Hollow Bastion

Kingdom Hearts Hollow Bastion
Hollow Bastion in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Universe	Kingdom Hearts
Appears in	Ultimate
Availability	Downloadable
Crate type	Normal
Maximum players	8
Music Bolded tracks must be unlocked Ultimate Kingdom Hearts series music Main: Fragments of Sorrow Alternate: Night of Fate / Hand in Hand / Hollow Bastion / Scherzo Di Notte
Tournament legality Ultimate Singles: Counterpick/Starter Doubles: Counterpick/Starter
Articles on Kingdom Hearts Wiki	Hollow Bastion Dive to the Heart

Hollow Bastion (ホロウバスティオン, Hollow Bastion) is the final downloadable stage in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, based on the location of the same name from the Kingdom Hearts series. It is the home stage of Sora, and is bundled with him as part of Challenger Pack 11. It was released on October 18th, 2021.

Stage overview

The stage is primarily a floating, traveling platform, with one extra platform on top, that begins at the Rising Falls, before soaring in the skies around the outside of the Hollow Bastion castle, and finally returning to the Rising Falls to loop back around.

When time, stocks, or health are running low, the stage transforms into Dive to the Heart (ダイブ・トゥ・ハート, Dive to Heart), which keeps the same layout, but features one of seven Stations of Awakening in the background, with cameos from different characters and objects:

• Sora's station has Riku, Kairi, a Paopu Fruit, and the Highwind. Its background depicts Destiny Islands, and its ring border features the series' famous crown design.
• Riku's station has Sora, Naminé, and Ansem, Seeker of Darkness. Its background depicts the Realm of Darkness, and its ring border features cards from Chain of Memories.
• Roxas's station has Axel, Xion, and Riku, as he appears in 358/2 Days. Its background depicts Twilight Town's clock tower, and its ring border features the Nobody emblem.
• Xion's station has Axel, Saïx, Xemnas, and Sora. Its background depicts Where Nothing Gathers from The World That Never Was, and its ring border features the Nobody emblem.
• Terra's station has Ventus, Aqua, and the Wayfinders he and they possess. Its background depicts a checkered pattern with the series' famous heart and crown designs along with the Unversed emblem, and its ring border alternates between a Wayfinder and Terra's own emblem.
• Ventus's station exclusively has Wayfinders, uniquely lacking any other characters. Its background depicts the Keyblade Graveyard, and its ring border features Terra's emblem.
• Aqua's station has Terra, Ventus, Vanitas, and Xehanort. Its background depicts a checkered pattern with the series' famous heart and crown designs along with the Unversed emblem, and its ring border features a Wayfinder.

Ω forms and Battlefield forms

The main platform of the Ω forms and Battlefield forms is identical to how it appears in the normal forms but resized and reshaped to match Final Destination and Battlefield, respectively. The three soft platforms of the Battlefield forms also resemble the floating soft platform of the normal forms.

• 

  Ω form of Hollow Bastion

• 

  Battlefield form of Hollow Bastion

• 

  Ω form of Dive to the Heart

• 

  Battlefield form of Dive to the Heart

Hazards Off

With hazards off, Dive to the Heart will not occur; the stage will only cycle through the Hollow Bastion environment. Dive to the Heart will also not occur in Ω and Battlefield forms if hazards are turned off.

Origin

Official artwork for Hollow Bastion in Kingdom Hearts.

Official artwork for Dive to the Heart in Kingdom Hearts.

Hollow Bastion is an important world in the Kingdom Hearts series, appearing in multiple cutscenes and repeatedly being alluded to leading up to its appearance as the penultimate world of the first game, and making numerous appearances as both a playable and non-playable world in the future games in the series. Though the original release of Kingdom Hearts first showed the world as the headquarters of Hades, Jafar, Ursula, Captain Hook, Oogie Boogie, and Maleficent after Sora meets with Donald Duck and Goofy in Traverse Town, the Final Mix version of the game adds an additional cutscene that plays after Sora fights Squall Leonhart earlier in that same world, where it's revealed that Riku ended up in Hollow Bastion after the Heartless attack on Destiny Islands. Later cutscenes reveal that Maleficent and the other villains are watching Sora's progress through the worlds, and kidnapping the Princesses of Heart, including Kairi, to open the Door to Darkness. After Sora, Donald, and Goofy visit Neverland, where they learn that Riku and the villains have obtained Kairi, they travel further to Hollow Bastion, where Riku reveals himself to be the true Keyblade wielder instead of Sora. As a result, Sora loses the Keyblade to Riku, and Donald and Goofy subsequently leave him to join Riku due to their mission from Mickey Mouse being to stay with the wielder of the Keyblade. With help from Beast, Sora travels through the giant castle with only a wooden sword to make his way to Riku, where he regains Goofy, Donald, and the Keyblade after a heartfelt speech. They travel further into the castle, and Riku reveals to Sora that Kairi's heart is residing within him. After the two have an intense battle, Sora, realizing he is unable to lock Hollow Bastion's keyhole without all seven Princesses of Heart, stabs himself with the Keyblade of heart to free Kairi's heart. This causes Sora to fall to darkness, and Kairi, Donald, and Goofy leave him for gone, until they realize that he was turned into a Shadow Heartless, and Kairi is able to return him to normal by a flash of light. The four escape Hollow Bastion, and return to Traverse Town to request a Gummi Ship upgrade from Cid, which allows them to swiftly return to Hollow Bastion to seal the keyhole, and prevent Ansem from destroying the castle with a Behemoth.

