Note: Merely discussing the content of this game -- or even just looking at the below cover -- paves way for some early spoilers regarding Kingdom Hearts II. If you're planning on going into the series blind, you'd best skip ahead.
And so begins not just
Kingdom Hearts further wedging itself into the realm of indecipherable names, but spawning what remains its biggest folly: an endless line of "bridge" games consisting of side-stories, prequels, and pseudo-sequels, all for the purpose of either divulging a particular interim between certain games or setting the stage for
Kingdom Hearts III. Be it the fault of a developer (Square-Enix) caring only to capitalize upon a successful brand or the burgeoning over-ambition of a short-sighted director (Tetsuya Nomura), it's vital to discuss why, exactly, this direction was problematic, beginning with the most obvious reason: it's been eleven years since the first three spin-off games (
358/2 Days,
Birth by Sleep, and
Re:coded) were announced, and we're only just getting
Kingdom Hearts III this year. Whoops.
This past decade's worth of wasted time and frustration is more than enough for fans to jump ship, especially when factoring in cost: over the next six years, engaging in the full
Kingdom Hearts experience required the purchase of a Sony PlayStation 2, a Nintendo DS, a Sony PSP and a Nintendo 3DS. Being an episodic series, this is not like
Final Fantasy's individualized entries where one can simply pass, say,
Final Fantasy IX on PlayStation and pick up
Final Fantasy X on PlayStation 2 without missing any context; nay, you must at the very
least engage in
Birth by Sleep and
Dream Drop Distance to make any sense of the series hereafter, and for the most dedicated of
Kingdom Hearts fans, that potentially means shelling out cash for systems you don't particularly want (or, in my example, you're lucky enough to know someone at college who's willing to let you borrow their PSP and copy of
Birth by Sleep).
