Remembering The Kingdom Hearts Video Games 

I wouldn’t really say it has the best world’s, sure the original worlds are really good but the Disney worlds are just really flat and boring

I love kh 2 and it's definitely a 10/10 but nothing can recreate what I felt while playing kh 1. I think that game had the most depth in terms of worlds, where as kh 2 was boring with worlds and I was just ready to get to the organization stuff

You mean KH2 final mix, that makes all the difference lol

@@UltimatePower01 the storyline for kh 2 was freakin epic and the best

KH3 easily has the best Disney worlds but KH2 especially the final mix version is clearly the best game.

Same bro Kh2 is just perfect

It's true, it's the best game

yeah, 2 and 1 are awesome, bbs is really good and the rest is just there

Have fun 😎 im replaying 2 right now

Your in for one hell of a ride dood Have fun!!

Good luck! Reminder, NO GAME IS OPTIONAL! The order is 1, COM, 2, 358, bbs, coded, Back cover, ddd, 0.2, 3, Re:mind, and finally MoM

@@castle3267 I agree but I didn't play MOM 🤷🤷🤷

@@stephenthedude4383 did you watch the cutscenes? Because the game’s story is pretty important and you’ll be lost without it

I used to agree with you but KH 3 changed my mind. I thought I know enough and played all the games to understand things. Turns out. I was wrong and was missing key characters and story beats. There was several times I was left going who's that? What just happened? I was able to read online to find the missing gaps but the damage was done. KH 3 was disappointing and made me realize I don't enjoy the series any more...

@@lukeluke333lukeluke Well I'm sorry for your loss bud lmaooo

my least favorite was the "people come back when nobodies and heartless are defeated", really bringing down the stakes, i was also feeling fatigued of the organization, after being in so many games they felt like they were one good idea beaten into the ground.

@@lukeluke333lukeluke i'm sad to hear that, i don't have much optimism for the story but am still willing to accompany Sora and the boys through their next adventure, and i've always prioritized gameplay over it which has always been at least decent

It didn't get too confusing until dream drop distance imo. Maybe it made sense if I played through the game but I quit after 15 hours. I was just frustrated with it and skipped and watch the game cut scenes.

Yea but that long ago.. ppl simply thought it was KH3

If KH3 was released in PS2 i assure you It would have been a good game as KH2 was but instead we got a terrible game with a boring game mechanics that focus in Mash buttons nothing else i remember when i fight the last boss i was stare at HP bars all time and my LV was 35 Lol

@@blusora if we got KH3 on PS2 it would’ve failed & The community would’ve complained because the PS3 came out a year after KH2.

@@-Anonymous-. you're wrong it wouldn't failed because the same developers who working in KH2 will work in KH3

@@blusora the Osaka team’s main effort recognized today was the combat for KH2.The combat is not even the issue with KH3. It’s the story, dialogue/line delivery, it’s pacing, & Disney world restriction. Among that all the issues with KH3 are because of the engine switch & starting from scratch…. All which you know NOTHING about. Otherwise you wouldn’t claim something so desperate. Lol KH3 being on PS2, probably the most embarrassing & worst take of all time.

DDD gets props just for how much they expanded traverse town.

The story is straightforward, if you play all the games together in release order. If you're trying to piece secondhand information together because you didn't know you missed a game or three, you're boned. (What do you mean, "there's no such thing as a Kingdom Hearts spinoff game?") The collection re-releases have done wonders for improving the understanding of the story.

@@Acorn_Anomaly I prefer to play them in story-order. More enjoyable for me that way. And even *more* straightforward.

Blind fanboi opinion

@@annedrieck7316 That's your opinion and you are more than welcome to it. 🤷🏾‍♂️

I love 3 and 2

It's definitely a really intimidating series to approach, especially if you're interested in the lore alongside the gameplay. Definitely try the first 3 games, and if you like them then give the non-numbered titles and KH3 a spin!

Yea, CoM gets beaten up by people but it had good bosses and story.

I mean Tbf, KH3 was never supposed to be the “grand finale” in the first place. Just the finale to the first arc, the Dark Seeker Saga.

