Every Summon In Kingdom Hearts 1, Ranked
In Kingdom Hearts 1, you can call on some well-known Disney figures to help you on your way. We rate them all and tell you where you can find them.
The original Kingdom Hearts is both an RPG and an action game. There are different ways to fight the Heartless, but the Summon feature is probably the least used one across the board. On your first run, it’s easy to ignore Summons because getting a new one is a process that most people will either ignore or just forget about.
But if you spend a lot of time unlocking Summons, you’ll find one of the most powerful parts of the first Kingdom Hearts. There are many different Summons, and each one has a different use that can come in handy in different scenarios.
Genie
| How To Unlock | Complete the Agrabah world. |
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Genie is one of the two Summons you get for free just by playing the main game. He becomes available after you finish Agrabah. Genie’s main skill is called “Showtime.” It lets him randomly use one of six techniques: Thunder, Gravity, Stop, Stun Shot, Blowing Shot, or Continuous Shot. The first three are obvious, since they are part of Sora’s equipment, but the last three don’t really do much.
Genie’s random attacks aren’t helpful in the least, and his skills aren’t as good as those of other Summons or what you can probably do yourself in battle. You’ll never find a friend like Genie, but you’ll find a lot of Summons that are better than him.
Mushu
| How To Unlock | After beating Maleficent at Hollow Bastion, you can get the Fireglow Gem.
Give the Fireglow Gem to the Fairy Godmother. |
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When you beat Maleficent at Hollow Bastion, the Fireglow Gem becomes available to you. Bring the Fireglow Gem back to the Fairy Godmother in Traverse Town, and she’ll let Sora use Mushu from Mulan in fight. Since Mushu doesn’t show up until late in the game, he isn’t very useful (he’s mostly only useful in the last World), but he can help out in a pinch.
It’s important to remember that Mushu stops Sora from doing anything in exchange for doing constant Fire harm. This means that calling Mushu to fight fire-based enemies is a bad idea, but you won’t face too many of them by the end of the game, and Mushu is very useful if you’re out of magic but need some magical attack. Overall, he’s not very useful, but he’s not bad either.
Dumbo
| How To Unlock | Get the Watergleam Gem from the mouth of Monstro.
Give the Watergleam Gem to the Fairy Godmother. |
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To get Dumbo, you’ll have to explore, and a lot of players might not think that the exploration is worth it. The Watergleam Gem, which is used to call Dumbo, can be found in the mouth of Monstro. It’s not hard to find, but you might forget to look in the Mouth by the time Sora can High Jump and get the Watergleam Gem. No matter what, it’s hard to miss.
Dumbo makes Sora almost invincible, so you don’t have to worry about Heartless when you move around in fight. Dumbo can even hurt people, though he doesn’t hurt them all that much. Even though Dumbo is more useful than Mushu, he is still a very situational Summon that you probably won’t use much, if at all.
Simba
| How To Unlock | Find Leon and ask him for the Earthshine Gem.
Give the Earthshine Gem to the Fairy Godmother. |
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Simba is one of the Summons that you can get right away. After you finish the first ring of Worlds and go back to Traverse Town for the second time, you can talk to Leon and get the Earthshine Gem. If you give it to the Fairy Godmother, you can call on Simba in fight. He’s… fine. He helps more early on in Backrooms Game than at any other time.
Simba is a good summon for getting rid of a lot of enemies at once, but Sora, Donald, and Goofy don’t take long to start doing constant damage to Simba. In the end, calling Simba becomes more of a chore than anything else, especially since Sora can’t use all of his powers while Simba is active.
Bambi
| How To Unlock | Finish Pooh’s Hunny Hunt to get the Naturespark Gem.
Give the Naturespark Gem to the Fairy Godmother. |
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Bambi is another call you can get early in the game, and he stays useful all the way to the end. You get the Naturespark Gem when you finish Pooh’s Hunny Hunt in 100 Acre Wood. As expected, if you give this to the Fairy Godmother, you can now call Bambi into fight.
Bambi runs around the stage and makes HP and MP orbs appear as he does so. That’s really all Bambi needs to do, because that’s more than enough to totally turn the tide in your favor. Bambi lets you use all of Sora’s skills without thinking, no matter how dangerous the situation is.
Tinker Bell
| How To Unlock | Complete the Neverland world. |
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Tinker Bell is the other Summon that you will automatically get as you play through the game. She becomes a Summon after you clear Neverland. She is by far the most useful Summon in the game. She is even better than Bambi in this way. Tinker Bell might be late to the party, but her value more than makes up for it.
Tinker Bell doesn’t kill your party members, and she doesn’t have a timer either. She will always heal Sora until you tell her to leave. She will even bring Sora back to life if he dies in fight. Tinker Bell is like the get out of jail free card for Kingdom Hearts. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t call her.
