I've seen a lot of people rank their favorite KH games in order of gameplay, story, worlds, etc. I don't really hear that many people talk about which games are best on an aesthetic level—like, how the game is designed in an artistic and vibe-based sense.
I'll give my ranking as an example, I'd be interested to hear yours:
1. KH1 – For me, there's something really endearing about the style of this game apart from everything else great about it. If I had to describe it, I'd call it "childhood playroom," because all the worlds are designed in these tight enclosed box-like spaces, like Wonderland for example. The level design feels intimate but packed full of neat details, almost like being in a child's playroom full of toys and stuff—you can go around an area like Traverse Town's main street, and even though it's so small compared to levels you get in KH3 or even KH2, there are so many more little details, both visually and gameplay-wise that you can notice and interact with. I also get this sense from the art style of the Heartless in this game, and from the 2D renderings of the worlds on the world map. The Heartless in KH1 always felt like they could have been stuffed toys by their design, and the worlds on the world map remind me of stickers or paintings you'd see on a playroom wall. I think this aesthetic is one of the things that's kept KH1 such a charming nostalgic entry in the franchise up to this day.
2. KH2 – When I think about KH2, I always think about being 12 again. Partly because most of us were around that age when we first played it (I was more around 9 I think), but also because KH2 just has that vibe of being at that age where you're still a child but trying to be just a TINY bit edgier. Think about that childhood phase you went through where you still played Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon all the time, but wanted to look cool in front of your classmates so you'd occasionally put on a Linkin Park song. It's got that "trying to be cool but in a really dorky way" vibe to it. And I think that's a distinct difference from how KH1 was. While KH1 embraced its childishness, KH2 felt like it was trying to prove that it could hang out with the cool kids. The dark robes of the Organization, the Nobodies with their angsty backstories and sleek silver designs, even the pointer designs on things like the Nobody sigil or the Organizations' weapons. You could feel the edginess baked into the art style in a way that wasn't there in KH1. It has its own charm in that way. It feels like such a time capsule of the mid-2000s.
3. KH3 – Whatever your problems with KH3, I don't think anyone can deny that the game has an amazing visual feel. The levels are so epic and vertically integrated—it's the first game in the series that really makes you feel like you're exploring an entire open WORLD, rather than just a series of rooms that calls itself a world. And I think for the most part, it succeeds in giving KH's classic art style a glow-up for modern gamers. Everything feels glossier, shinier, more textured, and that's obviously because of the modern Unreal engine, but it's also because of how they utilize it to enhance the classic art style rather than try to make everything "more realistic". Everything has more of a "doughy" look to it, like everything is squishier and more like puddy. It doesn't exactly give the sense of a "grown-up" KH style as it does a sense of a "modernized" KH style. I think worlds like Scala ad Caelum really emphasize this aspect of it—everything is more grandiose, more ostentatious, more bold, more brilliant. It's kind of like the art style of the old games has shed an old skin and is now free to stretch itself out and bask in the sunlight with a fresh healthier glow.
4. KHBBS – So, I don't hate the style of this game, but I never fell in love with it, either. To me, BBS always had this late-2000's/early-2010's semi-techno feel going on. Everything from the menu design to the characters' armor and Keyblades, to the Mirage Arena, to the music, to the sound design just felt like it was trying to be more...well, let me put it this way. If KH2 was the young 10-year-old Pokemon-loving kid trying to be cool by listening to Linkin Park, BBS is the 15-year-old kid who listens to a lot of dubstep and euro-pop and is on an Android phone all day long. It's an aesthetic I never really vibed with as a kid, and it's a big reason why BBS was never one of my favorite games in the series, aside from its wonky gameplay and, to be frank, dull writing. It also doesn't help that the limitations of the PSP made the worlds feel emptier and more fake, which is bizarre, because the worlds in KH1 were mostly empty of people too, but they were so full of details and hidden secrets that they didn't feel empty. Wherease BBS' worlds are so straight-forward and vacant that they feel lifeless by comparison. In other words, if the worlds in KH1 were like childhood playrooms full of toys and paintings on the walls, the worlds in BBS feel like the playroom after you've grown up and have to clear out all your toys from your room and give them to your younger siblings to play with. The room itself is the same, but it lacks the same contents, and feels just a bit more hollow as a result.
