Correction 1: Pointed out by The Animated Ignoramas, a true pacifist run of KH1 would avoid Monstro entirely, as it does not appear in World Terminus, so the Parasite Cage can be spared in favor of doing Atlantica and HT. Correction 2: Pointed out by IanMyDude, BtwAlexHere, and Big Boss on RUclips and Neku on Discord, the fights with the Shadows sent by Pete at Mysterious Tower, the mobs who steal the 100 Acre Wood book in Hollow Bastion, the first mob fight in KH2 Halloween Town, **AND** the fight against the Space Paranoids mobs in Hollow Bastion can end by letting the enemies hit you, so *subtract 44* from both the KH2 counts and the grand totals. Believe it or not, I never died on these fights so I had no idea. (But like seriously, the cutscenes after these fights are unchanged regardless of how it goes, and it makes no sense, especially in the case of the Pete Shadows.) Anyway, very embarrassing to be wrong on the internet like this. Correction 3: Pointed out by KeybladeBrett, you actually *can* progress to the Leon fight in KH1 by seeing all the Donald and Goofy scenes, and ALSO going to the Third District. Seeing the scenes on their own is not enough, you also need to visit the Third District at least once. For the record, there are 4 scenes (entering the Hotel, the Gizmo Shop, the Dalmatians' House, and the Alleyway). This is especially funny considering all 3 of the proposed progression methods I listed are actually true. I reckon the reason I've always heard/assumed that it's 5 Shadow kills is because that's the fastest way to do it. So, subtract another 5 from the KH1 counts and grand totals. Here's the obligatory spreadsheet of all the Heartless murder: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xZaYi7nqGq6wijmP8Upaqpn9prl518PcNwn6KaMaeGU
11:30 Someone might have pointed this out, but you don't need to do the dolphin sequence again after you visit the ship once if you unlock the shortcut with the big chest and the geyser. I don't think it affects the count since you did it again peaceful but it still bothers me.
@@madmaster0015 Oh shit, really? For some reason I always thought the geyser outside of Ariel's Grotto was one way. That's so dumb because I literally did unlock the shortcut when getting footage for this
@@RegularPat Yeah. The geyser pushes you out, but returns to normal when you leave allowing you to use it for quick backtracking. That probably would have saved you a lot of time with the dolphin. Maybe you can consider that when you make a video about shortcuts in the worlds or something.
Monstro does still appear in Sora’s memory restoration clips in KH2 and I don’t think Jiminy would be quite so chummy with Sora if he didn’t help Pinocchio so couldn’t it be possible that he still killed the parasite cage? Edit: I also thought I’d include that Monstro wouldn’t show up in the World Terminus because he isn’t a world. Just a random whale that’s somehow thriving in the Lanes Between.
I had guessed a score of around 13k myself, since by my recall they refer to the huge ass mob fight at the Graveyard in 3 as being 10k heartless(despite ironically requiring less kills on foot) and I recalled KH3 have a fair bit more Big Mob Fights, but I suppose Second Visits in 2 adds a big chunk, 3k is a good number to conclude on though, nice work
You could argue Sora never actually kills any of the White Mushrooms or Rare Truffles, kinda like the Darksides at the beginning of KH1. No matter what you do with the White Mushrooms, they either get angry at you and leave, or they reward you and leave. Same for the Rare Truffles. So any room with those as a possible spawn can be cleared of Heartless with no kills just by hitting them each once.
Now I wonder how a "True Murderer" Run would look like. That is, going out of your way to kill every single heartless in sight, but avoiding repeated encounters (each room counts once unless you must repeat that room because of the story). Or count each encounter (including optional ones) separately but never more than once.
Yes! So true this was my first thought when I finished the video I wanna know how many he kills with every heartless on screen being defeated but once per encounter and including the KH2 cups and battle gates. I'd also like to know how many kills in total sora gets including nobodies, unversed, and dream eaters
There are 2 fights in KH2 you named that you can skip by losing the fight: Retrieving Pooh's book and the first fight against Space Paranoids Heartless in Hollow Bastion after doing the 2nd world visits.
I do know that the battle in Halloween Town Square in KH2 can be avoided by taking enough damage; so, while this is not much of a change, it is something.
@@RegularPat frankly, these kinds of fights are what makes the 1000 Heartless fight so amazing, cos you're struggling and flailing for a good portion of the first half, then you start handling things fine, then you end up kicking ass at the 1000 heartless fight, proving Sora's growth.
"Let's start, as human history did, with Kingdom Hearts 1." Pausing right here, I just love your aloof delivery of clearly deliberate and impassioned scripts. Thank you for continuing to put this good shit out here.
This is why I love Pat. He answers questions I didn't know I had. Now, my big question is: How many lifetimes in Heartless Prison is Sora going to have to serve?
Or, alternately: none again because I think Ansem SoD is the only legal authority to the Heartless, and I'm pretty sure he declares existing as a thing that isn't a Heartless as a crime worthy of the death penalty.
It was around the time you talked about Chain of Memories, that I realized the reason the other spin-offs besides CoM and Coded weren’t on the table was because it wasn’t Sora doing the murder in those. Well, there’s half of Dream Drop Distance, but there it’s the Heartless who are absent.
Well, _now_ I wonder, how many Heartless were killed by other jagoffs, especially those who would not be able to send the freed hearts back to (a) Kingdom Hearts?
You know, it's funny you mentioned Roxas' kill count, because that was actually the first thing that popped into my mind at the start of the video. Because while Sora's kill count, even while being as conservative as possible, is definetly impressive, Roxas did almost nothing BUT kill heartless nearly every single day for close to a year, so I'm wondering how many that is. You can divide his kill count in two as well. An underachiever kill count where Roxas does the bare minimun to complete his missions, and an overachiever kill count where he collects the maximum amount of hearts the mission asks for.
So I have an awful question. Barrel Spiders (found in the Olympus cups) in KH1 essentially commit suicide upon seeing Sora, then run up to you and explode. Should Sora be held culpable for these acts I wonder?
