Kingdom Hearts: Every Platform-Exclusive Keyblade Explained

After many years of waiting, the Kingdom Hearts franchise is finally making its way to Steam on June 13, 2024. This comes three years after the series arrived on PC via the Epic Games Store, but Steam's higher popularity and Steam Deck compatibility meant a lot of fans have been holding out for this release in particular. Now, most of Kingdom Hearts is available via its assorted collections on every leading digital storefront, even if the Nintendo Switch just has a cloud-streaming version. After so many years of Kingdom Hearts spin-offs ping-ponging between PlayStation and Nintendo systems, it's good to have it accessible everywhere finally.

Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, and Kingdom Hearts 3 + ReMind are the three bundles that form the full Kingdom Hearts Integrum Masterpiece package, and all four of them are coming to Steam. There's also a bonus for Steam Kingdom Hearts 3 owners, taking the form of a unique “Dead of Night” Keyblade that's included with every purchase. KH3 has picked up a surprising number of platform-exclusive Keyblades over its lifetime and, while none are powerful enough to mark a particular skew as definitive, they are charming enough to be appreciable.

How Kingdom Hearts 3’s Platform-Exclusive Keyblades Stand Out

The full list of exclusive Kingdom Hearts 3 Keyblades and the platforms they appear on are:

Midnight Blue	PS4
Phantom Green	Xbox One
Dawn Till Dusk	PS4 and Xbox One
Advent Red	Nintendo Switch
Elemental Encoder	Epic Games Store
Dead of Night	Steam

All of these Keyblades share Formchanges and Shotlocks with Sora’s basic Kingdom Key, but a few differences ensure they’re all distinct. Dawn Till Dusk, Advent Red, Elemental Encoder, and Dead of Night are palette swaps of the Star Cluster Keyblade that King Mickey gains during KH3, while Midnight Blue and Phantom Green are altered takes on Kingdom Hearts 2’s Star Seeker instead.

Because of that, Midnight Blue and Phantom Green have slightly more range than the Kingdom Key, combining with the extra Magic stat point all exclusive Keyblades gain over the Kingdom Key to make them worthwhile. Their equipment abilities only reinforce this, with each exclusive Keyblade starting with two strong abilities instead of the Kingdom Key’s Treasure Magnet.

Midnight Blue, Phantom Green, and Dawn Till Dusk have elemental affinities while Advent Red, Elemental Encoder, and presumably Dead of Night all have one atypical ability in addition to the brand-new Magic Roulette, granting the strongest “-za” tier of Final Fantasy magic as Situation Commands to spice up combat.

Explaining Kingdom Hearts 3’s Exclusive Keyblade Designs

One could argue that Midnight Blue and Phantom Green owe their unique designs to being pre-order bonuses that celebrate the release of Kingdom Hearts 3 itself. Midnight Blue has the most unique details of any exclusive Keyblade, sporting the PlayStation controller’s iconic face button shapes on its cross guard, while Phantom Green references Xbox’s overall color scheme, alongside its colorful keychain matching its own face buttons.

Dawn Till Dusk was available through Amazon pre-orders in North America, but its name and color scheme actually pay homage to its 7-Eleven pre-order exclusivity in Japan. All three Keyblades can still be bought on their associated consoles for $2.99.

The Themes Of The Free Bonus Keyblades

Advent Red is colored like a Nintendo Switch, but its name is actually a multi-layered reference. Red is the Nintendo Switch logo’s primary color scheme, contrasting Xbox’s green and PlayStation’s sometimes-blue, but the “Advent” part actually references Kingdom Hearts’ 20th anniversary.

Its animations reinforce this theme with fireworks and confetti, while the Elemental Encoder marks KH’s PC debut with data effects. The Keyblade itself shares the simple black-and-white of the Epic Games Store’s logo, while Dead of Night does the same with Steam’s logo. Gleaning further details, including the meaning of its enigmatic name, will have to wait until Kingdom Hearts 3 arrives on Steam.

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