With the long-anticipated Kingdom Hearts 3 has just released this week, and as such, we felt there was no better time to reflect on the legendary franchise, highlighting some of our favourite bits! Do note that in this Club there will not be spoilers for Kingdom Hearts 3, but there will be spoilers for the rest of the series!

Chris

I usually don’t add to clubs whose topics I don’t have much experience with, but I’ll make an exception this time. I haven’t played Kingdom Hearts – at all. But I recall the first quiet murmurs about it on the net with the first title, and the explosion of popularity that came with the second, and the feelings of confusion and excitement over the seemingly never-ending .5s and spin-offs and remakes…I haven’t played Kingdom Hearts yet, but I really want to, and the release of Kingdom Hearts 3 has got me stoked. I’m trying to hunt down a version of the 1.5 and 2.5 collection, because what I’ve heard about this bizarre mashup of Disney and Final Fantasy sounds too good to be true. Childhood nostalgia, mixed with swordfighting and dumb Japanese RPG tropes? Yes please. So if you’re in the same boat as me, and have no actual experience with the series, but are interested…don’t give up! Hunt it down, and catch up using the games and the wikis! This series seems like a truly enjoyable ride, and honestly, it seems like one worth getting.

Javier

Do i have to pick one! Kingdom hearts to me is a collection of great moments in between some incredibly enjoyable gameplay. I actually really like as nothing feels drawn out, it’s very story driven and there’s always a purpose for what you’re doing, whether it be trying to save someone or finding an enemy. In terms of pure joy though i’d have to say beating Sephiroth in both of the main titles is pretty high up. Both of these battles took me fecking hours to pass and the relief/joy that washed over me when defeating that bugger was absolutely amazing. He’s a tough cookie!

Joe

For me, there is no better scene than the Secret Movie; in nearly every Kingdom Hearts title, this is what we fans latch onto the most, and are most hyped about… So much so that the Square Enix team have relegated it to additional DLC post-launch for Kingdom Hearts 3 just to avoid spoilers… So, out of all of these epic clips, which is my favourite? Whilst ‘Another Side Another Story’ comes close to my top entry, ‘The Gathering’ remains the most hype cutscene in Kingdom Hearts history (For now). Telling the tale of three armoured Keyblade weilders facing off against an enigmatic old man and his slender, dark apprentice, known only as Xehanort and the shadowy other; what transpires is nothing short of purely cinematic as these five combatants duke it out with the ferocity unlike anything we’ve ever seen in the franchise up until this point, culminating in the ending quote ‘Birth by Sleep’.

Man, 12 year old me was convinced this was Kingdom Hearts 3… Heh. Good times.