A Guide to Understanding Kingdom Hearts Story - Part 1

I’m certain that plenty of Kingdom Hearts fans have found themselves in this position: You’re in a conversation in which by some reason the game gets mentioned, and immediately someone comments on how the story is impossible to understand. Now, you’ll have the perfect counter-argument!

I’ll admit that Square definitely doesn’t make it easier for us, having released games from the saga for pretty much every big console and portable ever since the PS2, on top of more than one mobile title, but here in this article series our objective and focus is the story, and after having played the titles more or less fifteen times (at least once a year ever since I got to know Kingdom Hearts, around my 13/14 years of age. You can say the games have had a bit of an impact on my life) and more than once made someone who hadn’t played anything sit down by my side and listen to me explaining the entire story for a few hours, I’m positive I can prove you that you can easily understand the entire Kingdom Hearts story!

Before we begin, there’s only two things to be considered! The first one is that we’ll follow the game’s release order, but if you’re interested in it, you can check out the Complete Kingdom Hearts Chronological Timeline here!

The second one is that the focus will not be on details, deep lore and revealing every last secret the games hold, but to explain the overarching story of the series, in a way in which even those who haven’t finished playing any of the games can understand it! If you wanna get to know every last detail, I recommend you play them yourself, and experience first hand the incredible amounts of emotion that Kingdom Hearts manages to evoke in us.

The First Trio

As will become clearer a little bit forward, one of the constants throughout the entire series is the presence of trios of main characters, made up of two guys and a girl, and united by a strong friendship bond amongst them. The first one we’re introduced to, in the first game ever released, is the Destiny Islands Trio.

Sora is a classic JRPG protagonist: The young man who gives everything he has to protect or save his friends, brave, adventurous, with an extremely spiked hairstyle and a much higher than necessary amount of belts and zippers on his clothes. He’s the protagonist of the saga and of most of the games, and has a strong and determined personality. Sora has lived his entire life in Destiny Islands, alongside his two best friends.

Riku is both Sora’s best friend and greatest rival, sharing with him a deep and complex bond which encompasses both positive and negative feelings. Still at the start of the game, this dynamic is presented to us through two minigames which put the player in control of Sora and competing against Riku, and the insinuation of the existence of a “love triangle”, with both having some interest towards the last member of this first trio of protagonists.

Kairi is the only one who wasn’t born in Destiny Islands, having moved there while still very young and not leaving Sora and Riku’s side ever since then. The three of them build a very strong friendship, and spend their leisure days playing in the archipelago near the main island where they live, dreaming about adventures in unknown worlds beyond the horizon.

In the game, there’s a superstition that two people who share a Paopu Fruit will have their destinies forever intertwined and will remain a part of each other’s lives no matter what, and this is used as a motivator to introduce a rift in the friend group: Both Sora and Riku want to share a Paopu Fruit with Kairi.

Disney/Square Enix Characters

Donald, Goofy and Mickey are the same characters they’ve always been, just in another context! Their personalities, voices, mannerisms and even body language remain completely loyal to the canonical versions of them we all know very well because of Disney, which immediately brings a sense of familiarity to the game.

In this universe, however, Mickey is the king of the world he comes from, and Donald and Goofy are two members of his court and his friends, Donald being the powerful Royal Mage (and powerful is an understatement, since canonically our favorite grumpy duck holds the position of most powerful mage ever in the Final Fantasy franchise, alongside Final Fantasy XVI’s Dion Lesage, since the two are the only two mages in the history of the saga to have successfully cast Zettaflare... but there’s still a lot to cover before we get there!) and Goofy is the brave captain of the Royal Knights.

Both embark on a journey searching for King Mickey, who vanished while investigating the disappearance of the worlds and has left them a cryptic message, about them joining the bearer of some key.

While Donald and Goofy will be joining us almost as much as Sora throughout our adventure through the story of Kingdom Hearts, King Mickey shows up a little less, but he's still a crucial character to the plot.