5. DDD – The aesthetic of this game has always rubbed me slightly the wrong way, and I don't really know why. I think part of it is a similar problem with BBS, where the worlds feel empty and hollow, but with the added gimmick of them being much, MUCH bigger and therefore accentuating how empty they feel. But there's also something about the art style itself that's always bugged me. Like, is it just me, or is there a significantly higher amount of pink and purple in this game than in other games? Like, there's the reticles and the Drop meter, but there's so many other things too. And I don't know, I've just never jived with that color as a "Kingdom Hearts" color, if that makes any sense. I think the Dream Eaters are a big contributor to this, and to me, they've NEVER meshed well with the KH aesthetic. They're far too gaudy and colorful, they feel like living carnival treats rather than enemies. Like, the Nobodies were WEIRD. They were cool and freaky and had a distinct color scheme to them. The Heartless COULD be cute and plushy, but you could tell by their darker hues and beady yellow eyes that they were still enemies, if sometimes adorable ones. But the Dream Eaters—both the Spirits and Nightmares—just feel like if you took Pokemon and dipped them in candy coating. And I guess that's the vibe I get from the whole game, really. Just...Kingdom Hearts worlds, but dipped in this vaguely sweet candy-colored shell. I never liked it. The game itself is fine, not that I don't have problems with it on that front. But I could just never get used to the aesthetic. It should stay in the Sleeping Realm where it belongs.
6. Chain of Memories – So, whatever you think about this game's story or gameplay, I think we can all agree, there isn't much "style" to speak of with this game. The only new world to speak of is Castle Oblivion, which is cool in a minimalist sense, but it's just hallways. And despite all the worlds being recycled from KH1, they lack a lot of the charm and magic of the first game because they're all just...the same exact series of rooms with a different coat of paint. If going through those worlds in KH1 was like a child's playroom and playing with a bunch of cool toys, going through them in CoM always felt like walking through a series of office cubicles with some tchotchkes and bobble-heads on the desks that you can interact with but don't do anything interesting. Everything feels artificial and enclosed. KH1 had worlds you want to play in, CoM has worlds you want to get through. And there isn't much to speak about besides that, really.
7. Days/Coded – I barely even count these as having their own aesthetic because they just reuse all their worlds and character designs from KH2 and 1 respectively. If there's anything unique about these games, it's the gameplay interface, like the menus and chip grids, and I guess the Datascape in Coded. They're basically just mid-2000's games that borrowed a few accessories from the early-2010's.
8. Union X and Dark Road – I never liked the art styles in these games. Whatever you think of the story, or even the gameplay, I think there's a broad consensus within the KH community that we all would have rather had these games a fully-fledged 3D console games rather than the Flash-game chibi sprite mobile stuff we got stuck with. Not only is the aesthetic overly cute-looking and flat, but the character designs feel more confused and haphazzard. Like, we all remember the glasses-wearing clown-fro dude from Union X, right? Even the designs of Xehanort and Eraqus' friends from Dark Road feel very generic anime-inspired, like any typical unlockable character you could get from a free-to-play Tencent game or something. I think the story in these games is good, I could just never get with the aesthetic they tried to push, mainly because it doesn't feel like they ever really had a strong aesthetic at all. It feels more like they just cobbled together different random elements in character designs and plopped them against a flat 2D backdrop like some kind of glorified playable clip-art presentation. I think these games could have benefited from a stronger guiding theme in their art style and designs, because it feels kind of vacuous from an aesthetic standpoint.
