Kamiab Ghorbanpour

I recently replayed every Kingdom Hearts game available on Steam, and this is primarily a repost of my reviews from Steam, plus some extra thoughts on Melody of Memory as well as the two new KH manga series and the mobile games.

KINGDOM HEARTS -HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX-

Final Mix: This is the game I know the best. I have played it multiple times since I was a kid. It’s a superb, cozy, and exciting game with an enchanting story filled with mysteries and a world full of secrets, secrets that are being uncovered to this day. It’s no exaggeration to say no other KH hits the same area as the first one. There are annoying aspects, of course, such as the skippable Atlantica world, but overall, it’s just so much fun to play. Every time I go back to this game, I am amazed at how fun and addictive it is. Every time, I discover something new: a Trinity I’ve missed, or a part of the level design I didn’t understand before. The backtracking is kind of tedious, though, especially if you are not looking to complete everything.
But if you are willing to spend time in KH Final Mix and don’t rush it to get to the other entries, you are probably going to have a good time. Because this is a game worth taking in. Forget about what might come after, and just enjoy the ride that is the very first Kingdom Hearts.

Re:Chain of Memories: I remember really liking the GBA version, but I never truly enjoyed the remake for whatever reason, and I have played it multiple times. It’s a fairly creative and unique game; however, since most people will play it right after the first game, revisiting all the familiar worlds and fighting the same bosses and enemies in between your encounters with the Organization members can be excruciatingly boring.

358/2: Still so sad about this game. It’s a good one and deserved a full-on remake/remaster, but instead was turned into a “movie.” The movie is not very well edited either, and if you haven’t played the game, you are going to be puzzled by many things, such as how the hell the other members fight if Roxas is the only one with the Keyblade, what the missions look like, and how these people interact with one another. Where do they go, and more. They could have simply turned those missions into a sound novel with inconsequential dialogue options to include the missing dialogues from them. Also, there are these weird moments that show how incoherent this “movie” is. For example, there is a scene in which Xion hilariously changes from the hooded model to without the hood in every scene, as if she is constantly putting on her hoodie and taking it off the moment the camera is focused on someone else. Anyway, good game with an interesting story that deserved better.

II Final Mix: This is considered one of the best ARPGs ever made, so everything about how good it is has already been said. I just want to mention a couple of gripes I have with it. The diversity of the worlds is cool, but the worlds themselves are mostly lackluster. They are big battle hubs and feel very empty and small compared to the first game. I think they took the right trajectory with KH3 by having fewer worlds, but better ones (although I wish you could revisit them like in KH2). Take the Beast’s Castle as an example: your second visit is absolutely ludicrous. You basically just go back and forth between three small areas, watch cutscenes, and fight.
Anyway, I remember this era of games being all about QTEs (e.g., the God of War game came out the same year), but man, they have implemented this so poorly. You literally just have to press Y/triangle. I just spammed it as a result. Also, you basically get dodge until the mid-point in the game (through Drive forms), and if you’re a novice player, you probably won’t ever get it, which is hilarious for an ARPG of this type.

Birth by Sleep: I had SO MUCH fun playing this game when it came out. It came out when I also got into Star Wars, and besides Mark Hamill playing Master Eraqus, there are so many parallels and inspirations from Star Wars in this game. Anyway, I love the story despite it becoming a bit convoluted, and it remains one of my favorite Kingdom Hearts experiences. That being said, it’s originally a PSP game, so even with the remastered look, it looks graphically inferior compared to other games in this collection, and even emptier. Gameplay-wise, I think BBS is a mixed bag. The command system is great, and I think I even prefer it to the MP system (maybe?), but the whole focus mechanic ruins the flow of combat, and I never liked it.

Re:Coded: I don’t have much to say. I’ve never actually played this game; I’ve only seen the “movie.” It’s alright, and it’s the entry that really starts the whole data shenanigan. People say it’s skippable (which is mostly true), but it does come up in KH3.

Notes on the port: This is the best port of the 1.5 + 2.5 Final Mix collection I have experienced (compared to the PS3 and PS4 ports). Unlike those, I never experienced any crashes or issues here, while with the PS4 port, for example, I couldn’t make it past the Ursula fight in the first game and gave up (fortunately, it was an optional boss) due to crashes at the end of the fight. Also, all the games run smoothly on Steam Deck. I spent around 30 percent of my time on Steam Deck, and it was a delight.

