he took and only excuses it as long as xehanort keeps up some part of a bargain with him that we'll talk about in the dream drop video xehanort also says that tara still has too much light within him meaning he couldn't have stolen any hearts implying that xehanort was behind the dresser twiddling his fingers to release princess aurora's hearts and tara is actually all gucci still now going to ventus's end he was off trying to chase terror when he had to stop to save this little boy yenzo from some unversed and then he met evan you can tell who these are in jesus christ this man is a villain no matter what the context this man just looks like a [ __ ] villain that's a villain design afterwards ventus finds tara after his fight with brig and begs to go with him but tara says no and that he knows he'll be there when he needs him since they are best friends and while ventus was talking to tara aqua had a fight with venitas with so little purpose i forgot about it really all it did was remind aqua to tell ventus to go home again i guess putting ventus in a bit of a sad slump since aqua and terror are chasing or achieving their dream while he's feeling left out oh but suddenly check out who appears it's lee and isa the human versions of axel and psyx lee has some funny childish fun with ventus declaring them friends at the end and telling ventus to keep him memorized which imprinted memories of ventus's face onto axel resulting in his positive fraternal attitude to roxas while the rest of the organization didn't give a [ __ ] about him [Music] anyway now we're at the second half of disney worlds consisting of disney town olympus neverland and deep space which is based on the sci-fi parts of lilo and stitch more than anything these four are fan service worlds picked because they have connections to later games that you can have set 10 years prior the stitch connection is loose since he was just a summon and in a few cut scenes from two but it's fine stitch is fun we get to see some fun things like mini banishing pete maleficent saving pete phil training a young hercules peter pan getting put in his place and stitched learning about friendship from tara the world selection at this point allows us as players sense of familiarity in the worlds our new characters visit all three of whom beginning a new arc during these worlds tara one of redemption aqua regaining her trust in terror inventis learning that he can one day stand as an equal to tara on his own and you might notice by now a lot of birth by sleep revolves around the actions of terra sometimes negative like the reaction to tara stealing aurora's hearts even if he didn't really while others are positive like when terrorists save zach strife from final fantasy vii when he's under the mind control of hades everyone in these worlds really like tara he's the hero of olympus teacher of friendship freer of tinkerbell based of the red pill everyone is keeping a positive memory of tara and reinforcing positive terror memories into aqua and ventus even if every moment they're together is filled with fighting and birth by sleep their time apart is making their friendship stronger aqua's renewed trust in both of her friends reaches an apex when venitas appears at the end of her disney visits for yet another battle resulting with both of them passing out for a bit while aqua's taking that nap a strange light guides tara to destiny islands where he contemplates the distance he feels with his friends here he discovers a young sora and riku which leads him to conclude that one of them was the light which brought him here sora plays a way like the dummy he is while riku actually comes to interact with tara noticing that he's not from around here in telling the story of a kid who left for good with implications that this kid might be someone we know riku looks up to that kid because he too wants to leave the islands so that he can find the strength to protect his friend namely sora that sweet innocence makes tara believe riku to have guided him here motivating him to perform a ritual making him capable of wielding a keyblade in your hand take this key so long as you have the makings then through this simple act of taking its wielder you shall one day be and you will find me friend no ocean will contain you then no more borders around or below or above so long as you champion the ones you love tara has now made it where riku will one day possess the capability to wield a keyblade once the time comes so let's update how keyblades work for a bit rather than one keyblade or even one keyblade from every realm there are a rare amount of them keyblade wielders go through what is called the bequeathing such as we see tara perform that makes them capable of one day using a keyblade they are not passing on their current keyblade or making them into wielders instantly just making it possible to have one someday when they are ready only keyblade masters or those that have the proficiency of a master like tara can perform the bequeathing if we want a quick line of succession xehanort and ericus were deemed masters by their master ericus bequeathed teren aqua with presumably xehanort bequeathing ventus before he split him with venetis tara bequeathed riku which 10 years later moved to sora because riku did not show the worthiness of a keyblade and then the bit of a stretch one kyrie accidentally touched aqua's keyblade earlier and because their hearts connected kairi gained the power to one day wield a keyblade so technically we can even say that sora is still the keyblade's chosen one if we want since everyone else was chosen by people i am not exactly a big fan of this addition to keyblade lore though there is not a single bit of it that goes against prior lore from trusted narrators so i'm not going to say it's bad writing just not the direction i entirely agree with besides one really egregious thing in dream drop you know what i'm talking about i've come to accept all of this so let's move on tara tells riku to keep everything they've talked about a secret and finds the inspiration to again fight for his friends which he goes to do immediately after zainar warns tara that ericus is about to kill ventus hey yo yo yo let's back up juventus for a bit back in neverland ventus accidentally found mickey starshard which warped him immediately to yensid's tower where he met with the sorcerer donald and goofy they've worried about the whereabouts of mickey who they discern fell at the keyblade graveyard thanks to his starshard once ventus arrives to save him it's shown that xehanort is the one who struck him down doing such to attract ventus so he can tell him the truth benitus is the darkness within him and xehanort released it not to save ventus but so he can force a being of pure light and another of pure darkness to clash and form the keyblade in this case spelt with the greek letter chi and pronounced ki because nomura really thought he was funny with this one xehanort tells ventus that he would become the most powerful keyblade wielder if he made it but ericus was too afraid of him doing this resulting in zaynart sending ventus to confront ericus to learn the truth from him who then tells ventus that a few years ago xehanort told his friend he wanted to create the keyblade so that he could beget a new keyblade war recreate an almost unknown event that caused darkness to swallow the worlds and rebirth the new ones known today xehanort wants to learn how this could be and force a hard reset so that he can see light come from darkness eric has tried to stop him but failed earning his scar from xehanort in the process he made up a few years later when he brought ventus to ericus but ericus also knew he couldn't let ventus leave while xehanort needed him to not leave until he was strong enough to equal venetus power in his efforts to stop xehanort's plan from unfolding erica strikes at ventus catching us back up with tara's story with so much disillusionment in his master placed into him by xehanort hurting his brother was the final nail that pushed tara to accept darkness to save ventus tara throws ventis away in a portal while he prepares to face the man he saw as a father using the power he taught him never to touch ending with terror regretting how he accepted darkness to fight his master and ericus apologizing for failing as one raising his keyblade against two of his pupils was the worst