So it's definitely 100% possible to beat Shan-Yu without killing any extra heartless. All of Roxas' experience is transferred to Sora upon beating Simulated Twilight town. This means you can infinitely grind on the nobodies before twilight thorn to whatever level you need in order to beat Shan-Yu quick enough.
I was so proud to know instantly that World Terminus was the reason to go to Halloween Town. Anyway, great work as always. Extremely detailed and a fun watch!
I had guessed around 4500, which in fairness would have been pretty close if the KH3 train murders had counted. It’s giving Arkham Knight Batman’s totally not lethal BatTank with BatBallistics, imo.
I adore Pacifists/Minimalist runs like this and this is amazing. I also love the Gamechamp-esque logic about including cutscenes and this was a triumph of a video, Pat. Love your stuff and thank you for working out the answer that I didn't know I needed so badly
38:45 Actually, there's a third way to pass through this part, which you can kill no heartless. If you climb up to that first gate, you can glide, or use Sora's floaty mechanics, to fly until the waterfall and land above it. Avoiding completely all the Water Cores.
Really cool video! I'd like to provide a bit of insight for KH1 that I haven't seen in the comments yet. For the 9 Shadows in Dive to the Heart, you can actually despawn all of the enemies by walking far away from them, and that actually progresses the game. The same can be said for the Soldiers before the Guard Armor fight, and the two elevator rides in Hollow Bastion (although this one takes an incredible amount of patience). For KH3 you can skip the Water Core and Earth Core fights in Olympus by doing some fancy air slides over the area that they spawn in, which is done in the speedrun.
I always considered the amount of canon heartless fought to be every heartless that spawns while on the shortest critical path, so no backtracking or unnecessary content. I'm curious how much higher that count would be
But the shortest critical paths skip stuff that the game most definitely treats as canon in later entries. So this is probably a poor representation. It would be a MINIMUM REQUIRED kill count, but not canon. My personal canon is this: 1) Every in-game cutscene that is possible, is canon, unless a cutscene has two different versions, one for each outcome of a fight. Given that for heartless deaths, no alternate versions really matter, we should count every cutscene as canon. Cutscenes track Sora's story and they add up to form his most canon-possible-story for later entries. This means that stuff like olympus colliseum is absolutely canon. So is Sora's meeting with Sephiroth in kh1. So is his meeting with "unknown", "phantom" and "kurt ziza". 2) Sora gets told, in no uncertain terms, that killing heartless releases hearts. Knowing sora's kind nature and helpful attitude, as well as his definite "I'm a heartless-slaying-badass-so-don't-fuck-with-me" attitude he shows on multiple occasions, he would absolutely NOT shy away from killing as many as possible, right up until the organization tells him killing heartless helps their cause. Sora blatantly ISN'T a pacifist by nature. He's a killer. This means that all POSSIBLE heartless spawns during canon events and worlds, of which there are many, are canon kills. 3)Respawning enemies that respawn for no particularly canon-event-specific reason, are treated as non-canon deaths. Only their originals count. The last question remains whether or not the data organization fights and material synthesis requirements are canon. At no point has it ever been confirmed by a canon event that sora has unlocked and synthesized multiple ultima weapons, accessories, regular weapons or armor pieces. So the TRUE canon count is much, much easier to track. You do a run in which you avoid all respawned enemies unless the enemy in particular was not killed before this point. You do all worlds, all story beats, all cutscenes, all superbosses. You don't bother with data fights, and cavern of rememberance isn't story-related so not canon. You don't go synthesis material hunting. End result is whatever heartless killcount the end-game screens show you. No need to tally them personally. In fact, the only ones you need to keep track of are the cutscene kills and the ones the journal doesn't count but are obviously dead by sora's actions. The TRUE canon count, therefore, is likely much, much, much higher than this video's tally. I counted 7700 heartless kills on my last kh playthrough, BUT, that was with synthesis hunting (to be fair, I didn't have to do a lot of that. But I need to be consistent.) AND repeat tries of colliseum cups AND I can't ever be certain that bosses like cerberus and rock titan aren't just counted as heartless by the game. Given Sora's 1000 kill streak in hollow bastion, and the general increase in lethality of sora, I'd guess the total killcount in kh2 is somewhere around that level too. Maybe even more. I can't be bothered to replay kh3 to count THOSE kills, though. Somebody else can do that. So yeah, Sora's true canon heartless kill count must number in the tens of thousands. Above 10 thousand at the very least. Dude's a one-man army.
My original guess was that Sora would kill a minimum of 3,000, but I fully expected it to be higher. I didn’t take into account how many heartless are actually optional, so I had a feeling it would be a lot higher.
It makes me wonder how your number would be compared to a more normal playthrough. And what would a true canon answer look like? Like if all of this took place for real and you were able to follow Sora with a gopro and tally it up. Would Sora just slaughter every hearless he sees, or does he run from them sometimes and other times go on a spree? This is sending me on a spiral
feels like he'd wipe out as many as possible during normal circumstances, but certain ones ( like during his escape from the end of destiny isles, or the funk he falls into in the middle of kh2 ) he'd be more concerned with survival or outright minimizing casualties worth remembering that ( most? ) heartless are peeps who've been consumed by negativity and destroying the heartless frees them from that, so wonton slaughter of 'em is actively heroic
canonically I think there is the question whether doing the olympus cups actually count as kills. The specific teams are always re-challengable, and Sora never runs into the danger of dying himself, he just tires out after he reaches 0, so one COULD make the case that the cups are regulated and a no-kill-rule is enforced
Meanwhile in Pat's KH2 save file: Saïx- Dude, we're WAY under quota for these freed hearts. Xemnas- What? Isn't the Keyblade Master killing the heartless? Saïx- I mean... not really. He's avoiding whatever fights he can. Xemnas- Does he know?? Saïx- I think he knows!
I actually tried to see what would happen if you completely neglect the Traverse Town keyhole & see how far you can progress without doing it, but unfortunately they force you to do it to move on.
