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!

This weekend was pretty incredible for Kingdom Hearts fans. We hoped we’d get something from D23 Expo Japan 2018… and it turned out to be two trailers and a wealth of information.

I went through a spoiler-filled analysis of the story content in these trailers at KH Theories, so here I’ll focus more on going through the new information we have.

Here is the first trailer.

This trailer confirms several things:

• Marluxia is returning.
• Vanitas is returning.
• The Monsters Inc. world is real.
• Ariel appears to be a summons.

It was also interesting to see Sora’s interactions with Marluxia and Vanitas, since he has connections to them without knowing why.

The second trailer mainly introduces the new theme song by Hikaru Utada, “Oath” in the Japanese version and “Don’t Think Twice” in the English version. However, it shows some adjustments to scenes from previous trailers as well as new content at the end.

In the new scene, we see Riku (with a new design) and Mickey in the Realm of Darkness. Riku’s Keyblade has somehow been broken, and he leaves it behind for “the other me.” Official renders include what appear to be his new Keyblade.

This has prompted a lot of speculation.

But even more information came out over the weekend besides what was revealed in the trailers!

Do you miss NPCs in Kingdom Hearts? It looks like they’re back for Kingdom Hearts 3! A “Making of Kingdom Hearts III” presentation at D23 included a look at the Kingdom of Corona (Tangled), which is a lively world filled with NPCs.

You can check out more NPC shots here.

Square Enix also revealed a new Game & Watch style mini-game (this seems to be be based on Disney’s Giantland), that the final stage is something Nomura has always wanted to do, and that KH3’s Gummi Ship segments will include an open exploration phase and a combat phase.

I’ve never enjoyed the Gummi Ship segments, but it sounds like it might be more fun in Kingdom Hearts III.

Meanwhile, it also sounds like Kingdom Hearts Union Cross and Kingdom Hearts III will be linked in some way. Nomura calls this Project Xtrace.

KHUX will start using completely new worlds, the main scenario will develop rapidly, and KH3 will reveal why Ventus is around during Union Cross.

(Maybe I should start playing it again…)

Kingdom Hearts III will also include a Rare Heartless themed after Japanese pudding, and they’ll have fruit accessories. The Gummi Ship will also be customizable, in a system similar to how customization worked in Kingdom Hearts 0.2.

Finally, development of the worlds has been split into three stages. The first stage, which includes Toy Story, Monsters Inc., and Olympus, is 90% complete. Tangled is in the middle stage, which is 60-70% complete. They’ve indicated there are 10 worlds, but it’s unclear if this refers to all the worlds or just Disney worlds. (Update: apparently the actual Japanese wording could indicate anything between 10-19, so we don’t know how many worlds are in KH3 yet.)

Phew. That’s quite a lot of new information! Are you excited for Kingdom Hearts III? What do you think about the new details that were revealed this weekend?