For 9 years I avoided the hardest test of my favorite ARPG, now I would recommend it to everyone

MeinMMO editor Nikolas Hernes has looked at the new Kingdom Hearts collection as a big fan of the series. He has grown to love one part of the series even more – thanks to a special challenge.

On October 8, the Kingdom Hearts Collection will be released for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2. The game is a huge package with 7 playable titles – basically an overview of the action RPG series, excluding the rhythm game Melody of Memory and the mobile games. Square Enix has provided us with the collection in advance, and I played it on the Nintendo Switch 2.

During my playtime, I mainly focused on Kingdom Hearts 2: Final Mix, my favorite part of the series. After almost 20 years, I dared to take on a challenge I had feared for years – and it was fantastic.

A challenge that reveals the true potential of the game

I played the game in critical mode. In this mode, enemies deal double damage, but you also deal 25% more damage. However, you start with only 50 AP, which are the points used to distribute abilities. Accordingly, you start with strong abilities that you can equip.

Since that wasn’t hard enough, I also equipped EXP Zero. This results in receiving no experience points. 

It sounds like pure torture, but even though I struggled with some bosses and haven’t managed to finish the game yet, I realized how good the combat system really is.

While on normal difficulty you can simply spam the attack button, in Veteran mode you really need to utilize everything: spells, summons, and also the Drive transformations.

Kingdom Hearts 2 shows how well thought out and well-built the combat system is:

• Spells have combos, but you need to keep an eye on the mana bar.
• If you attack in the air, you have a higher attack speed.
• Summons give you a brief invulnerability but also cost the entire mana bar, which only regenerates after a cooldown.
• The counter will be your best friend.
• You will come to love the chicken from Chicken Little.

These are just small parts that show the multitude of options available. Action games are best when they provide players with various options to solve situations. You have to make decisions and use your own toolbox. Do you prefer to use spells from a distance and wait for the casting animation and later cooldown, or do you go in with melee attacks and risk getting hit more easily?

It’s also important to note how many hits an opponent can take before they are guaranteed to get an attack through: Every button press must be perfectly coordinated so that you don’t suddenly die from a counterattack.

You need to learn every encounter, and especially with the bosses, you will die at least once to understand the best tactic to defeat them.

Bosses always feel very tough, but never unfair. Kingdom Hearts 2 avoids making hard bosses just have more health. While bosses have fixed stats and do not scale, the game never lets me deal too little damage, not even at level 1. 

Additionally, as a player, you become stronger without level-ups because unlocked abilities are tied to story progression. This allows you to build a repertoire and even create your own builds: Do you want longer combos or shorter ones that achieve a strong conclusion faster?

But I will be honest with you: You still need a damn lot of patience because you will often die, and not just with bosses. But unlike many Souls bosses, it never felt too frustrating because I always knew what I could have done better.

This was even fun because I tried out more mechanics and combined them (I never thought I would love the spell Magnet so much).

With this mix and the many mechanics that come together in Veteran, Kingdom Hearts 2 is one of the best action titles of all time and offers one of the best combat systems of all time, which I even think about outside of actual gaming.

There is nothing like Kingdom Hearts

Kingdom Hearts is absurd, chaotic, but also special. When visiting the worlds and listening to the music, a mix of melancholy and nostalgia is created – no wonder when you go through the Disney movies of your childhood.

But it is precisely this crazy mix that still fascinates me today, and in my opinion, it works best in Kingdom Hearts 2 because it has a nice balance of Disney worlds, Final Fantasy, and its own identity. Later parts (especially 3) focused more on Disney and Pixar, which slightly diminished the atmosphere.

What I love about all parts of the series is the playful joy with mechanics and special moves that you might only see once but which characterize the Disney worlds even more. When you pull off an impressive finisher together with the Beast or Mulan, you can’t help but gaze at the TV and enjoy – this aspect fascinated me just as much back then as it does today.

Now that I’ve learned to appreciate the combat system more, I love Kingdom Hearts 2 even more. For me, it’s the best part of the series, and those who want to catch up on the series can get 7 games and the DLC for the 3rd part with the collection. Additionally, there are film summaries of smaller games in the series that make the story more understandable (or less understandable) for you. So, anyone who has never played the series has a good collection here. However, players who already have the other versions, such as for the PS4, do not need to get this one.

What about the other games in the collection?

I like all the playable parts of the collection because they have their own peculiarities, strengths, but also weaknesses. Especially Birth by Sleep has captivated me alongside the 2nd part. The beauty of the different games is also the different Disney worlds – there are a lot of them.

I’m also happy to finally play the games properly on the Nintendo Switch 2. Previously, there were only cloud versions, which are no longer available. However, a note should be made about Kingdom Hearts 3: The game does not run as smoothly as the other titles, and especially in handheld mode, there may be frame drops, which didn’t bother me. But if you are sensitive to this, you should rather opt for the other versions of the collection.

I can only recommend playing the 2nd part on the highest difficulty, as you truly notice how good and well-thought-out the combat system really is. If you are interested in the biggest release this year, look at this article: 12 Screenshots of GTA 6 crash a gaming site: There has never been a release like GTA 6