Current Events > Can someone sum up the kingdom hearts story for me? Spoilers

(+) Yeah! (+)

Thinking of playing 3 and its been along time since 1 and 2 I played so can someone give me a run down on the important stuff?

Ive also never played any of the spin off games apart from the GBA card game.

Nanomachines, son

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjiHufVEc7g

Lol almost 30 minutes? I just want a nice easy recap. Not war and peace.

SHRlKE posted...

Lol almost 30 minutes? I just want a nice easy recap. Not war and peace.

Nice easy recap
Kingdom Hearts

Choose 1.

That's a summary he boiled down after getting a 7 HOUR explanation from a friend. It's the best you're going to get while still being somewhat helpful.

Each game is like a new fanfiction with retcons, a 30 minutes recap almost feels too short to only touch the important stuff...

Darkness bad.

KH1: Boy goes to find his friends
CoM: Still looking
358: Resting before he keeps looking
KH2: Finally finds them
BBS: Old man does old man things
3D: Old man still doing old man things

Missed a couple games like Coded and the mobile game but whatever

Sora has to clean up everyone's messes

Yeah, KH gets pretty convoluted, you're not gonna get a short summary that also covers everything you need to know. That said, I'll try my best! Some of this will definitely be basic stuff you don't need a reminder on, but it's good to have a foundation~

KH1: Sora and his friends Riku and Kairi get sucked into some wacky nonsense when monsters called heartless take over and destroy their home. With the power of a special weapon called a keyblade, as well as the companionship of Donald Duck and Goofy, Sora travels around various worlds based on Disney movies to fight heartless and search for his friends. At the end, he fights Ansem, a, let's say "darkness enthusiast" possessing Riku's body. He manages to win, save the universe, and send Kairi home, but he has to continue his journey to bring back Riku too.

Chain of Memories: Sora's journey takes him to a place called Castle Oblivion where memories are super important. While he explores the castle, his own memories start to get weird, and he starts to think his closest friend is a girl called Namine. Turns out, it's all part of a plot by Organization XIII, a group of beings called nobodies who are basically reverse heartless. After cleaning out the Organization folks in the castle, Sora chooses to go into a deep sleep while Namine restores his memories. Meanwhile, Riku is also in Castle Oblivion, with his story focusing on his struggle to overcome Ansem inside him. He eventually succeeds and teams up with Mickey frickin' Mouse.

KH2: The story opens on some kid named Roxas as his ordinary life starts to get upended. Turns out, he's Sora's nobody, and he needs to rejoin with Sora so Sora can fight Organization XIII. Once he's whole again, Sora goes on another universal journey. Along the way, he learns that the Ansem he knows of is actually using someone else's name, and his real name is Xehanort. Eventually, Sora ends up at the nobody home world, where he and his friends defeat the rest of Organization XIII, including Xemnas, the nobody of Xehanort. After it's over, they all return home in what should be a picture perfect happy ending.

Birth By Sleep: Years before KH1, a group of friends named Terra, Aqua, and Ventus are all training to be keyblade wielders. Some stuff goes down and they end up going on separate journeys around the Disneyverse. Meanwhile, an aged keyblade master named Xehanort is manipulating them for his own ends. He wants to corrupt Terra with darkness in order to steal his younger, stronger body, and he wants to make Ventus fight some emo guy named Vanitas in order to forge the X-Blade. His ultimate goal is to summon Kingdom Hearts and take over the world or some such. Ultimately, he partially succeeds, taking over Terra's body to create the Xehanort from KH2, but losing his memories along the way due to Terra's resistance. Meanwhile, Ven goes into a super-coma and Aqua locks him up in Castle Oblivion in a secret room for his protection. Then, Aqua herself falls into the realm of darkness, where the heartless originate from.

Dream Drop Distance: ...some of which is conveyed to Sora and friends through a letter. Sora and Riku agree to take on a test called the Mark of Mastery in order to earn the title of keyblade master so they can help. To do this, they enter a series of dream worlds and try to resolve issues there. But Xehanort also has his fingers in this pie, having summoned his younger self from the past to interfere. It's revealed that Xehanort is trying to establish a new Organization XIII by using various bodies as vessels for his own mind. He's thwarted in his plot here, but it's clear he's not done yet.

