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Kingdom Hearts, a collaboration between the magic weavers at Disney and the RPG acumen of Square-Enix, is a truly unique concoction.Nobodyexpected it when it first hit shelves in 2002 – andcertainlynobody expected it to still be going over twenty years down the line.
Famous for its labyrinthine plotting and top-class combat, there are now twelve mainline entries in Sora’s saga. A common misconception is that only KH 1, 2, and 3 are necessary to play and that the others are all ‘spinoffs’; this couldn’t be further from the truth. In Kingdom Hearts,there are no spinoffs– and to play every game in chronological order is a Large Body-sized undertaking. How many hours can you expect to spend? We’ve got the answer.
This breakdown is operating under the assumption that you’ll beplaying the most recent, readily accessible incarnations of each game. That means the Final Mix versions of 1 and 2, the Re-Mind version of 3, Recoded rather than Coded, and so on.
As a bonus, the order our list is presented in is alsothe recommended play order for the franchise, so you’ll know where to start and end your journey!
Updated July 21, 2025, by Bobby Mills: With the series' release on Steam (after being trapped on the Epic Games Store for almost three years), more eyeballs are on Kingdom Hearts than ever. It’s a singularly unique, perplexing experience, not least due to its absurd titling and timeline that hops all over the place. We thought the time was right to nip and tuck our ultimate guide to just how many eons this legendary franchise will last you!
Kingdom Hearts
25 Hours
The story kicks off in an uncharacteristically simple fashion with the original Kingdom Hearts,first launched for the PS2 and now available in its Final Mix form for essentially every system under the sun. It’s a basic tale of young Sora traveling across a host of Disney worlds (with an alternately helpful and hindering Donald and Goofy in tow) to recover his chums, Kairi and Riku.
Your quest tothwart the diabolical Ansemwon’t be overly long. Experienced players willseal the final door at the ten to 15 hour mark; but on a first run, you are likely to be overwhelmed by the enemies in the last couple of areasand will need to grind.
The optimum way to do this is topursue the materials for the Ultima Keyblade, landing your runtime in the region of 25 hours.If you’re playing the Steam version on a high-end PC, KH1 is the title that’ll benefit the most,as load times are virtually nonexistent; lop a couple of hours off in that case.
Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories
20 Hours
So, what comes after Kingdom Hearts 1? Kingdom Hearts 2, right? Wrong –the second game in the franchise is actually Chain of Memories, which started life on the GBA before getting a ground-up remake as Re:Chain of Memories for home consoles. It’s a divisive entry and often puts new players off, switching the gameplay from the familiar hacking and slashingto card-based combat.
Chain of Memories has an interesting structure in that how fast or slow you get through it is entirely up to you. Each floor of Castle Oblivionis generated in real-time based on the cards you use at the entrance; will it be infested with enemies, full of treasure chests, or a platforming gauntlet? The choice is yours – but on average, those willing to knuckle through the card collectingwill topple the traitorous Marluxia in around 20 hours.
Kingdom Hearts 2
35 Hours
Thethird game in the lineup, Kingdom Hearts 2(stick with us here) is often hailed as Nomura’s finest work. It takes everything that worked about KH 1 and refines it to a science. It wiselyswitches back to the tried-and-tested button mashing of the original gameas opposed to doubling down on the card gimmick.
The writing and world design is better, the Organization XIII bosses are iconic, and the soundtrack slaps. It is, however,very unusually paced.
Your first five hours or so will be spent not as Sora but as Roxas, a new character whose summer vacation proves to be more existential than it first appears. You’ll be chilling with your friends, performing odd jobs to raise cash, and visiting the beach – very little of narrative significance occursuntil you’re nearer the ten hour mark than not.
It’s worth pushing through to experience the rest of this masterpiece, however, and once you’re in the proper swing of things,you may expect to tap out around 35 hours.Again,the Steam version is more fluid and lighter on loading, which might net you a sub-30 time.
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days
25 Hours (3 Hours For Movie)
This is where things start to geta tad complicated– and not just because of that ridiculous title suggesting you’ve skipped over 355 games. After KH2 left his story largely unexplored, fans demanded to see more of Roxas, so he was afforded hisown standalone adventure on the DS that fills in his time with Organization XII. Rather than being fully remade,its cutscenes were remastered for the HD release as a movie.
As a consequence, your playtime is going to be dependent on which avenue you choose to experience 358/2 Days via.If you track down a copy of the DS original, you’re in for a (very grindy) 25 hour investment.However, if you simply opt to sit back with a soda and watch the movie included in various HD collections,you’ll have consumed Roxas and Xion’s harrowing tale within three hours.Your call!
Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep
How exactly did Xehanort begin his scheme? And why is Sora so intrinsically linked to everyone’s destiny? Birth By Sleepaims to answer these questions in the form of a prequel, which rockets us back several years and introduces us toAqua, Terra, and Ventus, three aspiring Keyblade warriors who contend with the villain’s first form.
Birth By Sleep takes a page out ofthe Sonic Adventure playbookin that it featuresthree individual, intertwining campaigns: one for headstrong Terra, one for noble Aqua, and one for naive Ventus. All of the characters visit the same worlds but in different orders and with different events occurring therein.
