20 years of magic, 10 amazing worlds to explore.
One of the biggest TV and movie tropes in the last decade has been the multiverse, the idea of exploring multiple dimensions to uncover alternate versions of existing ideas. From both a business and creative perspective, it makes sense why established franchises are shaking things up in this way.
However, there aren't many video games latching on to this trend, as rendering multiple worlds in real-time is a difficult feat and the medium is relatively young in comparison to its contemporaries, making crossover opportunities more difficult. Still, there are a few great titles that manage enough to overcome these challenges, and here are some of the best examples.
While I love someone mentioning Planescape, not really multiverse. Planes and dimensions, yes. But, they are typically their own locations and are very rarely tied to another 'verse' let alone another plane. The only things that are directly tied are the ethereal and material planes. Otherwise, they are dimensions created of their own design and goals by the creator/owner and not comprised of 'their own version of another dimension'.
NP: “When I played through Final Fantasy XVI, I occasionally found what I believed to be evident Kingdom Hearts gameplay inspirations that I’d rather not detail here due to spoilers. Still, with it having been previously confirmed that Kingdom Hearts staff was working on this title, the notion wasn’t all that surprising.
However, I didn’t realize how truly instrumental Kingdom Hearts team members were in developing Final Fantasy XVI. After digging through the title’s credits, I found crucial Kingdom Hearts development staff who played significant roles in ensuring the combat design excelled.”
For a long time, it's been widely accepted amongst Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts fans that Donald Duck is the most powerful mage ever to exist, mainly due to his use of the stupidly powerful Zettaflare spell towards the end of Kingdom Hearts 3. This spell is one step up from Teraflare, a spell which was used in Final Fantasy XIV that was so powerful that it completely wiped out the base game, giving the developers a canonical reason to let them bin everything and start again from scratch.
Now you're armed with this information, you can see how it was pretty surprising for Donald Duck of all characters to bust out Zettaflare and establish himself as the most powerful character in Final Fantasy/Kingdom Hearts lore. However, now that Final Fantasy XVI has arrived and delivered a whole new cast of characters, a new challenger has arrived to provide Donald with some much needed competition.
Traverse, and Twilight I can agree with but I disagree with all of the KH3 worlds especially Pirates, Pirates was the most disappointing world. Hallow Bastion gave off so much mystery, and Castle Oblivion did so too. Enchanted Dominion from BBS, and it's twisted version in the realm of darkness are probably two of the more visually appealing worlds in the series, without NPCs it unintentionally became very eerie. Keyblade Graveyard is haunting from the moment you set eyes on all the dead blades. Atlantica and Halloween Town from the first game I consider better than how they are in the 2nd.
Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden and Twilight Town will always be the best
Traverse Town is nostalgia city