thing he believes he could have done falling into the arms of terra after master xehanort strikes the killing blow into his best friend's back forcing terra to realize that xehanort is evil and swears to strike him down a battle which zaynard exclaims must happen at the keyblade graveyard as he destroys the land of departure [Music] now during all of that let's go check in with aqua who found her way to destiny island from the same light tara followed which means she also meets riku and sora there who are very sweet best friends to each other aqua sees that tara bequeathed riku the power of a keyblade and requests that sora help riku if he ever falls to darkness it's really awkward these guys are like five she thought of bequeathing sora yet abstained because she worries two keyblades might lead to a rift in their friendship jensen guides her to his tower on her way off of destiny islands to inform her that tara and zayn or it struck air kiss down and that she needs to go to the keyblade graveyard to find them while vanitas does the same to ventus on destiny islands not that long after aqua left at this point ventus also regains all of his memories of his time with xehanort that have already gone over terra ventus and aqua all are going to meet up at the keyblade graveyard to prevent xehanort's plan and fight venetus the three of them meet up at the center of the graveyard where the story catches up to the kingdom hearts 2 secret ending here tara admits that aqua and the master were right to watch over him he regrets allowing zaynar to fool him and plans to kill xehanort despite knowing that his longing for revenge is fueling the darkness within with ventus then showing out to admit his fear of creating the keyblade with venitus and what's kind of nice here is that aqua and tara don't even know what that is but they promise ventus that they're going to help him and always stay by his side it's touching at this scene how the three of them realize each have gone through a lot and have done some wrongs yet they are ready to put that past themselves because they know that deep down the three all want what they think best for themselves terra ventus and aqua have rekindled their friendship just in time to face xehanort and venitas countless keyblade wielders gave up their lives all in search of one ultimate key and it will soon belong to me keyblade an in-game recreation of the cage ii secret ending starts and plays through to where ventus is frozen on the floor with aqua where she'll face brag while tara begins a battle against venitus and xehanort greg plans to make sure aqua and ventus fall so that terra is more likely to succumb to darkness though all he really accomplishes is holding off aqua long enough for venitas to escape the fight with tara to knock her out watching venitus almost kill aqua makes ventus's heart burn with enough light to unfreeze him resulting in a fight between the two equal halves of light and darkness and after that fight's done venetis explains what we've already known of the unversed absorbing all of them back into himself you know so they're not in all the games after this unmasks himself to show that his face looks like sora for a reason that should be clear by the end of the video fusing his body in the heat of the moment with ventus's in hopes of creating the keyblade although the keyblade is not finished yet within ventus's whole person ventus is fighting back against venitus within their hearts preventing the perfect unification and during that battle aqua and are barely making it in time mickey fight a unified ventus externally that venitus has dominance over both fights trying to stop the keyblade from getting up to zaynord's hand and give ventus his heart again i absolutely adore the synchronous way this battle plays out and i actually feel like aqua and ventus make a great team [Music] juventus defeat of venitus destroys the keyblade causing an explosion that knocks out ventus and aqua in the lanes between finding themselves at yensid's tower where mickey used the last of his strength to take them for care aqua wakes up to learn that tara is missing and ventus's heart itself slumbers looking for a light to guide him back which might be soon or it might be after kingdom hearts 3 comes out aqua vows to keep him safe for as long as she needs to taking ventus back to their old home after he subconsciously guides them there with his keyblade the land of departure holds a really big secret that ericus taught to aqua after she became a keyblade master one that only the true successor of a master knows which means xehanort is not privy to this information akko places ventus onto the throne of the castle and with ericus's keyblade transforms it into a new shape changing the throne room into the chamber of waking in the entire castle into castle oblivion connecting birth by sleep to chain of memories and 3-5-8 [Music] now let's return to tara after venitus leaves to face ventus xenor taunts tara into channeling more of his darkness and shows that his desire for the keyblade is so that he can use it to unlock kingdom hearts placing kingdom hearts above the two for their battle as he taunts him to succumb to the darkness despite knowing it's wrong he does as such anyways you'll pay zeonor was my master no my father eric is not enough for you leave my friends alone yes boy tara has done wrongs he regrets deeply brought darkness to helpless worlds allowed the death of his master and danger to come to his friends killing zainor is the only way he can see to right these wrongs however defeating the old man master xehanort was all part of his plan right as ventus and venitus forged the keyblade xehanort stabs himself with his keyblade to release his heart and place it into tara's younger body so he may live longer an act he could only achieve with tara's acceptance of darkness in a swift last-ditch effort to save himself tara dawns his keyblade armor but it wasn't fast enough the armor falls off to reveal master xehanort has taken tara's body turning into the young xehanort we recognize from the flashbacks in kh2 xehanort has won the fight with tara this heart belongs again to darkness all worlds begin in darkness and also end in the end every heart returns to the darkness once it came or so he thought well xehanort has both tara's body and heart he has failed to capture his mind his raw anger and lingering will terra's mind reforms his keyboard armor with one desire save his friends by killing xehanort to right his wrongs we the player now control the unhinged armor that we fought in kingdom hearts 2 spawning one of the most raw mandatory fights in the series tara xehanort is ridiculously powerful and can't be hit by many moves other than the base 3 hit combo or counters this is an endurance match for how long lingering will can stop zayn or until the keyblade is destroyed by ventus and aqua terror's story ends with the summoned kingdom hearts receding into the sky tara xehanort being taken into the explosion of the keyblade and the lingering will promising to one day set things right aqua then one day i will set this right we then return to aqua who after leaving ventus in castle oblivion finds who she thinks is tara on the ground in radiant garden she attempts to reach him but tara and zaynord's memories are conflicting with each other too much tara xehanort doesn't know who he is part of him wants to kill aqua while the other knows that she is a friend xehanort takes hold for one last fight against master aqua playing anson the seeker of darkness's theme signifying his transformation into who he is about to become as well summoning his stand owner of a lonely heart aqua and the remnants of tara's heart use the power of light to give terror dominance once again with only a short period in power tara uses that time to send his body and both of their hearts into the realm of darkness aqua dives in after him to prevent this fate but she has to choose either herself or him of course choosing tara sending her keyblade armor with his body to save him and leaving herself in the realm of darkness apologizing to ventus since she'll take a bit longer to wake him up on the surface xehanort is awoken by ansem the wise and his apprentices including bragg where it's found that xehanort has full amnesia besides his name which he claims as xehanort instead of tara setting himself up as an apprentice of