@@gengargamer5657 I forgot exactly which part of the game they stop you at (I think it’s the first Hollow Bastion visit), but if you don’t defeat Opposite Armor & seal the Keyhole the next chunk of story just won’t appear until you do.
@@nixuniverse5240 To get to Hollow Bastion, you need to speak with Cid and have him upgrade your Gummi Ship - this leads to the cutscene with the Library and Kairi's grandmother. He will not be in the right place for it until Opposite Armor is dead.
Personally I would add the Demon Tide at the Union X cutscene to be the actual number of keyblades that were sent to help Sora. With Ephemer and the 300 keyblades of the past I would add 301 to total as the roughest estimate that we can get. Assuming 1 keyblade kills one heartless from the tide and Sora directing all the attacks. But that’s just me.
Just wanted to point out, in canon, Mushu remembers being summoned by Sora and states "We used to beat all kinds of bad guy butt together" which points to Mushu being used for several of these encounters. Simba recognizes him too. Doesn't really change the numbers, but it could influence them
Huh, with a start so emphasizing Sora's murderousness, i was surprised you went with as pacifistic a number as possible. I thought you were gonna count killing as many heartless as possible, not counting repeating optional encounters (which means counting optional encounters the first time you beat them, including all the different possible enciunters you can get randomly in the same room) Love all your videos!!! Cant wait for the next!!
There is at least a passing chance of there being a Sora out there on some save file that has just been murdering some endlessly respawning heartless earning that sweet sweet infinite kills.
You don’t need to ride the dolphin a second time to reach Ursula’s lair; after the first visit to the Sunken Ship, there’s a passage to the Undersea Gorge at the bottom that, in addition to being enemy free, moves the stuck giant chest out of the way next to Ariel’s Grotto. Makes a much faster return trip and no need to worry about the command menu at all, but still gotta beat the shark for Sebastian to unlock the Den of Tides.
my initial guess was going to be around 3200 (i assumed more heartless would have to be mercilessly eradicated in the big battle in kh3’s keyblade graveyard). i was pleasantly (horrifiedly) surprised how close my guess was with the canon counter.
I don't know if it counts but I believe the 1st Minnie escort in KH2 can be done with 0 kills with a speedrun trick with pushing her along the left wall. (There is a clip of speedrunner InsertLogic doing that portion of minnie escort with 0 kills) I know it's 4 kills but gotta lighten that count.
Sorry if it is mentioned later in the video, but for the "canon friendly" count, you can subtract the World terminus Olympus heartless since you can lock it after beating hades cup
I wanna know a full kill (or purification run since it just releases their hearts) run count like every room you go through counting only once unless you go back for story and the story related fights as well.
20:13 Riku was shown to have used a Castle Oblivion World Card on his final floor for stated plot reasons but Sora not only wasn't shown to have used any World Card on his final floor unlike every other floor but was also completely out of them by that point as well as aware of the manipulation. As for whether the Heartless on specifically Sora's Castle Oblivion floor are real or not I'm leaning towards no because even though Sora didn't use a World Card to reskin the whole floor before entering he still progressed through the unaltered floor by altering each individual room with Map Cards. Regardless as you pointed out there are plenty of loopholes for the purpose of this video.
While I’m with you on not counting the Nobodies on a specifically Heartless kill count, I feel like their deaths would matter more if you were really taking this seriously. Even the lesser Nobodies are intelligent to some extent. Also, if you look at all the enemy ship models in KH2, they almost all have the Nobody symbol, not the Heartless one. So for the sake of this count, KH2 gummi kills straight up don’t count.
Great work as always Pat! So much research is put into this video so kudos to you (and the last third is not boring btw). Can’t wait for your next project!!
One cannon clarification. Technically no one can kill a heartless aside from a keyblade wielder. I know this does raise so many questions and an argument that this is a different iteration might be possible, but in kh2 it was stated that any time a heartless was killed by anyone but Sora, or another keyblade wielder, the heartless would simply reform. This would actually mean that you can have Donald and Goofy disembody the heartless without it counting as killing them.
In KH1 Atlantica, you can actually connect the area around Ariel's grotto and the sunken ship by knocking a giant chest out of the way, so there's no need to get the dolphin to give you a second ride to the ship.
The Torn page in Monstro in KH1 is up on a high ledge, however enemies spawn in the ground around that room (and, I believe, every entrance), necessitating at least a few kills for a "canon" total. Fortunately, it's possible to rescue the 51 puppies (7 chests) needed to get the Torn Page from Pongo and Perdito, though if you think they're part of the "canon route" then at least some of them definitely 100% require fighting enemies.
Ive said it elsewhere, Pat, but your scripts are peak and so fucking dense with info and jokes. And the mostly monotone delivery is the icing on the cake
Ah yes, the tiny "Friends are my power" Thanos. Jokes aside this is a really neat idea for a video, we rarely stop and reflect on how much blood we spill to save the day. Always feels double bad because 90% of the heartless look like they want to give you a hug and a box of cookies
Actually Pat, I have tried doing a pacifist run of KH1 in the past, and you can just see Donald and Goofy in each area to avoid 5 Shadows in Traverse Town.
Well this is earthshattering. I've never been this wrong so many times within like two hours of a video posting lmao. Thanks Brett, I'll update this. Thrilled at least to learn something about KH1-- I have been told time and time again that it is strictly 5 Shadow kills and 5 Shadow kills only to progress. I assume that's the prevailing info because it's definitely the fastest way to progress. EDIT-- I just tested it out, it seems like you also *must* go to the Third District to progress peacefully, in addition to seeing all of the D&G scenes. I saw all of them and Leon wouldn't trigger, but then went to Third District and it worked after that. Fascinating tbh
I don't think that defeating Heartless (or Nobodies, for that matter) actually counts as killing. Heartless and Nobodies are essentially two separated parts of a whole being, and defeating a person's Heartless and Nobody causes that person to be restored to their original form, so it's more like bringing them back to life than killing them.
for the Disney Castle Piece in KH2 and the Escort Minnie Subgame: I know that in the Speed running community for KH2 they have the tech known as "Push that Mouse" where you push Minnie up to the inner wall and push her down the hall in practically no time, potentially saving those shadows. The only thing is that you might have to use 1 Faith command to knock them away (potentially killing a heartless) and Minnie might get one shot off, but If you go the distance with it, the Finish Command does no damage. Almost the same situation with the Minnie Throne Room minigame. At the very least with Speed Running, I know that at least one Heartless dies in there, but it could start whittling that number down.