@@BobbyTheGamerOfJUSTICE but also it took 20 years to finish one arc. That's very unsustainable. Its why after BBS people began to feel like he was making it up as he went along even though the story kept trying to be clever with convoluted reveals. Tetsuya Nomura was 31 when he began Kingdom Hearts. He is now 51. if he takes another 20 years to finish an arc he will be 71 LMAO. Anyway I love KH. I thought KH3 was meant to be a grand finale, but either way excited for the future of KH.

@@zoestace7186 Some stories just take a long time to develop. I mean, just look at the MCU or the Trails series

@@BobbyTheGamerOfJUSTICE alright, it didn’t not conclude the Xehanort saga on the lvl that a lot of people thought it would. People have opinions stop making excuses. Still a great game, & the combat with Remind is satisfying.

@@-Anonymous-. It’s not an opinion when they literally confirmed it wouldn’t end the story lol.

I KNEW SOMEONE WAS GONNA CORRECT ME!

The ps2 version of Chain of Memories is actually a remake, the GBA version is the original

@@tigerfestivals5137 I'm aware, I worded it wrong. I meant that KH1 on PS2 was the original version of the story being told in CoM, since the story in the worlds of CoM are all re-tells of what happened in KH1, if that makes any sense? As in "Kingdom Hearts 1 is the original Kingdom Hearts game". It's a muffled way of looking at it, but that's what I was going for.

I can't speak for everyone's experience, but I can at least give my own. For me, I played Re:Chain of Memories and the combat to me always came across as very broken. To start, the game introduces basically everything you need to know in World 1 which is pretty solid. It helps you understand how to play the game and progress in the combat. In theory, it should be preparing you to experiment and master the controls in later worlds. However, the combat for regular enemies doesn't fully prepare you for bosses and vise versa. For regular enemies, just overusing strong cards will suffice while bosses are really designed strictly for you to avoid attacks by breaking cards. The game is very punishing for having your cards broken/letting enemies attack. Axel 2 is a great example of this as the entire boss fight can kill you with just 2-3 of Axel's sleights if you let him (it's happened to me more than one occasion). Thus, the game is teaching you the only solution is to build decks that can't be broken by your opponent and to constantly break theirs. As a result, your objective now shifts to building decks with powerful sleights that will do massive damage and kill bosses with ease. This limits your options as you're now focused less on experimenting and figuring out what options are most optimal for your play style. It isn't really teaching you to experiment and have fun with the system. It's teaching you to break it to make your life easier. Compounding this issue is the fact that Re:Chain of Memories system is based on math which most people dislike. I don't know a huge number of people who like math in games. As a result, people are going to want to focus on building decks that they can use long term to save time crunching all the annoying numbers to make the combo they want. I'm good at math myself, but even I get bored crunching numbers to figure out the precise details for a specific combo to just try it out. What ends up happening then is that players are being trained unintentionally to zero on a permanent deck that will kill most bosses and has simple math. In this case, 20-23 is an easy range to obtain because most people know how to add up to 20 or 21 (7 times 3 is 21). While the 2nd condition requires different types of key blades, players are earning new types all the time which makes this condition more accessible and easy to achieve. These two conditions are why Sonic blade becomes a welcoming choice for most players. Similarly, mega flare is instantly popular for grinding since it literally kills everything and just requires two random fires + mushu. In this regard, specific sleights are simply too powerful NOT to use and break the game's difficulty. The argument to not using a strategy like this is counterproductive since it forces the player to try and learn the controls to not break the game instead of instantly solving their problems with Sonic Blade. Re:Com also reduced the levels required for it making it even more busted than before. So realistically, you are essentially either going to use it or handicap yourself without much benefit in-game (even if internally, it helps make the combat a little more challenging). For me though, I think what killed it is that I really don't learn the controls. As I'm playing, I'm shutting my brain off during combat and not thinking about doing 20 different cool things to kill enemies. Instead, I'm thinking how to combine attacks to prevent breaks and kill them as fast as possible. I eventually get bored of fighting and just want to continue with the plot. This especially happens on Riku's side where I get burnout due to the fact that 75% of his side is just fighting all the time. Since I never learned how to not break the combat on Sora's side, I'm even less prepared for Riku's side which expects you to. In particular, I'm super bad about using enemy cards. They're so optional on Sora's side I forget that I can press a button and use them. Additionally, I have no motivation to do so as enemies typically die in a few hits from my key blade swings or sonic blade anyway (defeating the purpose of using one). On Riku's side though, you really do need them and I just don't use them. As a result, I'm forced to use the Card battle system by winning Duals against enemies. Since the system is just pairing cards equal or greater to the card of an enemy after using a card of equal value, it's incredibly easy and mind numbing to just rapidly press X to trigger and kill the boss. I don't even feel like doing Dark Mode. If I get hit at any point, the enemy can just combo me to death. This is also a problem on Sora's side, but I feel especially vulnerable on Riku's side so I'm obsessed with avoiding any chance of attacks at all. And since you're EXPECTED to break cards, not dodge, it becomes a rather poor motivation to use dark mode over safety. It also doesn't help that Riku has only one way to heal and it's based on RNG whereas Sora just has instant cure. I get why they added the card limits to add extra challenge, but the process just frustrates with me. Another issue from what I heard is that Re: Chain also suffers from 3D spaces. The game was originally designed for 2D battles which is why it works better on the GBA for combat. Since you have a 3rd dimension and can more easily miss, it further pushes the player into doing actions that reduce failures when fighting enemies. As a result, it continues to teach players to stick with what you know and not innovate which is counterintuitive to the combat they WANTED us to play. I don't know how true this is, but it's something I've read about before. I don't know if that's everyone's experience, but those are at least my main thoughts. I hope that was helpful to you, and if not, you can let me know what I can clarify from my experience.