Among the several Disney characters who famously also take part in the games, some like the Fairy Godmother from Cinderella and the wizards Merlin, straight out of the classic The Sword in The Stone and Yen Sid, from Fantasia, make more frequent appearances and have a greater importance to the main story plot.

Even though several other characters from games of the franchise show up in other places and more specific contexts, such as Cloud and Tifa playing a big part in a storyline and the trio from FFX-2, Yuna, Rikku and Paine showing up briefly in KH2, Vivi being part of a gang alongside Seifer‘s group from FF8, Auron being one of the best temporary party members you can get, and the childhood friend group around the main trio in Destiny Islands also including Wakka, Tidus and Selphie, there is a small nucleus of characters who have a larger role to play and a stronger importance and presence, more frequent and more closely related to the central plot, taking part in several crucial moments. They are Squall (who prefers to be called Leon), Yuffie, Aerith and Cid (The one from FF7).

As mentioned, there are still hundreds of characters who show up across all games, both from Disney and from Final Fantasy, varying from characters who can be temporarily included in your party to simple NPCs, from important villains who shape the story to side quest objectives such as collecting the 99 dalmatian puppies in KH1, and all of them have their own relevance to the world they exist in and to the game’s story in a more specific scope.

Villains

Very soon the amount of plot-relevant villains will increase meaningfully, with the arrival of more or less seven versions of a same character and a group named Organization XIII which was, at one point, composed of fourteen members… But let’s take it slow, and for now, let’s enjoy the simplicity of the first game!

Similar to what happens with the Disney and Final Fantasy characters above, the same goes for the villains: Most of the big Disney villains are present in Kingdom Hearts, just like some of the most iconic ones from the JRPG franchise (it’s not by chance that the secret boss fight against Sephiroth is so famous among fans), but there are few who have a close connection to the saga’s main storylines, most of them being more relevant to the story of their own worlds, but not interfering that much in the overarching main plot. However, some have a deeper connection:

Maleficent

Maleficent is introduced to us in the first game as the “leader” of a group of villains who are fighting against Sora, Donald and Goofy, which includes several villains from Disney’s most iconic movies, such as Jafar, Ursula, Hades and the Queen of Hearts, but unlike them, she’s always a stronger boss, and we always face her in the late/endgame, interfering directly in the most central and important parts of the story more than any other Disney villain, alongside her second-in-command.

Pete

Pete is, alongside Maleficent, one of the main antagonists in the saga, and he’s always either with her or doing her bidding somewhere, usually tormenting someone in the process. Since Mickey is such a classic character and so important here, nothing more fitting than his oldest and most classic rival to have a place in the spotlight too, right?

Ansem

Ansem, Seeker of Darkness is the first of the original Kingdom Hearts villains introduced to us, and it’s from him that the first Arc of the saga, the Darkseeker Saga, gets its name. He’s responsible for the reason why the King went out himself to investigate and sent out Donald and Goofy on the mission in which they met Sora: the fact that the Worlds are, little by little and one by one, disappearing and being consumed by The Darkness.

Main Concepts

So, how do these worlds work anyway, the ones we’ve mentioned a few times up until now? To make understanding the rest of the plot easier, let’s establish what exactly mean some concepts which are essential to understanding the story.

Worlds

Within the universe where the game takes place (which has become more and more meta in recent games, dealing with concepts of parallel realities, virtual ones and even video games within the videogame, all very Inception), every Disney movie ever coexists, each as its own isolated world, alongside original ones such as Destiny Islands and the first world Sora visits outside the islands, Traverse Town.

Ideally, each world’s inhabitants are not supposed to know about the existence of worlds other than their own, and only a few individuals with training and special abilities are able to travel between them, with the purpose of maintaining peace if something eventually threatens to affect the balance in which all of them coexist. King Mickey is one of these individuals, and Sora ends up becoming one too.