It's possible through save point warping to skip having to kill the pot spider in Agrabah as long as you touched the one in Aladdin's House. After saving Aladdin go to Storage Room and land back in Aladdin's House and you can easily reach the Bazaar without going around.
You can save effort in atlantica kills by opening the treasure chest next to Ariel’s grotto during your first trip to the sunken ship. This gives you a massive shortcut through the world and lets you avoid needing to be out of combat for that extra dolphin ride.
One thing i could think of that would probly lower the amount of heartless killed by Minnie, Riku and maybe Carpet escape would be playing on higher difficulties. Proud Mode is probably the way to go, since Critical gives you a 25% damage boost, allthough i am not sure if that applies to Party Members as weell.
38:21 "Afterwards when the party rescues the D.I.D.--" We had to physically stop the video for second wondering what that could be referring to because we have "The O.S.D.D." (one step down from the OTHER DID.)
33:00 Oh wow, as soon as you noted that the ones above Riku were fake, I realized they were all buzzing around in the same pattern except for the ones trying to murder you. That's a neat little trick they pulled there.
I don’t know a single thing about Kingdom Hearts besides the surface level stuff like it’s Disney meets Final Fantasy. How I arrived here, I do not know. All I know is that I’m both entertained and deeply confused.
"Come on, they're Nobodies. They don't even exist." And if you kill a Heartless and their corresponding Nobody, you bring the person back. *Make up your mind!*
giving it only a couple seconds thought, using the 1000 heartless battle as my ruler and trying to imagine with my hazy memory how many mob fights in the series are skippable vs scripted, I'm figuring it can't be much over 5 thousand? my hunch is actually a lot less but i tried to give myself some kh3 wiggle room. edit: welp the demon tide counting as 1 really killed my estimate lmao, really fun video :D
4:50 plus the only reason they can even fight the heartless is because they are with sora so even if you aren’t directly responsible you are still the main enabling force
Very interesting video!! It's also interesting how many heartless battles can actually be avoided becuase my inital number was way higher. I can imagine that it would be pretty arduous to avoid killing heartless unnecessarily though
I was half-expecting you weren't counting Re:coded because Data-Sora isn't Sora technically and he's technically fighting data, not actual heartless. Data-Sora getting done dirty once again, huh.
Correction 1: Pointed out by The Animated Ignoramas, a true pacifist run of KH1 would avoid Monstro entirely, as it does not appear in World Terminus, so the Parasite Cage can be spared in favor of doing Atlantica and HT.
Correction 2: Pointed out by IanMyDude, BtwAlexHere, and Big Boss on RUclips and Neku on Discord, the fights with the Shadows sent by Pete at Mysterious Tower, the mobs who steal the 100 Acre Wood book in Hollow Bastion, the first mob fight in KH2 Halloween Town, **AND** the fight against the Space Paranoids mobs in Hollow Bastion can end by letting the enemies hit you, so *subtract 44* from both the KH2 counts and the grand totals. Believe it or not, I never died on these fights so I had no idea. (But like seriously, the cutscenes after these fights are unchanged regardless of how it goes, and it makes no sense, especially in the case of the Pete Shadows.) Anyway, very embarrassing to be wrong on the internet like this.
Correction 3: Pointed out by KeybladeBrett, you actually *can* progress to the Leon fight in KH1 by seeing all the Donald and Goofy scenes, and ALSO going to the Third District. Seeing the scenes on their own is not enough, you also need to visit the Third District at least once. For the record, there are 4 scenes (entering the Hotel, the Gizmo Shop, the Dalmatians' House, and the Alleyway). This is especially funny considering all 3 of the proposed progression methods I listed are actually true. I reckon the reason I've always heard/assumed that it's 5 Shadow kills is because that's the fastest way to do it. So, subtract another 5 from the KH1 counts and grand totals.
Here's the obligatory spreadsheet of all the Heartless murder: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xZaYi7nqGq6wijmP8Upaqpn9prl518PcNwn6KaMaeGU
11:30 Someone might have pointed this out, but you don't need to do the dolphin sequence again after you visit the ship once if you unlock the shortcut with the big chest and the geyser. I don't think it affects the count since you did it again peaceful but it still bothers me.
@@madmaster0015 Oh shit, really? For some reason I always thought the geyser outside of Ariel's Grotto was one way. That's so dumb because I literally did unlock the shortcut when getting footage for this
@@RegularPat Yeah. The geyser pushes you out, but returns to normal when you leave allowing you to use it for quick backtracking. That probably would have saved you a lot of time with the dolphin. Maybe you can consider that when you make a video about shortcuts in the worlds or something.
Monstro does still appear in Sora’s memory restoration clips in KH2 and I don’t think Jiminy would be quite so chummy with Sora if he didn’t help Pinocchio so couldn’t it be possible that he still killed the parasite cage?
Edit: I also thought I’d include that Monstro wouldn’t show up in the World Terminus because he isn’t a world. Just a random whale that’s somehow thriving in the Lanes Between.
I had guessed a score of around 13k myself, since by my recall they refer to the huge ass mob fight at the Graveyard in 3 as being 10k heartless(despite ironically requiring less kills on foot) and I recalled KH3 have a fair bit more Big Mob Fights, but I suppose Second Visits in 2 adds a big chunk, 3k is a good number to conclude on though, nice work
At least 12
You're not wrong
I'd say closer to 13
More than 20 AT LEAST
23 on a good day
You need top comment ngl
Funny thing is killing heartless releases the heart so this is also the most "evil" run.
also doing this run makes kh2 story very confusing lol
@@Jonathan-us1qu Saix: "Keep killing Heartless my guy"
Sora: "What the fuck are you talking about Jesse"
Right? It’s funny that killing evil beings is treated as worse than child abuse (with the LSB fights).