Hollow Bastion returns as a location in Kingdom Hearts II, with the efforts of Leon, Yuffie, Aerith, Cid, and Merlin (forming the Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee) helping return the town to how it was prior to the events of the previous games. In contrast to its late game appearance in the original Kingdom Hearts, it is the second world visited in Kingdom Hearts II, accessible after Sora meets with Yen Sid at The Mysterious Tower (itself an extension of Twilight Town). The world serves as a hubworld of sorts, with the player frequently needing to make return trips to it for various purposes, and also houses two separate worlds in itself, being Space Paranoids (accessible via Hollow Bastion's computer system) and 100 Acre Wood (accessible via an old book in Merlin's house)—like the first game, the player can find torn pages scattered across the worlds, and return to Hollow Bastion to put them in the book and continue the story. An additional area in Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix is the Cavern of Remembrance, which contains replica data of the members of Organization XIII that Sora can fight in the Garden of Assemblage, located at the end of the cavern. Hollow Bastion also serves as an important plot device, with undoubtedly the most important event being Mickey finally reuniting with Sora, Donald, and Goofy. With his help, they are able to access the DTD dataspace within Space Paranoids, which, while initially scrambled, is fully restored after the trio assist Tron in defeating the Master Control Program, giving Tron full access to the main computers of Hollow Bastion; in the system's archives, he finds information on how the town looked when it was first built, which causes everyone to remember the town's original name of Radiant Garden. Radiant Garden's history is explored in Birth by Sleep, where it is fully seen in its original state as a city of light, and explored by Terra, Ventus, and Aqua. Hollow Bastion is also where Sora, Donald, and Goofy join the Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee, the Gullwings, Cloud, Tifa, and Stitch in fighting off an immense wave of Heartless.

In Melody of Memory, it is revealed that, in between the events of Birth by Sleep and Kingdom Hearts, Kairi was abducted by Terra-Xehanort, to be used in his experiments to send her into the oceans between worlds. He believed her to be a Princess of Heart, and would thus be able to find a world with a Keyblade wielder in it; she does, and lands in Destiny Islands, though this is actually due to a protective spell placed on her by Aqua. When Destiny Islands is attacked in Kingdom Hearts, Kairi's heart chooses Sora as a new vessel while her body is relocated elsewhere, though Sora is unaware of this course of events; however, it is alluded to in Deep Jungle, where the Hollow Bastion castle itself is among a collection of slides shown to Tarzan by Jane, and Sora notes how, despite never having been there himself, the castle looks familiar to him, which he reaffirms upon arrival in the Rising Falls.

Radiant Garden also briefly reappears, albeit only in cutscenes, in Dream Drop Distance and Kingdom Hearts III, with an additional small playable section in III's Re Mind DLC; Hollow Bastion is also recreated as part of Sora's memories and Jiminy Cricket's journal in Chain of Memories and coded, respectively (as well as their remakes).

Dive to the Heart serves as the starting location in the original Kingdom Hearts, and has become a recurring location used frequently for tutorials. In the numbered Kingdom Hearts titles, the player learns basic combat and game controls here. Each character has their own station adorned with symbols and important individuals, and often appear as a dreamlike realm. Battles atop the station can occur whenever an individual enters another heart, such as Roxas briefly attempting to overpower Sora while the former was merged with the latter.

Tournament Legality

Due to the stage lacking stage hazards and possessing a layout similar to the hazards-off version of the already legal Smashville (albeit slightly larger main platform) and having the same blast zone distance as Final Destination, Hollow Bastion is often considered as a counterpick in many tourneys, and a starter in some.