From a gameplay point of view, every Kingdom Hearts follows the same pattern: The player travels from world to world, in each of them facing a villain from Disney and/or an original villain from the saga as well, in each world advancing both aspects and parts of the main storyline and the world’s individual story, which is always related to the story of the original Disney movie it’s based on. The original Kingdom Hearts worlds, on the other hand, are usually only for advancing the main story.

Keyblade

Bearing the shape of a comically huge key, the Keyblade is both the main weapon used by Sora and the future protagonists and a fundamental instrument to the dynamics of the Worlds in the game: it’s the only thing capable of opening and closing the barriers between worlds, and, therefore, those who possess the ability to wield a Keyblade and travel between them are called Keyblade Masters.

It also has the ability of magically opening every lock and even people’s hearts, which leads us to the next concept.

Heartless

The Heartless are the game’s enemies, as soon as in the first tutorial you’ll find a couple of them in their most basic form, and as the game progresses, they keep varying in appearance, strength, power, etc

A Heartless is created at the moment someone’s heart is taken over by Darkness and separated from their body: The person ceases to exist, and their heart takes the physical form of a hostile foe. Normal people become the basic heartless we face by the bucket in the game, and more powerful people become more powerful Heartless or ones with unique abilities, meaning, some of the bosses we face throughout the gameplay.

The Darkness

The Darkness, capital D, is in a certain way at the same time a concept, an energy and a physical entity. Since the more complex aspects surrounding it only get into play later on, for now it suffices to know that The Darkness, every time that it’s mentioned like this, doesn’t only refer to the basic concept of darkness, but to an obscure force which has a certain independence, capable both to corrupt and “control” people and of “lending” its power to others.

Now that the most important characters have been introduced and the key concepts established and explained, we can finally move on to the most exciting and craziest part of this mix of Disney and Square Enix: The story.

The Beginning of Everything

The game starts (after the introductory tutorial) with Sora’s easygoing life alongside his friends in Destiny Islands. Tired of only dreaming about big adventures and far away places, the three of them plan on gathering provisions and setting out on a raft onto the open sea.

On the night before they put their plan to the test, a strange storm ravages the island, and when Sora goes investigating, he’s faced with The Darkness destroying everything, including their raft. He finds Riku, who’s clearly amazed by the power in the front of him, giving in to the darkest corners of his mind, and is soon after attacked by the strange creatures we know are the Heartless, even though Sora still has no idea of anything, pretty much.

In the middle of the despair of realizing his wooden sword caused no visible damage to the creatures, it suddenly transforms into the Keyblade, and the enemies are now possible to defeat when Sora attacks them. Exploring the island, he also meets up with Kairi, but in a strange spectral form which vanishes upon passing through Sora’s arms. He also ends up becoming unable to resist the chaos The Darkness caused and loses consciousness, being “thrown” to another world.

Sora ends up in Traverse Town, an original world from the game, where he meets the first small group of Final Fantasy characters (Leon, Cid, Aerith and Yuffie, for now), who are responsible for explaining to the boy what are the heartless, the Keyblade and the basics on how to defeat them. It’s also here that we form our main party, initially contrary to Sora and Donald’s wishes, but as soon as the three of them meet up they realize they have a common objective: find out what’s happening to the worlds which are vanishing and being destroyed by The Darkness, Sora searching for his friends and Donald and Goofy for their King, and so they embark on this journey together.

Disney’s Classics, But Written by Tetsuya Nomura

From here onwards is when we visit the Disney worlds. In Kingdom Hearts 1, the order in which they should ideally be visited is:

Neverland (Peter Pan)

As he explores each of these worlds, Sora interferes in the storylines of each “movie” at the same time he finds out information about what’s happening in them, which are full of Heartless terrorizing the characters and suffering the effects of The Darkness trying to take their hearts.

