The Best Order to Play Kingdom Hearts Series

Kingdom Hearts was first released in 2002 for the PlayStation 2, and since then, the franchise has released ten games in the last 11 years, including many spin-offs, remakes, and side stories.

Kingdom Hearts is a unique mixture of Disney characters and Final Fantasy characters. Running around with Donald Duck and Goofy makes the kids happy, but the adults are hit with some nostalgia when they encounter their favorite characters from their childhood. Seeing Square Enix characters such as Aerith and Cloud in the same game as Goofy and Winnie the Pooh does not feel weird is proof of how successful the franchise is.

There have been many Kingdom Hearts games that have been released, but if you want to know to follow the story from the start to the end, then it’s not as simple as you may think, “Start with the first game, then play the second game and so on.” So, if you want to play Kingdom Hearts story-wise, don’t worry; we have you covered!

Here is the best order to play Kingdom of Hearts

Kingdom Hearts

While playing Kingdom Hearts, you will be running into some of Disney’s famous characters as well as; you will be meeting some Final Fantasy characters. Disney fans will be in for a treat. Square Enix fans should rest assured that Kingdom Hearts has all the characteristics of a Square Enix game, including secret items, character building, minigames, and impressive boss battles.

The game isn’t a role-playing game like Final Fantasy X, but still, it does many role-playing elements. The characters will gain levels, special abilities, and spells as they proceed in the quest, and you can go out of your way to find unique items or go back to town to shop for better equipment.

You will be fighting the Heartless in virtually every game scene; once you defeat a pack, another pack will usually materialize at that moment and right there. The game also features some good platform-jumping sequences and some puzzles to solve. Kingdom Hearts is a linear game, but sometimes you can choose where to go first.

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories was proclaimed as the bridge between Kingdom Hearts I and Kingdom Hearts II, giving the players an introduction and a preview of the plot elements explored in the next game. In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, as Sora, you will be exploring the Castle Oblivion, in which each floor takes on the properties of the places you have explored in Kingdom Hearts.

In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, no one remembers Sora, but they know his name and other important bits. The game will consistently remind you that the most important memories are stored in your heart and not your head. As you travel through the Disney environments from Agrabah to Halloween Town, it will create a kind of a deja vu sense for you. Even though there is some additional content in this game, much content is just like it was in the first Kingdom Hearts game. Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories is unique card-based combat and exploration.

To advance through the various doors that a player comes across, the player must spend room cards when entering a new area for the first time. Players will earn these cards by successfully defeating foes. The rooms have a variety of features; some rooms may push you into darkness, forcing you to identify the Heartless by their gleaming eye, while in other cases, you can spend a card to create a room with a save point in it or a room with a treasure in it. In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, battles in the room may end in a spin of the roulette wheel, which could either clean up your existing cards or give you new cards. To gain access to rooms in which the story unfolds, you will need to use special cards.

Kingdom Hearts II

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is the first game in the Kingdom Hearts game series that features cooperative gameplay and traditional AI-controlled partners.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days features a simple yet beautiful friendship story, dynamic characters, and twists. In this game, you play Roxas, his “nobody,” a mirror image deprived of its memories, instead of the Kingdom Hearts game series’ protagonist, Sora. Roxas wants to retake his past by defeating shadow monsters known as heartless with nothing but a name and a doubtful group called Organization XIII.

There are so many familiar faces and Disney characters in the story, but they do not steal the plot’s thunder even as you unearth the Organization’s dark secrets.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days’ gameplay is torn into challenging missions that let you have your own pace. At the same time, the gameplay also encourages exploring, unlike the gameplay in previous games in the Kingdom Hearts game series.

The missions are set throughout the seven classic Disney worlds that are segmented, but you will get to quickly face new areas that you can explore along with some fun elements.

In this game, you have a lot of control over the tasks that you can accept, which gives you the freedom to work on the tasks that further progress the story, or you could go around doing extra stuff for greater rewards. The story events and the mini-bosses make sure that the gameplay doesn’t get boring.

The Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days has a fast-paced battle system that happens in real time and provides a thrilling combat experience that includes combos.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by sleep

One of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by sleep’s opening cut scenes introduces you to the game’s three main characters, Terra, Ventus, Aqua, and a fourth one, who will be unlocked upon completing the first three. You will have to decide which of the characters you want to play as first. You will eventually get to do this step two more times and explore the evolving story from three angles so you can reveal everything that the game’s story holds.

The game has a Square Enix story feel since it has strained friendships, internal struggles, and and battles between the heroes (the good-hearted) and the villains. While all this is going on, the charming Disney characters you fight alongside experience a familiar story from a unique perspective. The characters from Disney that you fight together with our Prince Charming protect Snow White from the attacking friends and get to see the dark side of the infamous mirror.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep features many specific tasks for each character in the three character’s play-throughs. You will cross paths with Disney characters and fighting different bosses at different times. Ventus is energetic and young and is well-meaning enough, but not so much that it becomes annoying. Aqua is focused and thoughtful and provides a more mature point of view. Terra struggles with the darkness that is within him.

Kingdom Hearts Re: Coded

Kingdom Hearts Re: Coded’s story starts with bugs; Jiminy Cricket, a dedicated royal who keeps track of critical and historical events, gets his hands on the original journal of Sora’s Travels only to find out that there is a mysterious message that has been added. After the events in Kingdom Hearts, the volume was nearly completely erased; this caused the little fellow to bring it to King Mickey’s attention. They decide to utilize the technological skills of rodent wunderkinds, Chip and Dale, to search for the data that is believed to be spread throughout the volume even though the pages are empty.

Instead of finding the answers, they find the classic worlds filled with corrupted data and glitches. They create a digital version of Sora and his keyblade since they need a helping hand to get to the bottom of things. The heartless and the other foes are now dismembered, and with auto-aim targeting, you can smash your keyblade button. Still, you have to watch the character’s position and be careful and stay alert against some specific enemies.

You can also use special abilities built into the keyblade of Sora by continuously hitting the monsters that boost you as you fight. Every weapon has bonuses like dodge automatically, faster attacking, or protection against magic. Most of these are pretty easy to utilize as you fight. Through an ability menu, Sora can equip extra magic spells, melee strikes, and items. All of this makes killing enemies enjoyable.

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream drop distance

Kingdom Hearts X

Kingdom Hearts X was released for Android and iOS on September 3, 2015. Kingdom Hearts X takes place before Sora’s adventures and the keyblade war. You will be taking on the role of an amateur keyblade wielder chosen by the Lost Masters and trying to solve the world’s problems. The game has basic sub-plots in the various worlds. Kingdom Hearts X’s gameplay is quite simple, you get a deck of 3-5 cards, and it depends on how much your keyblade has leveled up. There is a corresponding color that every card has green, blue, and red.

The colors have a meaning: Blue is weak to green, green is weak to red, and red is weak to blue. They also have a unique ability: a combo of attacks, healing, or a blast that hits everything. Apart from all that stuff, Kingdom Hearts X also features guilds, and you can assist other players or get help from other players to defeat a raid boss who appears quite often.

The raid bosses that the players have to fight range from the Behemoth to the Darkside Heartless. It is still quite addictive to collect these cards when you level up and find them from packs. Kingdom Hearts X does indeed lack the strategy that the original games have. The game is no doubt fun, but for small sittings and not for likely hours of grinding.

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep: A Fragmentary Passage

Kingdom Hearts III

Kingdom Hearts III was released in Japan for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on January 25, 2019. The series protagonist, Sora, is searching for the “Key to Return Hearts” while searching for keyblade wielders handled by Sora’s friends Riku and King Mickey. Kingdom Hearts III is the concluding chapter in a massive story arc; it can’t be faulted for having this fixation. Kingdom Hearts III is so stuck in the finer details that it can be challenging to get a sense of the three main heroes trying to accomplish, even for the massive fans.

