Since Birth By Sleep came out I felt that the Kingdom Hearts franchise was getting way too complicated for its own good. Too many characters, too many side stories, too many paths that connect to other paths, plot twists that made no sense... I don't mean that it was difficult to follow as a story... but facing the inevitable "final" chapter of said story that would be KH III, I could see that it was gonna be almost impossible to make something remotely good out of all of this. And it only got worse with Dream Drop Distance, 0.2 A Fragmentary Passage and Union X (and all its iterations).

Now KH III is among us... and at least for me it was incredibly disappointing and frustrating from a story perspective. It tried too hard to connect everyone and everything with no success, almost all of the characters behaved very differently from what they were stablished to be in past entries, the good guys suck and always and I mean ALWAYS fail at everything they try to do, the villain's motivations totally changed from what he himself said in BbB and DDD and because of that he lost appealing as a character, death means nothing to the series... and I could be here all day.

In my opinion, all this problems exist because Nomura just kept creating games out of nowhere and expanding the story without really taking into account that one day he would have to put an end to it. And when that day arrived, he just wasn't able to handle all the shit he created and made the mess that is Kingdom Hearts III.

As much as I hate how much south the franchise has gone, there is no way to fix this situation now. It is what it is. However, we are free to dream and wonder about how the franchise could have been if Nomura actually thought ahead of time and stoped milking it non stop. And I arrived to the this "alternate timeline". I want to know what do you think of it:

Kingdom Hearts I: Remains as it is for obvious reasons.

Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories: Remains as it is. It's a very good story on its own and it connects nicely with KH II.

Kingdom Hearts II: I would keep almost everything about it... except for any reference to Birth by Sleep found on the Final Mix version and its secret ending. No Aqua, no Ventus, no Terra, no Xehanort not being just Ansem's aprentice... Non of that. I would keep the Lingering Will fight and vanilla KH II ending, but without any specific context.

Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep: This one gets absolutely discarded as we know it. If anything, I would make a true spin off based on the secret ending of vanilla KH II. It would be set in a far away past from the first Kingdom Hearts and it would have its own contained story with its own characters and worlds... and it would have no direct connection to the main KH story.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days: We can keep this one. Just as Chain of Memories, it has a pretty good story on its own, it connects very well with both I, II and CoM and it doesn't change many things about the main story. If anything, it explains some interesting things (although not ultimately relevant) about many of the major characters on the franchise. The major introduction is Xion, but since it dies on this game and no one remembers her, we are good to go.

Kingdom Hearts RE Coded: Discarded. Unlike Days or CoM, this one has a pretty forgetable story that doesn't really do anything for the overall plot. Also, it references many aspects of BbS... so it cannot survive this purge.

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance: Totally discarded. This one drove the KH story to an even darker place than BbS. Time travel, Xehanorts everywhere, Organization XIII being a joke, Nobodies growing hearts naturally... Yup, I don't need any of that.

Kingdom Hearts Union X: Gone too. We don't need a subpar mobile game that from time to time connects major story elements to the main series because reasons.

Now, with all the mistakes corrected, we can go directly to KH III. With the changes I proposed, we would have probably got the game for PS3 or at most, early PS4. And if Nomura thought of an interesting conclusion, we could have had an actual good ending to Kingdom Hearts. I can't really say how the story would be with all the changes I made... but it would start with the letter King Mickey sent to Sora and Riku at the end of KH II. That's all I know...

What do you think?

I love KH, I played KH1 and 2 loads, then played BSB (never owned) years later because essentially it was teased at the end of 2 (playing as Lingering Will was one of the best boss fights I'd had) I have not purchase KH3 yet. I for some reason cannot bring myself to buy it and play it. Part of me knows that the convoluted story they've formed as part of the 700 spin offs may put me off the game (heard cut scene pacing was awful as well), when all I want to do is play as Sora beating up a Darkness powered Jafar. Even KH2 had weird things in it that didn't make sense or they tried to explain.

I'd long since given up on the story due to the 'spin-offs' affecting the main story.

Ive played most of them. Its really a convoluted story. I forget characters from game to game.

While I did not forget any characters, I can definitely understand how others could xD

KH III story is a mess in every aspect you can think about. If you don't feel like playing it, I would not recommend you to do it.

Yeah, someone would say something like "we have to go after Xemnas!"

Who the fuck was that again...?

No issues with Birth By Sleep, Dream Drop Distance i wouldn't disregard completely but maybe compress it a little.

My initial hate of the story came from KH2. Yay back when I played KH1, played as this little kid with Donald and Goofy at my side, fought Sephiroth in a gladiator arena, fought Darkness enhanced chameleon with Clayton riding on the back. Great stuff like that, then the villain was voiced by f*ing Billy f*ing Zane. Glorious.

Come KH2, wait.. who's Roxas? Where's Sora? Let me play Sora. *gets' to play Sora* What do you mean the bad guy from the first game isn't a real bad guy and his name wasn't even the name he went by? Huh? Oh cool, I'm fighting along side Beast again and defeating Darkness Scar as a little lion, cool. Sorry was I meant to feel something for this Axel guy as he dies? I've no idea who he is.

I liked BSB because timewise it's the first so story wise it's not really that confusing. Bad guy wants power, blah blah. Plus I enjoyed the dice mini board game bits.

I'll pick it up when it's £10 and ignore the story as long as the gameplay is KH as ever.

Kingdom Hearts is such a giant mess. My kids still enjoy it, so there is that. But overall half the levels in KH3 seem lazy, the other half rehash too much from the current movies. Additionally there are far too many cut scenes. And the story, I don't even understand the basics.

I disagree, I am very satisfy with Kh3 and the overall story of the series