"A scattered dream that's like a faroff memory. A faroff memory that's like a scattered dream."

Dreamcore. Leather hoods. Gunmetal keyblades. Bathed in the backroom glow of otherworldly neon signage. Humming with electricity. A sprawling, rainy cityscape with feral phantoms stalking the shadows in droves. No sign of intelligent life anywhere. Just a cool, collected instinct to stay alive and one step ahead.

We see a man we now know to be Roxas. But at the time he was nobody. Did he come out of one of the buildings? Or did he materialize from shadows pooling at his feet like inkwells?

We can deduce little about him. His posture is lean and proud as he strides into the street. He is donned in a fitted, black, leather coat. Fashioned very ominously. The cavity of the hood is well drawn to his face and well shadowed. We see enough but at the same time, not nearly enough. A handsome young man with blonde bangs. That's it. You'd never guess it was some multiverse riff on Sora voiced by Jesse McCartney. For now he's just some shady dude out in the street.

Suddenly, shadow beings emerge from the soaked street and converge in startling numbers. Like a swarm of locusts. We recognize them as Heartless, but there's something different. They're bigger, and quite honestly terrifying. With enormous, shadowy antennae arched high above their scalp like twisted strips of metal. Round glowing eyes. Empty. Animalistic. Ready to indulge is their most primitive instinct. They surround Roxas, who remains unflinching and alert.

He then does a 360 degree spin, drawing from the ether two enormous weapons in each hand. Familiar, but strange. The angles are so tight and obscuring, it takes a rewatch to recognize them as Oathkeeper and Oblivion. Their colors either stripped or muted by the nocturnal conditions. He prepares for a battle.

Another man, wearing the same leather garb, observes from the summit of one of the more distinguished skyscrapers. His hood is dropped and his face is washed in rooftop floodlight. Giving his long blades of silver hair an almost angelic luminescence. Even though his eyes and brow are obscured by a wide band of black fabric, we know this is Riku. But it doesn't feel like the same Riku at all. This one is dangerous AF. Nothing about him evokes the energy of a protagonist whatsoever. Which is disorienting after we witnessed him overcome his demons and help Sora vanquish Ansem, SoD. Wait... where the fuck is Mickey? Even more questions. What is Riku's business in this forsaken, desolate place that feels both familiar and alien at the same time? Why are his eyes covered? Why does he look so collected and content? Lording over a city like some kind of dark knight. Smiling. He outstretches his arms and looks to the sky. Down below where the action is, a giant glowing glyph encircles Roxas on the street. Makes you wonder if Riku was orchestrating this ambush with some kind of dark magic. He then reaches for his eyeband and pulls it from his face. But we don't get to see the moneyshot, as the angle cuts back to Roxas who has begun his onslaught against the shadowy creeps that were now flooding the street.

Whirling and dancing in lethal circles. Slaying Neoshadows like it was a stylish sport. Several times he appears overwhelmed but quickly corrects with another impressive aerial or backflip.

Our guy rushes the stairs toward the entrance. But he doesn't go inside. He does a flip and goes UP...the goddamn wall. Scaling the exterior and defying gravity as he whirls those immaculate keyblades like two glistening blenders. They almost sing as he explodes more spectral forms giving chase at his heels and peripherals. Up and up he goes, high above the streets and plaza. Like a hungry spider on crystal meth. Slashing and running toward his mark at the rooftop's edge. He means to kill Riku. Despite looking cut from the same cloth, these two are definitely enemies. This much is now obvious.

Our guy hurls one of the keyblades upward. It goes cutting through the air with razorsharp speed. Undoubtedly an accurate and impressive throw if it had been allowed to reach it's target. But Riku anticipated this, and leaps from the roof with a bizarre grace and catches it cooly with ease. Like a torpedo, he jets downward while our guy hammers upward. Both now armed with similar yet contrasting weapons. Such beautiful irony that Riku would end up with Oblivion in this moment. The darker keyblade.

