In the lead-up to Kingdom Hearts 3, Square Enix needed some fresh content to rebuild interest in the franchise after it had been dormant for years outside of mobile games. After porting over the collections of most of the earlier games to more modern platforms, the company then decided to squeeze out one last collection to hoover up the stragglers into one package. Dubbed Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, the value proposition on this one is undeniably lesser, but there’s still plenty to love about it.

The core of this release is Kingdom Hearts 3D, the 3DS spinoff that acted as the first chronological sequel to Kingdom Hearts 2 and the prelude to the series finale. Here, you play as both Sora and Riku in a tag-team sort of adventure where the two are given the shared assignment of awakening various Sleeping Worlds to complete the Mark of Mastery exam and officially step up as Keyblade Masters.

Though 3D feels just a bit like a ‘more of the same’ sort of filler entry, it nonetheless brings with it some fun gameplay innovations alongside the new and remixed Disney worlds it takes place within.

Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth By Sleep – A Fragmentary Passage is the other playable game here, and it occupies a rather odd place now. At the time this collection originally released, it served to build hype as a sneak peek at how a true next gen entry in the series would run on the new engine. Now, it’s a fun, but very simple adventure that feels sort of like a demo for Kingdom Hearts 3.

Here, you play in the role of Aqua, a Keyblade wielder trapped in the Realm of Darkness, and follow her struggles to survive and maintain her sanity as she’s endlessly tormented by both the innumerable Heartless that live there and the ghosts of her past. Compared to the series’ typical lighthearted and hopeful tone, this adventure has an understandably much heavier tone to it, but it unfortunately doesn’t feel like it really gets to explore that to the fullest.

As fun as this little adventure is, you can finish it in roughly three hours. It’s well-paced and enjoyable for what it is, but it’s also the kind of thing that you probably won’t feel too motivated to return to after you’ve seen all that it has to offer.

While Kingdom Hearts 3D runs at 1080p handheld, 4K docked and 60 FPS in both modes, Kingdom Hearts 0.2 only manages a rather unstable 30 FPS due to the much more advanced graphics. The tradeoff feels worth it for the increased spectacle, but it would’ve been nice if Square capped the FPS at 30 or 40 so it wouldn’t be all over the place.

Lastly, the mobile game Kingdom Hearts X is represented here via a series of cutscenes that give you a crash course on the major story beats, which is especially important given that the game is now delisted. Even so, the cutscenes feel rather tacked on and rushed, not to mention how much they complicate the already overstuffed lore of the ongoing story.

Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue is an overall solid entry in the franchise, although it’s easily the most skippable one. Kingdom Hearts 3D is an excellent game, but 0.2 feels more like a brief demo, and the Kingdom Hearts X cutscenes just sort of… there. If you’re looking to get into the meat and potatoes of this franchise, I’d suggest sticking to the previous collection and 3, but this is a good one to grab if you’re a big fan.