#kh fragmentary passage

[kitkat-the-muffin]

After running an entire experiment for over a year and a half

I have finally perfected the best order to play the Kingdom Hearts series in

The aforementioned best order has been completely play-tested by an outsider new to KH in order to verify its effectiveness, and it goes as follows:

Kingdom Hearts 1

Kingdom Hearts X [chi] and Kingdom Hearts Union X [cross]

Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep • (start with Ventus, then Terra, and end with Aqua. Include Final Ending. Exclude Secret Ending)

Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain Of Memories

Kingdom Hearts 2 • (followed by Kingdom Hearts BBS’s Secret Ending)

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days • (read Roxas’s diary alongside the cutscene movie if not playing the original release. Then read the secret reports after finishing the game)

Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded • (you may also play Coded if so desired)

Kingdom Hearts Dark Road

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance

Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep 0.2 A Fragmentary Passage

Kingdom Hearts 3

Kingdom Hearts 3 Re:Mind

Kingdom Hearts Missing Link

Kingdom Hearts Melody Of Memory

Kingdom Hearts 4

Extra notes:

DON’T FORGET THE SECRET BOSSES! All the cutscenes that precede and follow every secret boss fight is important, so I recommend looking them up on YouTube if you can’t beat them

ALWAYS READ THE SECRET REPORTS!!!! All of them. For every game

Look up BBS’s Secret Ending on YouTube, unless you feel like beating all three routes on Proud Mode (including the Mysterious Figure boss… I think. Idk, look it up)

As of writing this post, Missing Link and 4 have not been released yet, so they may be skipped for now. However, based on their trailer vibes alone, I’d still recommend this order whenever they do release

The mobile app for KHUX and KHDR has been discontinued, so the only source we currently have for them are cutscene movies on YouTube and Damo’s fandubs

The Dark Road fandub is not out yet as of posting this video, but hopefully I can update this post whenever it does release (same with Missing Link cutscenes)

If you have any questions please reply to this post because I have answers!

Here are some obvious ones tho:

Days is AFTER 2 to preserve the Riku plot twist

Dark Road is BEFORE DDD to increase player attachment to Xehanort before he takes full control over the narrative

Ventus is played FIRST in BBS because it helps the narrative make more sense (sorry Nomura, Xehanort being evil is not a plot twist)

Any spoilers for future games revealed in the prequels are intentional (like Maleficent thinking about Master Xehanort in Union X, or Terra seeing a vision of KH2 Riku in BBS) and are meant to serve as foreshadowing

If anyone feels like streaming the games in this order please let me know. I skewed the results of my experiment a little by being present for the Test Subject’s playthrough, so it’d genuinely benefit from another account played entirely in a vacuum

But also we kind of sped through the games rather than relishing them. There’s so much to do in all the games but to get to the rest of the story we didn’t really play them to their fullest. I hope future players can enjoy all there is and take their time with it :3

Anyway, please reblog this post if you found it interesting! I want to share this order with the world because I genuinely think it’s the best way to play the games! And again, if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Thank you to @goldensunset @8golden-harvest8 @share-the-skye for acknowledging my experiment’s existence a couple times, y’all are real ones 💕💕💕

[kh-described]

officially beat fragmentary passage on critical mode! still have to go back in for some last achievements (mirror aqua with no damage, and the zodiac boss rush thing), which I'm gonna TRY to do also in critical mode, but we'll see if I give up along the way

[handrawntv]

i forgot to post this sooner but pls enjoy me and seth’s full playthrough of KINGDOM HEARTS BIRTH BY SLEEP 0.2 A FRAGMENTARY PASSAGE. seth calculated that we cried out in awe at the visuals every 90 seconds on average.

i need to catch up a little on editing during this holiday but KINGDOM HEARTS 1 IS COMING UP NEXT, BABEY!!!!!!

[soggystyrofoam]

aqua 0.2 sprite redraws

[inexplicably-spookified]

aqua kingdomhearts

[xiiiwayfinders]

A Fragmentary Passage is the saddest dress-up game I've ever played

[smigglesss]

she’s being microwaved nice and toasty

[sugarwyns]

yes i own kingdom hearts on multiple platforms already. yes i bought it again when it came out on steam. and yes i still cry over aquas story

[dreamsy990]

SPONTANEOUS MINI REVIEW BECAUSE I REALIZED THAT I HAVENT FUCKING TALKED ABOUT FRAGMENTARY PASSAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok so. i actually really liked this one!

so uh. if you witnessed that incredibly long thread i made yelling about kh3 you will know that i. am not a fan of the look of modern kh. i think its kind of uninteresting compared to the delightfully cartoony style and just generally i dont like more realistic looks to games that already had a unique visual identity.

so im here to say that i think it works for 0.2! im a good way through kh3 and i dont think it works well there and ill get to that when i eventually review that game but. in 0.2 i think the new style fits the more dark tone very nicely, and the enviornments are absolutely gorgeous. like i came out of ddd thinking absolutely nothing could top symphony of sorcery in terms of world design and was proven wrong. the realm of darkness is my new favorite kh "world". for my mutuals who havent played kh, look at this!!! its absolutely gorgeous

and the environments are actually my favorite thing about this game. besides being beautiful, theyre also delightfully trippy and unsettling. theres a section where you have to climb up a seemingly never ending staircase, and every time you reach what you think is the top you hear aquas worst thoughts. a lot of the areas are twisted, destroyed versions of worlds seen in bbs. its very dark (fitting, for the realm of darkness) and honestly its a treat to just walk around admiring the view. the visual storytelling is as good as kh ever gets.

