Final Fantasy & Kingdom Hearts Union

Following on from last episode, the crew are now taking a deep dive into Kingdom Hearts X Back Cover! This sees a look into the characters you should know about, as well as how the story plays out! It's a pretty detailed segment, so if you're interested in finding out more, you will definitely enjoy it! On top of that, we also have a ton of questions... such as Whose Nobody Xion and whether they've heard of newcomers to the franchise struggling with getting into the franchise!

Today we're discussing the future of the Final Fantasy franchise, but in a way that you might not expect! It comes after legendary creator Yoshinori Kitase spoke to Kotaku about his vision for future games within the franchise and how he wants to incorporate things he's learnt on Mobius into home console titles. It's an interesting thought and it leads onto interesting discussions around the potential for an early access Final Fantasy title, as well as the direction things could potentially go from a gameplay perspective. Outside of that, we have the customary news update including the announcement of a new game and an update on the future of the Type franchise!

Kingdom Hearts X is often somewhat forgotten about, so for this episode we thought it'd be grand to do a COMPLETE summary of Season 1! It means we're therefore going to be talking about the premise, the characters and of course, the scenario. Yep, we're going to be hitting the scenario hard here, as there are a ton of little details within the story that could be rather important! We hope you enjoy the recap, even if you perhaps aren't playing Kingdom Hearts X!

We're very privileged to have legendary Final Fantasy music arranger TPR join us this episode, as he talks about his new album launch and answers plenty of our questions! He also joins us as we recap what was a rather crazy Gamescom 2017, where there were an absolute ton of announcements relating to the Final Fantasy XV Universe. We'll be talking about surprise announcements such as Final Fantasy XV PC and Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition, as well as the new downloadable festival!

With Kingdom Hearts 3 pretty much skipping Gamescom 2017, we thought it would be the perfect time to have a questions episode!  It means we'll be discussing plenty of fun topics, such as the likelihood of Kingdom Hearts 3 appearing on PC and whether we think there's a chance other Disney films will appear within the game. On a different tact, there are also questions relating to... how you can try to get your friends into Kingdom Hearts and whether we think a "Super Smash Bros" style game could work for the franchise.

Just prior to Gamescom, Square Enix decided to do a huge news blast for Dissidia: Final Fantasy NT, the console version of Dissidia Arcade! They revealed the release date for the game, but also detailed the Ultimate Collector's Edition and also announced that there would be a Season Pass that will contain six additional characters. This episode, we're reacting to all of this news, while giving some other general thoughts about Gamescom and some of the other small pieces that have happened in the last few weeks!

For this episode of Kingdom Hearts Union, we're joined by renowned voice actress Erika Harlacher. She has appeared in quite a few Japanese games over the years, and most recently appeared in Persona 5! Did we mention she's also a huge Kingdom Hearts fan? Aside from a rather neat interview, this episode runs through a recent interview with Shinji Hashimoto, who was appearing at MAGIC 2017. He spoke about Marvel appearing in Kingdom Hearts 3 and also why they haven't spoken too much about the game. As always, there's also quite a few in-depth questions, so we hope you enjoy listening to them!

The music of Final Fantasy has been something of a marvel over the years so we've decided to dedicate this episode to just that, Final Fantasy music. Throughout the episode, we discuss numerous topics such as... when did you actually start paying attention to the music of Final Fantasy, outside of it being just generic background music? We also discuss our favourite composers in addition to the famed Nobuo Uematsu and discuss the world after his departure - specifically with reference to Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy XV. We hope you enjoy!

Branden tackles the ever-exciting world of Kingdom Hearts by himself today as he runs-through numerous pieces of news relating to job hirings on Kingdom Hearts 3.  There are also a few different questions, one of which relates to whether or not Branden feels Kingdom Hearts 3 will feel like an incomplete game, in similar fashion to Final Fantasy XV. Things then move onto theoretics, as there's a question relating the Keyblade of Hearts from the original Kingdom Hearts. We hope you guys enjoy!

Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age has now released and we're talking all about it in this special episode! Yep, we're going to be running through our initial experiences with Final Fantasy XII back when it initially released, but then we'll be running onto how we feel about The Zodiac Age so far - have our opinions changed over time? It means there's a significant focus on the story, the soundtrack and more! We hope you enjoy the episode!

