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How would you rank the Kingdom Hearts games?( Favourite - least favourite)



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Sakuraba Neku

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01) KH2 Final Mix
02) KH3 Remind
03) KH1 Final Mix
04) KHBBS Final Mix
05) KH 0.2
06) KH3D
07) KH Re:CoM
08) KH Re:Coded
09) KH 358/2 Days
10) KH MoM
11) Mobile games
 

kaseykockroach

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KH1
KH3 (never bought Re:Mind)
CoM
KH2FM

There, that's the ranking of all the games I played.
I know, I know, I'm basic.
 
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HotGarbage

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KH 3
KH 1
KH DDD
KH 2
KH RECODED
KH MOM
KH UNION X
KH BBS
KH DAYS
KH COM

Trash can: KH RECOM, KH DARK ROAD,KH 0.2 and KH X BACK COVER
 

gameguy523

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KH1: The gameplay has aged a bit, admittedly, but it without a doubt has the strongest story and writing by a wide margin. It's the only one where Sora has an arc and the only one where the Disney worlds actually feel consequential to the plot. Just absolutely beautiful. There's something so different about 1 compared to the rest. It has this vibe, this atmosphere that they have never matched. My second favorite game ever.

KH2: Probably the best in terms of gameplay (or tied with 3) and quite solid throughout. It has slight pacing issues and some of the worlds feel flat, but it's made up for with the sense of emotional impact it has. This was clearly intended to be the original end of the saga and it feels so conclusive, beautiful and poetic at the conclusion. Favorite ending to a game ever.

BBS: A really beautiful tragic story. Has some pacing issues for sure, but it's also the entry in the series that comes closest to matching KH1's level of weight to the Disney worlds. The gameplay was a really nice change of pace for the series as well.

KH3: Super solid combat, dazzling graphics and the best level design in the series. At its highs, it's amazing. But it loses some massive points for having absolutely terrible writing and a really poor story. 80% of the game is completely inconsequential filler and even the 20% that isn't is pretty slapdash and filled with too much fan-service to feel all that original or exciting. It's just a series of cutscenes that rush through every dangling plot thread and give you exactly what you want to see without doing much of anything else. Only parts I love in the story are the final few segments and the Xigbar stuff. A really disappointing end to the dark seeker saga

Re:Coded: SO underrated. The best use of the deck and command system, a super fun mechanic in the stat matrix and some nice gameplay variety, even if some of it feels undercooked. Yes, the story is awful, but it at least is far less important to get the story right in this one as compared to others. Super fun game.

0.2: Bring back appearance customization!

DDD: The beginning of the end for the series strong writing and the moment they jumped the shark but damn is it fun and damn does it have some really memorable Disney worlds. Really love the sense of magic and wonder in this one. Feels like they went back to KH1's roots in many ways.

COM: One of the better stories in the series and some of the strongest pacing but I mean, come on, the battle system is so much different, which I respect, but it is so hard for some to get into, understandably. And recycled worlds of course does not help.

358: The opposite of KH3. Amazing story and terrible gameplay. I like the panel system though. Fun to pick what you want and what you can go without.

UX: It's aight I guess. Story has some interesting ideas.

Back-cover: I guess if this counts it's easily the worst. Absolutely awful. Super uninteresting character in MoM and super uninteresting mystery in the dumb box.
 

MATGSY

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Counting down.

Not ranked: All Theater modes because they are not games. VCAST, KH Mobile & whatever other misc. crap is out there.

12. X/UX/UX/DR: Money grubbing skinner boxes that exist to squeeze every last penny out of players. Little real strategy that matters, excessive aggressive power creep, & endless filler quests as the story oh so slowly dragged its ass over the course of years. Dark Road is particularly a waste, reusing the same worlds as UX instead of picking Disney properties that would've worked with the timeline or complimented Xehanort's journey.

11. Switch Cloud versions: About as insulting as UX/DR, though I'll grant that my test runs with the demos were at least playable. So I guess I can still place them 1 spot higher.

