All the News from the Kingdom Hearts 3 Premiere

Today was a huge day for Kingdom Hearts fans thanks to the Kingdom Hearts 3 Premiere Event, where many people got to try a demo build of Kingdom Hearts III for the first time.

With the embargo lifted, we now have plenty of gameplay details, videos, and screenshots. Here’s a compilation of comments about the premiere at KH Insider, with impressions from various publications.

The premiere event featured the Hercules and Toy Story worlds. Take a look at these new gameplay videos from each.

I’m pretty excited for the Toy Story world especially.

The overall consensus is that Kingdom Hearts III feels great, but let’s take a look at some of the specific details revealed.

As shown in the Toy Story gameplay video, Ralph from Wreck-It Ralph is a new summon. This is the second summon confirmed alongside Ariel. You’ll also be able to skip the summon intro.

You can have multiple Keyblades equipped and switch between them. Different Keyblades have their own Shotlock attacks. There are also different team commands in different worlds.

Somehow, Young Xehanort has split the Toy Story world in two in order to better understand hearts. (He can do that?) There is a possessed doll that the team must fight, too.

Rex also mistakes Sora for a character from a video game he’s playing, where he’s been stuck on a fight with Bahamut.

The official Kingdom Hearts Twitter account shared a bunch of new Kingdom Hearts III screenshots, too, and they look great!

There’s also a new interview with Nomura from Famitsu, translated at KH Insider. According to Nomura, the big themes in Kingdom Hearts III are “What is a heart?” and “resolution.”

The worlds in Kingdom Hearts III will be “vertically expansive,” with features such as wall-climbing. Each world will have new gameplay elements, such as the Gigas robots in the Toy Story world. The areas do look like they’re pretty big.

There will be other mini-games aside from the Classic Kingdom mini-games. As for the Classic Kingdom games, they won’t be all unlocked from the start. Instead, you’ll have to collect them. They’ll be played through a device called the “Mobile Portal,” which has other features as well.

Finally, everyone was hoping we might get a release date announcement today… but we didn’t. However, Nomura said the release date should be announced “early next month.”

Did I miss anything? Probably. There’s a ton of Kingdom Hearts III information out there now. What do you think about how Kingdom Hearts III is shaping up? As for me, I’m excited!