Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue

Okay, now things have just gotten silly. Long have us patient Kingdom Hearts fans weathered wacky names in 358/2 Days and Re:Coded all for the sake of Kingdom Hearts III's ever-nebulous release, but Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue? That's not just absurd -- that's pretentious word salad scribbled straight from the aspiring teenager debuting their Kingdom Hearts/Animorphs/My Little Pony crossover fanfiction into the world. Not that Kingdom Hearts wasn't already a fanfictional fever dream in itself, but how on earth am I supposed to say that with a straight face? Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue -- gads, even just typing that feels nasty. Thankfully, our ever-oblivious director in Tetsuya Nomura comes to the rescue with his faux-rocket science:

"This Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance compilation follows the previously HD work 2.5...and is worthy as taking its place as 2.6. Since Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover/Kingdom Hearts Unchained is supposed to be the first game in the mainline series, that is being represented as '0' in the collection. And lastly, Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep is '0.1' and that then leads into Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep."

Where do I even begin? The made-up math? The constant name influx? That despite said collection including Dream Drop Distance -- the convoluted but necessary step into the upcoming finale -- the presence of tech demo Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep -A fragmentary passage- and movie Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover only further inflates the baggage of confusing names and superfluous events? Granted, maybe the latter's unfair to 0.2 -- god, did I really just type that? -- but we'll get into that later.

Worldly Weekend: Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance

You know what? I'm skipping ahead. I don't have to play Kingdom Hearts: re:Coded to know it's utterly expendable to the series at large and that it was only designed for capitalizing upon the brand.  The latter's particularly indefensible upon having the arduous displeasure of watching its movie adaption in Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HD ReMIX, wherein I was begging, pleading for the bloated mess to end. We'll get to that when the time comes, but needless to say, I have very little interest in repeating my trauma with something so mercenary.

Anyway, here we are with 2012's Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance for 3DS. Commemorating Kingdom Hearts' tenth anniversary, it's only fitting that a) this would be the very last game to (finally!) utilize the original graphical engines and b) this would be the first in a line of games paving the way to Kingdom Hearts III. In fairness, I cannot recall if the latter was an explicit decision (the "lineup" bit, I mean), but it certainly exists now: there's the mobile Kingdom Hearts χ (which I haven't bothered with, and apparently will have key references in Kingdom Hearts III; groovy) and 2/3rds of Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue: the playable Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep – A Fragmentary Passage (the very end of which directly leads into Kingdom Hearts III's opening) and Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover. (A cinematic adaption of the aforementioned mobile game, which further convinced me it wasn't bothering with.)