Each campaign will run you about ten hours – beat them all to get the Last Story, which concludes the narrative at around 35 hours.Note thatthis doesn’t account for all the time you’ll spendin menus fiddling with the new ‘melding’ system,which allows you to customize your loadout by scrapping abilities you have no interest in.
Kingdom Hearts: Recoded
15 Hours (3 Hours For Movie)
Recoded isthe very definition of ‘skippable.‘Originally released asa mobile game in Japan(and we’re not talking smartphones, we meanflip-phones), which precisely nobody played, it got a glow-up for Western marketsas a full-fat DS title.
It tells a lightweight tale about Jiminy Cricket sending digitized versions of Sora and the gang into his journal to uncover why it’s suddenly gone blank.
Almost nothing that goes down in Recoded has any meaningful bearing on the overarching narrative, and Data Sora is brought up only in offhanded conversation in future installments. Like 358/2 Days,its cutscenes were remastered as a film in the HD collections, butunlikethat game, playing the DS original is no intimidating prospect asit only takes circa 15 hours.
Our recommendation? Either watch the three-hour movie or give it a miss entirely. Steam users are especially blessed in this regard, as fans havereleased an assortment of mods that boil it down to its bare essentialsand eliminate both the loading and needless fluff.
Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance
Dream Drop Distance is whereall the seemingly disparate plot threads of the preceding few games begin to coalesce. When Sora and Riku embark into the ‘sleeping realm’ - a sort of limbo where fallen worlds reside if they haven’t been fully restored - to complete their Keyblade training, it becomes apparentXehanort and all his incarnations have been pulling everybody’s strings from the saga’s beginning.
Throughout the game, youalternate between Sora and Riku, and much like Birth By Sleep, they tackle each world in a slightly different fashion. However, you don’t play each boy’s adventure one at a time – when your ‘Drop’ meter expires, you forcibly swap to the other character and pick up where they last left off.
By the time all this back-and-forth comes to an end, you’ll have sunk 25 hours in.
Kingdom Hearts 0.2: A Fragmentary Passage
3 Hours
Do you think Nomura enjoys trying to come up with the most ludicrously pretentious titles possible for these games? Fragmentary Passage isa brief, tech-demo-esque experience bundled in with the HD remaster of Dream Drop Distance; it’s intended to bridge the gap between Birth By Sleep and Kingdom Hearts 1. Hence, ‘0.2’, you see.
At the end of Birth By Sleep,Aqua was cast into the Realm of Darkness, where she’s spent years fending off throngs of Heartless as well as her own personal demons. The game gives a preview of the flashier combat Kingdom Hearts 3 would ultimately deliver, and it’s nice to see Aqua’s character fleshed out,but you’ll be done in less than four hours.
Kingdom Hearts Union χ
10 Hours
We’re not quite at Kingdom Hearts 3 yet; first, we’ve got togo through the mind-numbing Union χ (pronounced ‘chi’),whose piecemeal release pattern continues to make it a pain for new players to experience. This started out as ashort-lived browser game, which is now defunct but had its key plot beatsrecapped in a CGI movie, Union χ Back Cover.
This was then followed bya smartphone-based sequel which continued the story, until that too was discontinued. The app remains downloadable, but it only functions as a cutscene theater– no gameplay to be found.
So all told, for the complete Union χ package, you’ll need to watch the Back Cover movie and then the cutscenes in the app (or on YouTube),totaling ten hours or so. Unlike Recoded,this shouldn’t be skipped, and Steam users should take heed as it’s the only mainline game not included in that platform’s bundle.
If Birth By Sleep was a prequel,Union χ is an uber-prequel. It takes us back tothe absolute beginning of the Kingdom Hearts timeline, to the ‘age of fairytales’previously mentioned only in hushed whispers and bedtime stories. There, we meet the enigmatic Master of Masters, his Foreteller disciples, and a plucky band of kids known as the Dandelions.
Going forward, these events inform a lot of Kingdom Hearts 3’s story, andwill be a major component of the impending Lost Masters Saga.
It all comes down to this.The conclusion of the Dark Seeker Saga, the long-awaited Kingdom Hearts 3 pulls togetherevery notable character from all the prior gamesand aims to tie off various dangling plot threads. It mostly achieves this viaa colossal cutscene smorgasbord in the third act; acts one and two are spent on the usual business, mucking around Disney worlds with Sora, Donald, and Goofy.
Kingdom Hearts 3 stands apart from its predecessorsin that there’s no fluff padding the game’s introduction. No interminable Roxas prologue, no gathering raft materials for Kairi – you’re right into the first Disney world with Hercules.
It maintains this brisk pace throughout, but the worlds themselves are gigantic, with the Pirates of the Caribbean area in particular turning the game intoa Sea Of Thieves clonefor five hours plus.
When you finally nail Xehanort’s coffin down,your save file will have about 35 hours to show for it.
