I wonder if I'd be lost with the story if I started the series with this game...

It depends on how much of the series' mythology is built into this game.  If you really want to jump into the series, I'd probably recommend the PSP's Birth By Sleep because of its prequel nature.  This series has an absurdly convoluted story at this point, though (especially once you take into account all the important cutscenes only available in the Japan-only "international editions").  I've played all the games except the DS installments (which are relatively unimportant story-wise and are generally considered the weaker games in the series), and even I have had trouble following it.  I would suggest jumping into this series with the first Kingdom Hearts or Birth By Sleep.  Otherwise, don't bother.

Just play the first one.
Then play the second one up to the Tron World.  Enjoy that world for being awesome and lament that the rest of the game isn't as good as the first one.

Then Stop.

Personally, I liked Kingdom Hearts 2 a lot more than Kingdom Hearts 1, though the story in KH1 is perhaps not "better" but much easier to follow.  The game is just so much faster and your companion AI is nowhere near as suicidal/idiotic as they were in the first game (between Donald constantly getting himself killed trying to run into groups of heartless and Goofy spamming my potions...).  Plus, I just liked the worlds overall much better in KH2.

I thought the AI of the Companions was better in KH2.  I thought the story was meh.  From memory about half the worlds didn't feel like rehashes in 2.  My big problem with it is the combat just isn't as tight as in the original.  You didn't have much of a choice on whole how you built your Sora.

I think design and content wise, Kingdom Hearts II was the best. It had a great variety of Disney franchises, some sweet Final Fantasy cameos, and the battle engine was really, really fun. It did, however, had the "weaker" story. The first Kingdom Hearts I think had the tightest story since it focused its development on Sora and friends and the Disney characters he visited. Nowadays, the story is about whatever organization trying to do something regarding hearts, and whatever protagonist is available at the time trying to defeat them while having an existential, emotional crisis in the process... and it features Disney characters and worlds. Don't get me wrong, though, Kingdom Hearts was still unnecessarily complicated and it was very emo every once in a while. The difference is that it was all countered by the cheery, silly and fun disposition of Disney, so it all managed to balance out, hence why the game is more iconic and more fondly remembered than any of its sequels.

Can I be the weird one and say that Birth By Sleep is the perfect mix of KH1 and KH2? It's my favorite KH game with an amazing upgrade of the battle system.


I don't consider Re:Coded or 358/2 Days to be KH games. I hate them so damn much. Same with CoM, though Re:CoM is pretty good.


But yeah. Birth By Sleep > KH2 > KH > Re:CoM. Hopefully KH3D will be great too.

Birth By Sleep would probably be my favorite Kingdom Hearts series if it weren't for Terra's story being so incredibly boring (and Terra being so slow in combat that he's not fun to play as); Aqua's story largely being unimportant until nearly the end of the game; and Aqua herself pretty much being made of glass considering how little damage she can take.  Seriously, if you took a shot every time the word "darkness" is spoken in Terra's story, you'd die of liver poisoning before you reached the halfway point.  I really enjoyed playing as Ventus in that game, though.

I agree to a point, but what I really disliked about BBS (probably the only thing I disliked) was the very uninspired voice acting. Compared to previous games, it's a big let down.

Eh, I thought it was pretty decent overall.  The two characters I had big issues with on that were Aqua and Terra, both performances suffering from a distinct lack of effort.  That could also just be the script, though, which isn't exactly the most inspired piece of writing/localization.  Leonard Nimoy gave it a good shot as Master Xehanort, but I don't think any voice actor could have made his clunky dialogue sound convincing.

Then again, this is the franchise where a main character has at least three different personalities, and where another major character has had at least three versions of himself running around (and a large chunk of the recurring cast have had two versions of themselves running around).  And that's just the tip of the depths of insanity that this franchise has dipped into story-wise.  I don't envy the poor localization team that has to try to make this nonsense sound convincing and coherent.  That's why I suggest newcomers either start with the first game or Birth By Sleep.  You really don't want to come into this franchise late into the story.

I find it pretty ironic that Jesse McCartney seems to have the most emotion when it came to BBS. I remember when the whole internet was bitching about him before KH2.


I've seen some people start the series with either DS title, which is pretty hilarious.


I've pretty much lost faith in the series, unless 3D is good and KH3 comes out in the next three years.

I enjoyed Birth by Sleep a lot, even if in comparison to Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, it is a pretty light, streamlined game in terms of content. I really liked the story and how it told it through three different perspective, even if I agree that Terra and Aqua were as emotionally enthralling as a piece of toast.

Basically the problem with the games as of now is that each story now has to somehow line up with the rest of the games ala Star Wars prequels, and it hurts the quality of the games. This I find sad because Kingdom Hearts I think is a great success in crossover events. It was a concept that was insane but somehow worked. It also has a story I really liked.

I just looked at the Pictures.  I like the old Tron styled they used better.