NeoGnWWhen Sora was shown for Smash Bros, I immediately wondered what the stage would be, though I had two good guesses as to what it was.
Sure enough, they picked Hollow Bastion, which was indeed an imposing and eye catching castle, I like it a lot (and... I certainly prefer Hollow Bastion to Radiant Garden, the later of which seemed like a poor version of Traverse Town).
The other pick I knew they would have used? Traverse Town.
Nothing against Twilight Town or The World That Never Was, but neither of these locations seemed all that iconic to KH as a whole (Twilight Town is more of Roxas' deal and TWTNW was always SO MANY BORING WHITE TECHY WALLS), so I figured that they would use Traverse Town or Hollow Bastion to represent the series (with Destiny Islands being also a good call, but I would figure there's not much to the islands to really use).
So since Smash used Hollow Bastion, I'm using Traverse Town. And honestly I love how cozy this place is, even with lore: the reason Traverse Town exists is that this place happens to be in the universes between light and dark and it specifically looks for people who have lost their home.
Be it world wide destruction (as in the case of Sora) or major circumstance that forces you out of your home (the TWEWY cast), Traverse Town makes itself manifest and will give you shelter for as long as you need it, even if it has to break the rules of reality to do so (it manifested in the realm of sleep for the sake of the TWEWY cast, this realm is for worlds destroyed that couldn't be restored from KH1... which is literally impossible for Traverse Town since we make it so that the heartless can't get to the town's core and thus they can't destroy it).
This place was always kind of a heartwarming area for me, I have a big soft spot for KH1 given that I'm not a native english speaker, I learned the language by means of playing KH1 a lot to the point of memorizing the script. So to me, Traverse Town represents the entirety of the KH series: a mixture of traditional RPG settings with cartoony disney undertones, set as a cozy welcoming place that is quite simple and clean.
Every time I revisit Traverse Town (or explored its expanded self in Dream Drop) it is a delight, I hope that we can return to Traverse Town more often in the future (Twilight Town gets too much attention, dang it).
Oh by the way, as per suggestion there's hidden mic-- er... LUCKY EMBLEMS, hidden on the map... yes.
Can you find them all?
https://youtu.be/4CrwUSoaSXE
2022-01-07 15:57:44 +0000