I remember playing through world after world learning the controls, better attacks and defense and overall becoming a better player with every time I picked up the controller. The story of the heartless invading various worlds and taking hearts from others was simple enough but when intertwined with the subplots of the Disney world and their characters made every thing seem all the more intricate. The plot for the first game in abridged text goes a little something like this: Sora lives in the Destinty Islands world with his friends Riku and Kairi their world goes to shit after a heartless invasion, during which it is revealed that the "Keyblade" has chosen Sora as it's wielder and the three of them get separated and scattered across the KH Universe. Meanwhile Donald and Goofy are on a mission to find their king (yes it's Mickey) and to unite with the Keybearer to enable them to visit different worlds along the way. You meet up with them fight bosses as a party and depending on the worlds you're in you get guest party members for them such as Tarzan in the Deep Jungle and Jack Skellington in Halloween Town.
Each of these worlds have their own sub plot but basically each villain in every Disney themed world is in cahoots with Maleficent who has a plot to control the Heartless and all the worlds around her. In the end though we figure out that Ansem (the man's report pages you keep finding) is the main villain of the game after turning into a heartless himself he also brings Riku down with darkness as well. You beat him save the Kingdom Hearts keyhole and Kairi is the only one who makes it home safe and sound when the worlds are restored after Ansem's defeat.
This of course left me and many others wanting more the ending left everything unresolved, we never got to know what happened to Sora, Donald, Goofy, Riku, or Mickey and it was just yelling to you a sequel was in the works. Well to our knowledge two games were in the works a spin off called Chain of Memories for the Gameboy Advance that's story would tie into both the first and second game, and of course the actual sequel Kingdom Hearts 2.
I wasn't much a fan of the spin off but I did buy it and play it being the mega fan that I am, but I was completely 100% stoked on KH2 happening. The E3 trailer was unforgettable it showed new worlds, new Disney characters, a group of mysterious new villains, etc.
After using IGN to keep me up to date forever the game was finally released on March 28th, 2006 and of course I got it on launch. The story was even deeper this time and to keep things abridged and short again I'll explain it like this: You start off the game playing a character named Roxas and you go around fighting mysterious creatures that are not Heartless and you keep having run ins with apparently an old friend of yours named Axel who is always seen in a mysterious black cloak. Eventually it's revealed that yourself, Axel and others like you are Nobodies these beings are created when a person gets their heart taken by a heartless and in return becomes one, when that happens a nobody is created. Some of the nobodies then form a villainous group called Organization XIII that try to take over Kingdom Hearts with help of the other nobodies to gain hearts for themselves since they are products of heartless creation and have none. You also figure out that you didn't actually defeat Ansem in the previous game and that the real Ansem is a good guy and a friend of King Mickey who you meet up with a long the way and that the main villain behind most of this is Ansem's former apprentice Xehanort. And as mentioned earlier he was a heartless at the end of the first game therefore a nobody was created and that nobody is the leader of the Organization.
So throughout the game it retains it's formula of visiting Disney worlds with Donald and Goofy and the stories and plots that come with each different unique world. This time instead of pure heartless based plot lines and one visitation you revisit each world on two to three occasions and deal with heartless threats and nobody problems orchestrated by the Organization. By the end you defeat Xemnas the nobody of Xehanort and you return through the light with Riku back to the Destiny Islands
Ever since the closing of the second game fans, including myself have been clambering for KH3 and to this day we have not seen a legitimate second sequel. In the mean time countless spin offs have been released for handheld consoles like the DS and PSP and even mobile phone. The most recent being Dream Drop Distance which was released for Nintendo's 3DS. All of these tie in with the series in one form or another like a game about Roxas' time with Organization for the DS, a prequel featuring Keyblade masters fighting together before Sora was the chosen one on the PSP and now Sora and Riku fine tuning their battle skills on the 3DS. One common theme throughout these games is that Xehanort appears and is the main villain throughout them, perhaps building up to what will be the final battle with him and the the heartless in a potential Keyblade war for the third game.
The end of KH3D left it wide open for the third game to begin and it has a good story too. All people who can wield a keyblade come together for one final run through the worlds and battle in the Xehanort saga. Will it ever be made though? We see games like Diablo 3 that took ages to finally come out and how about Half Life 2: Episode 3 fans have been dying to see that get made and it's not even in the works. The reason KH has focused on little side spin off games for so long is because another Square-Enix title is currently in developmental hell of it's own Final Fantasy Versus XII and the creator of KH is directing and doing quite a bit of work on it. This project is what's in the way of what we all want to see as Kingdom Hearts fans and like the selfish fanboy that I am I say scrap this since it's been "in the works" since 2006 and barely any news has come about in over the last six plus years time, and Nomura develop the game that everyone really wants to see before it eventually gets released on the PlayStation 100, oh and did I mention they plan on re-releasing KH1 and CoM as KH1.5 HD for the PlayStation 3? Get to making the damn third game will you!
I bet you are all wondering what kind of worlds, plot twists, and characters from the Disney and Final Fantasy universes I would like to see implemented into a third game, well you can't do everything at once keep following this fanboy on his chronicles to KH3 when I return with a wish-list article of sorts when I return.
This has been Braeden Mayhew aka SpoodBeest for Fanboys Anonymous signing off, have a good one folks! Hope you enjoyed the read and if you want more good gaming talk but in the form of lovely video blogs subscribing to my YouTube channel is always appreciated, the link is below.
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