Kingdom Hearts Games Ranked Solely on Story
Inspired by Midrulean's list and a conversation on discord, which means YES this IS a callout post, you know who you are, how dare you do Days so dirty like that.
i will make a proper list ranking the holistic virtues of these games at some point but the prospect of that gives me anxiety for many reasons so I'm taking the cowards way out and taking gameplay out of the equation here, except in how it relates to the narrative. how fun the combat is does not matter unless the game's story is about having fun!! very rough and raw thoughts and feelings here so please don't take any of these as coherent statements on the quality of these games.
i will make a proper list ranking the holistic virtues of these games at some point but the prospect of that gives me anxiety for many reasons so I'm taking the cowards way out and taking gameplay out of the equation here, except in how it relates to the narrative. how fun the combat is does not matter unless the game's story is about having fun!! very rough and raw thoughts and feelings here so please don't take any of these as coherent statements on the quality of these games.
13 Games
feels weird putting this on a list with all these others because it's not really doing remotely the same thing as any of these other games. if the rest of the KH series is a shonen manga like One Piece, KH1 is more like an off-kilter melancholy children's novel/film like Neverending Story or Coraline, something that effortlessly captures the childlike imagination and expresses the thousand tiny anxieties and sadnesses of being forced to grow up. a game that says a thousand things with a handful of words, a game that paints an immense picture with a few brushstrokes, a game that just reaches my heart like nothing else manages. also the disney worlds actually matter to the story which no game in the series ever managed to the same extent again. i'm not really surprised that a lot of people who got into the series don't really get on with this one: both because it is categorically not an action game in the way it's sequels are and because it just doesn't hit the same feelings in the same ways. i love it all the more for that, though. i think a lot of people have a pet game that captures how they feel about growing up - be it ocarina of time, earthbound, pokemon, but this is the one for me. total adoration.
1
there's a solid argument to be made that this is the best kingdom hearts ever got. a beautifully resonant gameplay loop of routines and quotas building towards something you don't really understand or care about but...you guess it's important? everyone else seems to care. genuinely one of the most impactful games I've ever played, as each session played on the bus on the way to school further underlined that I was not alone, that other people felt this bad about school and work and the way these things are simply inflicted on us without a care for how we feel about it.
xion is also easily the best written woman in all of KH, which is not really surprising when you read that this game was predominately written by two women. turns out diverse voices make better games, who knew!! speaking of diversity, i do not for a minute think that the writers knew that they were writing a trans story with Xion but that is 100% what they ended up doing and it is deeply powerful in ways that run circles around a lot of explicit attempts like Tell Me Why.
imo this is an essential experience with one of the strongest intersections of gameplay and narrative in any RPG, so of course most people only engage with it through a godawful compilation movie that strips out the entire gameplay loop that makes it so powerful in the first place. i have a lot of friction with contemporary KH fandom discourse, especially the current conversation shaped almost entirely by streamers who only really like 2FM+, but the consistent manner in which people just refuse to meaningfully engage with 358/2 Days is my biggest sticking point. i remember i watched a youtube video where someone described this game as playing like complete shit and that xion was a worthless character because what happens at the ends means she "doesn't affect the series story at all" and i have never been angrier
xion is also easily the best written woman in all of KH, which is not really surprising when you read that this game was predominately written by two women. turns out diverse voices make better games, who knew!! speaking of diversity, i do not for a minute think that the writers knew that they were writing a trans story with Xion but that is 100% what they ended up doing and it is deeply powerful in ways that run circles around a lot of explicit attempts like Tell Me Why.
imo this is an essential experience with one of the strongest intersections of gameplay and narrative in any RPG, so of course most people only engage with it through a godawful compilation movie that strips out the entire gameplay loop that makes it so powerful in the first place. i have a lot of friction with contemporary KH fandom discourse, especially the current conversation shaped almost entirely by streamers who only really like 2FM+, but the consistent manner in which people just refuse to meaningfully engage with 358/2 Days is my biggest sticking point. i remember i watched a youtube video where someone described this game as playing like complete shit and that xion was a worthless character because what happens at the ends means she "doesn't affect the series story at all" and i have never been angrier
2
god, i adore this game. even if you are unwilling to read into the game's gay subtext (though I mean, come on) this is a love story, in the sense that it is about someone coming to terms with, and maybe more importantly, becoming at ease, with their love for someone else. has some of the most arresting imagery and cinematography in the entire series, and gives riku the room to breathe in really beautiful ways. riku telling everyone why he loves sora before diving into save him makes me tear up every time I think about it. sora side isn't as good as this but i will always be on this game's side for finally having the characters reject the supposed happy ending presented at the end of KH2 as unjust. sora firmly declaring that roxas deserves a heart as much as anyone else is maybe the greatest act of growth and heroism he's been through since the first game. real maturity is when you outgrow what your parents tell you, not when you grow into those expectations.
3
for a certain flavor of fan this is as good as the series gets but i'm just not with you there. the most soap-opera-y of all the KH games and it is to it's benefit, the relationship drama between the trio rules and the precious moments where they get to interact with one another with their incomplete perspectives on what's happening really sing. terra's story bangs from beginning to end and i really love the back half of ventus' but aqua's leaves much to be desired as she ends up being saddled with the unenviable task of seeing the resolution to all these disney plotlines, so she just doesn't get as much to do as she really should i think. it's also a shame that the structure of the game means that you're going to get at least one twist or dramatic moment (eraqus' fate or ventus' identity) relayed to you by a third party instead of you experiencing that dramatically.
is thunderously unsubtle about it's themes but that's maybe why a lot of the people who turn their noses up at the plots of these games like this one. which is very mean to say lol i like it a huge amount I just think it's a good few steps away from true greatness.
is thunderously unsubtle about it's themes but that's maybe why a lot of the people who turn their noses up at the plots of these games like this one. which is very mean to say lol i like it a huge amount I just think it's a good few steps away from true greatness.
