Kingdom Hearts Starting Choices EXPLAINED - What Should You Pick?

The thing with picking the Dream Rod is that you also end up with 2 extra MP Bars you otherwise can’t obtain. Which is hard to pass up considering how strong Magic is in KH1.

Honestly i respect someone who drops tutorials like this that already exist just in a higher quality than 2010 youtube

Just letting you guys know that in KH2 Final Mix, you don't learn Scan from leveling up. You get it from beating Axel for the first time.

KH1: What this video implies, but does not actually say, is that "Dead of Night" means that you need less total Xp to reach Level 99, while the "Morning" option requires the most. I bring this up as it is not 100% obvious, and miscommunication will occur.

This is why each of us as a kid thought kingdom hearts was such a tough game. Everyone thought the sword is cool and the shield was lame.

It’s definitely interesting how it doesn’t matter what weapon you choose in KH2, you get scan at level 4. Yet you’ll see it as early as the Roxas vs Axel fight for some strange reason.

In every single main game magic is so overpowered that it's recommended to pick it. However I will say it's definitely meant for experienced players, as while you are far more powerful with a magic build you also die much faster. Magic is the best option in each game, but make sure you get practice first so that you don’t end up with 50% of the game being the death screen.

FINALLY SOMEONE EXPLAINS WHAT IT MEANS!! Thank you thank you thank you. This is great, I hate games that whatever choice you make impacts the rest of your game play. But you don’t know till the end. Now I know… so I am so happy

Been wanting to let you know how much I appreciate you going back over familiar guides and refurbishing the content that brought me to you in the first place. Thanks again for the continued assistance through my endless journey with this fantastic series!

I tell people that, if they are willing to grind, level up, explore, take it easy, and aim for 100% conpletion, then staff + night is the way to go. If you are not tackling secret bosses before you are maxed out, the lack of second chance is not a big deal. You could still make the case that shield makes easier to farm up the synthesis gear at lower levels.

I’ve played KH for years and I had no idea the abilities where unlocked depending on what you choose, thanks for the videos, it seems you never stop learning something new about KH! ❤

Thanks again for making these guides! I already know this one, but I think having a bunch of recently updated guides for these things that are clearly laid out like this are going to be very helpful for most new or returning players.

An argument for staff, been a while but I remember the build chunking health, I managed to get ripple drive to put out stupid numbers since the finishers damage is correlated to max mp. Couple with more room for areo and cure, plus the secret bosses that require magic dmg to initiate dps, it's quite solid. Dunno how it fares on critical mode though, probably need to be a dodge tank. But areo (once you have it) works in all but one boss fight and tanks a lot of dmg. The one boss being ice titan, it'll punish you for using it since you're supposed to use guard.

Dream Rod > Dream Shield for life. That extra MP you can't make up for in any other way is worth so much more to me than the two extra item slots. You can't get those item slots you lose picking Staff over Shield in any other way either, but frankly if I can't beat a boss in six elixirs? I think I'd just accept I needed to get better at the fight. And anyone decrying the ability learning curve for Staff and early-game difficulty of it's lower stats has clearly never actually played Staff start or didn't equip Ripple Drive, that finisher is busted overtuned in the early-game. That said, I've also beaten the game on Proud a dozen times and also play a lot of action games. I can definitely see how picking Shield for more survivability early on makes a lot more sense than the Staff's damage potential for a first time player or anyone not all that confident with action games.

this is the most comprehensive guide to these systems I've ever seen and the comments giving more insight helps too! thank you very much for this video!

Crazy how I'm still learning something new about KH2 and it's from the PS2 days!! I love this game

Usually, my choices for the weapon follows KH 1: Dream Rod and sacrifice shield, and the reason is that the one extra mp is only at the beginning of the game, and if you choose not to choose it, you cannot have max mp and you be less than 1 mp. Both strength and defense there are items that boost the stats while magic doesn't. KH2: Dream Shield just cause more survivability KH3: Mystic route since I usually end up using more magic that I planned on using.

I have needed this video from you thank you so much 😭😭😭

I pretty much agree with you in terms of KH1’s starting choices. Pick Shield, sacrifice Sword, and Night Route. As for KH2, I only pick Shield. KH3, I pick Balance and Guardian

you forgot the most important part... in KH1 you MUST pick the rod and sacrifice either sword/shield if you want to do a 100% completion run. you only can obtain max MP when picking the rod, which gives a higher MP pool AND higher magic damage. you can max all other stats anyways. except the item slots which are pretty unimportant to begin with, it's just how many potion items you have ready on quick use. (which means that's the max amount of potions you can use until out of combat, there are a few bosses where it would be helpful, but nothing compared to the MP stat)