10. Melody of Memory: It does what it sets out to do very well, there's no arguing that this ain't a great rhythm game. I just don't care for rhythm games all that much. Only 4 bosses & the BS pulled with Kairi hurts it too.

9. 358/2 Days: "Kingdom Hearts: The Fanfic: The Game". Days has always been the most disappointing game of the series to me. Can't be disappointed by mobile games when they're a lost cause to begin with afterall. IMO, it's not really even the fault of the DS hardware, the general structure & design of the game badly needed more forethought. Story Mode is padded & redundant. Mission Mode has no unique content because every mission has to have already been beaten in Story. It feels such an obvious swing & a miss here, trim the fat in Story & give Mission Mode more missions of its own. They could even have a full 358 days worth of missions by restricting them to MM! Plus, more Disney bosses besides Pete & Lock/Shock/Barrel would've been nice too. & maybe utilize the whole roster of playable characters thing in Story Mode since that's the game's biggest gameplay hook.

8. 0.2 Fragmentary Passage: Its not all that much of a game TBH. Which isn't a bad thing per se, the world could do with more bite sized adventures like 0.2, provided the cost is right (Case Zero for the Dead Rising series for $5 is a pretty good example of this done right IMO) but by no means is 0.2 gonna rank higher than most of the full fledged entries.

7. Chain of Memories/RECoM: I guess I generally prefer the remake for the QoL improvements, but the GBA version has the better script & arguably the best overall script of any KH. But man is the whole card battle system a bit of a hard sell. Like I get it, there's much more strategy involved in how 1 sets up their deck than you're gonna find in any pure action entry. But it just gets in its own way too much, too many handicaps & RNG to deal with. I don't get why they couldn't have just done a proper ARPG on GBA, those did exist on the handheld.

6. RECoded: Never played the original (who has?). Coded is the inverse of Days, a vastly weaker story but way better gameplay. Can you tell which I prioritize? Command deck, Combo finishers, whole genre shifts, & a hell of a lot less filler (though I'd still call the 2nd HB chapter filler) makes it such a more pleasant game to PLAY. & on the same hardware & by the same dev team no less. It's essentually the only other game aside from KH1 where the Disney guys drive the narrative too.

5. DDD: Now we get to what are the "big ones", games big enough to warrant new Disney worlds. Sadly DDD is the bottom of the big 5, while having bigger worlds than most other games in the series was nice, the smaller number of them not so much. The main problem is that square got too experimental with it, using DDD as test bed for random ideas rather than focusing on what makes a solid game. Flowmotion is overbearing & raising DE is a huge time sink. Plus combat felt a little too unbalanced IMO, so many enemies canwill trap you in long drawn out combos over & over again. Plus between Stun/Stop/Bind/Freeze/Sleep which all do the exact same thing, you're always being interrupted. Combat just gets really irritating. Still the larger worlds, deeper cut Disney properties (IE Julius), & options for refighting most bosses means it still has its moments.

4. BBS:
Time has not been kind to poor BBS. People are way more critical of its shortcomings, particularly with Boss AI, which yeah, bosses are either complete pushovers or utterly absurd killing machines with little in-between. That said, boy is the command deck & leveling/fusing/leveling commands again is addictive as hell. It's just this constant non-stop dopamine incremental progression that keeps me hooked. Actually having PS2-level graphics & new Disney worlds in a handheld game seemed like such a big deal at the time. Plus I love how inventive they got for some Disney bosses just to make sure there was still a fair number of them (a lesson games could learn from).

The Cop-out Top Three. KH1, KH2, KH3: After some consideration I find myself unable to make up my mind on the order of ranking the 3 main entries. Quite simply, I've had a blast with all 3 3 & they all kinda do certain things better than each other but I couldn't make up my mind which highs take priority. So fuck it, 3-way tie.

KH1's positives & negatives tend to be the same things. On 1 h.a.n.d. platforming is clunky & combat is super basic compared to later games. Fighting flying enemies near ledges & chasing bosses that play constant keep away is such a drag. On the other, the limited combat options work to make the Disney villains feel all the more threatening. Part of the reason they've been getting phased out is because they can't scale with the faster, more acrobatic Sora of later titles. Here, Sora is believable in over his head & barely scrapping by BECAUSE of the dated gameplay. & while the worlds are small & not always laid-out the best, they have more platforming & exploration elements to them than practically every other KH. & of course this was the one entry where the plot is coherent & Disney characters matter, 2 things many of us wish the series could return to.

