JamesEmblem
2000
Peak fiction honestly, very few games get better than this. Tohno Shiki is truly the goat.
Big brained but wonky pacing
Really good DLC, but very pricey, and honestly quite hard. I've yet to legitimately do all of the superbosses without the EZ codes, but the couple I've done were really fun, and the surrounding story in this DLC is fantastic. The new secret ending is the peak of the series.
2019
Kamige, best game in the series, takes the best parts from nearly every game, very big brained story with lots of good theming.
Good improvement over the ideas in Birth By Sleep, much more fluid and fun to play, world design is a bit too open with too little to do, but still fun to run around and fight in. Good way of filtering out the idiots who weren't really into the series anyway.
Fun prologue to KH3, but really I think it should've just been rolled into that package. Still, the intro is really nice, and the outfit customization isn't in KH3, so there's some merit to it being standalone, and it's not as if it's any less fun to play because of how it was released.
Definitely the weakest entry in the series, but it's still a kind of good game, with some interesting ideas.
One of the high points of the series for sure. The combat is much more refined over KH1, the story is more complex, and visually the game looks a lot better too. The game is lacking in terms of non-combat stuff to do though, which compared to KH1 is a bit of a negative, and a lot of the side content is pushed into post-game territory. But it's still really great at what it does set out to achieve, so I can't help but consider it kino.
Big brained card combat, really fun to deck build. Whilst the game can be broken easily, it still feels engaging because you can't easily just obtain everything you need to break the game, and boss fights can still trip you up if you aren't careful. Story wise, one of the best in the series, all around just a good time. Definitely an improvement over the GBA version, being able to move in full 3D helps the combat a lot, and the game becomes faster paced because of it.
Fantastic game, though really rough at the same time. Full of PS2 jank, but that's a large part of the charm. Each world is fun and filled with stuff to do, the story is simple but really well handled, combat is definitely less refined than later games, but there's a lot of fun tricks you can pull off, and the tougher fights are a blast. Love all the side content the game has to offer, and the Final Mix exclusive content is really cool too. There are a few parts of the game that haven't aged well, but I think over time I've really grown to love the game in spite of that. Just a charming time all around really.
Best way to get into the series, outside of the larger collections that include this within it, there aren't really any bad games in the collection, and you get a lot of time out of it for your money.