What Should a Potential Kingdom Hearts 3.5 Release Include?

What Should a Potential Kingdom Hearts 3.5 Release Include?



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The Kingdom Hearts franchise is known for its compilation releases. Each major title in the series has been re-released as a compilation featuring bonus material in the form of side games – sometimes fully playable, sometimes as a “movie” that players can watch. Kingdom Hearts 3 has not yet gotten this treatment, but a “Kingdom Hearts 3.5″ seems inevitable given the franchise’s history – but what should this next bundle of Kingdom Hearts titles include?

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Contents Of Previous Kingdom Hearts Compilations

Previously, Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix released in 2013, followed by Kingdom Hearts 2.5 Remix in 2014. 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue then debuted in 2017. These compilations contained the following games:

  • 1.5 Remix – Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories, a cinematic rendering of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 with new added scenes
  • 2.5 Remix – Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix, Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep Final Mix, a cinematic rendering of Kingdom Hearts Re:coded
  • 2.8 Final Chapter PrologueKingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance and two pieces of cinematic content, Kingdom Hearts X Back Cover and Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth By Sleep – A Fragmentary Passage

What Should Kingdom Hearts 3.5 Include?

The obvious core feature would be, of course, Kingdom Hearts 3, the latest main series title in which Sora and his companions travel to a variety of exciting new Disney and Pixar-inspired worlds. Like the previous main series title, it should appear in its entirety in any potential collection. Other games and pieces of media that could appear include:

Kingdom Hearts 3 ReMind

ReMind is a DLC expansion for Kingdom Hearts 3 released in 2020. It covers Sora’s attempts to rescue Kairi at the climax of Kingdom Hearts 3, as well as scenes of Sora’s friends searching for him after his disappearance and a “Secret Episode” revealing more about where Sora ended up and featuring the mysterious character Yozora. As it ties directly to Kingdom Hearts 3, ReMind’s inclusion in any potential compilation seems obvious.

Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory

A rhythm game, Kingdom Hearts Melody of Memory was released in 2020. It primarily retells the events of the previous Kingdom Hearts games via Kairi’s memories, and serves as an excellent refresher of those games’ plots, making it perfect for a pre-Kingdom Hearts 4 bundle. It features dozens of worlds and iconic songs from the previous games, including Utada Hikaru’s “Simple and Clean” and “Sanctuary”, as well as several popular Disney tracks.

Possible Cinematic Content

Each of the previous compilations has included cinematic retellings of some of the Kingdom Hearts side games, allowing players to experience their stories without having to play through them. The obvious choice for 3.5‘s cinematic entry is Dark Road, a stand-alone entry introduced within the mobile game Kingdom Hearts Union X. Dark Road tells the story of Xehanort, one of the series’ main antagonists, beginning in his childhood and revealing how he eventually turned to the darkness and became the forbidding foe Kingdom Hearts players have faced so many times.

Notably, a companion film to X, known as Kingdom Hearts X Back Cover, did appear in the 2.8 compilation. However, that released in 2017, and the game continued for several years before ending service in 2021 (with Dark Road remaining available until 2022.) Another cinematic film dealing with more of the game’s plot introduced after 2017 could be a good inclusion in 3.5, especially as both Union X and Dark Road were delisted from app stores in 2024, so players interested in discovering this aspect of the Kingdom Hearts universe are no longer able to. As the mobile game’s plot will likely be highly relevant to the events of Kingdom Hearts 4, it should feature majorly in any kind of Kingdom Hearts 3.5 bundle.

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