The story of Kingdom Hearts III involves Sora, Donald, and Goofy, who are preparing for an upcoming war against the forces of darkness by gathering the Guardians of Light. The reason for the bloated state of Kingdom Hearts’ lore is the result of so many spin-offs and sequels that introduced new characters to explore the side and backstories. These characters had the time and space to establish themselves and have entire narrative arcs in their games. But, when united in one game, each character made less of an impact in characterization.

Kingdom Hearts III is trying to tie up all the separate narrative threads across the many Kingdom Hearts games and weave them into one conclusive story, and the result is incoherent. Numerous characters look the same; some are time-traveling versions of themselves, while others are reincarnations who have taken a new form or exist inside the heart of another character. The villains, many of which are of Organization XIII, say inane, purposely vague lines. This was to build mystery, but it doesn’t help much either. The characters deliver cheesy dialogues, which sometimes feel odd compared to what’s happening around them.

Kingdom Hearts III Re: Mind

Kingdom Hearts III was released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in Japan on 25th January 2019. Kingdom Hearts III Re: Mind is the DLC of this previous installment,1,i.e., Kingdom Hearts III. It is the overhauled version of Kingdom Hearts III, which will be released in 2020 in the first quarter. The fan following was huge; Square Enix could give the fans one more game consecutively in pair of 2 years. Kingdom Hearts III Re: Mind Is claimed to be the antidote to the bad endings, which was not so adored in Kingdom Hearts III. So it indeed consists of some unfolding and untold storyline ending. Kingdom Hearts 3 finished with Sora going off alone to scan for Kairi. Re: Mind takes you on that journey in average Kingdom Hearts design: neither essentially nor neatly.

It runs synchronously with the occasions at the Keyblade Graveyard, which means you must replay the peak again from the Keyblade Graveyard labyrinth right to the standoff with Xehanort. Even though the clarification Re: Mind is a Director’s cut. As an update, the Keyblade Graveyard doesn’t generally highlight any investigation. It’s a progression of manager battles isolated by long cutscenes. Luxord still holes up behind a playing card provoking Sora, and cutscenes stop the activity in comparative spots. Some of the exchange and cutscenes are revamped while others are new; however, the most significant contrast is the choice to play as Riku, Roxas, Kairi, or Aqua in a few battles. Shockingly, playing as these characters make smooth and up-to-date battle-less gameplay. Every one of them feels like more fragile forms of Sora with constrained move sets, and it doesn’t help that the Keyblade Graveyard itself is the blandest world in Kingdom Hearts 3.

What Re: Mind uncovers is a game, and an arrangement, continually changing itself in apprehensive self-reflection. Kingdom Hearts doesn’t know how to end, so it won’t, and it will return and reshape itself as much as it needs to ensure it. Remind, with a partition between the prefix and the word—proposing to recall and reconsider. Which makes Re: Mind an unusual DLC for a special game and a cure to our nervousness about Kingdom Hearts III’s endings. Kingdom Hearts will never stick to the arrival since it will never attempt. Is that the correct answer? Who knows, yet in a period of disillusioning finales, a story that destroys itself to maintain a strategic distance from the result is a breath of new sea air. A hidden episode called Limit Cut opens when you complete Re Mind, giving you access to a few testing supervisor battles. They’re ultra-extreme, and one bogus move (like not obstructing at the specific good minute) implies you lose everything. These are identical to the arrangement’s mystery supervisors (e.g., Sephiroth).

Sajid Ali

CEO, Lead Writer

Sajid Ali is a tech enthusiast and gamer who loves to write reviews about gaming hardware. He has a passion for staying up-to-date with the latest technological advancements and loves sharing his knowledge with others. Sajid studied Intermediate Computer Science at Degree College and went on to earn his Bachelor's in Computer Science from GSC. In his free time, you can find him testing out new hardware and software, or playing the latest video games. Sajid's in-depth understanding of computers and his love for gaming make him the perfect author to turn to for all things tech and gaming.