After a period of Epic Games Store exclusivity on PC, the Kingdom Hearts Dark Seeker Saga (comprising of Kingdom Hearts I-III, the previously handheld-exclusive Birth By Sleep, Re: Chain of Memories and Dream Drop Distance spin-offs, as well as a HD cutscene compilation for the DS-exclusive 358/2 Days and Re: Coded games), is finally on Steam. This release comes with some minor texture upgrades (also coming to the Epic Games Store versions), achievement support and cloud saves, making it an excellent way of diving back into these classic titles (if you haven’t already bought one of the console versions, at least).
The Kingdom Hearts games’ grand overarching storyline was never the easiest to follow, even having all the games side-by-side to play through. The franchise started out as a relatively straightforward action-RPG featuring Final Fantasy characters and worlds based on classic Disney movies back in 2002. Since then, the games’ sprawling mythology has gradually expanded to the extent that you might need a flowchart and a free afternoon to go over all the optional in-game reports and journal entries in order to make sense of exactly what is going on by the third game. On the other hand, the series’ leads, particularly Haley Joel Osment as Sora, David Gallagher as Riku and Jesse McCartney as Roxas and Ventus, deliver their often nonsense lines with enough conviction that you generally get on board with the stakes even if you have no idea exactly what the bad guys’ plans are supposed to entail. If you prefer the original Japanese audio, that is also handily included as an option.