...which leads us into KH3. Phew, there, the heavily abridged summary of the main plot of Kingdom Hearts prior to KH3! Oh, there's also 358/2 Days and Coded, but they more inform some of the other stuff going on. Days delves into Roxas' time prior to his role in KH2, as well as his friendship with another couple of Organization members. Coded more or less just explains how Mickey learns some of the stuff that gets revealed to Sora and friends prior to 3D.

Of course, like I said, this is the heavily abridged version. I've left out a lot of details that shouldn't be necessary to understand the main plot, but are still pretty important for some of the side plots going on. To be frank, Kingdom Hearts is a mess, and no, those spin-offs are not optional to making sense of it all. It's more accurate to think of them as additional entries in the series that just aren't numbered. The only ones you could skip are Coded and maybe Days, and I wouldn't recommend skipping the latter. The good news is, as I recall, KH3 comes with summaries of all the other entries built in, so if you don't mind reading for a bit before you start, you should get a better understanding of what's going on than what I put here~

ChrisTaka posted...

KH1: Boy goes to find his friends
CoM: Still looking
358: Resting before he keeps looking
KH2: Finally finds them
BBS: Old man does old man things
3D: Old man still doing old man things

Missed a couple games like Coded and the mobile game but whatever

Coded: Sora gets to finally go inside Riku

SHRlKE posted...

Ive also never played any of the spin off games

Oh, honey

I'll write smthng up after work but it looks like a previous post already covered a decent chunk of things.

But yeah, if you skipped the handhelds you're going to be lost. KH3 is really the last of a trilogy that is made up of Birth by Sleep and Dream Drop Distance.

old man almost destroys the universe because he's bored.

Basically at the end of the day with minimal enough spoilers basically all the past games add up to one key event:

Seven Warriors of Lights versus 13 Warriors of Darkness to clash to create the X-Blade, the one weapon that is capable of opening and controlling Kingdom Hearts. Thats really what it boils down to, and yes there are quite a lot of characters that if you only played main number games you might be confused on who some of them are and what their relationships between each other are. Hence why those side games are more a part of a bigger narrative.

Kid skips dinner

Baha05 posted...

clash to create the X-Blade,

It should be noted that the X is not actually an X, it's a letter from the Greek(?) alphabet which is pronounced key.

SHRlKE posted...

Lol almost 30 minutes? I just want a nice easy recap. Not war and peace.

I mean, I've seen it, and not only is it a pretty good recap, it's also pretty amusing. Definitely keeps you engaged throughout the whole thing.

And like other people have said, 30 minutes is probably the best you're gonna get.

Phantom_Nook posted...

old man almost destroys the universe because he's bored.

Also Chess

pegusus123456 posted...

It should be noted that the X is not actually an X, it's a letter from the Greek(?) alphabet which is pronounced key.

But also its said like Chi and its Xehanorts favorite word outside Darkness.

ViewtifulJoe posted...

Darkness.

https://youtu.be/sBbCXfj0Sao

So Sora wakes up one day. This is normal. He and some friends, including Riku and Kairi, play around on a small island that is like 50 meters from the mainland sometimes, and like to play various games. A couple of them want to actually go on an adventure.

Darkness falls. As in, beings made of darkness as something goes very nonstandard.

Riku, Sora, Kairi are separated. Sora appears in Traverse Town. Pluto is also... ...you know what, I haven't even gotten out of the tutorial and I cannot really summarize it any more minorly than this.

Just take the 30 minute video. Or better yet, play the game.

Its over now. You can safely play them at your leisure. So instead, ask:
"What order should I play them in?"

For KH1, 2, and 3, they are in chronological order. There are a couple side games too.
The most important is Birth By Sleep which is a prequel. There is also the 3XX days thing which is good for Roxas fans. Oh, and there was some silly castle oblivion thing which happened between KH1 and KH2. THAT ONE you can ask for. Because it is silly and a recap, but it does introduce that extra character and does explain why Sora is in a special chamber at the start of KH2.

So no. No summary for you. Or further one.

Play at least the mainline and two other games yourself.

Or ask a better question. Like at the bare minimum "what order should I play them in?"

pegusus123456 posted...