4
seriously let down by the presentation and pacing because the bones of a truly fantastic story are here. is MAYBE a bit better at Birth by Sleep at doing the whole "children arbitrarily forced to grow up and be inflicted with adult conflicts they have no stake in" thing than that game by virtue of the contrast between the Foretellers and MoM (lol) all being cartoon supervillains and the kids who are, to a one, Just Vibing. people get really hung up on the fact that it didn't really answer any of the overarching mysteries but imo the point was more that the mysteries were adult bullshit you didn't want to care about, you were just trying to live your life, they weren't JJ Abrams mystery boxes so much as metaphors for responsibilities you are told you have to start caring about when you really, really don't. smoking gun for this read is the fact that there didn't end up being a traitor at all and it was just something mom made up to get everyone at each other's throats. maybe the Kingdom Hearts game that hates adults the most lmao.
5
it's slight, sure, but just like roxas' chapter in KH2 this is arguably better than the actual main story of kh3. it is an actual crime we never got a full game of Aqua trudging through discarded dead disney worlds.
6
phenomenal central concept, execution leaves something to be desired. the conflict between sora and repliku s the stuff that I really dig here but the pacing is wack and the disney worlds are just padding. i like this one but I don't actually think I have much to say that others haven't already said.
7
man this one is so hard to square because I think the roxas chapter is legitimately possibly my favorite thing in video games and this is arguably the series' high point in terms of visuals and overall presentation AND it has some of the most simply exciting shonen moments that I think people really latch onto when they remember this game...but it's a fuckin mess. the nobody stuff works strictly as a metaphor for adolescent angst and teenage emotions but the game tries to wrangle more of a more identity politics read out of it and it is honestly rancid. i know a relatively popular fandom thought is that kh2 should have been the finale but honestly if the way the roxas/namine stuff was allowed to lie here the way in the ending of kh2 i wouldn't be able to handle it. the way the game treats the cessation of their existence as a happy ending for all just sits so badly with me I really hate it.
also KH3 gets so much stick for Maleficent and Pete doing absolutely nothing but I prefer that over the majority of this game being spent chasing Pete around when he doesn't matter at all. the organization are so underserved here, it's criminal how much Pete is allowed to steal the spotlight from them.
truly, deeply messy on all fronts. it is so sick when xemnas turns into a big dragon and you fly around to fight him
also KH3 gets so much stick for Maleficent and Pete doing absolutely nothing but I prefer that over the majority of this game being spent chasing Pete around when he doesn't matter at all. the organization are so underserved here, it's criminal how much Pete is allowed to steal the spotlight from them.
truly, deeply messy on all fronts. it is so sick when xemnas turns into a big dragon and you fly around to fight him
8
saving thoughts for a proper review. suffice to say, it's a frustrating one. i'll admit that I find the sheer level of vitriol levelled at this game kind of baffling given pretty much all the big fandom complaints about this are also present in KH2 to greater or lesser extents, but I can't deny that KH3 feels a little more hollow than that effort. there's stuff to love here, but it's a discordant mess in the macro scale, and the series' pervasive sexism blows up to become genuinely rancid in this instalment. re;mind has two of my favourite scenes in the entire series but it's locked behind an obscene paywall. i love master xehanort in this game, an old man outplayed and outclassed by everyone around him, rapidly being left behind by a world that has outgrown him, a man who has been so fixated on his quest that he barely even remembers who he is or why he's doing this anymore. xehanort twisting his hometown beyond recognizability is maybe my favorite climactic visual in the series. i just wish it leaned into this stuff more, and less into endless teasing and sequelbaiting. definitely one of the weaker stories in the series but i can't lie, I like how it ends so much better than KH2. anyway yeah i wanna save thoughts for a more fleshed out piece but to paraphrase an earthbound statement I resonate with, a lot of fans of this series are philosophically far closer to Xehanort than Sora than they'd ever like to admit
9
this is barely a story but i do think it's very funny that for a while my only exposure to X was this so i found myself confused and disliking it greatly because this is just kind of a bad overlong cutscene, but also because it gives the viewer the impression that most of the foretellers are relatively normal people instead of a quintuple of jrpg final bosses. aced in this just comes off like a grumpy dumbass while in X proper he's talking about how he wants to cleanse all life and rule the empty universe like god lmao
10
honestly gets quite a bit of undeserved stick from fandom as being completely worthless and not mattering, which is like, true, but the castle oblivion stuff at the end hits hard, and yet almost no one talks about it, perhaps because it was largely excised from the movie. once again those hateful things rewrite fan consensus in the worst ways lmao.
anyway this kinds blows. it's a shame because the concept of this is honestly maybe the best single idea for a plot this series has ever had (your past self going through your future self's diary) but it has absolutely no idea what it has on it's hands.
it's riku. they put bugs in him.
anyway this kinds blows. it's a shame because the concept of this is honestly maybe the best single idea for a plot this series has ever had (your past self going through your future self's diary) but it has absolutely no idea what it has on it's hands.
it's riku. they put bugs in him.
11
really just a trailer for kingdom hearts 4 that takes the time to be noxiously sexist about kairi. bad.
12
shit game for cunts. to everyone who complained about not getting answers to your questions: here you are: a game about dangling plot keys in front of you explaining things that never needed explaining. the worst kingdom hearts story.
![Kingdom Hearts Union χ[Cross]](https://images.igdb.com/igdb/image/upload/t_cover_big/co1tqb.jpg)
13
dwardman
2 years ago