Kingdom Hearts Series Best Playing Order

Kingdom Hearts 02

The Kingdom Hearts series is one of the all-time greats of action RPGs, mixing Final Fantasy design sensibilities and vibes with the worlds and characters of Disney. It’s also a series that spans almost a dozen games, and playing those games in the right order is important — not just for keeping the story straight in your head, but to make sure you adapt to gameplay concepts at the right pace.

In the past, we’ve ranked every Kingdom Hearts game, and told you how to play the Kingdom Hearts series in chronological order, but neither of those orders are what we’d consider the best by any stretch of the imagination. That’s what we’re here to rectify, as this list will tell you the best order to play the Kingdom Hearts games.

We’re going by the games and movies featured in Kingdom Hearts 1.5+2.5 HD Remix collection, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, Kingdom Hearts 3, and Melody of Memory — all of which are available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PC, and Nintendo Switch via Cloud if you really hate yourself. We’ll be skipping over the now-defunct Kingdom Hearts UX and Dark Road, the latter of which is technically still available but not particularly relevant to the main saga.

Kingdom Hearts

This is where the series all began, and it’s the best place to start when you’re playing through, too. Kingdom Hearts tells the story of Sora, Riku, and Kairi’s departure from the Destiny Islands, thrusting them into a grand scheme of fate, keyblades, and different worlds.

Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories

Chain of Memories is an immediate sequel to Kingdom Hearts, taking place mere moments after the end of the first game. It has Sora, Donald, and Goofy wandering into the mysterious Castle Oblivion while facing off against the mysterious Organization. On the other side of things, Riku is coming to grips with his descent into Darkness, something that we’ll see a lot of in the rest of the series.

Kingdom Hearts 2

There’s about a year gap in between the end of Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts 2, and while there’s at least one game set in between the two, it’s a much better experience if you go into KH2 first. After a year of sleep (and a short little romp playing as newcomer Roxas), Sora, Donald, and Goofy once again set out, this time to reunite with Kairi and Riku.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

What happened with Roxas in-between Chain of Memories and KH2? Who is Naminé? And why do we start KH2 playing as Roxas instead of Sora? That’s what 358/2 Days is here to explain, among many other things. If you’re on DS, you’ll be able to play as the entire Organization XIII completing missions for Xemnas, but if you’re playing the HD collections, this will be a (very emotional) movie.

Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep

Birth by Sleep is set ten years before the first game in the series, and provides a lot of backstory both for the games already played and for games that are still to come. This is kind of three games in one, with three playable characters: Terra, Aqua, and Ventus. Some of these characters will look a bit familiar, and by the end of the game you’ll have a very good idea of how all the pieces fit together in this wild universe.

Bonus round: The best order to play Birth by Sleep’s character’s is Terra, Ventus, then Aqua. That comes from series creator Tetsuya Nomura himself, so it’s more or less guaranteed to be right. You can, if you want, do Ventus before Terra – we’d recommend not doing that, since Terra’s gameplay is a lot to adapt to right after Ven – but either way, Aqua has to be last.

Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded

Honestly, if Coded was playable in the HD collections, I’d suggest you skip it. It’s a game that can be mostly summed up as ‘fine’, offering little in the way of gameplay or story. It does have little bits and pieces that line up with other games, and gives a teensy bit of extra information about Naminé during and after KH2, but it’s not worth the runtime. Thankfully, in the HD collection, you can just spend an afternoon watching the important parts play out in movie form.

Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep – A Fragmentary Passage

0.2 is a direct sequel to Birth by Sleep, showing Aqua’s journey after that game. It’s a fairly short experience, lasting only three or four hours, and sets up Kingdom Hearts 3 very well. It was actually released after Dream Drop Distance, but we think it’s better suited before playing that, because you’ll get a good idea of what happened when Riku was in the realm of Darkness, and learn a little bit about the Power of Waking, something that is mentioned many times in the next game but not explained all that much.

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance

The last game before Kingdom Hearts 3, but not the last thing you’ll experience before it — you’ll see. Dream Drop Distance has Sora and Riku diving into the hearts of sleeping worlds to wake them – using the aforementioned Power of Waking – and testing themselves to become Keyblade Masters. It leads directly into KH3, and connects a lot of what we’ve seen so far. But there is one more thing…

Kingdom Hearts X Back Cover

Back Cover is set much earlier than any of the games mentioned here, but watching it before anything else gives way too much away. You’ll need to watch it before going into Kingdom Hearts 3, though, because otherwise there’s going to be some huge question marks over certain scenes, especially if you’re going for the secret ending. It’s an hour long and it’s pretty dense, but it’s an alright watch all things considered.

Kingdom Hearts 3

Here we go, the big one. Kingdom Hearts 3 is what all of these other games have been leading up to, the finale of the Dark Seeker Saga and the final(ish) showdown between light and dark. It’s everything you’d expect, and obviously comes last in the list, save for one little epilogue game that gives a little of an insight into what comes next.

Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory

Melody of Memory is set after Kingdom Hearts 3, and has Kairi dealing with the fallout of what happened in Kingdom Hearts 3. It’s a rhythm game, which is obviously different from the rest of the series, and it doesn’t have a great deal of new story, but it is the first game to provide a connective web to whatever might come next for the series.

Related: 10 Disney Worlds We’d Love To See In Kingdom Hearts 4