Looking back at nearly twenty years worth of Kingdom Hearts games, it's strange to note how many of the most iconic Heartless have only appeared in a handful of titles. In fact, aside from the Purebloods like Shadows, there are few enemy designs that continued on from the first game to make more appearances in either the later numbered entries in the series as well as the spin-offs.
Of these different types of Heartless, the Defender stands out as one of the most iconic that the series has to offer, due in part to its incredible design as well as its role in the late-game content. The fact that the Defender from Kingdom Hearts still has the impact on the series that it does is especially interesting when considering that these Heartless don't even appear until the penultimate level.
The Defender's Design
There's no talking about the Defender without talking about the Heartless' design, which has a much scarier and more imposing aesthetic than most of what the game had prepared the player for up until that point. The first thing the player sees when these enemies spawn in is their shield that acts similarly to the Large Body or Birth by Sleep's Tank Toppler's stomachs by defending them from any attacks coming from the front. Like the familiar enemy types, magic can break through this defense, but the Defender has a twist on this mechanic depending on what color the eyes of dog on the front of the shield are glowing at any given time.
This shield itself is a huge part of the design of the Defender, with what looks like one of the heads of Cerberus on the front that bites whenever the Heartless attacks as well casts fire and blizzard magic. As mentioned with the glow before, if Sora has mastered Kingdom Hearts' magic systems he can cast the opposite of whatever the Defender is attacking with and land a tech counter that leaves the enemy stunned. Behind the shield, the Defender itself still has a lot of the cartoony style that most Heartless maintain, giving it a look like a knight that never bothers with leg day and spends all its time beefing up its arms and chest in order to pick up that shield.
Flooding the Endgame
When looking at the design itself, it's not much of a mystery how the Defender became such an iconic Heartless, but there's another step to how it solidified itself in the memory of the fanbase. While this is another Heartless from Kingdom Hearts' endgame like the Invisible, the Defenders make themselves a bit more known throughout the later sections of the game. Specifically, these enemies, along with several others from Hollow Bastion, end up spreading to almost every world in the game right as the final level first becomes available.
This is most notable because it is at this time in the game that many of the most intense boss fights in Kingdom Hearts begin to make their appearance, in addition to dozens of other secrets that are now unlocked. The result is that players are incentivized to start revisiting older worlds in order to pick up any secrets they had missed or weren't able to reach without specific trinities being learned or movement features like glide. So, with the Defenders being spread out across almost every one of these levels, players will run into these enemies everywhere they go on this hunt for the stuff hidden on each world.
The Defender Shield
On top of the design of the Defender, as well as their prevalence in the endgame, there is also one more aspect that makes this specific Heartless so special among fans. This would be the fact that the iconic Defender shield that is such an integral part of its design and combat mechanics is an obtainable weapon that players have a rare chance of finding in order to equip onto Goofy. It's one of two weapons from the original game that comes as a drop from a Heartless, the other being a staff for Donald, though unfortunately none of Kingdom Hearts' Keyblades are found with this method.
While the weapon doesn't bite when Goofy starts throwing it around, it still has one of the best designs of any of the shields that are available to either purchase or win in the Olympus Colosseum throughout the game. However, as impressive as the weapon is, it's stats are quickly overshadowed by other endgame weapons that are easier to get, barring a player getting extremely lucky on their first or second pass through Hollow Bastion. Still, this concept of weapons that can drop from late-game enemies is a fun one that extended into Kingdom Hearts 2 as well, though the practice was sadly discontinued by the time Kingdom Hearts 3 launched.
Kingdom Hearts is available now for PC, PS2, PS3, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.