KINGDOM HEARTS HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue

3D HD: The first striking thing for me when I played this game for the first time was meeting The World Ends With You characters (whom at that time I did not know), so instead of meeting Leon, Cid, Aerith, etc. at Traverse Town, you meet Neku Sakuraba for the first time. Something that I wasn’t unhappy about before KH3 came out and practically removed all Final Fantasy characters (if we don’t count Nomura’s weird FF vs. XIII stuff), but now that I am replaying this for the first time post-KH3, I feel conflicted. There is just something sad about the accessories store being closed, knowing Cid ain’t there.
Anyways, this is hands down the worst Kingdom Hearts game. It’s a mechanically undercooked, bloated headache with some interesting ideas, like the drop system, that are implemented atrociously badly. It’s the only Kingdom Hearts game that I usually drop playing mid-point, like now, and just watch the story cutscenes online, imagining it’s another one of those “movies” in the other collection. Speaking of story, this is where Kingdom Hearts goes full on into the brainless territory. While previous KH games were also stupid and convoluted, especially Birth by Sleep, they didn’t introduce time travel all of a sudden and overcomplicate things this late into the series. The infamous meme that “everyone is either Xehanort, if not, they’re Sora” basically starts from this game with the “I am already half-Xehanort” line.
Take KH2 as an example: the story is stupid and weird, but it’s built on genuinely interesting ideas, and while it gets convoluted, there is enough emotional meat in the plot points that you are willing to get along with the dumb retcons (e.g., Ansem was actually Xehanort’s Heartless, and now you have to fight his Nobody!) because you’re interested in Roxas’ story and maybe teared up when Axel died. But with KH3D, it is just the convoluted stupid lore/exposition and none of the stuff that actually made you care, but you’re so deep into the swamp that you would rather just continue on and learn all about young Xehanort, the sleeping worlds, and all this bs than climb back up.

Oh, and the level designs are so bad that you’re gonna miss the big empty battle hubs of KH2.

χ Back Cover: Probably the weirdest entry in the Kingdom Hearts franchise. This is a CGI movie that, unlike the other “movies” in the collection (which are just compilations of cutscenes) was meant to be a movie from the beginning. What kind of movie is it? A terrible one. It’s basically just a lore dump, and a very uninteresting and bad one that doesn’t even do that job properly. If you haven’t played or watched Unchained χ / Union χ, then good luck. This movie will be insufferable. Even after experiencing those, which you literally cannot even access to play anymore unless you downloaded the offline version, which was taken down for good from the Play Store, it’s still an uninteresting movie.
Anyway, a lot of people think this is a recap of those mobile games, but it’s not. It’s not even entirely what you need for KH3. Your best bet is to just play those games (if you can!) or watch the cutscenes (there are apparently decent fandubs on YouTube; I haven’t watched them myself) and then watch χ Back Cover.

0.2 Birth by Sleep –A fragmentary passage–: Don’t really have much to say about this one. This is basically the MGS V: Ground Zeroes of Kingdom Hearts. It’s a one-to-two-hour-long piece of cut content from KH3’s prologue.

Notes on the collection: I am still baffled by the existence of this collection. Unlike the HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX collection, which is definitely good value for the money with some really good games, HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue exists solely for people deep enough into Nomura’s swamp that they don’t see any hope of climbing back up. This collection basically exists to get people caught up on KH lore before KH3, which it doesn’t even do very well, because KH3 refers to stuff from KHUX that isn’t covered here.
If you are deep enough into the swamp, then you’ve already played this or are going to play it. But if you’re not, run away.

Notes on the port: A pretty good port of the collection. I played it both on PC and Steam Deck, and the experience was smooth and great. I don’t remember having any difficulties with it when it came out on PS4 either, so it’s very similar to that, I suppose.

KINDOM HEARTS III + ReMind

I probably would have given KH3 a thumbs down if I was writing this in 2019. While I really enjoyed the game, it frustrated me to no end. Going back to it now, almost exactly seven years later, I think that despite everything it deserves a “soft” thumbs up, especially with the Re Mind DLC included.

To start off, I am still upset about the lack of Final Fantasy characters. I’ve heard the argument many times that since the original characters have become more prominent over the years, it was time to move on from the FF cast, or that their absence wasn’t that big of a deal. I wholeheartedly disagree. Especially after replaying the earlier entries, it feels genuinely strange to walk through big empty rooms that were once occupied by people like Leon, with no one even mentioning them. Aerith, Yuffie, Cid, Leon, and others were integral parts of Sora’s story, and they had far more influence and importance to the plot than Roxas’ friends or Scrooge freakin’ McDuck. So no, I’m not convinced by that argument at all. I think this was the single worst decision they made with this game. Did Re Mind redeem it? I’ll get to that in a bit.

