Breaking down the Summons | A Kingdom Hearts Retrospective

What I love about the summons is that they'll remember the adventures you had with them. It's even more sweet when you realize Ariel got her wish to see what the outside world is like.

"Stitch is the next D-Link and is definitely not a Disney Princess." Wow. I can't believe Bio is slandering Stitch, who is objectively Best Princess.

Oh! I know the reason for the faded out Thundaga Shot command. It's only available to Aqua, so if Terra or Ven use Stitch, they won't get to use that command :)

One of my favorite subtle references in the D-Links, and I might come back for an edit later, is that Mickey has that one spell that shrinks enemies. Mickey has Mini/Minnie. Also that Zack has slot mechanics, in reference to his own PSP game.

One thing with the summons in KH2. Chicken Little is the only one to use the KH model for the hud instead of a drawn image. My thoughts on it are either chicken little as a summon were later in development and they were able to get someone to draw a hud icon for them, or because he's the only summon in 2 to be from a 3D movie they wanted to try to reflect that in the hud icon.

This video is so in depth I can feel the summons coming inside of me

Okay, so Thundaga Shot is an exclusive command to Aqua. Terra and Ven cannot use that command themselves, even with the D-Link. However, if you use the D-Link as Aqua, you'll have Thundaga Shot avalible. I'm not sure why they didn't just replace it with a thunder surge or whatever, but that's how that is.

You shout out Zero Gravira in Terra's D-Link and my guess is it's meant to be a representative of darkness. It might not actually be a darkness command, but the coloring is fairly similar to an actual darkness attack. That, and it drags people back down to the earth, Terra's actual element.

21:50 Terra in BBS is for some reason a very skilled Time Mage. In FF, Time Magic’s original name in Japanese is Jinku, which means space-time. Terra is not only good at the earth based spell Quake but other space related spells such as Warp (another spell exclusive to him) and Meteor acting as an intermediary form of this earth and space-time connection. Not to mention the fact that you pointed out that the Lingering Will uses gravity magic to draw in Sora. This could be why he has Zero Gravira in his d-link’s command deck. That or he’s just slow so he wanted a spell that would stop the opponent in place

I think Zack's D Link finish commands are supposed to reference his boss fight, as when you fight him when he has his helmet on he'll perform a dive attack that shoots out darkness, and when you fight him when he's possessed with Terra the first attack he does is a DM that shoots out darkness before rapidly teleporting around perforrming quick slashes, ending with another dive attack.

Float also happens to be a spell in Final Fantasy which gives the target(s) Float status, entities with Float is effectively immune to Earth element attacks and if your party is affected by Float, they'll be able to just walk over damaging tiles without taking said damage

It's worth noting Chain of Memories (and Re:CoM) actually does have three unique summon sleights! Shock Impact summons Simba to knock enemies away with a roar, and inflicts Stop. Idyll Romp summons Bambi to zoom around the arena and inflict Confuse on everyone. Cross-slash+, on the other hand, actually got shown off in the video in place of normal Cross-slash! The only difference is that Cloud warps directly behind his target to use it.

Correction on Simba for CoM - Simba damages all enemies in front of him, regardless of range. Thus, the best way to use him is by going to one side of the arena, face the other side, and use him. By the by, Lv1 only deals damage, but Lv2 and Lv3 also stuns enemies.

outstanding video. Really enjoyed this longform discussion showing the evolution of summoning through the games!

Fantastic video, Bio! I really loved this retrospective for a mechanic that's sometimes overlooked by folks during their playthroughs. Looking forward to what's next!

Ventus' D-Link having a flipped keyblade may be either an intentional reference or a holdover from the original design used in the KH2FM secret video, which did have the teeth on the opposite side!

29:46 According to the kh wiki on fandom, thundaga shot is a command exclusive to Aqua and as such doesn't appear for Terra or Ventus during stitch's d-link in their campaigns.

The Genie summons in both Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 remain my favorite Kingdom Hearts summons. The Tinkerbell summon was one of my most useful summons during Kingdom Hearts 1, especially against secret bosses. It also helps that Tinkerbell doesn't make Sora's allies disappear when summoned. Simba's summon in Kingdom Hearts 1 was cool too. I definitely enjoyed the summon mechanic throughout Kingdom Hearts.

17:48 stitch doesnt refill hp with his lick only mp. although he can use the ukelele move at any time being low on health causes him to use it as a priority, thats how he mainly heals sora. that's how we can use him to cheese some coliseum jiminy point requirements since in the cups they drop points instead of hp orbs. also when sora is low on hp he slowly heals him over time.

53 minutes? Why Bio, you shouldn't have, it's not even my birthday!