They near one another. A dramatic clash is threatened but never delivered. Instead they pass each other. Strangely. Beautifully. With the giant screen beneath their intersection like an arena, they are both brighter than two dying stars. Riku continues to plummet, while Roxas pumps his brakes in confusion. But despite Riku's eyes being obscured, there was an exchange of awareness most certainly in that moment. They both communicated to one another that neither were fucking around. That they were both capable. A passing promise to finish this when the time was appropriate. For all we know, these two were demigods with Advent Children-esque capabilities.

We cut to intense whisperings and flashbacks. Is it because of Memory Skyscraper? Are these images parallel to the ones being projected on the face of the building? Are we remembering? For the first time since these odd events took motion, we are presented with familiar imagery. Glitching in and out, we see Sora, Riku and Kairi as we remember them. We are reassured that this is still Kingdom Hearts. This lo-fi aesthetic continues the whole way down from what we can assume is Riku's plummeting POV. The music swells as a numbered countdown brings us toward the ground in a crescendo.

And then there's Mickey Mouse. Somersaulting through the night and landing poised in a battle stance. His gold keyblade drawn and gripped dangerously. Like he's fucking Yoda. As if that wasn't startling enough, he's also dressed in black leather as well, snugly fitted to his much more cartoony proportions. His hood is drawn, but we see his face. He sees us too. His knowing sneer is practically breaking the fourth wall. He knows he's just as cool, if not cooler than the punks dueling out in the streets. So clearly he and Riku have an agenda of some kind in this clusterfuck. But what??

No idea. That's it. The piano keys conclude and we are staring at a title card that says Kingdom Hearts. Much needed affirmation.

And then we see Sora. As we remember him. Being pulled through the air by some kind of magnetism, inches above the choppy waves of a vast ocean. Is it his ocean? No telling. But he's in some kind of deep sleep, hanging loosely, before passing by and disappearing into a gloomy and uncanny horizon. Being spirited away to God knows where.

The point I'm trying to make, revisiting this, is how brilliantly surreal this all played out.
Cuz I'm calling it like I see it, Another Side, Another Story is a dream. 
Just like Madonna describes. "No end and no beginning". Or when DiCaprio says in Inception, "you never really remember the beginning of a dream do you? You always wind up right in the middle of what's going on". Well that's how this is all feeling. 
And I personally find it to be one of Nomura's most profound visions. Right up there with XIII Versus and that batshit crazy April Fools bit. 
This bridge between KH1 and KH2 is pretty much his Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. A truly sophisticated firing of the brain either recalled from REM sleep or just raw artistic genius. 
He bombards us with questions, but we don't mind never knowing the answers. Because it's all so deliciously rich in mystery, we prefer it that way. 
My problem with KH2 and KH3 is he felt he needed to explain everything. Things get convoluted and clunky. While we are successfully shifted back into the hybrid of Square and Walt Disney, we can't help but feel uncomfortable. Dissatisfied. 

So what the fuck happened in the World That Never Was? Was it just stylish dream vapor? Edgy eye candy to keep us all talking until the next big entry? We get explanations in the following games. Sure. But it feels like a cover up to something much more cerebral and uncanny. 
Maybe even Nomura himself doesn't know. 
It all feels AI generated. Designed and edited during a time there was no AI. 
Which kind of scares the shit out of me. 
There is some truly terrifying anxiety in that City that gives me gooseflesh. Backrooms vibes, saturated in neonoir extract. But I dig it. It's all such a turn on. 
I love weird, next level crazy shit. And Nomura pulled the right strings with whatever installation he was trying to walk us through. 

Whatever it was, it was there for hot minute,
...and then it was gone.  

Our next best bet to pick his mind is KH4, which so far, is looking pretty incredible. It seems to be a return to that kind of aesthetic. Which is exciting. 

www.etsy.com/listing/1538861077/kingdom-hearts-royal-keyblade-11-scale

It can't really be the disparate gummi pieces of world barriers, since they had all reformed after 1, can it?

Let's be honest, this series gets nutty. And If I wasn't willing to just hand-wave a lot of this stuff, my head would be spinning. But some moments, (like Vanitas' appearance) I feel like a lot of us have trouble with. Love the cheeseiness, love the series, but I can't help but to grimace at some of the explanations the moments. But then there's things when all the rules are set up and then they're broken immediately.