It should be noted that the X is not actually an X, it's a letter from the Greek(?) alphabet which is pronounced key.

https://youtu.be/07tv6cSkg7k?si=L-qxIWHNz7-XYlhj

Prestoff posted...

https://youtu.be/07tv6cSkg7k?si=L-qxIWHNz7-XYlhj

Thank you for this

Ah, forgot about this lol

Kingdom Hearts = Sora loses his best friends Riku and Kairi when Heartless attack his island home. Awakening a Keyblade, he teams up with Donald and Goofy, who are searching for Mickey, to find them. As they travel the Disney worlds, Maleficent kidnaps the Seven Princesses with Riku's help. Sora beats Maleficent, but it's revealed Ansem was the real villain and he possesses Riku. Sora beats Ansem, but Riku and Mickey are stuck in the dark realm.

Chain of Memories = Sora's trio wind up in Castle Oblivion and have their memories altered by Namine at the behest of Marluxia, a member of Organization XIII. Sora fends off a replica of Riku the Organization made and frees Namine thanks to Axel, then beats Marluxia. Namine puts Sora's trio to sleep so she can put their memories back together. Meanwhile, Riku also stumbles into Castle Oblivion and is led by a man named DiZ to control Ansem's lingering darkness within him. With the help of Mickey, Riku ends the Riku Replica and succeeds in conquering Ansem.

Kingdom Hearts II = Sora wakes up after his Nobody Roxas sacrifices himself, and his trio goes out to defeat Organization XIII, led by the Nobody of Ansem: Xemnas. However, the real Ansem is DiZ, and the "Ansem" we knew was his apprentice named Xehanort. Ansem wants revenge on Xehanort, and sacrifices himself to stop Xemnas from completing Kingdom Hearts. Axel also sacrifices himself to help Sora, as Roxas was Axel's best friend. Sora defeats Xemnas, finally reunites with Riku and Kairi, and they all go live happily ever after.

358/2 Days = During the days when Roxas was a member of Organization XIII, he becomes friends with Axel and Xion, the 14th member who turns out to be a replica made to copy Roxas's powers to wield the Keyblade. Xion learns of her identity and goes awol, and Axel's attempts to maintain the status quo of their friendship by hiding secrets from Roxas ultimately shatters their friend group. Xion learns that as long as she lives, Sora will never awaken, as she's siphoning his memories away through her connection to Roxas, so she lets Roxas strike her down and she fades away from everyone's memories.

Birth by Sleep = 10 years ago, three Keyblade wielders named Terra, Aqua, and Ventus get led astray by Master Xehanort as part of his goal to reenact the ancient Keyblade War. He draws on Terra's insecurities to open Terra up to the darkness, molding him into a perfect vessel to possess. He sics Vanitas -- Ventus's dark half -- on Ventus, for their clash to produce the X-blade: the weapon needed to open Kingdom Hearts and start the War. Xehanort steals Terra's body, but loses his memories in the ensuing struggle, and winds up apprenticed to Ansem. Ventus enters a coma after his clash with Vanitas shatters his heart, and his heart enters Sora's to stay safe. And Aqua ends up in the dark realm after trying to save Terra.

Re:coded = After KH2, Mickey finds a message in Jiminy Cricket's journal made by Namine during Sora's year of sleep. He digitizes the journal and makes a Data Sora to analyze the message, and the journal itself takes on the form of a Data Riku to help Data Sora. The message ends up being Namine's way of informing the others of the connections Sora has to the fallen protagonists (Roxas, Xion, Axel, Terra, Aqua, Ven, and Namine herself) and imploring Sora to save them. The real Sora agrees to do so.

Dream Drop Distance = Sora and Riku take an exam to become Keyblade Masters, and enter the realm of dreams. They're led astray by echoes of Xehanort (Ansem, Xemnas, etc.) from across time that are being gathered by Xehanort's teenage self, instructed to assemble 13 versions of Xehanort to create the True Organization XIII. Sora is caught in darkness by Master Xehanort, but is saved by Riku, Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Lea (Axel revived as a human), and for his valor Riku is awarded the title of Master.

I can summarize the phone app game too since it's super crucial, but I have no clue how to do it succinctly lol