One of the first things we come to find out is that the 7 Princesses of Heart - Princesses with their heart full of pure Light - are being kidnapped: Snow White, Aurora, Belle and Cinderella have vanished and their worlds have been destroyed, Jasmine and Alice are taken right from under our protagonist’s noses despite their efforts to prevent that, and the seventh princess still has her identity unknown.

The other is that Sora can use the power of the Keyblade to close each world’s Keyhole, and this makes it so that they revert to their original state, without any Heartless and with the Darkness unable to cause any more problems. The trio goes, then, on a mission to close each world’s Keyholes while they search for Riku, Kairi and Mickey.

In Wonderland we have to gather evidence of Alice’s innocence and present it to the Queen of Hearts, to save the Princess from being arrested and accused of trying to steal the Queen’s heart. However, amidst a battle against her army of cards, Alice ends up vanishing anyway.

In the Olympus Coliseum we meet Hercules and his trainer, Phill, and we can take part in several tournaments in the Coliseum, fighting against Heartless squads, against Characters such as Leon, Yuffie and Cloud, and even the titans from greek mythology and Herc himself. Each tournament and battle won gives you increasingly better rewards and in-game achievements. Even though Hades is one of the villains conspiring with Maleficent, not a lot goes on at the Coliseum in this first game other than a few story-relevant cutscenes, and the big focus of the world are the tournaments.

In Deep Jungle we join forces with Tarzan to help Jane save the gorillas from the cruel hunter Clayton, corrupted by the Darkness, and the Dangerous leopard Sabor as we continue our search for our friends. From there, we move on to Agrabah, where the only Princess of Heart not yet kidnapped resides, Jasmine. Here, Maleficent and Jafar are looking for her, and eventually Sora, Donald, Goofy and Aladdin join forces to stop that from happening. However, when our heroes are busy fighting the evil sorcerer, Maleficent vanishes and Riku follows her orders and kidnaps Jasmine.

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On the way to the next world, aboard their Gummi Ship, Sora, Donald and Goofy are swallowed alongside the ship they were in by a gigantic creature. Sounds familiar?

The next world is, in fact, the inside of Monstro, the enormous whale which swallows the boat in Pinocchio’s story. In its interior, we meet Pinocchio himself, and also Geppetto, who asks us to go after the puppet, who ran off to explore deeper inside the creature.

Amidst the psychedelic labyrinth that makes up Monster’s insides, Sora finds more than he was hoping for: Riku, who accuses him of being “different”, of heaving replaced him with new friends, and runs away with Pinocchio, trying to steal his heart with the help of a huge heart within the whale’s stomach, but failing and running away thanks to the trio, who defeats the Heartless and saves the puppet, taking him back to Traverse Town alongside Geppetto, who becomes the NPC who allows you to customize the Gummi Ship.

It’s important to mention that soon after this moment, we see a cutscene showing Riku alongside Maleficent aboard Captain Hook’s ship, holding Kairi’s unconscious body in his arms and getting from the witch the power to control the Heartless.

From there, we go to the world towards which every Kingdom Hearts player has… strong feelings about, to say the least, and not lower the bar. Remember that part in which the inhabitants of different worlds (meaning, the characters in each Disney movie) cannot become aware of the existence of worlds besides their own?

In the worlds in which there are people and humanoid characters in general, no one finds even the least bit weird coming across a boy wearing shoes at least a couple of dozen sizes bigger than his, accompanied by a talking dog and duck, but here a human and two animals would probably drown pretty fast and that would draw attention I guess, so it’s the first world in which the main party changes appearance: Atlantica.

Sora as a “half-triton-half-dolphin”, Donald as an octopus (kinda) and Goofy as a Sea Turtle, here they join Ariel to search for this world’s keyhole, despite the warnings of King Triton, who reveals that he knows the truth about Sora being a Keyblade Master and their real objective, but orders them to go away and claims to have everything under control here.