Anyway, let me know what you guys think, and please let me know if I'm not making sense with any of these points and I'll try to clarify.
I'll give my ranking as an example, I'd be interested to hear yours:
1. KH1 – For me, there's something really endearing about the style of this game apart from everything else great about it. If I had to describe it, I'd call it "childhood playroom," because all the worlds are designed in these tight enclosed box-like spaces, like Wonderland for example. The level design feels intimate but packed full of neat details, almost like being in a child's playroom full of toys and stuff—you can go around an area like Traverse Town's main street, and even though it's so small compared to levels you get in KH3 or even KH2, there are so many more little details, both visually and gameplay-wise that you can notice and interact with. I also get this sense from the art style of the Heartless in this game, and from the 2D renderings of the worlds on the world map. The Heartless in KH1 always felt like they could have been stuffed toys by their design, and the worlds on the world map remind me of stickers or paintings you'd see on a playroom wall. I think this aesthetic is one of the things that's kept KH1 such a charming nostalgic entry in the franchise up to this day.
2. KH2 – When I think about KH2, I always think about being 12 again. Partly because most of us were around that age when we first played it (I was more around 9 I think), but also because KH2 just has that vibe of being at that age where you're still a child but trying to be just a TINY bit edgier. Think about that childhood phase you went through where you still played Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon all the time, but wanted to look cool in front of your classmates so you'd occasionally put on a Linkin Park song. It's got that "trying to be cool but in a really dorky way" vibe to it. And I think that's a distinct difference from how KH1 was. While KH1 embraced its childishness, KH2 felt like it was trying to prove that it could hang out with the cool kids. The dark robes of the Organization, the Nobodies with their angsty backstories and sleek silver designs, even the pointer designs on things like the Nobody sigil or the Organizations' weapons. You could feel the edginess baked into the art style in a way that wasn't there in KH1. It has its own charm in that way. It feels like such a time capsule of the mid-2000s.
3. KH3 – Whatever your problems with KH3, I don't think anyone can deny that the game has an amazing visual feel. The levels are so epic and vertically integrated—it's the first game in the series that really makes you feel like you're exploring an entire open WORLD, rather than just a series of rooms that calls itself a world. And I think for the most part, it succeeds in giving KH's classic art style a glow-up for modern gamers. Everything feels glossier, shinier, more textured, and that's obviously because of the modern Unreal engine, but it's also because of how they utilize it to enhance the classic art style rather than try to make everything "more realistic". Everything has more of a "doughy" look to it, like everything is squishier and more like puddy. It doesn't exactly give the sense of a "grown-up" KH style as it does a sense of a "modernized" KH style. I think worlds like Scala ad Caelum really emphasize this aspect of it—everything is more grandiose, more ostentatious, more bold, more brilliant. It's kind of like the art style of the old games has shed an old skin and is now free to stretch itself out and bask in the sunlight with a fresh healthier glow.
4. KHBBS – So, I don't hate the style of this game, but I never fell in love with it, either. To me, BBS always had this late-2000's/early-2010's semi-techno feel going on. Everything from the menu design to the characters' armor and Keyblades, to the Mirage Arena, to the music, to the sound design just felt like it was trying to be more...well, let me put it this way. If KH2 was the young 10-year-old Pokemon-loving kid trying to be cool by listening to Linkin Park, BBS is the 15-year-old kid who listens to a lot of dubstep and euro-pop and is on an Android phone all day long. It's an aesthetic I never really vibed with as a kid, and it's a big reason why BBS was never one of my favorite games in the series, aside from its wonky gameplay and, to be frank, dull writing. It also doesn't help that the limitations of the PSP made the worlds feel emptier and more fake, which is bizarre, because the worlds in KH1 were mostly empty of people too, but they were so full of details and hidden secrets that they didn't feel empty. Wherease BBS' worlds are so straight-forward and vacant that they feel lifeless by comparison. In other words, if the worlds in KH1 were like childhood playrooms full of toys and paintings on the walls, the worlds in BBS feel like the playroom after you've grown up and have to clear out all your toys from your room and give them to your younger siblings to play with. The room itself is the same, but it lacks the same contents, and feels just a bit more hollow as a result.
