Every generation has its signatures. A certain fashion trend, a popular artist, or a movie that most everyone has seen. They also have their own signature games, and even consoles. For example, my generation had quite a few great systems growing up, but none was ever more popular than the PlayStation 2, and few games were as beloved as its RPGs. It was, perhaps, the single greatest console for the genre, and many of its hits are still as acclaimed to this day, including numerous Final Fantasy games. For my generation, one of the defining RPGs of that era is none other than Kingdom Hearts. And right now, the whole lot can be bought for the price of a single new game.
Kingdom Hearts has, for over two decades now, successfully folded turn-based RPG gameplay into an ambitious series of action games about friendship, love, and the hardship of balancing the light and darkness in the world. Action unfolds in real-time, but Kingdom Hearts features a command menu that can be used to deploy spells, the use of items, special attacks, and orders for allies in combat. If you’ve played Final Fantasy VII Remake or Rebirth, you’re likely already familiar with the basic tenets of it.
Speaking of, the baffling Kingdom Hearts series are the unlikely (and occasionally uneven) combination of Disney properties and the sensibilities and characters of Final Fantasy. No, you did not hallucinate Sora, Donald Duck, and Goofy battling Sephiroth. That is, in fact, very real, and part of the first Kingdom Hearts game. You know what else is real? Mickey Mouse being the king of this universe, but also lowkey one of its most prolific warriors. These games are Space Jam for theater kids and Disney adults and they’re on a pretty decent sale right now.
On Steam, the entire franchise is on sale as the Kingdom Hearts Integrum Masterpiece for $US69, though it usually goes for $US100. This collection features just about every Kingdom Hearts title, since they’re all mostly canonical and tie in to the confusing overarching story in some fashion. Most of the entries are the full, original games, where possible. Some of the other titles, though, couldn’t be ported without meaningful resources put towards altering the gameplay to fit systems other than where the game first launched. For instance, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, which was released on the DS and made use of the dual screens for gameplay. In the case of games like this, this collection instead has compilations of the cutscenes in high-definition.
As far as full games, bagging this collection will get you Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, Re:Chain of Memories, II Final Mix, Birth By Sleep Final Mix, Dream Drop Distance HD, 0.2 Birth By Sleep – A fragmentary passage, III, and III ReMind. You’ll also get the HD cutscenes of 358/2 Days and Re:coded, as well as the movie χ Back Cover. Now, in case that made no sense, and I’m sure it didn’t, I will do my best to explain what I just said.
The three main games are in there, and the first two are specifically the Final Mix versions, which just means they are the re-releases that featured expanded content. Remember, DLC didn’t really exists in the early 2000s. The first game is not really all that fun (it’s too stiff in my opinion), but the second is like a completely different and much better game. Meanwhile, ReMind is just the third game’s lone piece of DLC, so if you’re interested in where the series will go outside of the story arc that concluded with III, it’s probably worth having.
Re:Chain of Memories and Re:coded are (as the titles might give away) remakes of existing games which were ported to consoles. The former is a Gameboy Advance title that adopted a card-based battle system, and the latter was a mobile game that was eventually brought to the DS and then everything else. Meanwhile, Birth By Sleep is a PSP prequel that is probably one of the most celebrated titles in the series, and 0.2 Birth By Sleep – A fragmentary passage is a playable prologue for III that picks back up with the fan-favorite character Aqua. I’m giving you all the broad strokes because anything else might literally cause an aneurysm.
Dream Drop Distance HD is also a port of a 3DS game, but at the time the handheld was being touted as being able to house console-level experiences, hence why this game was able to make the jump to other systems completely intact. And yes, Dream Drop Distance can be shortened to 3D, a point that the series’ creator Tetsuya Nomura and Square Enix were very proud to tout. Everything is canon, everything is convoluted, and I kind of respect it.
I cannot tell you a damn thing about χ Back Cover, as that simply goes beyond my limited understanding of the series. In my defense, I was very hammered the last time anyone tried to explain the Kingdom Hearts games to me, and while that was fun, it probably doesn’t help. What I do know though is that χ Back Cover is a film tied to yet another mobile game that presumably does a good job of filling players in on what that side of the story was all about, without forcing anyone to play the game.
Despite my jests, Kingdom Hearts is a hugely important series to a generation of folks. It’s tremendously obtuse, but it is also so sincere. It taught a generation of kids the power of friendship. It let Woody from Toy Story roast the shit out of its central villain and weaponize the power of love. The main weapon of the game is a literal giant key. And for the price of a single game, you get about two decades worth of the most heartfelt nonsense wrapped in one of the action-RPG genres’ best combat systems. Need I say anything else?
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