Meanwhile, similar to the original movie but with no Prince Eric in the picture yet, Ursula convinces and tricks Ariel into stealing her father’s trident and giving it to the sea witch, in exchange for making her biggest dream come true: Visiting other worlds. Following an extremely irritating battle, both due to the swimming mechanics and to the bossfight’s dynamic itself, Sora finds and seals the Keyhole.

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The next world is a lot of people’s favorite: Halloween Town! And yes, we can have Jack in our party. Here, Jack asks for ours and Dr. Finkelstein’s help to create a way to control the Heartless who showed up in town and make them take part in the Halloween Parade. He tries to create a heart to control the creatures, but it’s stolen by Oogie Boogie.

After defeating the villain both in his original form and in the shape of a gigantic monster-mansion, Sora seals off the world’s keyhole and the trio goes off to the last Disney world with relevance to the story.

In Neverland, we meet Peter Pan after having been captured by Hook, and after fighting our way through his ship, Riku runs away taking Kairi’s body with him and the trio stays back, defeating the villain and sealing off the world’s keyhole, located in the clock tower, accessed by the newest ability we acquired thanks to Tinker Bell: Flying!

And from here, we only have two more original worlds left, which complete our first story: Hollow Bastion and End of The World.

Endgame, or "the real Kingdom Hearts are the friends we made along the way"

Arriving in Hollow Bastion, we meet two familiar faces, fighting one another: Riku, and Beast, who is there searching for Belle, kidnapped due to being one of the Princesses of Heart. The trio confronts Riku, and he reveals to be the true original wielder of the Keyblade, and unexpectedly, it goes on to obey him, passing to his hands. Donald and Goofy debate on what to do, but ultimately decide to follow the King’s orders of following the Key’s bearer and leave Sora behind, hurt and defenseless.

Beast and Sora do not give up, and press on traversing the confusing castle filled with puzzles. Eventually, they run into Riku, Donald and Goofy again, and amidst another confrontation between the two ex-best friends, Sora declares that even if he loses his body, he’ll never allow his heart to be taken by the Darkness. Riku attacks him, but Goofy and soon after Donald go to his aid and back to his side, deciding that their friendship with Sora means more to them than the King’s orders right now.

Sora says that he doesn’t need the Keyblade, that his friends are his power and that’s everything he needs, and at this moment, due to the strength of his heart, the Keyblade leaves Riku again and goes back to belonging to Sora.

Riku is not happy in the slightest, gets defeated in the fight that follows, and runs away, meeting Ansem, who promises the boy he can make his heart stronger through the power of Darkness so that he can take the Keyblade back once and for all. Riku accepts and is consumed by it, becoming semi-possessed by Ansem. He reunites with Maleficent, who is trying to uncover Hollow Bastion’s Keyhole, and for that, she needs the seven Princesses' hearts.

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After solving more puzzles, defeating Maleficent twice and seeing her being consumed by the Darkness once and for all, we meet Riku-Ansem again and he reveals that the seventh Princess of Heart is actually Kairi, and the reason she’s unconscious is that her heart is missing. Without her heart, Ansem cannot access the world's Keyhole, but Sora cannot seal it either.

After fighting Riku without the help of your two companions and winning, Sora remembers the moment, back in Destiny Islands, when he came upon the spectral version of Kairi who disappeared upon touching him, and realizing where her heart has been all along, takes the keyblade Riku had created and turns it on himself, releasing the hearts of Kairi and the other six Princesses… and his own.

And Sora finally falls to the Darkness, disappearing exactly at the moment in which Kairi finally takes back her conscience and wakes up.

Ansem, fully controlling Riku’s body now, reappears and tries to kill Kairi, but Riku’s heart manages to take back enough control to stop the fatal blow and make way for Kairi, Donald and Goofy to escape. Meanwhile, the all-powerful Keyblade wielder at the end of the game, with almost all the best buffs and abilities possible, high level, etc., upon losing his heart to the Darkness, turned into… One of the most basic Heartless, the big black ant-like thing with the yellow eyes you see dozens around.

