I want to replay all of Kingdom Hearts. I haven’t revisited the earlier games in a long time, and I figured with Kingdom Hearts IV roughly a year and change away, I have enough time to take this lengthy trip down a memory lane that Disney and Square have been building for 25 years. I’ve been playing the upcoming Kingdom Hearts Collection [I~III] on Switch 2, and with this collection bringing just about every game to Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, everyone is about to have an easy way to jump right in. Playing through a bunch of games is a real commitment, and nothing holds you more to a commitment than accountability. So what if we all held each other accountable with a year-long playalong?
Introducing Guiding Key, a regular, book club–style series in which Kotaku writers, as well as friends from around the industry, will play through and chat about the Kingdom Hearts series piece by piece, all leading to playing Kingdom Hearts IV together when the game finally launches in late 2027. These posts are going to be a bit free-flowing in terms of format, but each will chronicle our journey through the story of Sora and friends, and can give folks an anchor for their own playthroughs of these games, opening up avenues of discussion and critique as we go through all 25 years of Square Enix and Disney’s emotional crossover epic. As folks follow us on this journey, we’ll be highlighting reader comments, letting folks submit questions and topics, and trying to make this a communal experience.
Obviously this is a massive undertaking, and even if you don’t play with us, we’d love for you to follow along with our Disney world-hopping journeys as we go from Destiny Islands to Quadratum. The idea is that we’ll have monthly posts dedicated to each game (with the mainline numbered games being spread across three months to accommodate play time), as well as shorter blogs throughout that time if something specific really stands out as cool, memorable, or perhaps frustrating, as we go. However, because some of the games are not readily accessible on modern platforms, we’ll likely just watch the cutscenes for games like 358/2 Days and Re:coded, which are included on the modern collections in lieu of the full games. Each post will include a quick list of sections they’ll be covering, so you’ll know if you’ve caught up to where we are.
This will be in flux a bit because life is unpredictable and new game releases may take up our time, but the rough schedule we’re looking at is as follows:
- Kingdom Hearts: October-December 2026
- Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories: January 2027
- Kingdom Hearts II: February-April 2027
- Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and Re:Coded: May 2027
- Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep: June 2027
- Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance and A Fragmentary Passage: July 2027
- A watch through of the unplayable mobile games Kingdom Hearts Union χ Dark Road: August 2027
- Kingdom Hearts III and the Re:Mind DLC: August-October 2027
- Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory: November 2027
- Kingdom Hearts IV: Late 2027
Will I have gone insane by the end? Will I somehow leave this replay more enthused by Kingdom Hearts III than I was seven years ago? Let’s find out together! The first introductory “episode” of Guiding Key will go up Thursday, October 8, when Kingdom Hearts Collection [I~III] launches on Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
