Kingdom Hearts

I meant the Black Truffles, not Mushroom XIII.

Those bastards are even more absurd.

And no. Heartless don't have Hearts. They are born from the Drakness of Hearts, but we can't say that being born from that means they have Hearts or something similar.

I'm gonna check the wiki.

EDIT: Most Heartless lose their original self and memories. They are driven by instinct rather than thought. So perhaps the Mushrooms are similar to Sora and ASOD? Heartless only retain emotions and memories if they are special like ASOD. Otherwise they are mindless, driven by instinct to consume Hearts and to return to the Great Heart. At least, they are not sapient. Maybe they are sentient, but I doubt that.

edited 28th Jun '17 2:39:33 AM by PolarPhantom

So is Roxas the canonically strongest protagonist?

Well, Sora beat him in a fight, as did Riku.

I mean, Will Turner might argue that what Riku did was cheating.

Roxas overpowered Sora pretty easily too, he just. Either forgot or never actually knew how keyblades worked.

edited 28th Jun '17 7:01:32 AM by unnoun

"In a fair fight, I'd kill you!"
"That's not much incentive for me to fight fair, then, is it?"

"The only rules that matter are these: What a man can do, and what a man can't do."

I'd forgotten how quotable that movie was. Too bad the sequels just kept rehashing those same lines instead of coming up with new ones.

Roxas definitely beat Riku. The point of Riku unleashing inner darkness was that he admitted he couldn't beat Roxas with his own power.

Roxas is definitely stronger than Sora at the end of DDD. But that's because Sora lost all his power due to darkness shenanigans.

In II it's hard to say because Sora definitely won that fight because he showed a greater control of the keyblade than Roxas did. Sora was winning the fight up until the end where Roxas gained the upper hand and was relentlessly attacking Sora.

But like they share the same body, more or less, so they were probably about equal strength in II.

The idea that Roxas "beat" Riku was never that well supported by the events on-screen. Roxas was on the ground, unconscious before getting back up and kinda staggering Riku, who then just gives up and summons Ansem.

I'd definitely say Sora minus plot-mandated depowers is the strongest protagonist, with the possible exception of 0.2 Aqua.

Strongest playable protagonist, anyways, cause I'd argue Mickey is stronger than them.

Well Mickey is a tested and proven Master, but so are Aqua and Riku. And Sora'a done quite a bit without he title.

Whenever our heroes team up with Mickey, it feels like they're fighting on roughly even ground with each other.

Winnie the Pooh is strongest protagonist.

I mean, we know for a fact that "Master" is just a title, because supposedly only a Master can bequeath a keyblade, and Terra did it to Riku. Because according to Nomura, Terra has the power and skill of a Master, and all he lacks is the title. Because Xehanort's a dick. Literally the only reason Eraqus didn't name Terra a Master is Xehanort said not to.

Like. The Mark of Mastery exam is. An exam. A test. I'm a teacher, I know what tests are about. And for. They're for the examiner to determine whether a student has the requisite skills, knowledge and capabilities, but. Like, they're a method to find out whether something is there, but they don't. Cause it. To be there or not.

edited 28th Jun '17 12:51:53 PM by unnoun

The Marluxia AS has taught me that Sora's animations are way too overwrought and long. Half the time I got damaged was because he does this leaping dash into the doom pools.

If you're attacking while falling into the doom pools is a possibility, you're doing the Marluxia fight wrong.

Master is mostly a title from what we've seen. You can be a powerful Keyblade Wielder without it. It's just that holding the title means you're officially recognized as one by the rest of the Keyblade Wielders in that Order.

As for the relative strength of the different protagonists I think most of them are about equal. Sora and Riku seem to be on roughly equal footing with each other and by KH 2 they're about on par with Mickey. Aqua, likewise, seems to be at least as strong as Mickey so I'd say she's also in the same tier as Sora and Riku. We don't have the best comparison with Terra but since he's older than Aqua and has all the skills of a Master I'd also say he's in the same general power range. Roxas is a bit trickier but he was able to best Riku and Sora in single combat at two different points so it's possible he's even stronger than them. Ven, Xion, Kairi, and Axel are probably a bit weaker than the others although we have no way of knowing how much weaker.

what

Liefeld would be proud.

Did Roxas really beat Sora, though? He was winning up until he lost.

God I love Final Form. It's like playing an Advent Children cutscene.

Roxas was also not powerful enough to trump Xemnas which is why Xion sent Riku after him.

Sora on the other hand...

...wasn't that strong, either, until he'd gone through the whole of KHII training up and recombining with Roxas.

It was ultimately a team effort that took Xemnas down, too. Flying solo probably wouldn't have ended as well as it did.

edited 28th Jun '17 3:13:44 PM by Enlong

Ranking the protagonists strengths seems like a highly subjective things based on the "feel" you have when playing as them or fighting against them. If you wanted to say Aqua was the strongest because she rips through enemies like butter, I'd accept that. If you wanted to say Roxas was the strongest because his boss battle is a cut above everyone else I'd take that too.

So is it Roxas/Namine or Roxas/Xion?

Roxas did / Xion pretty badly.