TK's Kingdom Hearts Guide

TK's KINGDOM HEARTS GUIDE

Every game up except KH3 has been remastered into the same HD but PS2-ish artstyle, and are available in the game catalog on PS+ Extra.

There are two battle systems in the series:

Standard - you have hack-and-slash gameplay for basic melee attacks and have a limited amount of MP that you use to execute magic, summons, and other cool tricks. the drawback to this is that you need to navigate the command menu while fighting
Card/Command Deck - you have the same hack-and-slash for basic melee attacks, but you earn different cards/commands over the course of the game to put in an automatically rotating menu where each card/command has a cooldown before executing. i like this system less because you have to dedicate 2 or 3 slots to your healing and its annoying to switch things out to optimize for each fight


Included in 1.5+2.5:
1. Kingdom Hearts - the OG game, standard system. story is very simple. there's platforming that hasn't aged well but very cute and fun
2. Chain of Memories - the first iteration of the card/command deck system and its very rough. repetitive level design and you have two separate campaigns which makes the game longer than it should be. i would honestly skip even though it's story critical (could've been called Kingdom Hearts 2 if it wasn't originally on handheld)
3. Kingdom Hearts II - the most beloved game in the series, refines the standard combat system with a darker story i find personally very intriguing
4. 358/2 Days - cutscene movie that explains side characters from KH2. the most beloved story in the series so i would give it a watch, apparently it's on letterboxd (although with no reviews lol)
5. Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep - a prequel that sets up the Big Bad of the series. makes the command deck system decent enough and plays across 3 campaigns which makes it a fan favorite. honestly i've never finished this and don't feel particularly compelled to
6. Re:coded - super skippable cutscene movie that nobody wants a proper remake for

Included in 2.8:

7. Dream Drop Distance - probably the best combat of the command deck games but the worlds are super bland and this is where the story becomes very hard to follow without a wiki. i'd play just because it's story critical but maybe on easy mode to blaze through it (like Re:CoM it would've been Kingdom Hearts 3 if not on handheld)
8. 0.2 - this was basically a tech demo for KH3 where you find out what one of the characters from BBS was up to during the events of the rest of the games. skippable but also super short
9. X Back Cover - movie that adapts one of the 3 (soon to be 4) mobile games. i'm super intrigued by the lore this introduces but it's not important yet

Their Own Games:

10. Kingdom Hearts III - pretty controversial for going full bonkers with the story but it also stuffs a ton of combat features into the standard battle system and has very beloved disney worlds. an essential moment in gaming history teabh for how it compared to expectations
11. Melody of Memory - rhythm game that recaps the story so far and includes some more teasers for the story to come

Misc. Notes:
- I am not a very skilled gamer and was able to beat the games I liked enough to finish on standard mode in about 30 hours or less.
- If you outright dislike the first game you will probably dislike the rest of the series
- The mobile games all take place before all other games in the series and are very inaccessible at the moment due to their gacha mechanics being shut down. If you care to watch cutscenes on YouTube, in order they are X, Union X, Dark Road and Missing Link. That being said I am personally anticipating a console remake of Union X to be bundled with a Dark Road movie as one of the next two games (either before or after KH4) because they are somehow more story critical than many of the console games.
- Kingdom Hearts 4 is releasing in the 2025-2027 range so you have plenty of time to catch up!