@@wrmsnicket sorry terminology is going over my head.
LSB fight?
@@Eshtian LSB = Lock Shock and Barrel
*Hack RUclipsrs:* "Can I beat Kingdom Hearts without killing any Heartless?!?!"
*Based Pat:* "How many murders does Sora commit on a given weekend?"
Blacks in Chicago enter chat
Why do klonoa pfps have to say the best shit in comment sections?
@@theofficialchannelofoffici7962because klonoa is great game
@@jiger2396 ???
"Any world with a Crimson Jazz in it is Hell."
Finally, someone said what we were all thinking all these years.
Though it can be a less harsh hell with reflect spam.
Or any enemy with iv frames.
You could argue Sora never actually kills any of the White Mushrooms or Rare Truffles, kinda like the Darksides at the beginning of KH1. No matter what you do with the White Mushrooms, they either get angry at you and leave, or they reward you and leave. Same for the Rare Truffles. So any room with those as a possible spawn can be cleared of Heartless with no kills just by hitting them each once.
This. It's "How many Heartless has Sora killed" not "How many Heartless has Sora assaulted"
He literally says in the video that he excludes those heartless eg when tallying Hades cup for KH1
This is such a specifically stupid idea, I love it
I was just flat-out in a trance this entire video. It didn't even feel like 50 minutes, it was just fascinating.
Now I wonder how a "True Murderer" Run would look like. That is, going out of your way to kill every single heartless in sight, but avoiding repeated encounters (each room counts once unless you must repeat that room because of the story). Or count each encounter (including optional ones) separately but never more than once.
Heartless don't respawn in Days so you could 100% do a genocide run and make Roxas the best Organization member to ever "exist"
Isn't it just a normal playthrough to kill every enemy on screen?
@@enoyna1001 That depends from person to person. Some skip enemies when they're tired of fighting.
@@enoyna1001 Most players just run past random heartless unless they can't activate progression like sizing up in the Bizarre Room.
Yes! So true this was my first thought when I finished the video I wanna know how many he kills with every heartless on screen being defeated but once per encounter and including the KH2 cups and battle gates. I'd also like to know how many kills in total sora gets including nobodies, unversed, and dream eaters
Big fan of Pat being stuck in the Heartless Trolley Problem for the better part of an hour
There are 2 fights in KH2 you named that you can skip by losing the fight: Retrieving Pooh's book and the first fight against Space Paranoids Heartless in Hollow Bastion after doing the 2nd world visits.
i am tearing my hair out, this is the fourth KH2 fight I didn't know you can lose and still progress through. JEEZ. thank you for telling me lmao
Don't these two fights happen in front of Merlin's house ? What are the greater lore implications of this?
@@Arkenway merlin is really bad at not letting sora die
@@RegularPat you can also lose the first fight in Agrabah and still progress
And you can lose in the 1st fight in KH2 Halloween town and move on
I do know that the battle in Halloween Town Square in KH2 can be avoided by taking enough damage; so, while this is not much of a change, it is something.
oh my god, another...you've gotta be kidding me, there's SO many fights like this in KH2 I didn't know about lmao
@@RegularPat frankly, these kinds of fights are what makes the 1000 Heartless fight so amazing, cos you're struggling and flailing for a good portion of the first half, then you start handling things fine, then you end up kicking ass at the 1000 heartless fight, proving Sora's growth.
"Let's start, as human history did, with Kingdom Hearts 1."
Pausing right here, I just love your aloof delivery of clearly deliberate and impassioned scripts. Thank you for continuing to put this good shit out here.
This is why I love Pat. He answers questions I didn't know I had. Now, my big question is: How many lifetimes in Heartless Prison is Sora going to have to serve?
None. He kills the Heartless Prison and escapes.
Or, alternately: none again because I think Ansem SoD is the only legal authority to the Heartless, and I'm pretty sure he declares existing as a thing that isn't a Heartless as a crime worthy of the death penalty.
Sora is going to jail for a minimum of 25,630 years if going by USA laws
It was around the time you talked about Chain of Memories, that I realized the reason the other spin-offs besides CoM and Coded weren’t on the table was because it wasn’t Sora doing the murder in those.
Well, there’s half of Dream Drop Distance, but there it’s the Heartless who are absent.
Well, _now_ I wonder, how many Heartless were killed by other jagoffs, especially those who would not be able to send the freed hearts back to (a) Kingdom Hearts?
@@TJF588 oh yeah, those people are *_dead_* dead.
Lmao.
You know, it's funny you mentioned Roxas' kill count, because that was actually the first thing that popped into my mind at the start of the video. Because while Sora's kill count, even while being as conservative as possible, is definetly impressive, Roxas did almost nothing BUT kill heartless nearly every single day for close to a year, so I'm wondering how many that is.
You can divide his kill count in two as well. An underachiever kill count where Roxas does the bare minimun to complete his missions, and an overachiever kill count where he collects the maximum amount of hearts the mission asks for.
So I have an awful question. Barrel Spiders (found in the Olympus cups) in KH1 essentially commit suicide upon seeing Sora, then run up to you and explode. Should Sora be held culpable for these acts I wonder?
Sora earns EXP for it (because watching something give up on life and combust is definitely "an experience") so it counts.
No, because someone's presence alone can't be considered the reason for a self-offing
@@1Jamesinator but they don’t blow themselves up unless sora is nearby so he is the reason for it
@@GoldStarLord That, my brother in Crisp, is called an assassination.
@@GoldStarLord I wouldn't blame the target of a suicide bomber. That's the Barrel Spider's attack that killed itself off.
So it's definitely 100% possible to beat Shan-Yu without killing any extra heartless. All of Roxas' experience is transferred to Sora upon beating Simulated Twilight town. This means you can infinitely grind on the nobodies before twilight thorn to whatever level you need in order to beat Shan-Yu quick enough.