ansem to study hearts and darkness further we as well see one last scene with soren riku where ventus's heart finds light within soras and slumbers there for the games taking place afterwards at the light which connected juventus at the beginning of the game was sora's recently born heart all of this ending birth by sleep with terra as an empty husk of armor xehanort as an apprentice to ansem aqua in the realm of darkness inventis deep in slumber his body at the chamber of waking and his heart within sora now before we move on to as little as there is to say about coded i want to go over many pieces that only become clear with both games starting with ventus and roxas's connection as we learned roxas is not a normal nobody he lacked memories of sora and doesn't have his appearance either now when sora released his and kyrie's hearts at hollow bastion ventus's was also inside of him which made the appearance of ventus bleed onto sora's nobody ventus's time in sora as well explains the dual keyblades each heart can normally only have one keyblade when sora uses two he's using both his own keyblade that chose him and the one locked to ventus's heart roxas for most of 358 used sora's keyblade while shion used ventus's through her connection to roxas and the period of time when shion couldn't use ventus's keyblade was caused by her distance from roxas because of his coma and her going off by herself right afterwards then upon xion's demise roxas gained back the use of sora and ventus's keyblades which turned into oathkeeper and oblivion because of sora's memories messing with him on a similar note vanitas face morphed into soros because of the part of sora that completed ventus and then i know i never talked much about unversed and that's because they're really lame now their name is meant to signify how they're not well versed in life as they only have one negative emotion instead of a wide array of them they aren't nearly as distinct from the heartless as the nobodies which makes it pretty clear that their reason for existing is because they couldn't use heartless remember from part one the emblem heartless didn't exist until after ansem's research which means that by the time of birth by sleep they'd only have a few designs they can use which really isn't that interesting for a whole game and speaking of ansem let's talk about him tara xehanort and xemnas as we now know the apprentice xehanort we knew previously was actually one body with two hearts within teras and xehanorts with no memories outside of his name which effectively makes him a new person now when xehanort turned himself into ansem and xemnas he's done something interesting ansem is the heartless of zaynard's heart as it's the one that dominated their persona while xemnas is closer to tara's nobody since it was without a doubt his body both of them retain memories of their time as ants from the wise's apprentice while xemnas has been slowly gaining and mixing memories of both xehanort and terra through his use of the chamber of repose leaving aqua's armor in there to remember her and wanting to find the chamber of waking in castle oblivion because he's learned that ventus slumbers there and now one last term we want to update kingdom hearts everyone so far has not known what kingdom hearts is and i'm going to be honest in the full series we still don't really know what it is however summoning it has also changed in kingdom hearts 1 anson thought he could create kingdom hearts by sending worlds to darkness in kingdom hearts 2 xemnas thought he could create kingdom hearts by fusing hearts together now in birth by sleep xehanort believes that having light and darkness fight will create the keyblade which will allow him to attain kingdom hearts as we have already seen it didn't work all that well and i'm gonna leave it just as that until the dream drop distance video last thing before we get to coded so in this disney final fantasy crossover there might be something you've noticed as really missing and that's final fantasy the only two characters to appear are mughals with some cute hoods in 358 and zack moogles act just as shops like they do in every cage game and zack is kinda clearly here to remind psp owners hey you should buy final fantasy vii crisis core and yeah i do really miss the ff characters but they would have not fit into the covert story of 358 and writers have said in interviews that they decided against having young ff characters in bbs during development luckily themes of final fantasy are still rampant in the games obviously light and darkness spell and item names but a fun one is in 358 every member of organization 13 is based upon a pre-existing final fantasy class zigbar is a ranger larkscene a ninja zoltan a dragoon psychic berserker demek's either a dancer or a bard and so on it's the main way that sets the organization apart in all their appearances you can actually play as all of them in 358's multiplayer mode but y'all can figure out how to do that yourselves i wasn't doing it for this video [Music] alright let's talk about kingdom hearts coded as i said earlier coded was a mobile phone game exclusive japan it was released episodically originally and was meant to be an unimportant phone game which by all rights everything but the final chapter is unimportant and even then i have trouble calling it that important since the slightest story significance existed squaring inside the team which made 358 port the phone game to ds and that version was released globally as recoded it is by all means a passable game with interesting parts borrowed from birth by sleep 358 in final fantasy 10 but that doesn't help its case in a story retrospective when the story does nothing which in the end makes the game itself less engaging to play through than any other entries so kinda sorta luckily the game has also been turned into a cutscene viewer in the new collection like 358 was and it has the opposite issue as that one both movie versions are roughly three hours for 358 it feels as though they left out a lot while with coded it feels like they really tried to stretch it i'm gonna stop dancing around the subject let's zoom right through what happens basically jiminy wants to figure out why his cage one journal only said to thank namine when cage 2 started to figure it out mickey asked chip and dale to digitize the journal which in turn shows a bunch of bugs have screwed up the journal so mickey creates a data version of sora to defeat those bugs and restore the journal mickey donald goofy and jiminy all get stuck in the journal around the middle where we also meet a personified version of the journal taking the form of riku and then we see that maleficent and pete also get themselves trapped in the digitized journal where they want to take it over and maybe bring digital heartless out like the mcp did in cage 2. guys i made way through the game at this point after restoring the cage one part of the journal data sort of sacrifices himself to get pete maleficent mickey donald and goofy out of the journal leading maleficent to realize hey pete let's find this book that won't be important until kingdom hearts 3 and then mickey's gang on the outside notices that there's an extra chapter in the book about chain of memories so they make a new dinosaur and send him to data castle oblivion where data roxas and dad and nominee both tell them that the entire point of this journey was to find out if a real sora is ready to save the seven people undergoing the most hurts by testing a data version of him those seven being tara ventus aqua namine axel roxas and a girl no one can name the data nominee deems this data sora ready to face the challenges of rescuing all seven of them miki then goes to tell yen sid about this little side adventure where they realize that if xehanort's nobody and heartless both perished then the real zaynart should come back with this worry mickey writes his letter to soren riku to make them aware of their purpose in kingdom hearts 3. every plot beat of coded is repeated in dream drop distance but better the only thing you're truly actually missing out on is maleficent mentioning the book and some character interaction and even then most of the cast aren't the real characters and if you're fiending for donald and goofy interactions with mickey have i got some [ __ ] to show you [Music] now with all of this gone through what have