If you plump forthe Re:Mind DLC(which comes as standard on Steam), though, KH3 takes on a whole new life. There’s an extra mini-campaign detailing precisely how Sora saves Kairi at the climax; difficulty toggles for your second playthrough that makes you either an utter weakling or an unbeatable Adonis; and a bunch of excruciatingly difficult Data fights. Those that choose to grind this outwill easily be pushing the 50 or 60 hour mark.
Kingdom Hearts: Melody Of Memory
12 Hours
Kingdom Hearts 3, with all its climactic finality, seemed to mark a natural stopping point for the franchise –but Nomura had other plans. In the run-up to Kingdom Hearts 4, which willmark the beginning of the Lost Masters arc proper,we’re being blessed with a procession ofexperimental, shorter games that lay the groundwork for that fourquel.
The first of these is Melody of Memory, the only title on this list for which the accusation of ‘spinoff’ is almost (almost!) valid. It’sa rhythm game, which sees Kairi hooking her brain up to a memory machine to try and track down a missing Sora, after he disintegrated at the end of KH3.
There’s a good selection of iconic music tracks to thwack the Heartless to, but none of it really moves the overall story along until the final third.When the curtain comes down on your maestro performance, you’ll have been conducting for 12 hours.
Kingdom Hearts: Dark Road
5 Active Hours, 25 Inactive Hours
Themost recent Kingdom Hearts entry- before Missing Link arrives in 2024 - Dark Road is yet another smartphone effort, this timeattempting to flesh out Xehanort’s backstory. We’ve only ever known him as a cartoony warmongerer, yet the ending of KH3flirted with the idea of his motives stemming from his youth, which this idle battler explores.
Yes,idle battler– Dark Road is one of those grindy mobile games that aredesigned for you to ‘set it and forget it’,presumably so Square-Enix can fudge their engagement stats and boost ad revenue.
Cynicism aside, there’s aboutfive hours’ worth of actual interactivity hereduring the (very engaging) story portions.The other 25 it’ll take to see the creditswill demand nothing of you other than putting your phone aside and letting Xehanort do his thing.
Steam users should once again notethat they won’t be getting the complete story here unless they pick up their mobile devices. Then again, there’s always BlueStacks emulation; but we’d never condone that, now would we?
What’s Next For Kingdom Hearts?
Kingdom Hearts: Missing Link
Once you reach the (current) end of the Kingdom Hearts saga, the inevitable question arises: what’s next? Surely Sora and company won’t be hanging up their oversized boots anytime soon. Well, the good news isthere are a couple more major projects on the imminent horizon, and we can make a decent rough estimate of what their playtime will be.
First up isKingdom Hearts: Missing Link, yet another mobile game which (as the title perhaps implies) will attempt tofill in the ‘missing link’ between the age of fairytales and Sora’s era. It looks to be more in line with the core gameplay than the card-shuffling of Dark Road – butits free-to-play nature and open beta that featured a bevy of different currency types, suggest a grind. Expect to have tocommit 100-plus hoursto see it through.
Kingdom Hearts 4
There’s always a bigger fish, though – and KH4 is one such fish. Projected to arrive in 2026, it’llformally kick off the ‘Lost Masters’ arc and pick up with Sora in ‘unreality’(i.e., the real world.) The phone games will factor in heavily, with the Master of Masters looking to be a major antagonist, so fans will need to do their homework.
We know very little about the story or gameplay beyond this, but it’sa fair assumption we’ll be hacking and slashing once again. Sora and Riku will explore the real-world city of ‘Quadratum,’ while Donald and Goofy continue to mosey around the Disney realms, with Hercules confirmed to reappear.Again.
Another question that needs addressing is who the remaining ‘New Princesses of Heart’ are.We’ve got Kairi, Anna, Elsa, and Rapunzel so far, which leaves three slots.Remember that they don’t necessarily have to be royalty, either.
Moana? Mirabel? Raya? Merida? Tiana? Time will tell.
Barring any big surprises, like an open-world format, we’d reasonably expect Kingdom Hearts 4 to be in line with its numbered cousins andrun around 40 hours.
How Many Hours In Total Does It Take To Beat Every Kingdom Hearts Game?
May our heart be our guiding key as wetot up the grand total playtime for the entire Kingdom Hearts saga,using an organized table Master Yen Sid would be proud of:
Approximate average playtime
25 hours
20 hours
35 hours
3 hours for movie, 25 for game
3 hours for movie, 15 for game
3 hours
Union χ
10 hours (including feature-length movie)
12 hours
Dark Road
5 active hours, 25 inactive hours
This comes toan eye-watering 270 hours, or 11.25 days. Let’s account for bathroom breaks, at the very least, andround that up to 12 days, meaning you could, if you were supremely devoted,complete a full Kingdom Hearts marathon in less than a fortnight.
Note that this total is the maximum time taken, assuming you areactually playing 358/2 Days and Recoded. If you merely watch the movies, it knocks the runtimedown by 34 hours to 236 hours, or just shy of 10 days.
Whichever way you decide to take on these seminal adventures, one thing’s for sure: you’ll be using more brainpowerto keep track of the storylinethan your playtime!
