Trying to break into Kingdom Hearts is a nightmare.
One of the biggest TV and movie tropes in the last decade has been the multiverse, the idea of exploring multiple dimensions to uncover alternate versions of existing ideas. From both a business and creative perspective, it makes sense why established franchises are shaking things up in this way.
However, there aren't many video games latching on to this trend, as rendering multiple worlds in real-time is a difficult feat and the medium is relatively young in comparison to its contemporaries, making crossover opportunities more difficult. Still, there are a few great titles that manage enough to overcome these challenges, and here are some of the best examples.
While I love someone mentioning Planescape, not really multiverse. Planes and dimensions, yes. But, they are typically their own locations and are very rarely tied to another 'verse' let alone another plane. The only things that are directly tied are the ethereal and material planes. Otherwise, they are dimensions created of their own design and goals by the creator/owner and not comprised of 'their own version of another dimension'.
NP: “When I played through Final Fantasy XVI, I occasionally found what I believed to be evident Kingdom Hearts gameplay inspirations that I’d rather not detail here due to spoilers. Still, with it having been previously confirmed that Kingdom Hearts staff was working on this title, the notion wasn’t all that surprising.
However, I didn’t realize how truly instrumental Kingdom Hearts team members were in developing Final Fantasy XVI. After digging through the title’s credits, I found crucial Kingdom Hearts development staff who played significant roles in ensuring the combat design excelled.”
Kingdom Hearts has become notorious for its strange and often confusing narrative. However, it makes perfect sense when players know what to look for.
Oh so it’s our fault?
No…it’s a convoluted mess because Nomura doesn’t know what he’s doing for the story
No it doesn't, and I've been paying attention. The story is plagued with continuity errors, and inconsistencies. All the spin-offs add more to the story rather than simply being self contained explanations of events that when you really think about it never needed to be told. I can make sense of the story but only by cutting more than half of it out. That's just plain old bad writing.
Even if that is true…which I highly doubt… it’s still horrific story telling. A good story teller doesn’t burden the audience with understanding a needlessly complex plot. This is a series that literally defines itself by throwing a ton of characters together that have no business ever existing in the same universe with one another and then justifying it with a mess of convoluted dialogue.
The only game in the series that succeeded at story telling was the first one because it kept the overarching story fairly simple and focused on developing its central character.
By the time you get to the second one, you have a variety of hooded anime figures dumping exposition to justify their edition to the plot. It only gets worse from there.
Play the first game. That is a simple enough story to get into the series.
My advice; play the games in release order. Alot of people say story chronological order but that can be really confusing. Trust me.
Read the manga, story makes more sense there.
I think a problem that SE is going to run into (or already has run into) with this series is that a lot of the people still following it were kids / teens when they played the first one, and are now much older. I know I'm finding it increasingly hard to tolerate the childishness of some of the stuff in these games, and I'm sure there are plenty of original players who have since just stopped following the series for this reason. I can't count the number of times I was playing KH3 and just feeling like, "What the f*** am I doing?"
SE can keep the series PG-13, and try to get a new audience of kids, but how do they intend to get kids into a series with a story that has been expanding since 2002, and over the course of like a dozen games? Especially when there are already loads of newer franchises out there that have already pretty much cornered the kids / teens market.
Honestly, I think they should either end the series once and for all, or take it in a more mature direction, and ditch the Disney stuff (I know, unpopular opinion, probably). It is a series that hasn't really grown with its audience, I feel. Alternatively, they could try to steer it in a more all-ages Studio Ghibli direction, sort of like Final Fantasy.
Indeed. If you wanna give it a try, just go with 1-3. The other games are unfortunately needed to know but you can just youtube all the cutscenes by order of release of each game.