these three games accomplished first they've created both a new villain and comrades we want to save as well as expand on two that had many mysteries surrounding them we also had the first titles that had someone other than sora as the main protagonist which through them gave sora and riku a purpose in kingdom hearts 3. this was not the end of any journey like last time but only the beginning come back in part 4 where i discuss kingdom hearts dream drop distance and 0.2 a fragmentary passage the prologue to kingdom hearts 3. [Music] the three titles from the 2007 kingdom hearts project shook up the series drastically characters besides sora took the spotlight chain of memories became important multiple innocents need a saving and an old villain might have come back a whole lot was set up by those three games so it's time for kingdom hearts 3 right wrong one more full-length game was needed to kick-start kingdom hearts 3 which ended up as kingdom hearts dream drop by the distance a title that namora partially came up with before writing the plot because oh look it's on the nintendo d of the threes though at the very least he at least recognizes this time that the title makes no sense in proper english now if we're going to rank the game by plot significance then this is by far the most important sense too especially is the only one starring sora besides one and two i'm discarding chain of memories since he doesn't remember it and coded because it was a data sora but i think i'm getting ahead of myself dream drop distance story wise serves the purpose of reawakening every plot point from the previous games to guide the motives of the heroes and villains every single game is synthesized here in some form to create the story of kingdom hearts 3. and to clarify i do not mean hey we'll catch you up on anything you missed to prep you for kh3 i mean tetsuya namura personally walks into your house to spit on you for skipping any of his games since everyone was making fun of kingdom hearts for having a hard to follow plot the writing team decided to double down and make 3d nigh impossible to follow if you skipped anything but coded which at the time was problematic for two reasons first each game was still on different systems with no compilations in sight you could do one two and chain on ps2 but you also needed a psp for birth by sleep a ds for code in 358 and now a 3ds for dreamdrop plus maybe you're a [ __ ] dumbass like me that expected kh3 to drop on ps3 in the second issue the choice of when the game released on 3ds i'm not sure how many of y'all remember this but the 3ds had an awful first year its launch included n64 remakes a short monkey ball game a butchered version of street fighter 4 bust a move and nintendogs the last of which is notable for today's topic that was pretty much it until mario kart 7 and 3d land came out nine months after the system's initial release so the 3ds really needed to prove itself in 2012 and dream drop distance was one of the big ticket games meant to do so cool for kingdom hearts fans like me but difficult for disgruntled 3ds owners because of the purposefully self-referential narrative you'll understand this as we go on but this is not the same as skipping chain of memories before too if you skip birth by sleeper 358 dreamdrop's story is mostly gibberish which again is not much of an issue today where it's sold with the rest of the sets but it's important to have in mind for some of the choices dream drop takes in the narrative as well as understanding the polarizing opinion cage fans have toward the entry dream drop distance is a direct follow to kingdom hearts 2 where sora and riku take their mark of mastery exam as requested in mickey's letter that letter is explained by the past three games that i've already talked about for over an hour which is why i'm not gonna let this video be as long so let's dive into kingdom hearts dream drop distance hey is this how you wanted it xehanort you want to fill me in i am hey do you remember now or wait did you never lose your memory [Music] that's not my name i'm not zeon art [Music] [Applause] my name is ansem dream drop actually has two fake out intros the one you just saw with zayn orton break and then heart cut to a scene of sword and riku on the island talking about leaving on a raft but unlike in cage one they actually get on the raft hold it for one minute before ursula wrecks their ship for an awkwardly placed tutorial fight that defaults to the wrong [ __ ] camera controls thus sending them both to separate parts of traverse town which as we all know is not the story of cage one meaning that this is not a flashback let's take off the mask yen sid has actually sent sorbet and richard to the sleeping worlds for their mark of mastery examination despite defeating anthem and xemnas the two of them are not truly masters which yen sid needs them to be before fighting zeonor sora initially thinks the test is a waste of time because of what he's already approved while riku feels that the darkness still has a hold over him and this test is what he needs sora doesn't want to disappoint his boyfriend since they just got out of that rough patch so he accepts the test now recap remember how tara and aqua fought some darkness balls and had that duel with each other for their mark of mastery well that was specifically the exam which master ericus chose for them see every keyblade master has their own mlm exam and yen sids is the tiniest bit different instead of badminton and a quick fencing match sora and riku have to unlock the seven sleeping keyholes to reawaken the seven wakeless worlds worlds the word plunged into darkness during the events preceding kh-1 but did not come back after defeating hansom so the test lasts the whole game this time now to awaken the sleeping rules that actually meant that sore and riku had to go to sleep themselves which is why they look younger and lack abilities from cage too as well since these worlds are asleep sora and rico are not interacting with physical beings rather these are the dream versions of those people which the worlds remember for example while you meet mickey tron and gemini in some worlds they aren't the real versions of them rather the constructions which the worlds have dreamt up the world is recalling one of their visits and portraying them to sore and riku hence why these people treat sore and riku as complete strangers speaking of strange dream drop has few returning worlds as these worlds slumbered since before kh1 sora and riku never had a chance to visit them the only slumbering world they had previously visited is traverse town which takes upon a different role in dream drop as i mentioned quickly during cage 1 traverse town is where survivors go once the world is overcome by darkness meaning it only needs to exist when darkness has taken too much of the land hence trevor's town does not currently exist and is currently in slumber making it the first world in the game where sora and riku get new duds soras with a funny x on him and riku with this cool little twisty hearts they're also both still younger which is meant to represent how they both cast away their knowledge of their time with the keyblade thus reverting to their forms before the keyblade additionally yenset explains that traveling through time can only happen if a powerful sorcerer sends them back to a time they were already at which for sora and riku had to be right before destiny islands went to rest thus why they are young i also swear there was an interview where nomura said he wanted sword to look younger because it's a more iconic look but i can't for the life of me find that interview and uh why would that be the case if he's got the big ol x on him anyways i understand the idea but some gameplay mechanics i'll get to later battle that narrative a tad upon their arrival in traverse town soro and riku make contact with characters from another memorial produced game the world ends with you nekku meets sora while joshua meets riku i haven't played toei but my brother said they're a lot less edgy here than in the original game riku can't seem to find sora but joshua explains that there can exist two versions of a world on a separate plane from each other and implies swords on the other side joshua's explanation is also meant to be somewhat faulty so please just accept this for now it'll be explained way better at the