168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Kingdom Hearts is coming to PC. Well, it’s been on the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Epic Games Store for years, but everybody knows you have to be a special kind of loser to buy your games from that thing. I’m talking about Steam, which will soon be home to every single Kingdom Hearts💫 game bar Melody of Memory and a handful of mobile titles. Players are already looking forward to another playthrough, mods galore, or even seeing this bizarre yet delightful crossover through for the first time. But with so many games, wh♔ere is the best place to start?

A normal person would say the first game, but I am no normal person. Instead, I encourage you to tackle Kingdom Hearts in a way that makes no sense whatsoever. I mean, that is exactly the sort of thing Tetsuya Nomura does when directing these games an♚yway, so I don’t see much harm in it. Besides, the first game has aged the worst, takes forever to get going, and you’re going to end up lost and confused anyway.

Kingdom Hearts Is All About Embracing The Confusion

I’m in my twenties and grew up with Kingdom Hearts, but I didn’t live in a house that could afford every single piece of console hardware under the sun - that includes the Game Boy Advance. I got an SP with Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, and Sonic Advance as a birthday present one year, but Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories remained out of reach. I🔯t wasn’t until the spin-off was remade for PS2 and ported several years later that I was able to play it.

Unfortunately, because Tetsuya Nomura is a twisted fool who loves to make our lives more difficult, he decided to make the events in Chain of Memories positively integral to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Kingdom Hearts 2. Even if you finished the first game, it feels positively a🌌lien in terms of narrative if you didn’t play Chain of Memories. This was during a time when the internet, as we know it, was still in its infancy and fictional universes that spanned multiple pieces of media weren’t a thing, so I couldn’t just jump on Wikipedia t🗹o catch up - I didn’t even know what that was back in 2006.

But despite being thrust into Traverse Town and seeing references to events I’d never seen in the first place during the gorgeous opening cutscene, I still fell in love wꦅith the sequel. I’d no idea it was referencing Chain of Memories till after the fact, and thought I was being taken on a bold new adventure that wasn’t afraid of throwing me into the deep end, referencing characters that I hadn’t even met yet destined to play a bigger role in mom🌠ents to come. Turns out I had met a bunch of them, and even defeated them in battle before Sora was asked to take a nap.

Fate Had Other Plans For My Kingdom Hearts Experience

Sora smiling while holding keyblade in Kingdom Hearts.

There was a surreal beauty to Kingdom Hearts 2 subverting my expectatio👍ns of this series as it indulged further in its own fiction, relying less and less on Disney worlds but still sinking into the nostalgia we have for the company’s myriad animated films. Organisation 13 and Nobodies became♔ immediate staples that have endured for decades, while Roxas, Axel, Xion, and so many other members of the ensemble cast were first introduced here and stuck around for good. Yes, it was confusing, but everything about Kingdom Hearts is, so don’t worry about getting lost amidst the noise.

And I’ll be honest, I did the exact same thing with Kingdom Hearts 3. I didn’t grow up with a lot of money, and never owned a PSP, which swiftly ruled out playing Birth By Sleep. While Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance was gifted to me on my birthday, that was the very same day my Nintendo 3DS was stolen on a train journey.

Maybe it ♕was fate, maybe I’m just unlucky, but I mis♐sed out on all the non-main entries because of things out of my control. Yet none of this stopped my hype for Kingdom Hearts 3. I was still enthralled by this universe, snug in a nostalgic blanket of my own making that had me caring intimately about these characters despite having no understanding of the broader mythology. But that didn’t matter when it had such heart.

kingdom hearts 3 image showing kairi

These memories have come flooding back since the Steam versions were announced, as I know that millions of new and existing players will be diving into these games or curious as to where they should start, because there is a lot to get through. I don&r✨squo;t think there is such a thing as a perfect order, but to be brutally honest, you can skip over Dream Drop Distance, 358/2 Days, and Recoded if you really want.

The collection condenses the latter two into cutscene compilations anyway. When it comes to Dream Drop Dist🎃ance and Birth By Sleep, neither game plays well or looks especially good, and you will primarily be playing for the characters, narrative, and adorable crossovers. If the loss of context doesn’t bother youꦐ, don’t fret about seeing them through to the end in a certain order.

Jade, Come On Now, Which Kingdom Hearts Should I Play First?

Sora waking up on the sofa in the Kingdom Hearts 4 trailer

Listen,♚ I know not everyone is as unhinged as I am, and you would rather have a traditional entry point than pick a game at random and roll with it. Despite having been ported to nearly every single modern platform under the sun, as🌃ide from visuals, each Kingdom Hearts game is as it was upon its original release - warts and all.

The original is stilted and awkward in lots of ways and lacks the dynamic combat and more ambitious world building of everything that came after, while Kingdom Hearts 2 requires plenty of additional knowledge that you’d have to play both the first game and Chain of Memories to understand. I don’t even want to think about how many hours you’d need 𒊎to sink into this series to understand Kingdom Hearts 3 if you decided to start there.

There is no perfect answer, anꦐd no right choice, so go with yo🗹ur heart and embrace everything that makes Kingdom Hearts beautiful and frustrating.

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