{"id":77448,"date":"2026-08-18T17:42:04","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T09:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=77448"},"modified":"2026-08-18T17:42:04","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T09:42:04","slug":"kingdom-hearts-4-lets-you-play-as-the-final-fantasy-universes-most-powerful-black-mage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=77448","title":{"rendered":"Kingdom Hearts 4 Lets You Play As The Final Fantasy Universe\u2019s Most Powerful Black Mage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/KH4_D23_4K_10.jpg?w=300\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For good reason, developers often don&#8217;t let playable characters in video games get too overpowered, lest they make a game too easy to plow through. But Kingdom Hearts 4 seems to be straying from that principle, as Donald Duck was revealed to be a fully playable character in last weekend&#8217;s extended D23 trailer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In a segment of Kingdom Hearts 4 taking place in the Underworld from Hercules, players will take control of Sora&#8217;s perennial sidekicks, Donald and Goofy, in platforming and battle sequences. The trailer also shows off a combo attack combining Goofy&#8217;s shield-spinning and Donald&#8217;s star-shooting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;But wait,&#8221; you might say. &#8220;What do you mean Donald Duck is overpowered?&#8221; Yes, Donald is the party member who fails to heal you at opportune times, but one cutscene in Kingdom Hearts 3 shows off the sheer magnitude of his wizardry at its absolute peak. A dramatic moment at the start of the story&#8217;s endgame has Donald, defending his friends from Terra-Xehanort, fire off the Zettaflare spell&#8211;a feat almost unheard of in the larger Final Fantasy universe.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kingdom Hearts 3: Donald&amp;apos;s ZettaFlare\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LMzfX88ZmTw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The giant freaking beam of fire hopefully speaks for itself.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A famous Reddit post that went up shortly after Kingdom Hearts 3&#8217;s 2019 release posited that this stunt proves that Disney&#8217;s favorite ill-tempered duck is the most powerful mage in the wider Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy universe. With some calculation, the user (very roughly) estimated that Donald&#8217;s Zettaflare produced over 5.5 million hit points. And if you&#8217;re unfamiliar with numeral prefixes, &#8220;zetta&#8221; represents one sextillion, or 10 to the 21st power. That&#8217;s a really big number.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Zettaflare is a rare sight in Square Enix games; after Kingdom Hearts 3, Final Fantasy XVI featured the move, with series-staple summon Bahamut delivering the spell in the form of a giant beam from space that would rival the Death Star. But in the case of Bahamut, we&#8217;re talking about a giant dragon, so Donald can technically still hold onto the title of the most powerful mage (and probably a black mage, since he stubbornly refuses to heal you when you most need it).<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s no telling if Kingdom Hearts 4 will make use of or even just reference Donald Duck&#8217;s stratospheric power scale, but soon you too can play as him and neglect to heal Goofy on your adventure. The game is set for a late 2027 release, and series creator Tetsuya Nomura is adamant that it won&#8217;t be delayed beyond that timeframe.<\/p>\n<p><br \/>\n<center><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespot.com\/articles\/kingdom-hearts-4-lets-you-play-as-the-final-fantasy-universes-most-powerful-black-mage\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article At Source <\/a><br \/>\n<center\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For good reason, developers often don&#8217;t let playable characters in video games get too overpowered, lest they make a game too easy to plow through&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":77450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[967,2829,667,14186,11777,1972,27554,2651,2148,19440],"class_list":["post-77448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-black","tag-fantasy","tag-final","tag-hearts","tag-kingdom","tag-lets","tag-mage","tag-play","tag-powerful","tag-universes","wpcat-32-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/77450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}