Gallery

Background details

Hollow Bastion

• 

  Rising Falls.

• 

  Castle detail.

• 

  Castle detail.

• 

  Castle detail.

Stations of Awakening

• 

  Sora

• 

  Riku

• 

  Roxas

• 

  Xion

• 

  Terra

• 

  Ventus

• 

  Aqua

Gameplay

• 

  Sora at a readied stance on the stage.

• 

  Sora using Blizzaga against Popo on the stage.

• 

  Sora and Mario on the stage.

• 

  Sora combating with Mario, Cloud, and Sephiroth on the stage.

• 

  Sora casting Stopga, Aeroga and Curaga on the Dive to the Heart section of the stage.

• 

  Sora jumping in his Station of Awakening.

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning
Japanese	ホロウバスティオン	Hollow Bastion
English	Hollow Bastion	—
French	Forteresse oubliée	Forgotten Fortress
German	Hollow Bastion	—
Spanish	Bastión Hueco	Hollow Bastion
Italian	La Fortezza Oscura	The Dark Fortress
Chinese (Simplified)	虚空城	Void City
Chinese (Traditional)	虛空城	Void City
Korean	할로우 바스티온	Hollow Bastion
Dutch	Vergeten Kasteel	Forgotten Castle
Russian	Полый бастион	Hollow Bastion

Trivia

• Many Dive to the Heart station designs have been changed from their original appearances for Ultimate, with all of these changes having previously been made in the 15th anniversary versions of the stations used in merchandise. These changes remove explicit references to other Disney properties.
  • Sora's is missing images of Donald Duck and Goofy. They have been replaced with icons of a raft and paopu fruit from the "Sora's Mind" station from Birth by Sleep. Additionally, Riku's picture has changed location.
  • Riku's is missing the image of Mickey Mouse. He has instead been replaced with art of Sora originating from the cover of Re:Chain of Memories.
  • Terra's has had Mickey symbols on the outer ring border replaced with alternating Terra and Wayfinder symbols.
  • Aqua's has had Mickey symbols in the central checkerboard background replaced with more Unversed symbols.
• Hollow Bastion is the only stage to change its background for the remainder of the match when a certain condition is met. Additionally, said condition is time running low, being on one stock, or having low stamina, meaning this stage is also the only one to do something besides changing music when this occurs.
  • As a result, Dive to the Heart is uniquely completely inaccessible while in Training Mode.
• Dr. Kawashima cannot appear from Assist Trophies on this stage. Lunala cannot appear from Poké Balls.
• Discounting the Dive to the Heart stations, Hollow Bastion is one of two paid DLC stages without any visible background characters, along with Northern Cave.
• Hollow Bastion's Battlefield and Ω variants will turn into their respective Dive to the Heart variants if stage hazards are on, but not if they are off. This makes Hollow Bastion's Battlefield and Ω variants one of two stages where the Battlefield and Ω variants have differences between hazards on and hazardless versions, the other being Figure-8 Circuit (where Shy Guy racers do not appear in hazards off versions of the Battlefield/Omega forms).
• This stage's default My Music settings are non-standard. By default, Fragments of Sorrow is the most likely song to appear, while Night of Fate, Hand in Hand, Hollow Bastion, and Scherzo Di Notte are all equally set as the second-most likely choices.
• Hollow Bastion features seven Dive to the Heart stations. This coincidentally is the same amount as the Seven Guardians of Light.
  • The stations of four of these guardians are featured on this stage: Sora, Riku, Ventus, and Aqua.
    • Two additional guardians, Kairi and Lea through his nobody Axel also appear in these stations.'
• In a YouTube video, Masahiro Sakurai showed various changes made to Hollow Bastion before the final release:
  • The colors of the rising falls were tweaked to not look like ice.
  • Dive to the Heart was initially too dark and caused visibility issues.
  • The cloud density in the background was too uneven initially.
  • The pipes on Hollow Bastion initially looked to flat, so their gradation was tweaked to look more 3D.
  • There were issues of background elements contrasting too much and blending into the foreground.
  • A progression of the stained glass background was shown.
  • A structure on Hollow Bastion initially looked too much like a churro.
  • Characters initially blended into the stained glass too easily.
  • The drop through platforms in Dive to the Heart were changed to be easier to see. The platforms also had a visual bug where they changed hues depending on location.
  • The Dive to the Heart floor was made less vibrant for visual clarity.