Wow, D23 was awesome! There was a ton of new information about Kingdom Hearts 3 and we can't wait to delve into it! This show is therefore quite extensive, as we run through the new Kingdom Hearts 3 trailer, which of course revealed a brand new world in Toy Story.  Things then move onto discussions about the release year for Kingdom Hearts 3, as Square Enix revealed that the game will be releasing in 2018 and there's also a run-through around some comments Nomura has made regarding the depth of the worlds featured. All in all, it makes for one hell of a show!

Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy, was recently asked about whether he'd like to return to work on the Final Fantasy franchise. His response was very open ended, but he didn't shoot down the suggestion. But it begs the question, should Sakaguchi return? Would it be a good thing for the franchise or should they give some other people the opportunity so shine? We take a big old look at the current state of play when it comes to directors on the main Final Fantasy series, while also taking a look at where they've all ended up. We also shine a small spotlight on some of the upcoming talent within Square Enix when it comes to directing bigger games. Hopefully you enjoy the deep dive into Final Fantasy directors!

We've been promised something of a big show for Kingdom Hearts 3 at D23 Expo, but there's still tons to speculate about! For example, we know there's going to be a new world announced for Kingdom Hearts 3, but which world will it be? Last time they announced Big Hero 6! We've also been told that we will receive a much longer trailer and that it will contain new content. Nomura has said that the new trailer will make people much happier than the one they showed prior to E3 2017. Who knows, they may even through a release window our way. The guys also talk about their experiences at the Kingdom Hearts World Tour, including their favourite songs and parts of the concerts.

E3 2017 has been and gone everyone, but it's time to take a look back at the show and digest everything that came out of it! This episode Darryl is joined by Chris aka Hoogathy, who has been a regular contributor to the Final Fantasy Union website for many years. Together, they look at everything that happened prior to E3, the show itself and a couple of things that have come after. It means we'll be talking about a few different topics, such as Dissidia NT, the focus on mobile phone games and Episode Prompto!

E3 2017 is now done and dusted and from a Kingdom Hearts perspective, it was surprisingly good! We actually had quite a bit of information, from a new trailer, through to what we have to look forward to in the near future. Branden and Churro (who was at E3) breakdown everything we saw from Kingdom Hearts at this year's show and run-through what we're expecting to see at D23 in July, where they've said a new world will be shown! We hope you enjoy the show guys, it's a bumper edition!

Square Enix has hit E3 2017 pretty hard, with a ton of announcements, trailers and reveals before the show even started! This episode is therefore to run-through everything that's happened so far and also to run-through the Square Enix Presents schedule, so you guys know everything that's coming up! It should be a good E3 everyone, here's hoping we make it out the other side all in one piece!

Kingdom Hearts 3 has had quite the journey throughout E3 already following its announcement back in 2013. We take look through history to help inform our predictions! Yep, that's right, we're looking at every major event since the E3 2013 announcement, running through all of the key moments throughout the game's development so far. And this all culminates in our predictions for the Kingdom Hearts franchise at E3 2017 - so please be excited!

Even though it doesn't feel like it should be, E3 2017 is right around the corner, so it's prediction time! And that's the first major segment of the show, as we talk about the games we think will be there and in what capacity they will appear! Following on from that, we have a ton of questions from the community, relating to a whole host of topics. We've got questions about Dissidia: Final Fantasy Arcade, Final Fantasy XVI and even our views on what distinguishes Western RPGs from Japanese RPGs! It makes for a pretty action-packed episode!

There's a rather alarming rumour doing the rounds at the moment, which suggests Kingdom Hearts 3 is having content removed to hit a 2018 release date! And it's a rumour that features as the main topic of the show. What is the rumour, where did it come from and does it matter? All these questions are answered! We also have some questions from the community about the possibility of Kingdom Hearts 3 being shown at E3, how long we're willing to wait for Kingdom Hearts 3 to release and the likelihood of a Kingdom Hearts VR game!

We have a rather interesting episode for you guys this week, as our main topic revolves around the release of Final Fantasy XV and how it's affected our opinions of the upcoming Final Fantasy 7 Remake. There's also a few news stories relating to Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Brave Exvius and Final Fantasy XIV, as well as some questions about the 30th Anniversary, NieR Automata and representation for more types of characters within the main series games! We hope you enjoy!