Lock hard carries this channel. Couldn't do ANY of this without him

Hans had a really cool heartless tho

@@landonalves1774 Indeed!

Same. I hope KH4 doesn’t take forever to come out and doesn’t get delayed over and over again for 10 years like 3 did.

Yeah KH3 is probably the badest shit.

KH3 is so underrated compared to 2.

@@bigcade554 AGREED! Like, I get it, 2 is a good game, I've played it myself, I got 100% completion, I beat it on crit level 1 but KH3 imo is as good if not better than 2.

I'm glad I'm not the only person who considers 3 their favorite.

Even to this day i still don't understand why KH3 is so hated. I really dont.

I didn't mind the idea of an aerial fight but the mechanic was really half baked and just didn't feel as good as the regular combat system

PSP will definitely get some more love from me soon. I'm playing through all the FF games and there are MANY that I missed there ;)

Blasphemy

Remember the secret ending? Now remember kh3. It's so bad they are just looking around and nothing is happening in 3s ending. While we got this mind blowing secret ending from KH1 and KH2. Osaka, square and nomura are all hacks.

KH2 is everyone’s favorite

@@jeremybrandt5779 for good reason lol

I love the cloud feature! It proofs how shitty the Nintendo Switch is

@@jeremybrandt5779 Me; "I'm guess I'm not part of 'everyone' then :'("

@@lukasruston8618 Me neither.

3 isn’t the best, but it isn’t bad either. But 2FM is the best

The story is unfinished even after beating the dlc 😒

Dude? They'll be saying the same thing about games they had in the future

They're really not spinoff if they're vital to the lore. That criticism is now outdated since the collection is out for all game systems.

@@Redxan600 They're non-numbered handheld titles built around gimmicks; most of their gameolay content is rehashed from the numbered console titles; and they don't serve to move the narrative _forward,_ only convolute the existing narrative of KH 1+2. By any metric they _are_ spinoffs; the fact that they're vital to understanding the story is a major failing IMO. That may not be as bug of a problem _now,_ since we have the collections, but for the longest time if you wanted to fully experience KH's story, you needed to own five different consoles. And on top of that, their worlds are lifeless, their plots are mediocre and padded to hell, and the fact that they're necessary is a testament to the series' terrible writing. Frankly, I wish the series had ended with 3. I can't muster one iota of interest in KH4; all the magic of 1 and 2 are _looong_ dead. At thus point KH is a just a bloated monument to why Nomura was the worst thing to ever happen to Square. Pretty much everything wrong with modern Final Fantasy is a byproduct of his influence on the company. I think it's telling that two series have begun to look so similar.

