I completely forgot they announced Kingdom Hearts 4. That was in 2022 and they've said nothing about it since, not sure why they decided to even announce it if it was so far away.

>>1075465 They've been silent about it because the next game, Missing-Link, is in development hell and has catching delays for years. Of course, Missing-Link is another fucking gacha mobile game. Granted, it looks like the best of the mobileshit so far, but that's not saying much.

>>1075456 >Favorite entry? DOOL WEELD >Favorite Heartless? DOOL WEELD >Favorite Keyblade? DOOL WEELD >Favorite character? DOOL WEELD >Favorite world? DOOL WEELD

I have only played the first game and thought it was overrated crap. >Favourite world Tarzan, I like Tarzan.

I have a question for KH fags. Is Zidane in any of them? He is my favourite FF protag and looking at pics of aqua is making me want to try KH again. People talk about the original and the disney parts but not the FF parts.

>>1075561 Excellent Parasols >first game KH1 and its improved remix are kinda jank. The combat is floaty as hell, a lot of the worlds are terribly designed (I'd actually say Deep Jungle, the Tarzan world, is the worst funnily enough) and the end-game has a huge amount of grind if you want to 100%. Almost anybody would say KHII, BBS, and 3D are better. KH1 is also an early PS2 game and compared to a lot of other Q1 2002 PS2 releases it holds up well, but it's rough to go back to 23 years later. The synthesis grind is probably the worst part of the game, but all the best gear is locked behind it. Here's an actual crafting sheet. >Crystal Crown <Lucid Crystal x5 <Power Crystal x1 <Shiny Crystal x1 <Blazing Stone x3 <Frost Stone x3 15 items, the Lucid Crystal alone has a whopping 1% drop rate and drops from exactly two sources in the game. They're all like this, synthesis items take so goddamn long to get and that serves only to massively bloat out the game's play time from about 26 hours casually to over 60 hours completionist. I advise new players to not 100% the games, it's misery. Though I enjoy KH1, it's flawed. >>1075571 No, the FF characters are mostly from VIII and X. In fact, I don't think there were any FF characters in KHIII whatsoever. Nomura (series director) said they'll return in IV, but so far we don't know much about it.

>>1075571 Cloud, Squall, and Tidus are the protags that show up. Like >>1075578 said it's mostly VII, VIII, and X.

>>1075579 >>1075578 How disappointing. >No ff characters in 3. But why? Like you couldn't put the onion knight or the OG warrior of light anywhere? not even a single dude from the new games?

>>1075589 There's a lot of speculation over III's development, but according to statements by Nomura, Disney and Pixar were a fucking nightmare to work with compared to previous games. It shows through as III is way more Disney focused than most Kingdom Hearts titles, it's the most Disney orientated entry since the very first Kingdom Hearts. Fans point to Arendelle, the Frozen world, as an example; Sora and the gang have essentially no relevance in the world's plot as it awkwardly recaps the events of the movie in an extremely dragged out level that contents as one of the series' longest. Contrast that with Halloween Town or Space Paranoids which are entirely original stories in their respective IPs. Here's the interview https://archive.is/KBksk They were given tons of guidelines and some were very strict. There were no FF characters because "so many original characters that need to resolve their own problems and issues. And because their issues and problems are very difficult, there just hasn't been that much space to fit Final Fantasy characters so far." KHIII's development was also heavily impacted by the disaster that was Final Fantasy XIII Versus. That trainwreck took so incredibly long and suffered the FFXV reboot that by the time they were finally able to work on KHIII, it had to be heavily rushed. Though Squeenix claims development started in 2015, an engine switch and restart of progress meant it only really entered full development in 2017, meaning the game was made likely made within two years and under intense creative restrictions. You can really feel it in the final product, which plays like a pure compromise in every department. The game should have been delayed, all the way to 2021 if they had to. So many things went wrong and it came out feeling like such an obligation rather than the triumphant third entry. I completely understand why they're going straight to Kingdom Hearts VI after Missing-Link, that wasn't what KHIII should have been.

>Kingdom Hearts VI *IV

>>1075617 >>1075613 I have no faith in KH4

>>1075467 >another mobile spinoff OH. MY FAVORITE. >>1075625 Considering the awful circumstances 3 was developed under, it turned out surprisingly well. It's a lot better than Chain of Memories and I thought that game was alright.

>>1075626 True, but I think that they're going full ham on the Disney properties while just limiting the SE influence to Final Fantasy if they're even going to put FF characters into KH4. That and the most recent mainline FF game was a more mature game with a more mature content, themes and content. I think that IF KH4 will bring in the Star Wars and Marvel Universe than Square Enix should bring more IPs or even other video game companies into the mix like Bandai Namco and Capcom. I'll be honest, I just wanna see how a Vergil secret boss fight would work in an ARPG

>>1075634 >but I think that they're going full ham on the Disney properties while just limiting the SE influence to Final Fantasy if they're even going to put FF characters into KH4 The world they showed off in the KH4 trailer is an entirely original one, Quadratum. I think 4 might lean away from Disney properties a bit the way the handheld games did.

