Kingdom Hearts Collection 1-3 Sets A New Series Record

The New Kingdom Hearts Collection Has The Highest Review Scores In Series History Square Enix Published Oct 5, 2026, 9:49 AM EDT Josh Coulson is an editor at TheGamer covering breaking news on everything from colorful platformers to the latest Lego sets. Primarily a news writer since 2018, Josh has covered just about every major game from the past decade. Now an editor, their focus has shifted to being the leading affiliate expert at the site, building relationships between TheGamer and global brands including Mattel, Funko, and The Pokemon Company. Sign in to your TheGamer account A new, definitive way to play through the entire Kingdom Hearts series launches this week. Kingdom Hearts Collection 1-3 releases on all major platforms, and three days before its arrival, it is off to an incredibly positive start. Kingdom Hearts Reviews Hit New Highs Reviews for the collection have started to drop and, as it stands, the games currently have a 90 on Metacritic. Not only does that make it one of the highest-rated games of 2026, but it's the highest aggregate score a Kingdom Hearts game has ever received on the platform. Much like The Witcher 3 Remastered, the new Kingdom Hearts Collection won’t be eligible for Game of the Year awards. However, to rank number one in a series that is so beloved is an even greater honor and really goes to show just how well this collection plays. The 90 it has on Metacritic is a full three points more than Kingdom Hearts 2’s, a game that has held onto the record of highest-rated game in the series for 20 years, and the latest entry, Kingdom Hearts 3, which scored an 83. What Reviewers Are Saying About The New Kingdom Hearts Collection What makes the collection’s series high even more impressive is that every reviewer so far has played it on Switch 2. That includes TheGamer’s own George Foster, who awarded the latest Kingdom Hearts release a 4.5 out of 5. “Kingdom Hearts Collection 1-3 on Switch 2 is a fantastic package that is so close to being completely on par with the Integrum Masterpiece release,” Foster writes in their review, which you can read in full on the site right now. That sentiment is shared by MonsterVine. “Kingdom Hearts Collection 1-3 is an excellent way to experience most of the Kingdom Hearts franchise, whether for the first time or for the umpteenth. Most of the bundled games deliver essentially perfect performance on the Nintendo Switch 2,” the site’s identically-scored review reads. The caveat to the 90 the Kingdom Hearts Collection has been awarded is that it hasn’t been reviewed nearly as much as the individual mainline entries in the series. There are just seven reviews contributing to the collection’s score on Metacritic right now. By comparison, there are 64 for Kingdom Hearts 2, and 88 for Kingdom Hearts 3. The collection’s review score may change if more sites get their hands on it when it releases on October 8. There is a very real chance its score gets higher when that happens, though, as you’d imagine it will run even better on PS5 and other more powerful platforms. Despite its strong score, the collection does have the odd decisions surrounding its availability on Switch 2 still hanging over it. Since the new collection is launching on Switch 2, Square Enix will be shutting down the cloud versions of the games on the original Switch. That means those who bought the games on that platform will lose access to them, and while they’ll be offered a discount to upgrade to Switch 2, they won’t be getting the new collection for free. Released October 8, 2026 ESRB Everyone 10+ / Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood, Mild Language, Use of Alcohol Developer(s) Square Enix Publisher(s) Square Enix Franchise Kingdom Hearts Genre(s) Action, Adventure, RPG, JRPG