end of the game oh sudden thing my friend who peer reviewed the script also said this is a tuoi reference so again forgive my lack of knowledge narratively this is the case so that riku and sora can exist in separate realities of each world perhaps interacting with the same characters that have no knowledge of the other hero however because of portals joshua explains that the two worlds are connected and have an effect on each other so you gotta beat the stage as both characters to seal the keyhole and i think now is a good time to bring up some of dreamdrop's gameplay choices i know i've meant this as a story retrospective so far but drops gameplay decisions actually have a heavy weight upon the story first let's talk about our new partner characters for this journey the dream eaters a little bit after sora meets neku he introduces him to these funny little creatures there are two types the spirits that help sora and rico on their journey and the nightmares which act as the main enemies throughout it the nightmares plant bad dreams into the worlds and people while the spirits vanquish the nightmares or in other words they eat the bad dreams it also introduces a pokemon or shinmagame tensei-like system where you fight the same monsters you have in your party i think they're a neat way to replace your party members and the heartless in one go as donald and goofy don't make sense as your partners here while the heartless and nobodies shouldn't be able to get into the slumbering worlds i don't like dream meters as much as d and g or the heartless and nobodies but by god are they a step up from no partners and the unversed in birth by sleep it made traversing some of those worlds feel lonely in the universe they're just so heartless light i do also have some complaints about how abilities and command development stem from dream raiders but it's a a bit outside the topic of today and b i used a new game plus save from my brother because he got really into dream eaters and that's the one thing you can carry over thanks anakie well the dream leaders are here throughout the entire game as your partner and villain they're not super integral to the story there's one very major plot point near the end but we're not about to learn about the origin of the dream eaters not in dream drop here's when anyways funny 3ds stuff starts to leak in the main reason for the dream readers isn't the story explanation that i just laid out but because nomura really liked nintendogs plus cats as in nomura had the thought while playing nintendogs oh gee and it should be cool my dogs could fight someone else's dogs so yeah our partners in the general story explains the dream part of the title pretty well while sora and rico experiencing separate planes explains the distance part good enough it gets a bit better later so let's talk drop for a second now worth by sleep had a system like sonic adventure 1 where you picked your story and you stuck with that character on that save you didn't share anything between the three characters reverse rebirth also worked that way in chain of memories but riku's gameplay related growth in that game is negligible so who cares dream drop has you play through the two stories in the same save file where you can switch at any time with a shared inventory and dream meters with a few exclusive items for each but the dream drop team put in a little spin where you have to watch this meter down here the moment this meter falls to zero you automatically swap to the other character it's meant to keep you on your toes but it serves no story purpose that's not already portrayed well enough thankfully one of the more plentiful items in the game is a drop me knot that restores the drop gauge so if you're ever low on meter just go ahead and use one or two between battles and as a warning you drop back exactly where you were last time with the sole exception of boss fights that restart completely so i'd recommend finishing a world before dropping because scenarios like this get way too [ __ ] tense [Music] last gameplay stuff to go over is what the 3d did to show off the depth offered by the 3ds screen dreamdrop added both the dive mode and slow motion dives are essentially this game's replacement for gummy ships since they're traversing through dreams instead of real worlds they don't need to go through space dives looked kind of cool on 3ds but now they're just kind of normal looking i mean they're more fun than kh1's gummies but not as good as twos flow motion on the other hand is meant as an improvement of sore and riku's mobility but i recall a magazine interview from years ago stating that three depth inspired it so i'll mention it now slow motion lets soren riku do some extreme jumping gliding grinding and parkour type [ __ ] early in the game that adds to the circus aesthetic prevalent in many of the worlds as is [ __ ] balloon no early spell in any kh game is as busted as this [ __ ] don't know what to equip [ __ ] balloon don't know what job you want balloon salesman don't want to knock someone up just cast balloon [Music] back to the story sora and riku meet more of the world as with you cast to find that some of them are in sora's traverse town while others are in riku's with a black-coated man revealing his face to riku after the boss of the world showing a new but perhaps familiar face leaving hints that the mark of mastery exam is not going as it should his little hint is the last mystery we need before we start the first set of disney worlds in dream drop distance the first set of disney worlds all have some connection as a missing world from the previous titles the grid based on tron legacy is the original missing program of tron as space paranoids from kingdom hearts ii was a copy of the tron data that ants from the wise found and put into radiant garden chrysler's paradise is the rest of pinocchio's world that we never saw in kh1 since we know jiminy stayed with sora after killing ansem and we only ever saw gepetto and pinoc waiting in traverse town after kh1 then we've got le cite de clochas based on hunchback of notre dame i'll be honest it doesn't really have a connection to previous stories it's in dream drop because it's a less popular disney movie that the osaka team wanted to add and it fits the circus aesthetic for the sake of making my previous argument stick i'm going to go ahead and connect it to the italian cage one pre-order bonus known as the scepter in the kingdom where sora and riku went on a non-canon adventure with quasimodo and also went to a sword in the stone world is this an awful argument tell me in the comments below maybe i'll hide it if i don't like your answer enough the actual disney parts of the stories has a slightly different focus between sora and riku's perspectives sora being the lighthearted boy he is focuses far more on understanding a certain character's motivations what formed their hearts into the way it is quasimodo was shaped by his isolation and gargoyle friends clue was programmed to change and pinocchio was created by the blue fairy with jiminy guiding him soros sees who and what makes these hearts who they are with clue and pinocchio additionally standing in for nobodies as fake beings that grew a heart then on riku's side it's more about finding the source of darkness and getting rid of it riku chases after frollo cgi jeff bridges and monster's tummy ache in a way that sora did not as someone who had darkness within him before he wants to vanquish it as soon as possible these two conflicts are made more clear by the reappearance of the young man with white hair throughout the worlds in both sora and riku's journeys when he shows up in sora's story he has xemnas with them while in riku's ansem joins them perhaps because this is a world of dreams but no actually they're genuine and there's an explanation at the end ansem of course wants riku to accept darkness again well xemnas yet again poses questions to sora of what constitutes a genuine heart and person questioning the legitimacy of pinocchio tron roxas and even sora himself implying that the memories and friends that form a heart could happen within a nobody as we had seen in 3-5-8 backhandedly dissing sora by stating he isn't much different from a nobody himself [Music] after those worlds sauron riku returned to traverse town again to find that the toei gang is still stuck in traverse town they're at least