We played Kingdom Hearts Collection Collection 1-3 on Nintendo Switch 2, here are our thoughts
Posted on September 1, 2026 by Richard Ford in Previews, Switch 2
I’m confident in saying I wasn’t alone in being frustrated when, hot on the heels of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s Sora announcement, instead of getting the 1.5 and 2.5 Kingdom Hearts collections natively on Nintendo Switch, Square Enix revealed cloud versions. The Kingdom Hearts games are amazing, but incredibly time consuming. Players sink dozens and dozens of hours into those action RPGs before reaching the end of each adventure, and there are a lot of titles. Wouldn’t it be nice to play bits and pieces of the games on bus and train journeys?
Well, my frustration and the frustration of every Nintendo Kingdom Hearts fan is at an end, because I was able to play some of the new native ports on Switch 2 at Gamescom, and it felt as good as I always dreamed it would. I was pressed for time, so I only got in about 15 minutes of Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix and Kingdom Hearts 3 + ReMind each in handheld mode, but it was enough to give me an idea of what to expect with these versions.
What immediately jumped out at me, having not played Kingdom Hearts 2 in a decade, was how good those cutscenes at the opening of the game still hold up. Even compared to the first game, they really did push the boat out to make a lasting impression. Again, due to the brief time I had, there wasn’t much time for me to play around with the game, especially because I was locked into Roxas’ tutorial on movement, fighting and looking for a lady’s cat (you can’t reach him, you’re supposed to lock on to him like you would an enemy). After that, you have a little sub-boss with your first true enemy and then we learn that Roxas and Sora are linked, somehow. I won’t spoil how they connect if you’re new to the series.
Everything felt responsive and as it should. Quality of life changes compared to the original release includes widescreen, clearer text, and improved audio. Yoko Shimomura’s beautiful music really pops in this version of the game. Otherwise, things are largely intact from Kingdom Hearts 2 as it was originally released.
Kingdom Hearts 3 was the one that really blew me away. As one of the PS4’s best looking games, I wasn’t sure how Nintendo Switch 2 was going to handle a game like that, but lo and behold, this port has absolutely nailed it. I played through the opening of Kingdom Hearts 3, set in the world of Disney’s Hercules, where Sora, Donald and Goofy climb Mt. Olympus to team up with Herc and lay the smackdown on some Heartless, the minion bad guys of the series. After that my time with the demo was done.
Having played Kingdom Hearts 3 at launch on PS4, I was not expecting the game to feel just as good as it did then, but the team have clearly worked hard to make sure this doesn’t feel like an inferior port. The game looks just as good as I remember it, and gameplay was fluid and responsive. Only playing in portable mode and pressed for time, I didn’t get the chance to go through the menus to see if there was any Nintendo Switch 2-exclusive quirks, but the most important thing to report is that if you were a Nintendo gamer who didn’t want to touch the cloud version of Kingdom Hearts 3 and was heartbroken not getting to play the big finale of the Xehanort saga, this port will do the trick for you. The experience here is just as good as its original release.
It is worthy of note that the cloud versions of the Kingdom Hearts games are getting discontinued soon in favor of these new native ports, so if you happen to own any of those versions of the games in the series, Square Enix is selling the new releases of these games at a discounted price for those cloud users to help make the transition over.
Kingdom Hearts 1.5, 2.5, 2.8 and 3 + ReMind are all here and accounted for, and to get a real treasure trove of titles as a single collection is really good value for the dozens upon dozens of hours you’ll invest playing these games. We haven’t got long to wait, as this collection comes out in early October.
More: highlighit, Kingdom Hearts Collection [1-3], Square Enix, top