KH2 has far improved combat by far, especially in FM & is perhaps the best of the whole series in this regard. It has the best Disney worlds of any game & I honestly love how many battles had objectives beyond the simple slaying of enemies. For that matter Reaction Commands were a great way of working with those objectives & giving players more combat options. The downside is world design got super dumbed down, & any sense of rational story telling jumped out the window. The sheer number of follow up games sent FIXING KH2's shit says it all.

Quite frankly I have never had a solid idea of if I prefer 1 or 2 more because they're polar opposites of each other in what they do & don't do well.

People say the Disney worlds in Kh3 are absolute wastes of time, I say they're the best damn part. Yeah, KH3 perhaps even more so than the series already does suffers from a wicked case of oil & water not mixing where everything after San Fransokyo feels like an entirely different game. IMO KH3 has some of the highest highs of the series with wonderful worlds like Toybox & Caribbean, to the epicness of the Organization gauntlet & final boss. It just mainly suffers from the inability to glue those highs together.
 

Elysium

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I've ranked plenty of times before, but I never mind doing it again. Sometimes my thoughts change after a while. Besides, we've had MoM since the last time I ranked, which gives me more excuse..

1. KH ~ To me, it's the best in pretty much every area. The story, the Disney and FF interaction with the main story, the difficulty, the gameplay, the side quests, the properties used. The only thing it has against it at all are the technical limitations of the time (smaller worlds, fishface, more text bubbles), but it does the most it can considering the time it was made and I enjoy fleshing out the worlds in this game more than the others (as far as finding all the chests, trinities, special Heartless, hidden secrets, etc.).
2. KH3D ~ I go back and forth over 3D or 3 at #2. I think the only reason it isn't a clean sweep for 3D for me is the lack of D&G. Aside from that, I enjoy 3D much more than 3; it's just the silence of general gameplay in all of the spinoff games that lack party members that I don't really enjoy. This one's better than those somewhat because at least you have Dream Eaters. As far as involving D&G, I wouldn't want Dream Eaters to go away, loved their addition, but perhaps Donald would've went with Sora and Goofy with Riku, with the other party member for each character being a Dream Eater. Neither one of 3D and 3 have a "perfect" world roster to me, as far as the Disney worlds selected. Symphony of Sorcery and Prankster's Paradise are the only worlds I "love" in 3D; Arendelle, Olympus, and the Caribbean are the only ones I "love" in 3. But I enjoy the level design of the rest of the world here more than the rest in 3. And there's no question that the original worlds in 3D blow 3's clean out of the water. In comparison, San Fransokyo (I know it's a Disney world but it's the point at which the feeling begins) and Keyblade Graveyard in 3 both feel as if the game runs out of steam in a way and just barely makes it to the finish line, not to mention Radiant Garden's idiotic omission from the saga's finale.
3. KH3 ~ My thoughts on 3D above sort of went for both it and 3, so see there.
4. KHCoM ~ Better story, dialogue, and original characters than 3D and 3, but admittedly less fun to play than those two as far as going through the levels is concerned.
5. KH2 ~ I do enjoy 2 more these days than I did back when it first came out. Still, a lot of it is me making concessions for the game in order to enjoy my time with it than it actually being good.
6. MoM ~ I loved this. The only thing I hate about it is Kairi being the main character, but at least that's only on the world map. Unfortunately, I messed up my controller playing this game. It still functions, but it's like the buttons don't work as well, I guess from being pressed repeatedly (and likely too hard) so much to complete the game, lol. So that's why I haven't played it in a while... (And controllers being so high, I haven't bought a new one yet.) The game is really fun, even if it feels incomplete. It has a similar feeling to 3 of losing steam at the end, with the KH3 worlds being a letdown compared to everything else.
7. re:Coded ~ I almost ranked Days above this, but I always remember enjoying this game more than Days. It's been a while since I've played Coded though, whereas I've played Days more recently and that runthrough improved my opinion of Days. I need to get this one out again sometime.
8. Days
9. BbS ~ This is the only one I really don't enjoy playing, that feels like a slog. It's not all bad, I do enjoy those first three worlds, Aqua, and the Command Board.
10. 0.2 ~ It's only this low because it's so short--I do enjoy it. I'd probably put it below 2 and above MoM if it could've been longer somehow.
11. Chi (the movie thing)

Never played, will never play, any of the mobile games.
 
