Summary

• Kingdom Hearts mobile games complicate the series, requiring multiple platforms and convoluted plotlines to follow.
• Certain titles like Coded are skippable due to their obscure origins and lack of significant impact on canon.
• Missing Link promises to be the most faithful mobile Kingdom Hearts experience, with improved combat and visuals.

For those who have been keeping up with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the Kingdom Hearts series since its 2002 debut, it's been an arduous task. To begin with, a PlayStation 2 was adequate to follow Sora's adventures – but very quickly, a GBA, a DS, a PSP, a 3DS, and more became necessary. You required more Munny than is in Scrooge McDuck's coffers.

Nowadays, most of the games are compiled into convenient HD collections, negating the need to take out a second mortgage; but the outliers remain the Kingdom Hearts mobile titles. Some are more plot relevant than others (and indeed one has been replaced in canon), but you're not going to be able to dodge all of 'em! So: which is best?

A fair warning: we'll be getting into plot spoilers, and given that a couple of these deceptively innocuous phone games have ramifications for the entire KH universe, that shouldn't be taken lightly. Tread your oversized shoes with caution.

4 ❀ Kin♋gdom Hearts: Coded

Mickey, They Put Bugs In Him!

Ask any Kingdom Hearts fan to nominate a game that newcomers can safely skip, and if the odds are good they'll point a gloved finger in the direction of Coded. This one is difficult to discuss in much detail, as it started life as a hyper-obscure episodic RPG exclusive to Japanese territories, and hasn't been available on any storefronts since the 2010s. What's more, we're not talking smartphones here – OG Coded was a flip phone game. Yeah, good luck playing it now.

T⛄he iteration that contemporary players are likely to be more familiar with is Kingdom Hearts: Recoded, a full re-imagining of the DS.

This souped-up version received a global rollout, and effectively supersedes Coded in canon, making it a shoo-in for our list's bottom spot: it's so irrelevant, it's been memory-holed by its own remake.

In terms of gameplay, Coded and Recoded see a digitized avatar of Sora navigating a virus-ridden realm in an attempt to decipher what's happened to Jiminy Cricket's journal, which has inexplicably turned blank. Platforming comes in the form of giant neon blocks, and the Disney worlds utilized are the usual suspects (Hercules, Alice, Pooh, Peter Pan) that early Kingdom Hearts was so obsessed with. Been there, done that.

Recoded at least makes the combat resemble its console brethren a bit more closely – but there's very little reason to pick it up, or hunt down the flip phone original since all its significant cutscenes were included in the Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix collection.

3 ꧑ Kingdom Hearts: Un🉐ion χ

That's Pronounced 'Chi', In Case You Were Wondering

As is Kingdom Hearts tradition, nothing about Union χ's journey to the West was simple, either; initially, this was a browser MMORPG in the 2010s, but it attracted minimal attention and was hastily repackaged as a phone game for its international debut. Union χ floundered along for a while, until finally, in 2021, its servers shuttered and its app was converted into an offline cutscene theatre.

Not a particularly auspicious legacy for Union χ, by all accounts – but at least its narrative has some major meat on its bones. We are at last shown the 'age of fairytales', an ancient era spoken of only in Kairi's bedtime stories, and we get to see the germination of the all-important Keyblade War. There's the enigmatic Master of Masters (who'll be a major antagonist in Kingdom Hearts 4, so start cramming) and his disciples, the Foretellers, who have gone on to become minor fan faves.

Other faces of interest are Master Ephemer, the founder of Xehanort's Keyblade academy Scala ad Caelum; his chums Brain, Skuld, and Strelitzia; and even the human forms of Organization XIII's Marluxia and Larxene. It transpires that they lived in the past before being beamed to Sora's time, which is a nice bit of fanservice.

Beyond the engrossing story, the gameplay's exactly what you'd expect from a free-to-play mobile outing. Starting the levels costs an expendable resource (unless you watch ads) and combat is grindy, throwing insurmountable walls up to encourage spending cash. It's a blessing that the entire story can now just be blitzed through in slideshow format – our condolences to those who had already sunk their college fund into seeing what became of the Dandelions!

2 Kingdom 💙Hearts: Dark Road

Did You Ever Hear The Tragedy Of Master Xehanort The Wise?

Rather than making Dark Road a standalone adventure, Square-Enix opted to capitalize on the existing install base of Union χ and place the new game's launcher inside the menu of the first. It's a curious arrangement, and for a while, it led to the app's name becoming a complete mouthful: Kingdom Hearts Union χ Dark Road. When you boot it up these days, you're met with an unsubtle splash screen asking you which game you'd like to hop into, making the process smoother.

Dark Road is intriguing for Kingdom Hearts fare in that it explores the backstory of our resident villain, Xehanort. Whether portrayed by Leonard Nimoy, Christopher Lloyd, or a rotation of other bankable stars, he's always been presented as a trigger-happy warmonger – and yet, there were signs of depth, of an emotional motivation behind his universe-resetting ambitions. Dark Road indulges this untapped potential, taking us back to his school days, and the tragic events that shaped his worldview.

As teens, Xehanort and his rival-to-be Eraqus were firm friends, and other schoolmates like Bragi and Vor bring up the rear of the cast, revealing a human side to the diabolical Master we'd not really seen before.

Inevitably, disaster strikes when one of the thirteen original Darknesses from Union χ resurfac𓆏es; and even the Master of Masters himself pops in for a cameo or two.

In terms of actual gameplay, like its brother Union χ, Dark Road is nothing to write home about. It's one of the 'set it and forget it' variety of phone games, designed for you to leave your phone idle for hours at a time while Xehanort and company mow down Heartless (and Square-Enix farm engagement stats for advertisers). Still, the fleshing out of the KH-verse's biggest baddie makes this a more than worthwhile time sink.

1 ﷽ Kingdom Hearts: Missing Link 𝐆

The Release Date's Still Missing As Well

Alright, so we're cheating by including Missing Link, because despite it being almost three years since its announcement (at the time of writing) it has still yet to materialize. Pssh – that's nothing in Nomura time, considering how long we all waited for Kingdom Hearts 3. However, everything we've seen of Missing Link to date, including an open beta test or two, makes it plain it'll be the most faithful Kingdom Hearts experience on mobile yet.

For starters, the combat is finally the tried-and-true hacking and slashing, over which you have full directional control. None of the card shuffling of Dark Road is to be seen here, and the limiting 2D art style of the Union χ engine has similarly gone the way of the dodo. The budget's skyrocketed compared to past efforts, and judging from all available gameplay, it's visually close enough to a console Kingdom Hearts release to fool the casual observer.

The story, too, promises intrigue. You fill the shoes of a Keyblade wielder in Scala ad Caelum, between the events of Union χ and Dark Road – so that's post-Ephemer, but pre-Xehanort, if you're keeping track. Established characters like Brain, complete with a snazzy hat, have already popped up in trailers, so expect copious amounts of fan-baiting.

We're assured by Square that Missing Link (as its title would suggest) is to be the 'link' between the Dark Seeker Saga and the forthcoming Lost Masters arc, so one would hope all its time in the oven is just to make it the best transitional piece it can be. No matter how it turns out, its competition is so bad that it's practically guaranteed to be the best KH mobile offering of all time.