Resuming the on-and-off Kingdom Hearts first ever playthrough… thing, we reach Birth by Sleep, a game originally on the PSP but in terms of this review it also got a few “HD” console ports, which is handy. Set ten years before Kingdom Hearts I, the game features three protagonists each with their own story mode that intersect with each other, which was fun (reminded me of the Resident Evil 2 A/B scenarios) and the combat was great as well. Let’s see how it fairs overall though…
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After mistakenly playing the next game release-order-wise last time (thanks PS4 collection menu!) it’s finally time to tackle Kingdom Hearts II in this on-and-off marathon of my first time playing the series, and I was excited about this more than most because it’s often cited as the best one. Now obviously I still have three main games and two spin-offs to look at yet (not counting mobile titles, which I won’t be covering gameplay wise at least) so I can’t say “I agree!” but I did enjoy myself a lot, which can never be a bad thing… let’s take a closer look at the game then, nearly 20 years after its initial release (Coincidentally!)
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It’s time for the next stop on my first play through of the Kingdom Hearts series, and it’s the DS game “358/2 Days”, pronounced “Three-Five-Eight Days over Two” which means really it should’ve been stylised “358 Days/2” but… whatever. Also I was following the main menu of the “Story So Far” PS4 game so played this next (by buying a physical copy! Who’d of thought I’d be buying a DS game in 2024…) then later found out it was released AFTER Kingdom Hearts 2 in order to fill in some gaps. Did it matter? No, in fact I really enjoyed myself here, seeing it as a sequel to Chain of Memories that fleshes out the Organisation plus sets up the prologue of KH2 to boot. I guess I’ll just have a different experience with the series than people who played it at the time! Let’s take a look anyway.
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Going into my first ever play through of the Kingdom Hearts series I was warned about Chain of Memories and its remake, how even some of the biggest die hard fans of the series seem to flat-out hate it, well the gameplay at least. I thought to myself “well, I want to complete all of them for this review series, so I guess I’ll just grin and bear it” but, man… hate to say it, but I’m going to have to join the many and say I really disliked the gameplay here. I was just going to play the Re:CoM edition but struggled so I heard the GBA original was easier, and it was… to a point, but the core gameplay is just badly designed. I’m sure some who played it when they were young and “forced” themselves to get good at it because it was finally new Kingdom Hearts game will get angry at my review, but for me, now in 2024? This is not a fun experience…
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Over the past couple of years I reviewed one series I’d played many times (the PS2 GTA games) and one I’d always wanted to play (Mass Effect Trilogy) so I thought I’d do the same again, and in this case Kingdom Hearts is the series I’ve never played before but it’s always been on my “I’d like to try that some day” list, especially as more and more people started ragging on its apparently convoluted storyline (I do love a good convoluted storyline…) So I saw a “Story So Far” collection of most of the games on PS4 for under a tenner and thought, why not? Sora in Smash only pushed the series back into the forefront of my mind anyway. So what did I think of the original game? I really enjoyed it, actually! Let’s take a deeper look from someone playing the 2002 RPG for the first time in 2023…
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Hogan Reviews 