Kingdom Hearts 3 Chronicles is my attempt to keep up with my thoughts on Kingdom Hearts III after every session. Today’s post will cover… OK so it’s getting hard to break down? It’s everything after the 8th world but before “The Eclipse”. Also worth knowing that I am playing on Proud Mode, the hardest difficulty available from the start.
Ok so I don’t remember the exact sequence of these cutscenes, but basically we revisit Riku and Mickey in the Realm of Darkness, see how they get captured, and then reveal that Aqua is here and she has fallen to the darkness. Meanwhile Sora gets a message from Chip & Dale that Riku and Mickey are missing, so Sora decides to go save them. He opens a gate which leads to Destiny Islands, where he finds Aqua’s old Keyblade (I think this was originally Master Eraqus’s Keyblade actually?). He uses it to summon a door on the island, which he enters after convincing Donald and Goofy to stay behind.
Aqua uses the power of the Demon Tower (the column of Shadow Heartless) to fight against Riku, and you get to control Riku in battle. This round as Riku is bit more balanced because Sora is pretty close to his level. I felt like I had a much better handle on this fight than I did when first playing as him at the start of the game. After you fight the Demon Tower for a bit “Anti-Aqua” herself appears to fight against Riku before turning back into the Demon Tower again. Once you get the Demon Tower’s health to zero, a special reaction command appears that just says “Sora.” Hitting the command causes a cutscene where Sora appears to help out. Together Sora and Riku summon their super dual-keyblade to beat back the Demon Tower and free Mickey. Riku goes to Mickey’s side and you take over as Sora to fight Anti-Aqua.
This battle is pretty tough because Aqua has a lot of mobility options that make her hard to pin down. She’ll summon copies of herself to distract you and then appear in a dark warp behind you to attack. There’s also her finishing moves that cover a lot of the battlefield, making it dangerous to just move around. It’s one of the most fun battles so far though because of the fact that her general moveset as a Keyblade user feels familiar. It’s a cool change of pace compared to fighting massive monsters the whole game.
When you beat Aqua she falls into the dark waters again, but Sora reaches out to her. She wakes up on Destiny Islands, and we get one of the best moments of the entire series so far. At first, Aqua doesn’t realize she’s in the Realm of Light, asking when the Destiny Islands fell to darkness. When they tell her she escaped the darkness she starts to cry, a powerful moment for this poor girl who’s been trapped in the Realm of Darkness for literally a decade.
Then we go off to Castle Oblivion (which Sora doesn’t remember) and Aqua turns it back into the Land of Departure, and we very easily find Ventus sitting on the chair. Vanitas shows up though and Aqua decides to fight him solo. You get to play as Aqua which is SICK even though she controls differently, and the difficulty is inflated by only giving her 1 hi-potion and 1 ether. Still, gotta say I got super hype at this moment. By now Square have a good handle on how to get my invested, so when this part happened I literally said out loud “Oh damn I get to be Aqua? I love this game.”
After you stomp on Vanitas he gets desperate and tries to attack Ventus so Aqua blocks him and gets hurt. Just as Vanitas is about to kill Aqua, Sora reaches out with his heart and FINALLY learns the power of waking and uses it to return Ventus’s heart to him. Ventus wakes up and in the second best moment of the game so far beats back Vanitas. Vanitas leaves, saying it’s all good because at least “his brother” is awake. Ven notes to himself how Sora looks like Vanitas and then says that Sora was Ven’s second chance. Everyone is happy yeeee.
After that there are A BUNCH of cutscenes, like a solid half hour of plot plot plot happening. The guardians of light all come together for the first time: Sora, Mickey, Ventus, Aqua, Riku, Kairi, and Axel. Aqua comments on how she met Sora when he was little but he doesn’t remember, and then she mentions the same about Kairi and how she doesn’t remember, then Axel laments no one remembering him, BUT Ventus actually does remember him, and that’s good news. Axel has a great moment where he says all this is confusing which has to be a call out to the audience that “yes, this is silly, but don’t you love it?” They’re right, I do love it. The team reconfirms their goal and Yen Sid says they should rest today for the battle tomorrow.
Somewhere in the middle of all this (sorry I forgot the order again, this may actually start before the Vanitas fight) we get a cutscene with Vexen and Demyx where they conspire, with Vexen saying that since they’ve been pushed out of the proper Organization they have an opportunity to atone for the trouble they’ve caused. He also mentions that one of the chosen Organization members feels the same way but isn’t able to do anything because he’s one of the chosen. This is an interesting tidbit. My gut says it must be Saix, since he’s really the only one who would have a reason to feel that way, considering most of the other members of the Organization are just versions of Xehanort at this point. Demyx agrees to help though. He next appears in front of Ienzo with an empty vessel ready to take on Roxas’s form, and Ansem the Wise in tow. It’s good to see how some of the people from the former Organization really do seem like they’re on the side of light, and now that their leader is back they can help.
Next we get some scenes with the guardians of light getting ready for their battle. Aqua and Ventus reflect on how they’ve been gone for so long, Ventus says he thinks he dreamed of Sora’s life while he was asleep. He also references seeing little animals, which is maybe a reference to Dream Eaters? That could be interesting since he was somehow a member of the unions back in the days of the Keyblade War, so he would’ve had a Chirithy Dream Eater of his own. The meaning of the line depends on how far back you want to assume he’s “remembering” things.
We move to a scene with Axel on the clock tower in Twilight Town with THREE ice creams, wishing Roxas was back. Saix shows up, because Saix and Axel were friends before they became Nobodies, and they talk about what that was like, but it’s a funny, antagonistic conversation because they’re on opposite sides now. Saix asks why Axel has 3 ice creams when it would just be him and Roxas, and Axel says he doesn’t know, he just felt like getting 3, but fans will know the 3rd is for Xion, who no one remembers right now but apparently Axel is trying to remember. Saix reveals a bit about how they first joined the Organization - they were very briefly apprentices to Ansem the Wise, charged with searching for a girl who was the focus of experiments but had disappeared. Axel says he never found her, and there’s no trace, and I think Saix says there’s still no trace. This is clearly the girl the Ansems were discussing earlier, but at this point I have no idea who it’s supposed to be anymore. It’s like every time this particular mystery comes up it just gets cloudier. Saix in this scene possibly supports my earlier theory about him though, since he says he re-joined hoping to find this girl but has since failed. Is he having second thoughts? I would say yes.
Next we jump to Destiny Islands, where we find Riku sitting by himself on the beach, but he’s not really alone - the Replica Riku is here with him, or in his heart at least, just so they can talk. Replica Riku clearly isn’t evil right now so this can’t be the same Riku we met in San Fransokyo, which is just fun. He says he has unfinished business though before he’ll “return” to Riku. Riku doesn’t seem bothered by this.
Finally, Sora and Kairi sit on their tree, and she offers him a Paupu fruit, the fruit that is said to connect people’s destinies. You may remember wayyyyy back in the original Kingdom Hearts, this was something they discussed but never did because it was like a cutesy love thing, but now it seems like we’re finally delivering on their relationship. They share their fruit and it’s cute and the scene ends.
And that’s where we’re gonna wrap up - after that you’re kicked to the world map and the next area you can go to is called “The Eclipse” and it looks like a white storm cloud. Fitting - the eclipse being the place light and dark meet...