>>1075727 I mean, there were hints of Star Wars and Marvel being in KH4. I'd like to see less Disney, but they also own the franchise.

Kingdom Hearts is doomed as there is no longer any cultural relevance for a Disney, Final Fantasy crossover. They both lack Ubiquity. >Disney Disney's reach has shrunk to the point where I do not think Kingdom Hearts can stay profitable. Kids these days haven't experienced Disney in the same way that I did. Disney has a massive volume of content that was available to pretty much anyone with basic cable. It wasn't just the tent pole movies. They were on TV. They were on the Radio and played songs that directed you to the TV. They were in malls which helped put Disney's IP into the minds of people. Sure nobody bought anything from the stores, but they served as a kind of marketing tool. They expanded upon those movies with spin off TV shows that were easily available to almost everyone, not just die hard Disney fans. I didn't even care for the TV series that much, sometimes due to the way the timeslots worked out, whatever was on Disney was the least worst thing to watch. Now everything is on demand. There is no reason to watch a show if it isn't your favorite show. You didn't need to see the Disney film to still be aware of a Disney IP. You didn't need a Disney subscription to be aware of a Disney IP. Disney no longer has the same ubiquity it once had. >Final Fantasy Final Fantasy was once the Call of Duty of gaming. In terms of CONSOLE/PC releases >1997 FFVII >1998 Outlier >1999 FFVIII >2000 FFIX >2001 FFX >2002 FFXI >2003 FFX-2 With the exception of 1998, they release one game a year. I'm going to refer to this time period as the golden era. I'm, not going to bother laying out Call of Duty's release timeline, we all know what it looks like. During this golden era everyone who played video games pretty much played at least one Final Fantasy game, and had a favorite. 6 games in the span of 7 years. 5 Original stories in the span of 7 years. Now? 5 Original stories in the span of 23 years. 2002 was 23 years ago. Square doesn't have any franchises that have the same ubiquity that Final Fantasy had.

>>1075613 I'm hoping that Yozora being real is a sign that square enix wants to make their own super crossover with a bunch of their own franchises. I feel like they have enough franchise recognition on their own that they don't really need Disney to make a Kingdom Hearts style game. I knew current Disney would be hard to work with so when I saw him I was thinking he was their escape route. Doubly so when they start saying "oh yeah this guy is basically alternate universe Sora", despite looking nothing like him

>>1075756 Nomura was actually in between making Verum Rex real or making KHIV, and ultimately he went with KHIV. After it, I imagine we might get an actual Verum Rex game assuming he doesn't lose interest. He's talked about eventually retiring and wanting to end the Kingdom Hearts series.

>>1075757 I think, given how long it's been, it'll actually kind of end up being both together.

>>1075456 >Favorite entry? I don't know. I like the feeling of Kingdom Hearts I the most, but II definitely had better gameplay. But II is also where the autism really went full throttle for the first time. Also the worlds weren't as comfy. Also II is where it's revealed that Ansem from the first game isn't really Ansem. I hate that twist so much. >>1075735 Everyone still watches the Disney movies, though. And the fact that the IPs aren't everywhere anymore may actually make more people want to play KH because the supply for all those characters isn't outweighing the demand anymore. But even if that weren't the case, I still see people, children and adults, wearing clothes with those characters all the time.

>>1075787 I work with children. They don't have the slightest clue who is on their shirts. I have seen kids with shirts with bands and asked them what their favorite songs are and 10/10 their response is "I don't know who that is. I just like the shirt."

>>1075901 As a teacher I see more kids with Five Nights at Freddy's shit on their lunch boxes than any Disney stuff. I see more Disney merch in the classrooms of my fellow teachers than on any of the kids.

>>1075735 Didn't Tactics come out in 1998?

>>1076386 97 in JP 98 in USA >>1076347 Same. Also applies to Harry Potter. Hell, one of the kids only knew Donald Duck from the Anti-Nazi propaganda episodes where he seig heils and thought all Donald Duck content was pro Nazi because he only saw clips of it on tiktok and didn't see the whole episode.

Something funny about KHIII is how it has a Steam themed Keyblade. I think it's one of the nicer designs, it's not a busy mess.

Anybody ever hear of this? I just discovered there's a mod that tries to give Kingdom Hearts 2 Devil May Cry-styled combat. It looks fun.

>>1078356 I have actually, although I recall the mod being for KH1 rather than KH2

>>1078356 This isn't just a mod, it's a whole fangame with an original story. The details elude me at the moment, but I believe it's an AU where the awakening of Sora was a failure and Roxas manages to escape the simulation. It heavily reworks the game and takes a lot of cues from Days. Some worlds are swapped out, like Atlantis being replaced by Traverse Town. It's not finished, but you can download the alpha. They're making good progress.

>>1078356 >>1078400 As I recall someone is making a Days remake in UE5 as well. Obviously there's the melonworks HD port of Days already which works in the cutscenes from the movie but that is at it's core still a DS game. But this is apparently a very different thing.

>>1077665 That isn't steam themed, its just a reskin

>>1075734 Leaning away doesn't mean stopping entirely, even Days had Disney elements and that game almost entirely focuses on KH lore and characters.