This is the second collection of Kingdom Hearts games on Steam, coming after 1.5+2.5, and directly before 3. As I mentioned in my review of 1.5+2.5, Kingdom Hearts is one of my favorite game franchises, and like the other entries, I had a lot of fun 100%-ing these games as well.

Don't start the series with this collection. If you're interested, play the games in order. It's easy to get lost in this series even if you play them in order and pay close attention, so it would be extra difficult using this entry as a starting point.

Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance is a very interesting entry in this series. It uses the command deck system from Birth By Sleep while forcing you to swap between Sora and Riku at regular intervals. It also replaces your party members with Dream Eaters, which are similar to Pokemon, and it's incredibly important that you take care of them because that's where you get your passive abilities.

On top of all that, Dream Drop Distance has the most confusing story in the whole series, introducing time travel as a main plot element, taking place in settings that may or may not be the dreams of individuals or worlds, and detailing the villain's convoluted plan for every game in the series so far. And unfortunately, this game is absolutely vital to the plot of Kingdom Hearts 3.

Given all these strange elements, it would make sense if this entry was either the best or worst in the series. For me, I think it's one of the weaker entries, but still pretty enjoyable. It helps a lot that the DDD achievements were easier to get than most of the rest of the series, and the Disney worlds might just be the best in the whole series so far. Also, the crossover in Traverse Town was one I loved, since it's a crossover with one of my other all-time favorite games.

And then there's the game with the worst title in the series: Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth By Sleep: A Fragmentary Passage (at least this was the entry where they started giving the side games numbers to indicate their place in the timeline). I think this game was essentially a tech demo of the Kingdom Hearts 3 engine that was included to add a second playable game in this collection (this game was never released apart from the collection). Actually, despite all that, this might be my favorite entry in the whole series. It follows Aqua, my favorite KH protagonist, and her travels through the Realm of Darkness in the time between Birth By Sleep and Kingdom Hearts 1. The Dark World is a little depressing, but very imaginative, a little surreal, and beautiful. This game is more of a character study than the plot-heavy stories in the rest of the series, and it really only connects to the main story at the end. It only takes about four hours to get through this game. Getting to 100% is a bit more difficult, but still doesn't take too much time. I really love the shorter length of this game, especially after the absolute grind-fest that was Birth By Sleep.

This collection also includes Kingdom Hearts Chi Back Cover, which is a cutscene movie that summarizes the important points from that version of the mobile game. I tried to play through KH Union Cross when that was the current version, and if KH Chi was anything like it, then I'm glad to have a good way to skip the game and cut to the relevant story. It takes place in the distant past of the KH world, and sets up characters and plot points that are relevant in the ending of KH3 and, supposedly, beyond. The pace is pretty slow, but the story was interesting enough as background. Unfortunately, I'm not nearly as good at critiquing film as I am at interactive media...

Overall, this collection is probably the weakest of the three bundles you can buy on Steam at the moment, but it's still worth playing, and you should still probably just buy and play through the games in the original release order (1.5+2.5, then 2.8, then 3).

Another goty

guy from smash part 2

its fun and very high performanced. Its amazing.

DDD is a great game if you don't mind engaging with the RPG side of the Action RPG formula. Fragmentary Passage is very short, but works well as an interlude and explanation of some events between games.

Try to get it on discount, if you can.

Dream Drop Distance boss fight setups are poorly designed sometimes having little space and oversized enemies. Also the timed character drop outs are inconvenient

This collection is mostly just Dream Drop Distance with the short adventure that is 0.2, so its not as fantastic of a deal as the previous collection, but DDD is definitely worth playing if you love the Kingdom Hearts series and if you intend to play Kingdom Hearts 3.