Controlling this heartless, we run towards the escaping trio at the entrance hall, and even though Donald tries to kill us more than once, Kairi somehow realizes who we are and runs to hug the Heartless. Both are then completely overrun by a horde of enemy Heartless.

In the best Power of Friendship style, a white flash throws every enemy back and in place of the heartless, Kairi is now holding Sora, who has returned to his original body. Beast stays back to hold off the Heartless and make sure we escape, since he’s not planning on leaving Belle and the other princesses alone there, and the four of them run away.

Right after one of those strategic pauses, subtly inserted in the plot to allow the player to complete any side quests they still want to, buy items or grind and level up before going into the final sequence of the story and of battles and bosses, the main trio is back to Hollow Bastion, to fight a Behemoth and seal the world’s Keyhole, thus allowing the original people who lived in that world prior to it being consumed by Darkness to return: The Final Fantasy characters who previously were living in Traverse Town.

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At The End of The World, Literally

From here, whether you are the player who only cares about the story and wants to progress it already or the perfectionist who completes 100% of every optional objective and sidequest (usually one is friends with the other), it’ll get to a point where you have nothing else to do but go on to the End of the Worlds.

Earning its name, this world is nothing more than a conglomerate of the wreckage and remains of the worlds which have been destroyed by the Darkness, and the first parts of it you traverse consist of a sequence of battles against bosses or groups of powerful Heartless, culminating first in the boss fight against one of Disney’s classic figures: The Chernabog. From here, we go through to the last save point in the game, and the final sequence of fights and cutscenes.

The trio ends up in a corrupted version of Destiny Islands, where Ansem appears again, at first in the form of Riku and then in his true form, arguing with Sora that darkness is the true essence of the heart, and that’s why eventually everything and everyone will succumb to it.

As a good JRPG protagonist, Sora counter-argues that that’s not real, that even when filled with darkness, deep inside there is a light that never goes out. After a battle against Ansem and the big Heartless on his back, and then a battle against the World of Chaos, the gigantic warship entirely made of organic matter into which he transforms because of course, Ansem is a JRPG boss after all, the trio, with the help of Riku’s heart, defeats the villain.

In a last desperate effort, Ansem opens the Door to Darkness, literally the door which leads to the Realm of Darkness, the world where the Darkness has control over everything, intending to then summoning the Kingdom Hearts, the heart of all the worlds, begging it to fill him with the power of Darkness.

However, Sora states that the Kingdom Hearts is not what the villain thinks it is, and that instead it contains the power of Light, and he’s proven right when the door opens and the power of Light emanates from within, destroying Ansem once and for all. Or was it?

Sora, Donald and Goofy run towards the door and try to close it, since it leads to the Realm of Darkness, which is infested with Heartless, but even with Riku’s help, who with Ansem’s destruction was able to get his body back and return to his original form on the other side of the door, they’re unable to.

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It’s then that, inside the Realm of Darkness alongside Riku, King Mickey shows up, wielding a Keyblade just like Sora’s Kingdom Key but with inverted colors! With a keyblade on each side, they’re able to close the Door to Darkness permanently, one group remaining on each side, and right before closing it Mickey assures them that there’ll always be a Door to Light, so both him and Riku and Sora, Donald and Goofy will eventually be able to leave wherever they end up in.

The worlds which had been consumed by the Darkness start to restore themselves, and Kairi starts to be taken back to Destiny Islands as a result of it. She and the rest of the world eventually vanish, with one last promise made by Sora that he’ll manage to go back, someday.

Conclusion

And so our main characters are left by the ending of the first game: Riku and Mickey in the Realm of Darkness, Kairi safe and sound with her heart in the right place and back to her fully restored world, and Sora, Donald and Goofy heading straight into their next adventure, which we’ll discuss soon in the next article in our series!

Any questions or comments are very welcome! And thanks for reading!