How To Play The Kingdom Hearts Series In Chronological Order

Kingdom Hearts 358

The Kingdom Hearts series is long and often a bit confusing, having run for over 20 years with a dozen or so main series games that jump all over the place in the timeline. It’s actually not all that confusing if you play all the games, but playing in order of release can be a bit of a headache at times.

We don’t particularly recommend playing the series in chronological order, as there’s a lot that can be spoiled and even more that has much more of an impact if played in release order, but knowing how it all pieces together is important. We’ve already ranked all the Kingdom Hearts games from worst to best – arguably an even worse order to play them in – but today we’re going from start to finish.

This is a list of every Kingdom Hearts game in chronological order, from the very start of the golden era of keyblade wielders to the end of the Dark Seeker saga — and beyond.

Be warned though, there are spoilers here.

Kingdom Hearts UX

Technically, Kingdom Hearts X Back Cover – a film included in the HD 2.8 collection – and Kingdom Hearts X – a Japan-exclusive browser game – are the earliest stories in the timeline, but neither of them are really playable so they don’t make the cut. UX isn’t really playable either, since it was taken offline, but you can at least watch videos of the story online. This game is set in the age of fairytales, just after the Keyblade War. It’s lore-heavy, and features a lot of characters who will surprisingly turn up later, hundreds of years into the future.

Kingdom Hearts Dark Road

Dark Road is a game about a young Xehanort, who would go on to become the main villain of the Dark Seeker saga and get involved in a lot of time travel shenanigans. It features characters like Eraqus, who later becomes a keyblade master, and more or less directly leads into Birth By Sleep, which is the first big game in the series — chronologically speaking, of course.

Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep

Birth By Sleep is a pretty big game, telling the story of three keyblade wielders who set into motion some pretty major events that ultimately end with Sora, Riku, and Kairi wielding keyblades in the future. We also get to see Master Xehanort at his most menacing, and Terra, Aqua, and Ven’s fates are sealed, which will be a big thing when Kingdom Hearts 3 comes around. It’s set about 10 years prior to the start of Kingdom Hearts.

Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth By Sleep -A fragmentary passage-

The most ridiculously named game in the series, 0.2 is set almost immediately after Birth By Sleep, and focuses on a lone Aqua traversing the realm of darkness. Time works differently on the other side, though, and while you only spend a dozen hours in this game wandering the realm of darkness, it actually stretches the length of Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts 2, and the very start of Kingdom Hearts 3. It’s also famous for being the game that gives a canon reason for Mickey not wearing a shirt in the finale of Kingdom Hearts.

Kingdom Hearts

The game that started it all isn’t actually the first chronologically. Who knew there was so much story to tell before the series even started? Kingdom Hearts is the logical starting point for most players, but it’s definitely not the start of the series’ timeline, not by a few thousand years. Thankfully, from here on in, the timeline gets a lot less messy… although you’ll notice how I said less messy. You’ll see.

Kingdom Hearts Chain Of Memories

Chain of Memories takes place immediately after the finale of the first Kingdom Hearts game, and has Sora wandering the halls of Castle Oblivion and facing off against the mysterious Organization. There’s not a particularly large jump in time after Kingdom Hearts, the opening cutscene for this game is set mere moments after the closing cutscene from the first game.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

If we’re being picky, technically this game starts before Chain of Memories, but that’s much less than a quarter of the game. The vast majority of this game takes place after Chain of Memories, and tells the story of Roxas, Sora’s Nobody(ish) who joins the Organization to help bring about Kingdom Hearts.

Kingdom Hearts 2

Set vaguely one year after the end of the first game, and immediately following the ending of 358/2 Days, Kingdom Hearts 2 has you starting as Roxas and then transitioning to play as Sora because of story reasons. It’s one of the best games in the Kingdom Hearts series, so it’s worth playing all the others to get up to this point.

Kingdom Hearts Coded

Nothing much of note happens in this game, although it does very vaguely connect to Kingdom Hearts 3 in a dumb way. This happens pretty much immediately after the ending of Kingdom Hearts 2, and if you watch the story play out in the HD collection, you’ll get a nice connection to the next chronological game.

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance

Dream Drop Distance is the best Kingdom Hearts game. It’s supposed to be set about a year after Kingdom Hearts 2, though if you play through all of them the timeline doesn’t quite add up. But hey, Sora and Riku spent a little bit of time in the world of darkness at the end of KH2, so maybe time just distorted a teensy bit. This game has Sora and Riku embarking on their Mark of Mastery exam, and leads directly into Kingdom Hearts 3.

Kingdom Hearts 3

It’s not quite clear how much time passes between Dream Drop Distance and Kingdom Hearts 3, but it’s not a significant amount — just enough time for characters to move around a bit and put plans into place. This is technically the end of the Dark Seeker saga, and has the final confrontation between Sora’s band of merry keyblade wielders and Xehanort’s 13 vessels of pure darkness.

Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory

Surprise! The rhythm game spinoff has important lore. About a year after the end of Kingdom Hearts 3, Kairi and the gang are searching for Sora. Why? I can’t tell you, that’s too big of a spoiler. But they’re looking for him.

Related: Why Aqua Is The Best Keyblade Wielder