5. DDD – The aesthetic of this game has always rubbed me slightly the wrong way, and I don't really know why. I think part of it is a similar problem with BBS, where the worlds feel empty and hollow, but with the added gimmick of them being much, MUCH bigger and therefore accentuating how empty they feel. But there's also something about the art style itself that's always bugged me. Like, is it just me, or is there a significantly higher amount of pink and purple in this game than in other games? Like, there's the reticles and the Drop meter, but there's so many other things too. And I don't know, I've just never jived with that color as a "Kingdom Hearts" color, if that makes any sense. I think the Dream Eaters are a big contributor to this, and to me, they've NEVER meshed well with the KH aesthetic. They're far too gaudy and colorful, they feel like living carnival treats rather than enemies. Like, the Nobodies were WEIRD. They were cool and freaky and had a distinct color scheme to them. The Heartless COULD be cute and plushy, but you could tell by their darker hues and beady yellow eyes that they were still enemies, if sometimes adorable ones. But the Dream Eaters—both the Spirits and Nightmares—just feel like if you took Pokemon and dipped them in candy coating. And I guess that's the vibe I get from the whole game, really. Just...Kingdom Hearts worlds, but dipped in this vaguely sweet candy-colored shell. I never liked it. The game itself is fine, not that I don't have problems with it on that front. But I could just never get used to the aesthetic. It should stay in the Sleeping Realm where it belongs.
6. Chain of Memories – So, whatever you think about this game's story or gameplay, I think we can all agree, there isn't much "style" to speak of with this game. The only new world to speak of is Castle Oblivion, which is cool in a minimalist sense, but it's just hallways. And despite all the worlds being recycled from KH1, they lack a lot of the charm and magic of the first game because they're all just...the same exact series of rooms with a different coat of paint. If going through those worlds in KH1 was like a child's playroom and playing with a bunch of cool toys, going through them in CoM always felt like walking through a series of office cubicles with some tchotchkes and bobble-heads on the desks that you can interact with but don't do anything interesting. Everything feels artificial and enclosed. KH1 had worlds you want to play in, CoM has worlds you want to get through. And there isn't much to speak about besides that, really.
7. Days/Coded – I barely even count these as having their own aesthetic because they just reuse all their worlds and character designs from KH2 and 1 respectively. If there's anything unique about these games, it's the gameplay interface, like the menus and chip grids, and I guess the Datascape in Coded. They're basically just mid-2000's games that borrowed a few accessories from the early-2010's.
8. Union X and Dark Road – I never liked the art styles in these games. Whatever you think of the story, or even the gameplay, I think there's a broad consensus within the KH community that we all would have rather had these games a fully-fledged 3D console games rather than the Flash-game chibi sprite mobile stuff we got stuck with. Not only is the aesthetic overly cute-looking and flat, but the character designs feel more confused and haphazzard. Like, we all remember the glasses-wearing clown-fro dude from Union X, right? Even the designs of Xehanort and Eraqus' friends from Dark Road feel very generic anime-inspired, like any typical unlockable character you could get from a free-to-play Tencent game or something. I think the story in these games is good, I could just never get with the aesthetic they tried to push, mainly because it doesn't feel like they ever really had a strong aesthetic at all. It feels more like they just cobbled together different random elements in character designs and plopped them against a flat 2D backdrop like some kind of glorified playable clip-art presentation. I think these games could have benefited from a stronger guiding theme in their art style and designs, because it feels kind of vacuous from an aesthetic standpoint.
Anyway, let me know what you guys think, and please let me know if I'm not making sense with any of these points and I'll try to clarify.