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2 quid is good

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Just realised I've posted in this thread twice and haven't ranked the games yet so, from best to worst, here goes:

- KH2
- KH1
- 0.2
- Days / ReCoM
- Re:coded
- BBS
- 3D / KH3

KH1 is really just lightning in a bottle that's never quite been captured again. It does everything perfectly, fun gameplay that feels satisfying, good character writing, strong worldbuilding, a good plot. If I have to be honest, the only reason it's not number one is because Leon is just so much hotter in KH2.

Re/CoM was quite fun as a GBA sprite game, I haven't played much of it but decided to try it out after Recom just made me lose my head one time too many, and found out that the card system and the way the worlds are laid out works much better on a 2D GBA than a fully 3D PS2 level production. The story is brilliant by the way, I found way more enjoyment just watching all the cutscenes as a movie than struggling through the awful level design. The card system is fine enough on PS2 as well, but I couldn't abide the way the rooms were set up.

KH2 my beloved <3. Look, I know people like to say it's writing isn't up to par with it's predecessors. Maybe that's true in their eyes, I dunno. I can't ever bring myself to say it though. It feels like the logical next step that a franchise like this should take. MORE Final Fantasy, MORE Disney, MORE original KH content, yes please! And it's not like we're getting more with no substance, Auron is literally the shining example of the franchise in how to do a "one-and-done" cameo, and the other ones weren't bad either, yeah, even Setzer (Vivi being the sole, sad exception). When it comes to keeping the player entertained, KH2 definitely doesn't miss the mark. People also say the FF characters were less relevant in KH2.

Really? Honest to goodness, the strength of the original and FF characters is the ONLY thing that makes me rate this game as highly as I do. The introduction that KH1 gave us is used as a springboard for an entire world dedicated to them, their problems, their daily lives, and how they co-exist with the fantastical crap at the forefront of KH2. It's brilliant man, it might be a B-plot but that doesn't make them less important. I feel like I learnt way more about them in this game than in KH1. I could go on and on (and maybe I will if someone wants me to) but I'll end it here and say that KH2's underrated strength is having a massive cast where everybody with a voiced line (and even some unvoiced NPC's) feels like they contributed to the game. It's frustrating to see pieces of media with massive missed potential, and KH2 as a standalone and as the end to a trilogy delivered on making me feel like no one character wasn't given some time in the sun, even the Struggle Promoter.

358/2 Days is a game that's ridiculously divided the fandom (although maybe not so much nowadays? Where were all these Xion fans when I was a kid on forums defending her huh). I like it man. It's OK. I think the gameplay was fun, if a bit tedious at times, and I found it more intuitive than BBS and 3D. Although, I did get stuck on Leechgrave for literally 8 years, and then when I came back to it, I beat it in one go, so how much of that difficulty was down to me being a dumbass 12 year old is up in the air. And I really like Xion. I don't care that her whole scthick was to be a tearjerker, I just think it was nice to see someone with zero sense of self and identity slowly grow into her own person, and I like how it felt like a mutual thing between her and Roxas. I couldn't care less for Axel, if anything, this was the game that made me dislike him. All of the character dialogue between every character was great and very entertaining, and I really liked how absolutely SHITTY the seasalt trio is to each other. The clocktower scenes between all 3 of them always felt so awkward, and it was glaringly obvious to me as a kid that Roxas was the glue binding them together. It felt like a real dynamic to me, and I wish Axel and Xion's conflict was explored further. Anyway, I enjoy this much maligned story for pretty much the reasons people dislike it.

