Kingdom Hearts 4 revealed at series anniversary event

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Imagine Hank Hill saying the name "Xehanort."

The fashion king of Square Enix, Tetsuya Nomura seems to be at it again: Kingdom Hearts 4 was announced at a special event celebrating the series' 20th anniversary.

The trailer for Kingdom Hearts 4 shows series protagonist Sora waking up in a minimalist apartment in a modern city. He seems to be trapped in this world of "Quadratum" and proceeds to do battle with a shadowy giant monster. The trailer ends with Donald Duck and Goofy searching for Sora in a lightless abyss, before getting accosted by an unseen foe.

The trailer did not include a release date, and it's hard to gauge how far along in development Kingdom Hearts 4 is. The series' third entry got a similar announcement trailer in 2013 and was not released for another six years, so Kingdom Hearts fans could be in for a bit of a wait.

It's also unclear how Square Enix will handle this entry's PC release. Kingdom Hearts has been a PlayStation-centric series and Kingdom Hearts 3 did not see a PC port until just last year, releasing on the Epic Store alongside the vexingly-named series compilation Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue.

Square Enix has been pursuing more PC ports of its games in recent years, but the results have been uneven. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins arrived on PC in a sorry state, both suffering from limited graphics options and frustrating performance issues, and a significant stuttering issue in NieR: Automata was left unaddressed for four years after the game's release. One can hope that Kingdom Hearts 4 gets a better-performing, more timely PC port than what we've seen in the past.

Ted Litchfield
Associate Editor

Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch. You can follow Ted on Bluesky.