@@RunePonyRamblings RU-vid, I'm tired of you hiding and deleting my replies. Stop that already! "They're non-numbered handheld titles built around gimmicks; most of their gameolay content is rehashed from the numbered console titles; and they don't serve to move the narrative forward, only convolute the existing narrative of KH 1+2." Wow, really? You're just going to straight up say that? First off, each of the non-numbered games plays uniquely and different. Sure Re:Coded and DDD has the BBS mechanic, but with Re:Coded, the gameplay has variety and DDD has Flowmotion and Dream Eaters to make the gameplay feel so much different from BBS. Second, they do serve the narrative. All of the other titles were building up to the finale of the Xehanort saga. "By any metric they are spinoffs; the fact that they're vital to understanding the story is a major failing IMO." If you can follow the MCU stories, or the Star Wars films, or any of the Harry Potter books, then there should be no problem for you to follow the KH lore. "if you wanted to fully experience KH's story, you needed to own five different consoles." While I'm not disagreeing with this statement, that is not longer a problem now since the collection is out for all game system. "And on top of that, their worlds are lifeless, their plots are mediocre and padded to hell, and the fact that they're necessary is a testament to the series' terrible writing." Dude, what game are you playing? Because this doesn't sound like Kingdom Hearts. I mean the worlds, plots, and padding are true with kh2, but what you're describing is not at all like KH. "Frankly, I wish the series had ended with 3." You could just stop playing and not invest any more time into this franchise. No one is forcing you to stay. "At thus point KH is a just a bloated monument to why Nomura was the worst thing to ever happen to Square. Pretty much everything wrong with modern Final Fantasy is a byproduct of his influence on the company. I think it's telling that two series have begun to look so similar." Suuuuure. Blame Nomura for everything. But guess what? If it wasn't for Nomura, Kingdom Hearts probably wouldn't be as popular now. He doesn't have anything to do with the recent FF games other than just the art. You're just letting his wins stay rent free in your head. At this point, you can double down and spout some more information and show off how petty you look, or just walk away from this. Your choice.

