Somebody Hit Level 100 In Kingdom Hearts Without Leaving The First World

[thunderball]

Achieving level 100 in Kingdom Hearts isn't too difficult a task, unless you decide to tackle that goal without ever leaving the game's starting location. And that's exactly what one (questionably sane) man has now done.

AaroneousGaming has been playing a lot of Kingdom Hearts this past month and, based on a report from Kotaku, he managed to sink a whopping 210 hours into the game in that period of time. That's a pretty impressive run through any game, but even more so when you consider the fact that this masochist racked up the hours without ever leaving the game's starting location. His goal? To reach level 100.

 

That lofty aspiration was achieved recently during a stream, with AaroneousGaming hitting the mark with about 200 hours, 10 minutes on the clock. And again, because this point needs stressing, that was achieved without ever stepping foot off of Destiny Islands.

For those unfamiliar with the original Kingdom Hearts, Destiny Islands serves as the game's brief tutorial area. Before Sora's life gets completely turned on its head and his friends are pulled into a narrative so tangled even Square Enix doesn't know what's going on at this point, he spent his days climbing and jumping around a small island while practicing swordplay with his pals. You're meant to play through this area pretty quickly and then, boom, you get sucked into the actual game.

Obviously, you don't earn a heck of a lot of experience in a tutorial area. Instead, you're supposed to venture out into the world, fight more and more baddies and, eventually, all of that boosted experience will bring dedicated players up to level 100. AaroneousGaming decided to skip all of that nonsense and instead stick to what he knows best: Destiny Islands.

As you can imagine -- and as that 200-plus-hour timeframe proves -- reaching level 100 under those restrictions took some serious dedication. Dedicated players who don't just run from story beat to story beat can wrap up a run through the original Kingdom Hearts in about 60 hours. That's a pretty beefy game by most standards. This guy, though, managed to triple that time within the tutorial.

While we imagine he will never want to touch the game again, we have to admit we're a bit curious to see how quickly the rest of the game flies by now that Aaroneous has maxed out Sora. Kingdom Hearts has a lot of exposition and side distractions, but we've got to figure any combat would be a breeze at this point. He'll probably be one-shotting early bosses.

After 200 hours in the tutorial, though, maybe Aaroneous would be better served to step away from the series for a bit and come back (presumably) later this year when Kingdom Hearts III finally arrives.