Square Enix really wants you to get ready for Kingdom Hearts III.
Kingdom Hearts I.5 and Kingdom Hearts II.5 collected just about every entry in the series in remastered forms for PlayStation 3. Now, Square Enix has announced that it will bring the final pieces of the puzzle to a PlayStation 4 collection called Kingdom Hearts II.8. It’ll also include a new playable chapter. To be specific, it contains:
- Dream Drop Distance, previously a Nintendo 3DS game, is the main part of II.8. This is that title’s first release on a console. It’s also the latest game currently in the story’s timeline, so its events lead right up to Kingdom Hearts III.
- Cutscenes from the Japan-only mobile game Kingdom Hearts Unchained χ presented in the collection as Kingdom Hearts χ: Back Cover.
- Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth By Sleep: A Fragmentary Passage (man this series has some weird names). This is a short, playable sequel to Birth By Sleep, which was a prequel to the original Kingdom Hearts.
Above: Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance.
Square Enix has done a nice job collecting the Kingdom Hearts series into these three packages. Previously, games in the franchise were scattered across lots of different platforms, making it hard for fans to keep up unless they owned every system. It didn’t help that each game made the series’ already-confusing lore more complicated, so the company was likely concerned that a lot of fans needed some catching up before it released Kingdom Hearts III for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Kingdom Hearts I.5 HD focused on the original Kingdom Hearts and its first portable release, Chain of Memories. Kingdom Hearts II.5 HD collected Kingdom Hearts II and Birth By Sleep.