@UCoSokzbIpUUKOWnI1UwMvPA *"Second, they do serve the narrative. All of the other titles were building up to the finale of the Xehanort saga"* Yes, because informing the present-day cast that Terra, Aqua, and Ventus need help totally required an entire game of rehashed KH1 levels to do and couldn't have simply been established in a cutscene. Ditto for Xion, who is totally a character that needed to exist, who isn't made redundant by Roxas and Namine already existing, and totally needed an entire game to explain her existence. Did we need an entire game for the sole purpose of explaining Xehanort's plan to re-create the X-blade? The plan we already knew about from BBS? And which hasn't changed by KH3? Literally 3 of the 5 spinoffs have no justifiable reason to exist. And even then I'd say CoM is seriously pushing it. *"If you can follow the MCU stories, or the Star Wars films, or any of the Harry Potter books, then there should be no problem for you to follow the KH lore."* Star Wars is hardly an apt comparison at all. _None_ of the Star Wars EU is required to understand the films, not even the cartoons. They can _enhance_ your understanding or appreciation of the universe, but you're not going to be left unable to understand Episode V because you didn't watch the Holiday Special or read Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Harry Potter is an even _worse_ comparison. It's a straightforward series; you start at book one and each subsequent book moves the narrative forward. When you read Prisoner of Azkeban you won't be left wondering who Sirius Black is because you didn't read the secret epilogue to Chamber of Secrets that was only published in a UK-exclusive magazine. You don't need to read a spinoff book to know who the other teams in the Tri-Wizard Tournament are. And you certainly don't need to play a Beedle the Bard DS game to understand WTF the Deathly Hallows are. As for the MCU... frankly that whole format is cancer. Whatever happened to just telling a story? Even complex stories can be told succinctly; anyone who _needs_ an entire book/movie/game to set up a character or plot point is a bad writer, plain and simple. Remember what I said earlier about Star Wars? Well, compare that to the new Disney era; wanna know who the hell the First Order are, where they came from, or how they managed to rise and gain control of the galaxy without the New Republic lifting a finger to stop them? Gotta read some books! Pick up the visual dictionary for Ep. IX if you want to know where Palpatine's giant sith army came from. Hey, doesn't Mustafar look a little... different than it did in Ep. III? Play the Darth Vader VR game to find out why! Did you like the Mandalorian? Well you'll need to watch the Book of Boba Fett if you want to be up to speed come Season 3. You'll also need to watch Clone Wars and Rebels to know what the deal with Ahsoka, Thrawn, and Bo Katan is. And of course you'll need to watch the Ahsoka series, and the Ranger of the New Republic, if you want to be prepared for the inevitable Thrawn crossover. Who knows? Maybe the Obi-Wan interquel nobody asked for will have some scene with Ezra that will also be required viewing. The Compilation made FF7's story _worse,_ not better; ditto for this new multi-game remake they're doing. Do I even need to mention Fabula Nova Crystalis? Did we really need two sequels to FFXIII? Why do I have to watch a movie, an anime, play two mobile games, and buy multiple DLC chapters just to get the full story for FFXV? And why, despite all this extra development for their worlds and characters, are they still LESS compelling than the old self-contained titles? It's nothing more than bad writing, corporate greed, and franchise milking. I guarantee you that a competent writer could've told KH's story in 4 games, tops. *"Dude, what game are you playing? Because this doesn't sound like Kingdom Hearts. I mean the worlds, plots, and padding are true with kh2, but what you're describing is not at all like KH."* Why are we even playing through Disney worlds in any of the spinoffs? It's largely irrelevent to the plot, and the worlds themselves have no unique NPCs, enemies, or mechanics. No unique character forms. No novel method of traversing them. No personal connection with the main character. They could literally be replaced by original levels, or procedurally-generated greybox dungeons, and from a narrative and gameplay standpoint almost _nothing_ would change. KH2 did lay the groundwork with it's more straightforward level design, but it still had all of those key features I mentioned. *"You could just stop playing and not invest any more time into this franchise. No one is forcing you to stay."* I know that, and you know that. You also know that that's a non-argument. My opinion is no less valid just because I've grown sick of it. I put up with a _fuckton_ of BS from this series because I loved KH1&2. I have every right to be upset that after blueballing us for 14 years they have the gall to do it all over again. *"Suuuuure. Blame Nomura for everything. But guess what? If it wasn't for Nomura, Kingdom Hearts probably wouldn't be as popular now. He doesn't have anything to do with the recent FF games other than just the art. You're just letting his wins stay rent free in your head."* I love KH 1 & 2, but frankly at this point I would rather the series have never existed, if only to avoid it's own degeneration and the deleterious effect it's had on SE as a whole. You do know Nomura was the director of FFXV, right? He was also one of the minds behind Fabula Nova Crystalis in general. He might not be singularly responsible for all the problems with SE, but he's certainly emblematic of them. Especially given that modern FF is largely experiencing the _exact same issues_ as KH, seemingly born of the same mindset and directorial approach. Yes, the KH series is very successful; it's also a laughing stock. You could call that a "win" in the same way that Disney's live-action remakes are "wins", and I suppose if you're a bean-counter it doesn't really matter, but if you're someone who wants good games/movies/whatever, it hurts. You can call that "staying rent free", I call it "giving a damn about the things I love".

@@RunePonyRamblings Literally every side game adds something to the plot what. That’s like watching the MCU movies and saying only the Avengers films are important.

and Joker the leader of the phantom thieves who steals hearts

Pretty effects with fanatsy go well with old Disney. Have you watched fantasia? It's called creativity back in the day. We don't have that anymore which is why KH3 happened. Which is why devs do not build their own engines. You make it sound like it's FF meets the Simpsons.