BBS is just something meh to me, it's not bad, it's enjoyable, I like all 3 protagonists for the most part, I like Eraqus, I like Vanitas a lot too, I really like Zack and I want to revise my earlier statement, Zack is the shining example for a "one-and-done" cameo. The gameplay is fine too but it always felt too limiting to me, I did enjoy d-links a lot though. I think the story is probably just as good as Days, but maybe this is the downside of having an almost fully voiced game, quite a few performances left a lot to be desired, and did have an impact on my enjoyment. It's a solid 7/10

Re:coded. Game has good gameplay. More news at 10. I also really enjoyed the little text box dialogue Sora has with the Destiny Island Crew, who don't get ANY time to shine. While the gameplay is fantastic, it was those little flavour texts that edge it over BBS for me. Make no mistake though, it's a game carried by the gameplay. Also, Jesse McCartney outdid himself here. Fun stuff!

3D is just ahh... is it even worth talking about the game now? Didn't we already rake it over the coals enough 10 years ago? The gameplay is just so frustratingly bad and I don't really let that impact my opinions on KH games, but it HAD to here. I did not enjoy 3D at all, and then I gave up to play it on beginner, and it STILL was not fun. More manageable at least though. The last 20 minutes or so of this game is simply stand out stuff in the franchise as a whole, like, come on, who WASN'T hyped with "This leads to Kingdom Hearts" with the faded III after the message? Fantastic stuff. Also, the TWEWY cameos realy were great, I loved Shiki interacting with Riku, I don't think we ever get to see him flustered, so that was nice. I was really quite unhappy at the time though on what I felt was a disrespect to Xemnas' character.

0.2 I am not bothering to write the whole name here, but I wholeheartedly agree with @KingdomKurdistan
0.2 is wonderful, literally does not put a step wrong in ANYTHING, and this tech demo, more than anything else ever could, gave me the feeling that, yes, KH3 would be worth it. The writing is great, the level design is the best its been since KH1, the cinematography is also brilliant, the gameplay is GOOD, as much as you could expect for a tech demo. The opening CGI is also actually the best the series has ever had. I don't mean to prop 0.2 at the expense of others but I feel it has to be said, KH3's cannot compare, at all, really. It's only better than KH1's and that's not a hard task at all.

KH3 just made me mildy annoyed. I don't really care to talk about it much anymore? It wasn't particularly stand out in anything I feel, except the gummi ship. I genuinely get a kick out of that, it's so crazy fun. The gameplay is also of course, good. I just think it has the worst plot and writing in the series by far, and the SDG dynamic is good too but then there's just some parts where the bullying of Sora goes too far and it's weird? Like, I feel like it came outta nowhere. There's always been some ribbing between the three, but not to this extent. Also Leon's haircut is DISGUSTING. 0/10! I'm prepared for this to be screenshot and taken out of context so I feel confident in saying it.

Chi/Unchained/Union X/Back Cover/Dark Road are simply not worth ranking, and Melody of Memory is unranked because it's a fantastic rhythm game that I greatly enjoy, but I don't feel good pitting it against the "proper" games, for various reasons, but mostly because I value story quite a lot unless the gameplay is particularly good or egregious, and MoM has a rather lacking story, which tbh, I never wanted it to have one anyway.
 

SuperNova

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Gameplay: KH3:RM>KH2:FM>KH1>MoM>Re:Coded>BBS>CoM>DDD>Days

I love Rhythm games which is why MoM is ranked so high, KH3 has great speed and I love the keyblade transformations plus being able to use magic,items, and blocking in the air feels so nice. KH2:FM is a really close second.

Story: KH1>KH2>Days>CoM>KH3>BBS>Re:Coded>DDD (MoM not included.)

KH1 is the simplest in terms of story and its really endearing, KH2 has the best pacing out of all KH games despite its flaws in dialogue. KH3 would've been higher if the pacing wasn't so bad and the bullcrap ending. DDD belongs in the trash.

Games below DDD: KHUX. I like the story. Hated it was a mobile game.
 
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