Kingdom Hearts built the foundation to its mythology inside mobile games that players and fans can no longer reach, and Kingdom Hearts IV is built on that same lore. The series’ χ-era titles, which hold the origin of the Foretellers, the Master of Masters, and the Keyblade War, were delisted from app stores in 2024. Director Tetsuya Nomura has called Kingdom Hearts IV a fresh start for newcomers, but the game’s announced villains and its first trailers draw from stories that are now unavailable to anyone who did not play them years ago.
Kingdom Hearts created the mythos it draws on through mobile games that cannot now be played, and Kingdom Hearts IV relies on the very same lore. The games that introduced the Foretellers, the Master of Masters, and the Keyblade War — which set the stage for the entire kingdom of heart mythology in the series — are delisted from the app store. Director Tetsuya Nomura refers to Kingdom Hearts IV as a reboot for newcomers, but the villains announced in the game and its trailers draw on the mythology available only to those who played the games years ago.
The games that hold the lore are gone
Kingdom Hearts Union χ, the mobile entry that carried most of the χ-era plot, ended online service in June 2021 and was reduced to an offline cutscene theater. In August 2024 Square Enix delisted the entire app, which also contained Kingdom Hearts Dark Road, from the App Store and Google Play without explanation, GameSpot reported. Dark Road, whose story concluded in August 2022, told the origin of Master Xehanort, the villain at the center of the first three games.
Square Enix had positioned a newer mobile game, Kingdom Hearts Missing-Link, as a bridge to Kingdom Hearts IV. It cancelled that game in May 2025, removing the route it had named for players to prepare for the sequel.
What is locked away
The χ-era games introduced the mythology that predates the original 2002 release: the Master of Masters and his five Foretellers, the Book of Prophecies, and the Keyblade War that ended the ancient world. Union χ also delivered series-defining reveals, among them that the recurring villain Xigbar is the centuries-old apprentice Luxu, carrying out the Master’s plan. Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover, a 60-minute film in the 2017 collection Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8, introduced the Foretellers but left their central mysteries unresolved, including the Master’s motive, a traitor’s identity, and the contents of his Black Box. Reviewers called it incomplete at the time; Press Start described a string of cliffhangers that sent viewers to the mobile game for the full story. Those answers arrived in Union χ, which is now delisted.
Kingdom Hearts IV draws on it directly
Square Enix revealed Kingdom Hearts IV in April 2022, opening what it calls the Lost Master Arc, named for the Foretellers who vanished after the Keyblade War. Nomura told Game Informer that year that “the easiest way to get more new information and hints about Kingdom Hearts IV would be first to play Missing-Link,” and that the sequel’s new enemy ties to the masked characters who appeared at the end of Kingdom Hearts III, in remarks recapped by KH13. Those masked figures are the Foretellers. A new gameplay trailer at the June 9 Nintendo Direct showed Sora in the city of Quadratum but still gave no release date, and coverage of the trailer noted it featured characters from the delisted games, including Strelitzia and Vali.
The case that it will not matter
Nomura has framed the sequel as a reset. He told Young Jump in 2024 that he “wanted to end it with 3, or rather reset it,” appointing new writers and a new logo “to make it easier for new people,” in comments translated from the interview. Square Enix is also re-releasing the console saga: the Kingdom Hearts Collection [I-III], due October 8, gathers the numbered games and includes Back Cover. A studio that compiled its spin-offs before Kingdom Hearts III could do the same with the mobile story before the next game.
That collection does not include the Union χ or Dark Road story, and Square Enix has announced no plan to re-release it. Nomura’s reset describes a narrative restart, a new hero in a new world, rather than a story that stands without its setup. The same interviews that promise an easier entry point also point players toward lore they can no longer reach.
On the evidence so far, the likeliest read is that Kingdom Hearts IV resets the framing but not the foundation. Its villains, its arc, and its early trailers rest on a body of lore that exists only inside delisted apps and a film built to raise questions it never answers. Until Square Enix re-releases that material, the most complete record of the series’ origins belongs to the fans who archived the cutscenes themselves, not to the company that made them.
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