back with their game partners but they still have to win the reaper's game to get home again i have not played chloe i just know the basics of the story because my brother won't shut up about it for 15 years here a dream eater is causing havoc that snr gotta stop additionally through the mismatched timers on the toei character's hands joshua theorizes the worlds are not parallel but completely separate from each other if the worlds were parallel to each other they would run at the same flow of time since they don't joshua theorizes that the two worlds are imagined by two different beings anyway soren riku chased the dream meter out of traverse town through teamwork in a difficult boss rush starting up the second act of the game the second set only has two more worlds these two worlds go through the past of some of mickey's adventures one following fantasia and another following the direct-to-video film mickey donald goofy the three musketeers these two worlds offer a fun glimpse into mickey's training years before becoming a king and also slightly implying that he married into royalty i think or maybe he and minnie both come from royal families i don't know these worlds are just kind of good disney fun with some character building for mickey donald and goofy during fantasia however our white-haired boy shows back up in both visits telling sora that he's not part of the task to go figure and letting riku know that him learning to control the darkness has made him useless to his goals thus bringing to light an important aspect of dreamdrop's story this is riku's journey from the start 3d was going to have riku as the only playable character but square had many requests to play a sword again since it had been a while so they threw him in too it's why at the start riku agreed to take the test immediately while sora hesitated sora had already found light in the past few adventures while riku still had darkness inside him this mark of mastery is him going through the final steps to accept and wield the darkness not only wield darkness but wield it to protect the light a use that ansem tara and no one else could accomplish riku succumbed to darkness blocking his chance to use the keyblade and this journey is how he reclaims and accepts his power intermittently during the boys adventures we get a glimpse of the real awakened reality between worlds there we have a side plot where axel now lee and most of ansem the wise's apprentice reappear in radiant garden as humans since their nobodies were destroyed and their hearts freed which should account for numbers 1 through 8 of the organization but xehanort breg and iza are all missing prompting lee to go on his own mission to find them and an internal desire to bring back roxas then on mickey's side of things maleficent and pete kidnap minnie mouse so mickey doll and goofy have to go save her maleficent and pete beg mickey to make code important in exchange for minnie's life but just in the nick of time lee shows up to let us know that skipping coded is a-okay sending maleficent and pete off to kh3 to do nothing of importance lee goes back with donald goofy and mickey to make an unknown request to yen sid where he additionally tells that gang that everyone from the organization is definitely human again likely including master xehanort a worrisome issue since yen sid can't currently locate soren riku leading lee to train in the hyperbolic time chamber with merlin while mickey goes out looking for the two of them who happen to have landed that wait isn't this [Music] since soren riku unlocked all seven sleeping keyholes they should have gone back to jensen's tower but instead they ended up in the world that never was which i will clarify now is not a dream world but the real one as it exists between light and darkness it can reform when needed a fact explained in an interview so it's reasonable not to know that since sore and riku still look young this means they're still asleep despite existing in the real world anyway this is when dream drop story becomes infamously convoluted act three is a make or break moment for some people the moment sora arrives zigbar shows himself back to life to sora revealing that he and the other villains could hijack sora's mark of mastery before it even started going back after the fight with ursula there's like two seconds when you see a man in a robe that was actually the version of ansem that we saw at the beginning of kh1 as you may recall apprentice xehanort split himself in two between birth by sleeping kingdom hearts 1. the body became xemnas while the heart became ansem meaning that until riku gave his body to ansem he had no body and just lived his days on destiny island as a robe and since yen sid was capable of sending sora and riku back to a point they existed before they had a keyblade xehanort who's just as powerful could send a version of himself to a point where he also existed thus allowing the villains to follow and guide sora during his whole journey and send versions of xehanort from different points of time to other points of time thus allowing the villains to follow and guide sora during this whole journey and allowing time travel on xehanort's end additionally implying that xehanort had this planned for years in fact the villains are even the ones who put the new outfit on sora which allowed them to track him because of the sigil on his chest which is why they could bring the still sleeping sora into the real world zigbar then places him into a new sleep to talk to the white-haired boy yet again at destiny islands here it's shown that ansem set the white-haired boy on his journey and then he tells sora some wack-ass [ __ ] about how important his first journey was to shaping him which is why he relived it in his memories the dead escape and even his dreams then waking up at his maximum confusion sora races through the city that never was with uncertainty on if he's awake or asleep switching between the dream outfit and his looking kingdom hearts too as he runs through he has visions of those deep in his heart including namine shion ventus aqua terra and even roxas people that shaped what his heart is today so he then wakes up to learn he was put into a sleep within his sleep by zigbar in his deepest sleep possible he had seen the people deepest within his heart even parts he was unaware of such as ventus and tara now awakened xemnas shows up to confirm that nobody's can in fact grow a heart if they find a sense of self over time with memories and interactions towards others an idea that might seem somewhat crazy but given the entire narrative 358 i think it's reasonable to understand most nobodies in organization 13 still retain their memories and thus those took the place of their hearts while others such as roxas xi'an and even xemnas lacked as much as them thus reforming somewhat of their own hearts to take its place xemnas and xehanort hoped that this would not be the case because they needed empty husks for this reason xemnas and xehanort formed the organization for a specific reason round up a bunch of empty husks hook them up to kingdom hearts then fill them all with the exact same heart and mind translation they were going to turn all the members into xehanort make more xehanorts you tricked your friends to but you aren't you scared of just turning into someone else me i'm already half xehanort he said it he said it yes jose north has a new organization 13 which is planned to consist of 13 xehanorts sharing the same hearts while this in the series is not named we in the fanbase refer to it as getting norded or to become a xehanort for example at the end of birth by sleep tara got norted in kingdom hearts 1 ansem tried to north riku and now xehanort and the zea gang is trying to nord enough people for 13 darknesses one person they want to north is sora a difficult thing to do because of a little something something come on one last time everyone my friends his final fight in the game against xemnas representing stories struggle to prove that anyone can have a heart even if they grow one in an odd manner [Music] while sora wins said fight he wore himself down too much letting the white-haired boy kidnap sora and confirm who he is a time traveling young version of xehanort sora's campaign ends with his heart entering a deep slumber and his body being stolen by the organization somewhat of a bad ending where am i