Assuming when you don't have a heart inside of your body, like Ven after his clash with Vanitas, you cannot move, speak, emote in general. It's like being asleep. I have no problem with this.

Additionally, we know that if you don't have a heart, you can't use a keyblade.

So in the secret ending, when Ven, no heart in his body, creates the portal to the land of departure I kinda shrugged tbh. I don't understand the significance in him creating that portal at all. Why should he know where to go? The kid has been demonstrating pretty poor judgement throughout the whole game. Sure, he has a really strong heart, got it. I still don't understand why that matters at all, here. Ven wasn't a master so he didn't know about the Land of Departure's hidden nature as a hiding place. I guess you can argue that he just wanted to go back home, but then again, he just saw Eraqus die there so he know there isn't anything left for him. I read it as him trying to go relive his happiest moments, even though Terra and Aqua won't be there with him, wanting to be in LOD is his way of grappling with the past.

What I'm saying is Aqua should have just opened the damn portal. Makes zero sense to me for Ven to have done it.

I'm not including Arendelle because I can only put 6 options and there's no chance in hell that it would win anyway (even though I think I like it more than most).

Personally I gotta go with the Caribbean because of how expensive it is and how much is there to explore. I also like the Davy Jones fight a lot.

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So I recently got the 1.5+2.5 collection along with 3 on PC, but as I started 1 as I boot up a save, or open a menu my game freezes. And not only does it freeze, it freezes EVERYTHING. I can't Alt-F4, Ctr-Alt-Del, nor reset my graphics card, everything is just frozen. I've been looking around, but nothing seems to work. VSync off, Framerate set to every setting, etc. etc. I really just wanna enjoy these games, and will take any form of help, whether it be a setting change, a mod, or whatever.

I had the intention of playing through all the KH games so I got the compilation games. I had played the second one and a few of the others before, but really wanted to hunker down and get back into the series. I had a blast with the first game and I’m excited to get back to the second for nostalgia but obviously need to know what happened in Chain of memories for lore reasons. I started playing it and got past traverse town and half way through the first world and I’m….just not having a good time. Between the gameplay and the fact that it’s sort of a rehashing of the game I literally just played I’m debating on wether saying screw it and watching the cutscenes on YouTube or forcing myself to play it. What are your opinions?

It’s kind of sad when you think about it 😕

I am getting into the kingdom hearts series but I REALLY wanna play kh3 because of how good the graphics are. (I have never played a graphically intense game ;-;) I do not mind doing some research on what happens before, I just really wanna plaay it and honestly can't wait with it sitting in my library.

Do you approve of his choices?

I'm asking because all of the posts I can find are about how fun they are to use or how cool they look. Most just default to ultima keyblade because well... it's ultima weapon. However, I see a lot of people opting to use oathkeeper/oblivion instead, as well as seeing the chef one which I haven't unlocked, happy gear, ever after, crystal snow, etc.

I'm also wondering because I'm doing the data organization on critical and I'm using the ultima weapon but sometimes my eyes start to wander when I'm struggling ya know. So, I guess now that the game has been out for 5 or so years, is there a consensus on the best keyblades?

Thank you to all the people who left quotes on my last post! I ended up being a bit basic with what I chose to do in the end, just to make it a bit easier on myself. Thank you all!

I'm trying to get the meteor strike staff for donald in the grand crevasse and im doing what every guide tells me, but the chest doesnt spawn? are there 2 of these little batlte cages?

So I’ve recently gotten into the series with the all in one package. I played through kh1fm on proud, skipped Re:CoM because I didn’t like the combat (I watched the cutscenes online), and just recently finished kh2fm on critical, but I still plan on doing all the super bosses. Anyway, I’ll soon reach the third game and I was wondering, what difficulty should I play it on? I’ve heard people say it’s too easy on proud but it’s too hard on critical as well, and I want to get the best experience especially when playing the dlc.

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Image from KH Wiki