It also possibly could have been remedied by naming it “Kingdom Hearts 358 Days/2,” but perhaps it was just a stylistic choice. Why it is pronounced “three-five-eight” and not “three-hundred and fifty-eight” is unbeknownst to me.
I said there would be math involved, but not like this. “Three-five-eight days over two.” Not this “three-hundred and fifty-eight divided by two days” or whatever nonsense everyone has been spouting. “Three-five-eight days over two.” Say it with me again. But you probably skipped out on Re:coded-not only does it once again go through old worlds from the first game, but the story basically sets up the 3DS title Dream Drop Distance for that to set up Kingdom Hearts III. Listen, I said that the titles make sense, not the games. Turns out the data (or the code, rather!) is corrupt, and the characters… make a digital Sora… to clean up the bugs. Rather than focusing on memory, Coded focuses on data, with our Disney Castle characters (King Mickey, Donald Duck, Goofy, and chronicler Jiminy Cricket) digitizing Jiminy’s journal of Sora and co.’s adventures. See, this game has computers as the main focus. That mobile version never left Japan, but the rest of the world got to experience the Nintendo DS remake called Kingdom Hearts Re:coded (see above for the “Re:” explanation). Like, old phones with buttons before gacha games were a thing. The first of three handheld Kingdom Hearts titles simultaneously announced for release, Coded (or “ coded” in lowercase letters if you care about their styling) came out on mobile phones. If you think hacking and computers in film and television are silly, wait ’til you get a load of Kingdom Hearts Coded. I’d also like to think that the antagonist Xemnas trying to create his own Kingdom Hearts would give the title a meta element by having the second Kingdom Hearts we’ve seen-that would probably make too much sense, though. Need more proof that it’s a sequel? Sora’s got new clothes.Īlso, Chain of Memories is mostly summed up visually in the opening FMV of Kingdom Hearts II, basically making you play that game by transitive property if you missed it. KH II, on the other hand, iterated on the hack-and-slash third-person action-RPG combat from the first proper game. If you want a point of reference from Western games, think about how Brotherhood and Revelations in Assassin’s Creed came between AC2 and AC3.Ĭhain of Memories was a side story with a completely different card battle system, summarizing events from the first game. Wait a second, why is Chain of Memories not Kingdom Hearts II and why isn’t this Kingdom Hearts III? Semantics is a weird thing, especially when it comes to video game titles. Let’s just say that “Re:” means “remake” or “revisit” or “redoing,” or what have you, and not “regarding” like in email chains.
This game got a rerelease for the PlayStation 2 called Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories that remade the entire game in 3D. At the same time, as the trio makes their way up the castle, their memories begin to fade, thanks to some trickery from Organization XIII and their memory-manipulating “witch” named Naminé. The main trio of Sora, Donald, and Goofy are going through the Castle Oblivion, which recreates several Disney worlds based on Sora’s own memories. First released on the Game Boy Advance, this game served double duty in advancing the story while also retelling some story beats from the very first game, which those who exclusively own Nintendo consoles weren’t able to experience (at first).Īs one can probably guess from the title, memory is the primary story theme this time around. It didn’t take too long for Tetsuya Nomura and friends to get into handheld spin-offs for Kingdom Hearts.
While Kingdom Hearts may have caught the same bug, allow me to try to make sense of all of these titles. Square Enix always likes to keep it esoteric and straight-up bizarre-don’t forget that Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring and Murdered: Soul Suspect are absolutely real titles for games they have published. I won’t defend the lore as a whole (especially now that time travel is in the mix), but where I will start is with the game titles.
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I’m here to make a wild claim: the Kingdom Hearts series is not as impenetrable as it seems. With numerous spin-off games across platforms, soapy drama, a web of character relationships, and the presence of Skrillex, the Kingdom Hearts series makes the most convoluted anime shows seem as simple as a children’s picture book in comparison. Kingdom Hearts III is dangerously close to release, and like a bunch of high school students cramming the night before a test they knew about weeks in advance, everyone is trying to make sense of the lore beforehand. Editor’s Note: As we’ll dive into the explanations behind each of the Kingdom Hearts games’ titles and meanings (or try to), some spoilers will follow for the past series entries before Kingdom Hearts III‘s release.