Somebody actually did a challenge run to get Roxas to Lvl 99 😂
Now you just need to figure out how many Nobodies Sora has killed to learn how many people Sora has restored.
Zero, he killed all the wrong nobodies, lol
I watched it twice during the Patreon exclusive period, but I'm gonna watch it again now that it's live.
I was so proud to know instantly that World Terminus was the reason to go to Halloween Town. Anyway, great work as always. Extremely detailed and a fun watch!
Same. When he said it, I knew what he was talking about and felt like I'd watched enough of these videos to get that.
I had guessed around 4500, which in fairness would have been pretty close if the KH3 train murders had counted. It’s giving Arkham Knight Batman’s totally not lethal BatTank with BatBallistics, imo.
I adore Pacifists/Minimalist runs like this and this is amazing. I also love the Gamechamp-esque logic about including cutscenes and this was a triumph of a video, Pat. Love your stuff and thank you for working out the answer that I didn't know I needed so badly
38:45 Actually, there's a third way to pass through this part, which you can kill no heartless. If you climb up to that first gate, you can glide, or use Sora's floaty mechanics, to fly until the waterfall and land above it. Avoiding completely all the Water Cores.
Really cool video! I'd like to provide a bit of insight for KH1 that I haven't seen in the comments yet. For the 9 Shadows in Dive to the Heart, you can actually despawn all of the enemies by walking far away from them, and that actually progresses the game. The same can be said for the Soldiers before the Guard Armor fight, and the two elevator rides in Hollow Bastion (although this one takes an incredible amount of patience).
For KH3 you can skip the Water Core and Earth Core fights in Olympus by doing some fancy air slides over the area that they spawn in, which is done in the speedrun.
I always considered the amount of canon heartless fought to be every heartless that spawns while on the shortest critical path, so no backtracking or unnecessary content. I'm curious how much higher that count would be
A lot of
But the shortest critical paths skip stuff that the game most definitely treats as canon in later entries. So this is probably a poor representation. It would be a MINIMUM REQUIRED kill count, but not canon.
My personal canon is this:
1) Every in-game cutscene that is possible, is canon, unless a cutscene has two different versions, one for each outcome of a fight. Given that for heartless deaths, no alternate versions really matter, we should count every cutscene as canon.
Cutscenes track Sora's story and they add up to form his most canon-possible-story for later entries.
This means that stuff like olympus colliseum is absolutely canon. So is Sora's meeting with Sephiroth in kh1. So is his meeting with "unknown", "phantom" and "kurt ziza".
2) Sora gets told, in no uncertain terms, that killing heartless releases hearts. Knowing sora's kind nature and helpful attitude, as well as his definite "I'm a heartless-slaying-badass-so-don't-fuck-with-me" attitude he shows on multiple occasions, he would absolutely NOT shy away from killing as many as possible, right up until the organization tells him killing heartless helps their cause. Sora blatantly ISN'T a pacifist by nature. He's a killer.
This means that all POSSIBLE heartless spawns during canon events and worlds, of which there are many, are canon kills.
3)Respawning enemies that respawn for no particularly canon-event-specific reason, are treated as non-canon deaths. Only their originals count.
The last question remains whether or not the data organization fights and material synthesis requirements are canon. At no point has it ever been confirmed by a canon event that sora has unlocked and synthesized multiple ultima weapons, accessories, regular weapons or armor pieces.
So the TRUE canon count is much, much easier to track. You do a run in which you avoid all respawned enemies unless the enemy in particular was not killed before this point. You do all worlds, all story beats, all cutscenes, all superbosses. You don't bother with data fights, and cavern of rememberance isn't story-related so not canon. You don't go synthesis material hunting.
End result is whatever heartless killcount the end-game screens show you. No need to tally them personally. In fact, the only ones you need to keep track of are the cutscene kills and the ones the journal doesn't count but are obviously dead by sora's actions.
The TRUE canon count, therefore, is likely much, much, much higher than this video's tally. I counted 7700 heartless kills on my last kh playthrough, BUT, that was with synthesis hunting (to be fair, I didn't have to do a lot of that. But I need to be consistent.) AND repeat tries of colliseum cups AND I can't ever be certain that bosses like cerberus and rock titan aren't just counted as heartless by the game.
Given Sora's 1000 kill streak in hollow bastion, and the general increase in lethality of sora, I'd guess the total killcount in kh2 is somewhere around that level too. Maybe even more. I can't be bothered to replay kh3 to count THOSE kills, though. Somebody else can do that.
So yeah, Sora's true canon heartless kill count must number in the tens of thousands. Above 10 thousand at the very least. Dude's a one-man army.
My original guess was that Sora would kill a minimum of 3,000, but I fully expected it to be higher. I didn’t take into account how many heartless are actually optional, so I had a feeling it would be a lot higher.
It makes me wonder how your number would be compared to a more normal playthrough. And what would a true canon answer look like? Like if all of this took place for real and you were able to follow Sora with a gopro and tally it up. Would Sora just slaughter every hearless he sees, or does he run from them sometimes and other times go on a spree? This is sending me on a spiral
feels like he'd wipe out as many as possible during normal circumstances, but certain ones ( like during his escape from the end of destiny isles, or the funk he falls into in the middle of kh2 ) he'd be more concerned with survival or outright minimizing casualties
worth remembering that ( most? ) heartless are peeps who've been consumed by negativity and destroying the heartless frees them from that, so wonton slaughter of 'em is actively heroic
canonically I think there is the question whether doing the olympus cups actually count as kills. The specific teams are always re-challengable, and Sora never runs into the danger of dying himself, he just tires out after he reaches 0, so one COULD make the case that the cups are regulated and a no-kill-rule is enforced
Meanwhile in Pat's KH2 save file:
Saïx- Dude, we're WAY under quota for these freed hearts.
Xemnas- What? Isn't the Keyblade Master killing the heartless?
Saïx- I mean... not really. He's avoiding whatever fights he can.
Xemnas- Does he know??
Saïx- I think he knows!
I actually tried to see what would happen if you completely neglect the Traverse Town keyhole & see how far you can progress without doing it, but unfortunately they force you to do it to move on.
