If you love Disney, you're going to love this! Kingdom Hearts 3 mixes your fave Disney characters with the stars of the Final Fantasy series for one beautiful, bonkers action RPG.
Look, we get it. This is one of those mash-ups that doesn't quite make sense on paper, we know, but please believe us when we tell you it totally works. Kingdom Hearts brings together characters from Square Enix's fan-favourite Final Fantasy series and teams them up with some of Disney's most memorable cast. The Disney characters come from both classic and contemporary movies and while it's tempting to think they're just two-dimensional rip-offs, they're really, REALLY not, with each one brought to life as carefully as Square's own Final Fantasy characters.
The first Kingdom Hearts game came out in 2002 and since then, even the most dedicated Kingdom Hearts fan will admit that at times, they too have struggled to keep up with its highly complex story. Yes, it's a HUGE game with loads of lore, side quests, and characters, and yes, that can seem a little overwhelming at first. Director Tetsuya Nomura, however, has said he had been "thinking very precisely about how to make sure both those who have been with the series for a long time and those for whom this will be the first KH title will be able to follow along", which - hopefully! - means you'll won't need to know everything about the events that have gone on before to make sense of KH3.
Let's be honest here; even if you have nothing else to do between now and January 29 it's unlikely you'll get all the games finished - there's just too many of them! But Square has done a great job of bringing older instalments of the Kingdom Hearts series to current-gen consoles, so if you're keen for a head's up and want to get used to Kingdom Hearts' good guys, bad guys, and in-between guys, jumping into Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts 2 will certainly help! We're told the many different spin-off titles are all apparently important to KH3's plot too, but if you've only time to get one game done between now and KH3's release, Nomura recommends you spend some time with the KH3 prequel, Kingdom Hearts 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue collection.
Main character Sora will team up with a whole host of delicious Disney characters in Kingdom Hearts 3. While we've no doubt some are being kept back as a surprise, so far we know we'll meet Ariel from The Little Mermaid, Remy from Ratatouille, Simba from The Lion King, and Wreck-It Ralph from… well, Wreck-It Ralph. We'll also bump into Rapunzel, Woody, Buzz and the Toy Story gang, Sully and Mike from Monsters Inc., plus Anna, Elsa, Olaf, and Svenn from Frozen and Captain Jack Sparrow and crew from Pirates of the Caribbean. That's all as well as traditional characters we've already come to know and love in Kingdom Hearts games, such as Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and the legend that is Donald Duck.
As you might well expect, we'll encounter many of these characters in their native worlds. While again we're sure there are still surprises in store, we know some of the worlds we'll be heading to Disney worlds faithfully recreated in the game. So far, it's been confirmed we'll head to Tangled's Kingdom of Corona, Big Hero 6, Mount Olympus, Twilight Town, Monster’s Inc, Mysterious Tower, Toy Story (featuring Wreck it Ralph), Frozen, and Pirates of the Caribbean. Sadly, although Disney also owns the Marvel and Star Wars franchises, it's unlikely - if not quite impossible - that those worlds will appear in Kingdom Hearts 3.
Kingdom Hearts 3 will be released January 25, 2019, in Japan, and on January 29 in North America and Europe. We've already waited thirteen years for this third installment, and the wait it just about killing us now. Can someone just wake us up when it's the end of January, please…?