now so it's a good thing riku still has a lot left riku races through the castle that never was to find a sleeping sora at the top and a black robe nightmare that has guarded sora after beating him ansem the seeker of darkness shows up to tell riku that sora is completely asleep at this point with darkness taking hold of sora's dreams additionally riku isn't still in the new outfit because he's asleep but rather the entire game he has been inside of sora's dream as a dream eater thus explaining the dream eater emblem on his back then ansem does what you'd expect and absorbs riku into darkness which due to being in cytosaur's dream covered by darkness means that riku is going towards darkness within darkness so i get it now there's no point in trying to hold the darkness back you know when i look at you there's this memory that flashes back a secret i said i'd keep when i was little [Music] the main reason i kept dreaming about seeing the outside world was because of him consume the darkness return it to light you can try [Music] riki decides that no matter what he does ansem will always be within his heart he can't hold the darkness back so instead he will consume the darkness and return it to the light that way he can save sora and go back to the real world with him riku is not trying to kill ansem in this battle he hasn't been able to stop ansem before instead riku is making it clear that as part of his heart ansem is part of the light a light pretty hard to make him a part of because the second phase requires a precise loadout that deals with his powerful health disseminating attacks [Music] once defeated though riku raises his keyblade towards ansem's stand perhaps to turn that manifested darkness back into the light or perhaps something bigger with anthem defeated riku has made it out of sora's dream but since sora still sleeps riku retains his dream meter powers and sets off to the top of the castle to save him here the young xehanort explains that they never really wanted sora their first option was riku who became too immune to darkness because he already got his booster shot while their second option was roxas who became too self-aware for the job however with sora in their grasp all 13 vessels of xehanort have made it most of them cloaked but we do see zigbar xemnas ansem young xehanort sora and master xehanort accounting for six of the members what happened was that ansem tasked young xehanort with gathering every version of himself to this point using time travel to force all 13 xehanorts to come into being [Music] right before master xehanort arrives it's the mickey cast stop which stops most of the room however young xehanort possesses a keyblade with the power of time allowing him to fight riku beating him doesn't save the day however because every xehanort still appears so it's time for a big ol revelation moment master xehanort now explains that his plan of having one pure light and one pure darkness battling birth by sleep was a poorly done plan he made in his eagerness the only true way to form the keyblade and summon kingdom hearts is to force 13 darknesses and seven lights to clash xehanort and maleficent gathered the seven pure hearts together in kh1 for this plan as well as planned organization 13 for his 13 darknesses but neither of those plans went very well which is why he has the contingency plan of the new organization 13 and plans for mickey to ready seven new lights this plan of xehanort's will summon the actual real kingdom hearts if successful a problem at this point since the only guardians mickey has at this moment is himself and riku with haste xehanort blasts at sword and nordom while ansem and zemnes take down riku and mickey leaving no way for them to win [Music] axel [Music] axel please the name's lee got it memorized lee shows up the last minute to save sora causing isaac to reveal himself as a xehanort but was still a dire looking three against 12 fight donald and goofy show up to save everyone else right as the xehanort's apparent time limit runs out as they disappear xehanort exclaims that the gathering of the 20 pieces will happen soon in kingdom hearts 3. slightly true because it will happen there but also wrong because it took 7 more years back at yensid's tower sora and riku have returned to their real states despite this sora still sleeps and riku needs to wake him up by diving in riku should have what is known as the power of waking meaning he is the only one that could do as such if he can he should pass his test within sora's heart riku finds one last nightmare the nightmare of ventus's armor the sort of final boss of dream drop distance i mean he's not too hard besides a gimmick point at the end i usually think of it as more of an epilogue battle since it lacks the weight of the last three xemnas is sora's final boss ansem is riku's and young xehanort is the real final boss which fits the narrative better with how those three showed up during the disney worlds either way after defeating said nightmare riku finds himself in the deepest part of sora's heart where he finds roxas xion and ventus the three ask him questions needed to wake up sora and prove himself as having the power of waking with then a data version of ansem the wise showing up to give riku information that could help him save the people and some wronged riku is about to leave in a success but ansem has one last wise question young man i do not believe you ever told me your name [Music] it's riku [Applause] [Music] this final line here portrays the sense of self that riku has found since the intro of cage 2. he no longer feels chained to the identity of ansem but exists in the light he found through that darkness and then wakes back up to find everyone wide awake and ready to hear yen sid's grades for the exam riku i name you our new true keyblade master way to go riku yeah i knew you were gonna pass with flying colors yeah riku has now achieved the rank of keyblade master and sora did not but not only does riku become a master lee suddenly summons a keyblade this is ridiculously stupid do you know how lee was asking yen sid for something earlier well it turns out he went to the hyperbolic time chamber to train a bit for a keyblade he's trying to learn so he can traverse worlds easier but is portrayed to the player wretchedly and doesn't make much sense by the rules birthed by sleep put in place we never saw anyone bequeath it to him and we don't know if his heart is really good enough for it kh3 is gonna rectify this a tiny bit so i don't know maybe when i do the kh3 video someday now in the secret ending kyrie shows up after never being mentioned in the game to become one of the seven lights and sora goes off to meet with a bunch of dream leaders in traverse town thus concluding dream drop distance 3d is the most confusing part of the series it actively insults you for skipping previous games and it makes the self-contained story confusing with time travel dreams dreams within dreams and tamagotchi mini games despite this dreamdrop rewards you for paying attention the sigil on sora's chest riku's dream eater emblem the rules of time travel plus from the previous six games they all have a hand in motivating the heroes and villains of the story even wrapping up riku's story arc that he began in kingdom hearts 1 so well that in kingdom hearts 3 he has little growth with all of this dreamdrop synthesizes those stories and terms to prepare the gang for kingdom hearts 3. so of all the games released between kingdom hearts 2 and 3 this is the one with the most weight to the story it is not just a new game in the series but the story prologue to kingdom hearts 3 which is why it's titled the final chapter prologue in the ps4 re-release of the game so as i said in part one the series had a bunch of re-releases on ps3 and ps4 plus since part one has been put on xbox epic games and kind of on switch though the epic games release is at a ludicrous price i would not recommend anyway as they went through the collections they didn't have any games to initially pair dreamdrop with and as the shortest game it would be a little odd to put it on ps4 by itself five years after the initial release so the compilation disk kingdom hearts 2.8 final chapter prologue had two additional parts to it the one hour film kingdom hearts key back cover that goes over the important events of the phone game kingdom hearts key in