How so?
@@gengargamer5657 I forgot exactly which part of the game they stop you at (I think it’s the first Hollow Bastion visit), but if you don’t defeat Opposite Armor & seal the Keyhole the next chunk of story just won’t appear until you do.
@@nixuniverse5240 To get to Hollow Bastion, you need to speak with Cid and have him upgrade your Gummi Ship - this leads to the cutscene with the Library and Kairi's grandmother. He will not be in the right place for it until Opposite Armor is dead.
@@nixuniverse5240 Wow
Personally I would add the Demon Tide at the Union X cutscene to be the actual number of keyblades that were sent to help Sora. With Ephemer and the 300 keyblades of the past I would add 301 to total as the roughest estimate that we can get. Assuming 1 keyblade kills one heartless from the tide and Sora directing all the attacks. But that’s just me.
i gotta say the script and the humor in this video is so well written a minute in and im totally sold
Just wanted to point out, in canon, Mushu remembers being summoned by Sora and states "We used to beat all kinds of bad guy butt together" which points to Mushu being used for several of these encounters. Simba recognizes him too. Doesn't really change the numbers, but it could influence them
Huh, with a start so emphasizing Sora's murderousness, i was surprised you went with as pacifistic a number as possible. I thought you were gonna count killing as many heartless as possible, not counting repeating optional encounters (which means counting optional encounters the first time you beat them, including all the different possible enciunters you can get randomly in the same room)
Love all your videos!!! Cant wait for the next!!
There is at least a passing chance of there being a Sora out there on some save file that has just been murdering some endlessly respawning heartless earning that sweet sweet infinite kills.
There's some guy on GameFAQs who is, to this day (circa June 2023), attempting to kill 9999 of every respawnable Heartless in KH1, so...
i'm glad SOMEONE is finally taking this little murder rapscallion to task
You don’t need to ride the dolphin a second time to reach Ursula’s lair; after the first visit to the Sunken Ship, there’s a passage to the Undersea Gorge at the bottom that, in addition to being enemy free, moves the stuck giant chest out of the way next to Ariel’s Grotto. Makes a much faster return trip and no need to worry about the command menu at all, but still gotta beat the shark for Sebastian to unlock the Den of Tides.
Shark isn't a heartless though?
@@jstar3382 No. The Shark (named Glut, btw) is in the movie and not a Heartless.
my initial guess was going to be around 3200 (i assumed more heartless would have to be mercilessly eradicated in the big battle in kh3’s keyblade graveyard). i was pleasantly (horrifiedly) surprised how close my guess was with the canon counter.
I don't know if it counts but I believe the 1st Minnie escort in KH2 can be done with 0 kills with a speedrun trick with pushing her along the left wall. (There is a clip of speedrunner InsertLogic doing that portion of minnie escort with 0 kills) I know it's 4 kills but gotta lighten that count.
Said clip is shown here: ruclips.net/video/5PTC4CRbpdY/видео.html
Sorry if it is mentioned later in the video, but for the "canon friendly" count, you can subtract the World terminus Olympus heartless since you can lock it after beating hades cup
I wanna know a full kill (or purification run since it just releases their hearts) run count like every room you go through counting only once unless you go back for story and the story related fights as well.
Sora doesn't kill heartless he frees them
Wait, are we sure Key-less kills count?
Cause if the heart isn't freed they just repop later, right?
He's going to get slammed with countless life sentences but because he plead guilty he'll be spared the death penalty.
This was really interesting to watch. It’s always so cool to see different ways these games can be played to achieve certain goals :)
Your videos are always so oddly specific and I love them very much
The sheer dedication this took - well done
20:13 Riku was shown to have used a Castle Oblivion World Card on his final floor for stated plot reasons but Sora not only wasn't shown to have used any World Card on his final floor unlike every other floor but was also completely out of them by that point as well as aware of the manipulation. As for whether the Heartless on specifically Sora's Castle Oblivion floor are real or not I'm leaning towards no because even though Sora didn't use a World Card to reskin the whole floor before entering he still progressed through the unaltered floor by altering each individual room with Map Cards. Regardless as you pointed out there are plenty of loopholes for the purpose of this video.
Pat your videos are so good, the titles make it seem like such a vapid topic, but your content is so dense and funny. Keep up the good work!!
While I’m with you on not counting the Nobodies on a specifically Heartless kill count, I feel like their deaths would matter more if you were really taking this seriously. Even the lesser Nobodies are intelligent to some extent.
Also, if you look at all the enemy ship models in KH2, they almost all have the Nobody symbol, not the Heartless one. So for the sake of this count, KH2 gummi kills straight up don’t count.
Now do "how many creatures/people did sora kill?"
"make room in the morgue, sora been having some weird thoughts lately and thier angry thoughts" best reg. pat quote so far.
Great work as always Pat! So much research is put into this video so kudos to you (and the last third is not boring btw).
Can’t wait for your next project!!
I just want to say you make a series I never played, and don't know if I ever will, fascinating
One cannon clarification. Technically no one can kill a heartless aside from a keyblade wielder. I know this does raise so many questions and an argument that this is a different iteration might be possible, but in kh2 it was stated that any time a heartless was killed by anyone but Sora, or another keyblade wielder, the heartless would simply reform. This would actually mean that you can have Donald and Goofy disembody the heartless without it counting as killing them.
In KH1 Atlantica, you can actually connect the area around Ariel's grotto and the sunken ship by knocking a giant chest out of the way, so there's no need to get the dolphin to give you a second ride to the ship.
The Torn page in Monstro in KH1 is up on a high ledge, however enemies spawn in the ground around that room (and, I believe, every entrance), necessitating at least a few kills for a "canon" total. Fortunately, it's possible to rescue the 51 puppies (7 chests) needed to get the Torn Page from Pongo and Perdito, though if you think they're part of the "canon route" then at least some of them definitely 100% require fighting enemies.
Ive said it elsewhere, Pat, but your scripts are peak and so fucking dense with info and jokes. And the mostly monotone delivery is the icing on the cake
Why are these videos genuinely so good. I can legit usually watch one of these and get my KH hit.