i briefly mentioned aquas thoughts a minute ago so ill bring them up again, her commentary adds a lot to the desolate atmosphere, and this game really feels like a character study. it shows her desperation, her worst thoughts, her hope despite everything, and its just genuinely good. i havent been able to say that about khs character writing since like. days. its GOOD.

i am. not a fan of bbs' writing. i think its got a good underlying concept with absolutely terrible execution, and it makes me wonder at times if the things i like about it were intentional or not. but this game takes the best written character of bbs and gives her more depth than they ever could before. i can say with confidence that aqua is one of the best characters in the series, and a lot of it is because of this game.

the tone here is very gloomy, but thats not really a complaint because the game is so short. the depressing atmosphere isnt too much to bear because youre barely in it for more than 2 hours. and i think that run time is EXACTLY long enough. it goes for exactly as long as it needs to tell the story and still give a moment to breathe.

as for gameplay. im not the biggest fan of the updated system. i like to think im open to change with kh's combat. i think the command deck has potential and the card system in com was fun and i actually liked days' panel system. but something about the way this new version of the system feels to play is just. unsatisfying. hits dont feel like they have any weight to me, and spells feel inconsequential despite being more grandiose than ever. its just not as good as it was before, and like its a sort of half assed replacement of reaction commands. the way they incorporated style changes into it was okay, but again its not as satisfying as it was in bbs. but maybe it was just satisfying in bbs because the rest of the combat there sucked

tldr, the things i care about in a game (writing and visuals) were fucking spectacular, but the gameplay definitely had room to improve. also if i ever have to fight a darkside again ill throw up and cry! 8/10, though im tempted to raise it to a 9 for the environments alone

[anonymoussong]

Put your fave things about your fave game in the tags 💙

[artisanscarecrow]

Taking a bit of a breather from Tron content today-- back to Kingdom Hearts!

...Would you believe that my favorite character from Birth By Sleep is actually Ventus? XD

I think all these drawings I've done of Terra and Aqua recently are making up for how much I drew Ven as a youngster.

Terra and Aqua reuniting briefly in Fragmentary Passage was Very Sad. I did this based on Terra commenting that he "couldn't see" Aqua or Ven in that scene.

Drawn using Procreate.

[luxmoogle]

Never forget cat ears Aqua.

[kh-described]

personal update i played fragmentary passage this week and it only took me like 3.5 hours so now i'm playing it on critical mode and having lots of fun :) i've always been too scared to play a kh game on critical but i think this is a great game to try it out on!!

(also the game is so pretty and i did like it a lot!! the cutscene to gameplay ratio was very. off. but i can forgive it because i love aqua so much)

[roxtron]

AT LAST I HAVE FINALLY FINISHED THIS REDRAW--

(I ended up getting too tired to fully draw the background, so I just edited it from the screenshot.) Here's the original screenshot and also a zoomed-in screenshot of the redraw for the details in her face.

(Also yes, it's a screenshot from a youtube video of the cutscene. I couldn't take the screenshot myself and get a frame that good. So shhh.) Anyway overall this was really fun to do but it took me forever lmao. that's why I haven't posted art for a while, though to be fair I just kept getting distracted a lot and procrastinated towards the end. This definitely isn't the style I naturally draw in so it was really difficult for me to work with the whole semi-realistic style. Turns out my original style is insanely cartoony compared to this stuff. I'm really happy with how it turned out though! It was definitely a fun experiment. I'm thinking my next redraw is gonna be from the back so I don't have to worry about drawing the details in the face lol. (Oh also also, yes I did change her hair color a bit. In the game the screenshot/cutscene is from her hair is darker- I don't know why though?? In the original game before this her hair was a much more pastel bright blue, so I compromised and went kinda inbetween. Same with the eyes, though I kept a slight tint of the original purpley-blue.)

[goldensunset]

u can just come over and play kh at my house :) no need to spend money i got it all already. come on. i'll make us snackies :)

YAAAAAAUYYYYYY

[xekutozoren]

Sephiroth's secret cameo in A Fragmentary Passage ( •̀ ω •́ )✧

Does anyone remember that scene in KH 2.8 where Aqua blacks out after finally catching up to her friends and being attacked... and then it pans to her just floating/sinking in the darkness until Mickey finds her?

I'm talking about this:

Arghhhh, this moment is so painful, my poor queen ; A ;

Go Terra!!! \(゜ロ゜\)

So, like, how did she go from being in a giant Heartless fist to just floating down in the middle of nowhere?

Been thinking about this little gap as an opportunity and came up with a scenario where Sephiroth was observing her for a while.

When Terra manages to get Xehanort and the large Heartless to disappear in that burst of light and Aqua collapses on the floor, it doesn't take long for the smaller Heartless to sense her light and come to feed on her heart. Sephiroth jumps out, quickly vanquishes them and picks her up. o(*￣︶￣*)o

But at that point they hadn't established a proper relationship yet, he's just fascinated by her light and how she isn't broken yet. He senses Mickey's presence and sees him searching for her, so he goes and softly lets her float towards the Disney copyright. ( ﾉ ￣ｰ￣)ﾉ

Ref from おいも