What is Kingdom Hearts III Re Mind?
For three numbered games, the expanded edition was a Japanese disc the West waited years for. Kingdom Hearts III Re Mind, announced at the Kingdom Hearts Orchestra -World of Tres- concert on June 8, 2019 and released for PlayStation 4 on January 23, 2020 (Xbox One followed on February 25), replaced the disc with a download: $29.99, or $39.99 bundled with a recording of the Osaka orchestra performance. For the first time, the deluxe version of a Kingdom Hearts game was a worldwide release.
The package is built in three episodes, mirroring the Final Mix structure. The Re Mind scenario replays the climax of Kingdom Hearts III from inside Sora’s rescue of Kairi, letting the player fight key battles as Riku, Aqua, Roxas, and finally Kairi herself, and explore Scala ad Caelum. The Limitcut Episode, set a year later, is the traditional boss gauntlet grown up: thirteen recreated-data battles against Organization XIII in the Garden of Assemblage, wrapped in new story scenes that return the Final Fantasy cast to Radiant Garden. The Secret Episode ends the package with a single boss, Yozora, the hero of the in-world game Verum Rex, in a fight with two different endings depending on whether the player wins or loses.
Around the episodes sit the tools players actually kept: Data Greeting, a diorama mode for staging photographs of the cast; a Premium Menu of EZ Codes and PRO Codes for bending the difficulty in either direction; and a free update, released alongside, that added the Oathkeeper and Oblivion Keyblades for players holding the game’s two Proofs. Critical Mode itself had arrived earlier, as a free update (version 1.04) on April 23, 2019, with halved HP and MP, rarer situation commands, and its own exclusive abilities, a sign of how completely the download era had replaced the second disc.