RegularPat out here answering the most burning KH questions
mr pat never disappoints
Saïx: "Xemnas, is Kingdom Hearts ready?"
Xemnas: ''Uh.... No, not by a longshot. We're so fucked."
Ah yes, the tiny "Friends are my power" Thanos. Jokes aside this is a really neat idea for a video, we rarely stop and reflect on how much blood we spill to save the day. Always feels double bad because 90% of the heartless look like they want to give you a hug and a box of cookies
Pat's HeartlessSona: *nervous sweating *
There's a cutscene in san fransokyo where sora killed 14 heartless you didn't mention it
Actually Pat, I have tried doing a pacifist run of KH1 in the past, and you can just see Donald and Goofy in each area to avoid 5 Shadows in Traverse Town.
Well this is earthshattering. I've never been this wrong so many times within like two hours of a video posting lmao. Thanks Brett, I'll update this. Thrilled at least to learn something about KH1-- I have been told time and time again that it is strictly 5 Shadow kills and 5 Shadow kills only to progress. I assume that's the prevailing info because it's definitely the fastest way to progress. EDIT-- I just tested it out, it seems like you also *must* go to the Third District to progress peacefully, in addition to seeing all of the D&G scenes. I saw all of them and Leon wouldn't trigger, but then went to Third District and it worked after that. Fascinating tbh
😮
Awesome stuff, we both learned from each other! Saw your Kairi salute post and was mind blown
Oh my God I guessed it!
"With that, we swim _that_ way out of Atlantica"
Dang, looks like the fun is over.
I don't think that defeating Heartless (or Nobodies, for that matter) actually counts as killing. Heartless and Nobodies are essentially two separated parts of a whole being, and defeating a person's Heartless and Nobody causes that person to be restored to their original form, so it's more like bringing them back to life than killing them.
for the Disney Castle Piece in KH2 and the Escort Minnie Subgame: I know that in the Speed running community for KH2 they have the tech known as "Push that Mouse" where you push Minnie up to the inner wall and push her down the hall in practically no time, potentially saving those shadows. The only thing is that you might have to use 1 Faith command to knock them away (potentially killing a heartless) and Minnie might get one shot off, but If you go the distance with it, the Finish Command does no damage.
Almost the same situation with the Minnie Throne Room minigame. At the very least with Speed Running, I know that at least one Heartless dies in there, but it could start whittling that number down.
Ironically the man who brings the pat in patience having the monk levels of patience to complete this video
It's possible through save point warping to skip having to kill the pot spider in Agrabah as long as you touched the one in Aladdin's House.
After saving Aladdin go to Storage Room and land back in Aladdin's House and you can easily reach the Bazaar without going around.
Regular Pat: "They're Nobodies, they don't even exist."
Roxas: 😮💨
Thank you Pat for putting in this incredible amount of work to answer a question many of us have had at some point.
You can save effort in atlantica kills by opening the treasure chest next to Ariel’s grotto during your first trip to the sunken ship. This gives you a massive shortcut through the world and lets you avoid needing to be out of combat for that extra dolphin ride.
Dialogue from namine actually confirms that only the heartless on the last floor are real.
Was literally waiting for this while watching the CoM novel video again lil
Pat: "How many Heartless have you killed to raise your levels?"
Sora: "How many breads have you eaten in your life?"
At 43:58 I'm reminded of Lord of the Rings during the Army of the Dead fight. "That still only count's as one!"
I’ve been having some Angy thoughts lately
this is how i realized the hostile program in space paranoids is NOT a heartless. all this time, for years, i thought it was
This must have taken so much effort! Looks incredibly tedious. So thank you for all of your hard work!
thanks pat for answering this burning question
One thing i could think of that would probly lower the amount of heartless killed by Minnie, Riku and maybe Carpet escape would be playing on higher difficulties. Proud Mode is probably the way to go, since Critical gives you a 25% damage boost, allthough i am not sure if that applies to Party Members as weell.
38:21 "Afterwards when the party rescues the D.I.D.--"
We had to physically stop the video for second wondering what that could be referring to because we have "The O.S.D.D." (one step down from the OTHER DID.)
"I cracked the code and/or am on crack" is best theorist catchphrase, lmao.
This video popped up in my recommended, and I really like the video. Great voice overs, research, and editing. I look forward to the next video.
I love the winged Bentley for two turtledoves, caught me off guard and I chortled 27:19
Even when we’re not looking, it just keeps happening 41:17
33:00 Oh wow, as soon as you noted that the ones above Riku were fake, I realized they were all buzzing around in the same pattern except for the ones trying to murder you. That's a neat little trick they pulled there.
I don’t know a single thing about Kingdom Hearts besides the surface level stuff like it’s Disney meets Final Fantasy. How I arrived here, I do not know. All I know is that I’m both entertained and deeply confused.
Enough to fill 50 cemetaries.
"Come on, they're Nobodies. They don't even exist."
And if you kill a Heartless and their corresponding Nobody, you bring the person back. *Make up your mind!*
Great analysis video! Thanks so much for uploading!
It was very interesting!
giving it only a couple seconds thought, using the 1000 heartless battle as my ruler and trying to imagine with my hazy memory how many mob fights in the series are skippable vs scripted, I'm figuring it can't be much over 5 thousand? my hunch is actually a lot less but i tried to give myself some kh3 wiggle room.
edit: welp the demon tide counting as 1 really killed my estimate lmao, really fun video :D
4:50 plus the only reason they can even fight the heartless is because they are with sora so even if you aren’t directly responsible you are still the main enabling force
I like how this is also considered a low level run AND a pacifist run
Very interesting video!! It's also interesting how many heartless battles can actually be avoided becuase my inital number was way higher. I can imagine that it would be pretty arduous to avoid killing heartless unnecessarily though
I was half-expecting you weren't counting Re:coded because Data-Sora isn't Sora technically and he's technically fighting data, not actual heartless.
Data-Sora getting done dirty once again, huh.