kingdom hearts 0.2 birth by sleep a fragmentary passage an epilogue to birth by sleep following aqua in the realm of darkness however it's also told from the narration of mickey after dream drop distance so it doubles as a prologue for kh3 in not just the story but gameplay as well because despite how important marketing makes it look this short 2 hour adventure is a glorified kingdom hearts 3 demo and i know a lot of people like to talk about it with birth by sleep but that doesn't make much sense to me so we'll talk about it now 0.2 story purpose isn't exactly to progress the story wildly or have some deep meaning rather it fills in some minor questions that need answering before kingdom hearts 3 can start dream drop distance came out in 2012 0.2 in 2017 in cage 3 and 2019 the writing team had time to think about what was left to clarify before kingdom hearts 3 and this glorified tech demo was a good place to do that it also has the most minor of connections to the kingdom hearts key series but if i'm to talk about that it really needs its own video anyway point two starts off right after kyrie shows up at yen sid's tower here they try and figure out who's going to be the seven guardians of lights they currently have sora riku mickey and kyrie with plans of saving terra ventus and aqua to finish the list through the knowledge of yensude and miki they need to find aqua first so she can take them to the other two and to catch up everyone else mickey tells the story of when he saw her in the realm of darkness at the start of kh1 switching the narrative to aqua's perspective which she struggles to keep on because she's lost her sense of time every step she takes in the realm of darkness could be days in the realm of light or every day could be minutes her only motivation to keep going is the knowledge that she saved tara in the realm of light and knowing that she needs to wake up ventus however she starts to notice something is wrong when she finds cinderella snow white in aurora's worlds plunged into darkness additionally she starts to hallucinate tara and ventus keep in mind as far as aqua knew at the end of birth by sleep the only problem she left unresolved was waking up ventus which we all know is completely wrong despite this aqua continues to fight on with her courage and motivation waning until she finally meets up with her visions of tara and ventus again but this time tara actually talks back since his heart has ties to the darkness and it's at this moment where he confirms to aqua that worlds have been falling into darkness in her excitement aqua then tells tara that vent is in the chamber of waking which is a bit of a mistake because right then is when tara went xehanort mode and oops wow oh let's fight ourselves thankfully tara stops terra north from getting aqua killed and then mickey saves aqua from being swallowed by darkness now you can probably guess what mickey's doing here he's looking for the kingdom key d aqua doesn't though so mickey fills her in on what the heartless are and his plans to seal the door to darkness so anyway short hallway of heartless ensues that leads aqua and mickey to the dark side of destiny islands we recognize from kh1 after aqua has a quick memory of them miki tells aqua that sora and riku are the ones helping him now since this is where sora got his keyblade and it's where anson plans to open the door to darkness now presumably because it's his homeworld the dark version of sora's keyblade should be here which as we already know is correct once mickey finds it he explains that they need one person on each side to lock the door and one person on each to close it so mickey and sora locked it while riku donald and goofy held it closed explaining why it went the way it did in kingdom hearts 1. speaking of explaining during this scene a ball of heartless attacks mickey to remove his shirt thus explaining why he's shirtless in kingdom hearts 1's ending oh and also it swooped aqua back into the deeper section of the realm of darkness which is why she wasn't in the final moments of kingdom hearts 1. and that's about it overall the story of 0.2 is a good character builder for aqua and an okay explanation of what mickey did during kingdom hearts 1 but it's not exactly a game changer though it's kind of mandatory because of the post-credits scenes here yen said gives everyone their role for how kingdom hearts 3 starts kyrie is going to train with leigh in the hyperbolic time chamber mickey and riku are going to save aqua with some new outfits while sora don and goofy are going to master the power of waking this is a very odd scene because this isn't like oh yeah you'll miss major plot elements here it's just we don't have an integral scene where yen sid says what they'll do in kingdom hearts 3. it's like if you remove the scene in air bud where the coach says how there's no rules a dog can't play basketball similar to how there's no rules that air bud can't be in kingdom hearts 4. dream drop distance and the little bit 0.2 ad are meant to reawaken everything we already knew about for kingdom hearts 3. every old piece of the puzzle has fit into the board new pieces are ready for placement and our heroes from kingdom hearts 2 have their plans these games do not make sense without the context of what came before nor should they most gaming franchises either reset completely for sequels or only reference previous titles a small amount to make themselves more accessible to newbies nothing stops you from playing ocarina of time without linked to the past and franchises like shantae don't do more than just having characters from past games reappear however that's not a bad way to go about making stories and art pieces that often cost 20 to 60 dollars each not everyone finds it worth it to play every game in a series to understand one entry and that's fine but there are some times when it's absolutely mandatory kingdom hearts did something new and spent 13 years of games to set up for kingdom hearts 3 which to understand you need to follow the road it took reach out for new worlds lose that which you remember reunite with what you lost re-examine the past for a new purpose and re-awaken to that goal kingdom hearts took years of storytelling character development and world building to both connect and reconnect to the hearts of its fans [Music] hey everyone this is technically the end of my kingdom hearts story retrospective that i planned out back in march of 2021 this was one of my longest journeys with writing and editing videos back then the shower thought i had for this one was a 20 minute video focusing on terminology throughout the entire series i did not expect these to be the most artistically fulfilling video essays i've ever put out and i've only been able to get this far with the kind words i've received from friends and strangers alike now a few people have told me they'd be interested in hearing my analysis on kingdom hearts 3 and i'm not going to say that that will never happen but that's a video i need to give an 800 percent effort for and i will need to treat it differently than i did the rest of this series plus i'll need to make a short video about the key series there's not much to go over there but the themes of key don't fit with dream drop or cage 3 so i'd rather put it on its own anyway i want to thank all of you for listening to me reconnect with one of my favorite franchises and i hope this has given you insight as to why it's so special to so many people [Music]

Channel: NovaZone

Views: 1,124,609

Keywords: Kingdom Hearts Retrospective, Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts 2, Chain of Memories, 358/2 Days, Birth by Sleep, Dream Drop Distance, Video Game Retrospective, Coded, Kingdom Hearts 3, Kingdom Hearts 4, Kingdom Hearts Review, KH, KH retrospective, kingdom hearts analysis, kingdom hearts explained, kingdom hearts story explained, isn't that confusing, isn't confusing, confusing, simple and clean, kingdom hearts ii, final fantasy

Id: UFYxhBbJ9TM

Length: 204min 7sec (12247 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 16 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Turmoil_Engage]

If you or anyone you know needs some recap or just something to watch in the background, this video is amazing. Great editing, quality, narration, and comedic timing. And this dude has barely any following on YT, despite how good this is.