One of the best parts of KH3 is the Disney worlds. I’ve never really liked how the Disney worlds were handled after KH Final Mix, especially what KH2 did to them, where they mostly felt like big empty combat hubs. In KH3, though, they are large and elaborate, and while they’re still not as interesting or layered as the first game, they do have secrets and a real sense of exploration. The modern graphics also help a lot. During some cutscenes, it’s honestly hard to tell that you’re not watching a Pixar movie. If you stopped playing the series somewhere between KH2 and BbS, or if you just want to try a Kingdom Hearts game and don’t give a damn about the story and only care about the Disney worlds, then this is, honestly, the best entry to pick up.

The story is bad, at least when taken on its own. I’ve read a lot of complaints about the pacing, and while I think people are onto something, pacing isn’t really the core issue. The pacing has always been awful in this series, so that’s nothing new. The real problem is that KH3 lacks a compelling, engaging storyline that pulls you in and unfolds as you make progress, like KH1 and KH2 did. I think people often mistake that absence for pacing issues. The story picks up where DDD left off and mostly feels like it just wants to wrap up the Xehanort stuff as quickly as possible. It’s not really telling a story in the traditional sense, with a beginning, middle, and end. It feels more like paperwork, just checking items off a list. That’s why it feels so different from earlier KH games.

That said, I enjoyed the story more this time around after playing through Dark Road. KH3 already has an insane number of loose ends to deal with. At one point, Jiminy Cricket basically says, “Okay, we don’t have time to explain how or why Ventus is connected to Sora, or why they’re both connected to Vanitas. You can read about it in my journal. We’ve already sat through three hours of cutscenes, let’s move on.” I get why they rushed things, but honestly, the Xehanort storyline becomes so much more meaningful if you’ve played Dark Road. I really wish that had been included in the 2.8 collection. If you look at KH3 as part of a much larger narrative, it’s not that bad. If you judge it as a standalone story told from beginning to end, it’s a total mess.

From a gameplay perspective, KH3 actually does some really interesting things and pulls together mechanics from previous games in a fairly elegant way. I genuinely enjoy “playing” KH3. That said, the base game is absurdly easy. A friend of mine who usually sticks to Normal or Easy played it on Proud when it came out and was still annoyed by how easy it was, which I completely understand. Re Mind fixes a lot of this, along with the lack of meaningful content after finishing the main game. If you’re playing this version, I strongly recommend playing on Critical instead of Proud if you want to engage with the combat at all, rather than just button-mashing your way to the credits. Now, let’s talk about Re Mind.

Re Mind is a very mixed bag. If I were reviewing it on its own, I’d probably give it a thumbs down without hesitation. When it’s bundled with the base game at a reasonable price, though, it does enhance the overall experience, even if it’s still not a particularly good DLC.

For a large portion of Re Mind, you’re essentially rewatching the final Keyblade Graveyard scenes with added context and time travel nonsense. Some of it adds a little to the story, but most of it feels unnecessary and redundant. Did we really need to explicitly spell out that the Lingering Will is “Terra’s thoughts”? Did we need to watch the Terra-Xehanort fight again, plus an added scene of Sora time-traveling to save the Lingering Will, only for the Lingering Will to sacrifice himself for Sora? I really don’t think so. On top of that, Re Mind is basically a boss rush, and there are effectively no new story bosses. You’re fighting the same characters you’ve fought a billion times throughout the series. The data battles are cool, sure, but this really should have been marketed as Kingdom Hearts 3.5 Final Mix.

As for the Final Fantasy characters in Re Mind, I could rant for hours, but I’ll keep it short. The cameo was insultingly half-assed, even if I’m still glad it happened at all due to the backlash.

Another major reason I’m giving it a thumbs up is that it runs very smoothly on the Steam Deck. That said, I still prefer playing it on PC, simply because of how good it looks there.

OTHER ENTRIES

I have not replayed Melody of Memory yet, as it has not been released on Steam and remains exclusive to Epic. However, I did play it when it first came out on PS4, and I did not like it. To be fair, I was mainly interested in seeing the story at the end and did not put much effort into the gameplay itself. I will write a proper review once it releases on Steam and I replay it.

As for KHUX and KHDR, I recently went through KHDR, which sadly doesn’t feel great, as you can’t really play these games anymore. I only have access to the offline version (now taken down), and that’s only because I downloaded them long ago when they were first released, so my Google Play account still retains access. They are mainly an incoherent series of cutscenes, but the stories are interesting, especially KHDR. KHUX is kind of all over the place, but KHDR is surprisingly good and makes KH3 much better.

I also recently started reading the KH3 and KH Final Mix manga series, both of which are getting official English translations. They are really good, especially when it comes to comedy. There are many expressions that wouldn’t have been possible in the games due to the limitations of 3D assets, but are possible in the manga.
I also love the art, especially in KH Final Mix. Overall, I think it’s a good adaptation of the games.