*Noncommittal shrug*

I was initially going to say that I can't answer this because I've only played Kingdom Hearts 1, so my knowledge of the later games is pretty limited. Then I remembered that my little brother is both obsessed with those games and the Mycroft to my Sherlock*, so I gave him a call and got the expert opinion (and a reminder that I need to play the Kingdom Hearts games so that my brother can talk about them with someone who understands story telling because those games apparently make a lot of... interesting choices.)

Here is the sum of my brother's analysis:

The two properties handled the concept of personhood and artificial beings in such wildly different ways that it would never even occur to him to compare them (though it was an interesting question once posed). A good portion of the later Kingdom Hearts games revolve around asking what a person even is. Should they try to make the Nobodies into people? Do the Nobodies even need to change to be people or are they people already? What makes Roxas different from other Nobodies? These questions start being asked very early on and, for all the story's flaws, you can tell that the writers are aware that they're dealing with a serious topic and that they're trying to do it justice.

Meanwhile, Miraculous introduces artificial beings who don't have true free will and then... completely ignores all of the ethical implications of that plot point. Emilie and Gabriel are good parents. The fact that the heroes have been killing off sentimonsters isn't concerning. Gabriel's commands are just a minor inconvenience to Adrienette and not anything that needs to be explored in a deeper way. He's still totally redeemable and it's fine that Adrien never learned the truth while his father was alive so that he could decide what that meant for their relationship on his own terms.

Given all of that, it's really not shocking that Kingdom Hearts makes you feel invested while Miraculous repulses you because the Miraculous introduced human sentimonsters for cheap shock value to the point where I firmly believe that it was a retcon. Meanwhile Kingdom Hearts planned major elements of the plot around the concept and set it up right from the start of the second game. If Miraculous had done the same kind of thing, then I doubt that most salters would be deeply upset by the concept. They still might dislike it, but it would be seen more as a matter of taste than as a true flaw.

For example, once they decided to make Adrien a sentimonster, the show suddenly had a ton of foreshadowing to set up that reveal (or, at the very least, foreshadowing that the rings somehow controlled Adrien).

Every time Gabriel or Nathalie gave an order, the camera focused on the rings. We also get Ephemeral where Adrien obeys his father's commands without even a token struggle, a thing that feels very off - and therefore counts as foreshadowing - in a season where rejecting akumas becomes far more commonplace. Alya does it without even seeing Marinette (see: Gang of Secrets). Adrien can't do it when he's looking her in the eyes, fully aware that she loves him and that she's his lady, meaning that touching her will let his father win.

When you compare that to the writing in Chat Blanc you can see how different it feels when they're writing Adrien like a human. Chat Blanc sees Adrien actively struggle against his father to the point where that episode isn't a win for either side. Everyone loses because Adrien was still human and still able to fight. I'm still not a fan of Chat Blanc, but at the very least it didn't imply that Adrien was totally incapable of resisting his father's commands. It just implied that Adrien probably shouldn't find out the truth during the final fight which I can admit is somewhat fair.

If they had always planned for the sentinonsense and written the show around it, then both Chat Blanc and Ephemeral would have been hints at Adrien's status. Instead, they feel like they're from alternate universes and that's not the only example that I can point to. It's glaringly obvious that, at the very least, they didn't care to write in at Adrien's status until mid season four (and do not bring up the pigeon nonsense. Dear gods, that was not and never will be foreshadowing. Your English teachers failed you.)

That's just one straightforward example of the ways that the show would be different if the sentimonster stuff had always been the plan. To really set it up, I'd expect a lot of other subtle to grand changes. Here are a few examples:

Kagami, Felix, and Adrien are the only sentimonsters that Gabriel and Nathalie have every known, so the first time Nathalie sends a sentimonster out to die, you could have Gabriel react in a way that hints at Adrien status while also establishing the fact that the sentimonsters that Nathalie creates aren't alive in the same way that the kids are (an element that the show desperately needs).

You could have Adrien and Kagami actually know each other and hint that their parents have something going on as would be expected if Tomoe was close enough to the Agreste to get a designer baby of her own. As-is, this more grand partnership feels like it comes out of nowhere and we still don't know what it's all about. I'm not even sure if we ever will know.

You could do more complex things with Felix. For example, have him mess with Adrien in a way where he's clearly testing what Adrien is allowed to do. Make it seem like Felix is an asshole who is constantly pushing Adrien's boundaries only to eventually reveal that Felix loves Adrien and was trying to see how free his cousin was/figure out what Adrien's amok was/etc. Really make Felix a freedom fighter instead of canon's lackluster nonsense.

The list goes on. There are so many major and minor changes you could make to canon in order to make this twist feel earned and well set up. As-is, I don't know why they made this choice.

My brother and I both felt like they just wanted shock value since the writing seems terrified to engage with the ideas that they've introduced, thus Adrien's status being used as a minor inconvenience to Adrinette and nothing of true narrative value. You could have replaced the sentinonsense with Adrien's bodyguard following him around and gotten a similar story because Gabriel doesn't give Adrien the kind of commands that you'd need a magical ring to give. Plus the commands that he gives are all waved away within minutes thanks to Nathalie having the backup ring because heaven forbid that we let the sentimonster stuff have real consequences!

That was more my nod to canon - the ramp isn't added into the Intro Song Opening or the show until this episode, so they really went out of their way to add the ramp into the show on Alya's word in "Catalyst".

Season 1:

Season 2-Onward:

also, jokes aside. someone read the sample for this, and, um... balleraggot...

gravel eating contest (first person to chip a tooth wins)

designate a friend as 'the doom' for the day. the doom must remind the other guests that someday, all of you will return to the soil once every hour. if they forget to do this, the doom role gets passed on to whoever's birthday is next