It’s been just over 21 years since the original release of Kingdom Hearts on the PlayStation 2 and the magic has never faded, you can now access the full collection on Steam so the magic will never fade. If you are a returning player or even someone looking to get into the series this is written just for you. Kingdom Hearts is a series of role-playing games created by Japanese game designers Tetsuya Nomura and Shinji Hashimoto, developed and published by well-known company Square Enix in collaboration with The Walt Disney Company.

It was re-released in 2024 with the Kingdom Hearts Collection which has the entire catalogue of titles and DLCs built into the collection. You follow the adventures of Sora, a happy little teenager who is fighting the shadowy darkness along his adventure, but don’t worry you have some familiar faces helping you along the journey with allies like Donald Duck, Goofy, and other well-known Disney characters we all grew up to love. I’ll put a brief overview of all three of the title’s main storylines, if you don’t want to know about the stories and want to go into the titles fresh skip the next three paragraphs. There are no big spoilers but it will give you a brief description of what these games are about.

You begin the adventure on Destiny Islands with two friends Riku and Kairi and their biggest dream is to adventure. they are leaving their world and finding what is out there. A figure in a brown robe informs Sora that their world has been connected and is being attacked by black creatures which are known as Heartless. Riku invites Sora into the darkness which Sora is hesitant about and resists the call and instead calls upon a well-known weapon in the series, a Keyblade. When the adventure begins you meet Donald and Goofy, well-known characters in Disney who are on their adventure to find a Keyblade wielder who can help save the world. From this moment on Sora, Donald, and Goofy all team up to save the world and search for Sora’s friends along the way.

Kingdom Hearts II begins with Sora awakening along with Donald and Goofy in Twilight Town with no memories of anything after the events that occurred at the end of Kingdom Hearts. There is a small little entry in Sora’s journal that says “Thank Namine” which doesn’t mean much to the trio so they embark back on their journey to find Riku and King Mickey. Much to their surprise King Mickey was in Twilight Town and wanted to help the trio out with some low-ranking reinforcements, he then proceeded to usher them onto a train and promised to meet them again soon. You get to meet some more familiar faces in the Disney Universe in Kingdom Hearts II and some faces you would rather not see.

Kingdom Hearts III takes place after the events of Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance which is included in the collection. You will notice a noticeable difference in Sora now being older and still the main protagonist. He has set out on a new adventure to stop Xenanort from bringing about a second Keyblade War. You have the same team as the previous two titles with some more familiar faces joining the ranks and helping Sora on his adventure. You get to see some amazing worlds on your adventure.

It’s weird playing a game so old compared to something newer with the controls and being able to feel them become more fluid. You can notice from Kingdom Hearts 1 to Kingdom Hearts 3 how much the controls have been fine-tuned and something like the slower camera movement in the first title had been rectified by the third title was great to see and feel.

Regardless if you were using Keyboard and Mouse or Controller the game was one where you could just relax and not need to think too much about controls as they were the bare basics which was great for a subtle change. It was great to see all the controls could be remapped if you wanted which could make the game really yours, I will HIGHLY recommend leaving the camera movement on manual otherwise you will end up hating it as much as I did and end up changing it so you’re not stuck if you do choose auto.

I’ll make a quick comment about the audio in these games before deep diving, but the background elevator music is good for the first 30 minutes after that it needs to be turned off, but is that a feature, no of course not, you can just turn it down to the number 1 which you can still hear, so you can’t escape that happy elevator Disney themed music but that is a small issue. The audio dialogue in these titles was absolutely magical.

Getting to hear characters I have grown up loving, to the voice dialogue from newfound friends was great and made you feel like you were watching a Disney animated movie. The voice acting was absolutely spot on which took away from the annoying background music. You got to hear little things like the sounds when running over surfaces, to killing the Heartless. Everything was fine-tuned and the further you got into the series the better and better it got. You could hear the different audio qualities throughout the games which was an amazing jog down memory lane to see how far gaming has come.

Since its original release back in 2002 it’s had some updates with the graphics but not so much that it looks like another remake. They have retextured some things and smoothed out the graphics so it’s still got that feel-good cartoonish feel but still looks great and alive. Launching the original title took me back to those beloved hours on the PlayStation 2, and then going through the titles with Kingdom Hearts III being released back in 2019, you can see the advancement of graphics over the years and how something so simple can be fine-tuned to look so stunning with different things like shaders and lighting. All three titles felt time-relevant and looked stunning and the bright and vibrant colours dragged you in for more.

Kingdom Hearts Collection is a great feel-good series that takes you into worlds of pure imagination. You can play through all the titles from start to finish and the smaller stories that are in between as they are included in the collection. You forget about how old the series really is and immerse yourself in the experience. I would highly recommend picking up this collection if you are a new or returning player.

Written by: Hayden Nelson