KINGDOM HEARTS Collection [I~III] for Switch 2 Quick Review

Reviewed on: Switch 2
Code provided by the publisher.

Full disclosure before anything else: I'm not a Kingdom Hearts person. I've bounced off this series more than once, never quite connected with the tone, and the plot has always struck me as something you'd need a whiteboard and several hours to explain let alone trying to figure out all those title names. Sheesh! So take what follows with that context. I went into this collection with an open mind and no particular loyalty, and I'm glad I did, even if I came out the other side still not fully converted.

What I can say without hesitation is that this is a complete, well-assembled package. Everything is here, the ports are solid, and the whole sprawling universe is finally sitting in one place on hardware you can take with you. There are a few FMV hiccups worth mentioning, mostly cutscenes that don't quite hold up next to the gameplay around them, but nothing that broke the experience. The content is genuinely enormous, enough to eat weeks of your life if you're committed. Make sure you've got the storage space ready, because the full collection is north of 120GB, which is not a number to discover halfway through a download.

The games are solid if not a bit too much to swallow if you’ve never played. They are listed in order of release inside the collections so that at least takes some of the pressure off figuring out the crazy title names.

Verdict

Am I the world's biggest Kingdom Hearts fan now that I’ve dabbled with this collectiion? No. The things that never clicked for me still haven't clicked. But I enjoyed my time with it more than I expected, and I can see clearly why this series means what it does to the people who love it. It is a beautiful change of pace with a lot of dark, depressing, and heavy games and media that are so common today.

If you're a fan, this is an easy purchase and probably the definitive way to own these games especially to play on the go. If you're curious and have never jumped in, this is as good an entry point as you're ever going to get.