From an outside perspective, they’re essentially the same type of game, right? One of them just happens to employ a cast of Disney characters, as well. Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts both feature fantastic and over-the-top worlds with explosive and glitzy battles. Their Big Bads are seemingly insurmountable embodiments of a higher power, too.
The similarities go so far that Kingdom Hearts is home to Final Fantasy characters and convention spanning from the earliest titles to unreleased titles that have been reworked to fit into the sprawling Kingdom Hearts narrative.
The areas of cross-over may be broad and frequent, but each series has its strengths and weaknesses. Fans of role-playing games may be looking to jump into one of these series for the first time. It is important to know what you’re getting into so you can choose a franchise most suited to your preferences.
8 Final Fantasy: Never Held Down
Final Fantasy’s single greatest ability, much like humanity’s, is its capacity for change; no two Final Fantasy games are exactly the same. The series breaks its own conventions constantly to produce the best possible experience at the time.
Even their insistence on keeping each installment distinct from the others is overstepped in the cases of Final Fantasy X-2 and the Final Fantasy XIII sequels. Someone looking for a series of games that avoids stagnation at all costs will find a comfortable home in Final Fantasy.
7 Kingdom Hearts: Kingdom Of Continuity
The biggest thing Kingdom Hearts holds over Final Fantasy is a continuous story over about a dozen titles. The story is widely regarded by fans to be a complicated web of intersecting tales, but all of the parts of it are available and parsable.
Fans of the series can depend on every main character introduced into the series having at least some small part to contribute to the ongoing tale of Sora and his friends. For someone looking to dive into a series that will reward them from one title to the next, Kingdom Hearts is bountiful and generous.
6 Final Fantasy: Constant Innovation
Final Fantasy builds its prestige on the back of innovation. Final Fantasy games, for decades, were seen as the flashiest and most cutting-edge games of their time. A player making their way through the Final Fantasy series will find themselves playing a familiar yet brand new game every single time.
This isn’t to say that Kingdom Hearts is resistant to change, but Final Fantasy games run the gamut from pure turn-based RPGs to the hybrid model polished to a shine in Final Fantasy VII Remake. Players who want variety in their JRPGs should definitely look into a game from this franchise.
5 Kingdom Hearts: Character Familiarity Across Genres
Characters, both original and from other series, are the heart of Kingdom Hearts. The series places a heavy emphasis on the characters who make up this universe. Some characters exist solely because they are literally created from the heart and soul of others. It’s a story about connections, the people who support us, and reaching out to people we don’t understand to find common ground.
This makes Kingdom Hearts a universe that leans on its characters and expects players to form connections with them. It makes it easy to do so with a cast of characters with a variety of attitudes and quirks. Plus, recognizing your favorite people or creatures from Disney films never hurts.
4 Final Fantasy: A Dense History
Final Fantasy has time on its side since Kingdom Hearts hasn’t been around nearly as long as Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy games get to hold the distinction of acting as a history tour through games as a medium.
A player picking up Final Fantasy VII will have the opportunity to experience the history of games. In fact, if one plays through all of the games, they can watch the core of the medium grow at change over thirty years of experience. They act as the soil strata of video games for players to see how technology influenced game creation. One could also argue that the series showcases how video games can be both art and commercial products.
3 Kingdom Hearts: A Dense Knot
Kingdom Hearts is well known for its convolution, but that can make it a treasure trove for some players. The opportunity to dig through journal entries unlocked through dedication to the game and exploration of every single nook and cranny is thrilling to some players.
The game, from the outset, is rife with allusions to the next titles and symbolic gestures to the lore and themes of each game in the series. The satisfaction of picking away at a tight puzzle-like knot is all over the place in Kingdom Hearts and should not be taken for granted by newcomers.
2 Final Fantasy: Genre Shift
Kingdom Hearts doesn’t often reach outside of the bounds of its Action RPG box. Final Fantasy games, however, reach much further beyond the “JRPG” typing. Titles like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Final Fantasy Tactics take even longer strides from the base RPG experience that Final Fantasy began as. If a player is looking for variety in their game franchise, then Final Fantasy has deep pockets for them.
Even within the mainline Final Fantasy games, there are genre shifts. Some games contain digital trading card games like Triple Triad, small racing segments, or even fishing games that set them apart from their contemporaries. There’s a little bit of something in Final Fantasy for everyone whereas Kingdom Hearts appeals to a much more narrow slice of players.
1 Winner: Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy takes the cake here; the series simply had such a massive head start on Kingdom Hearts. This has given Final Fantasy the opportunity to spread its net wide and give it a broader appeal to a larger contingent of players. Moreover, the developers were able to experiment more given the longer timeline.
Final Fantasy is a long-lasting piece of history in the halls of video games and it’s a series worth visiting by any fan of games. Even the positive aspects of Kingdom Hearts can be found in the right Final Fantasy titles, so if someone has to pick just one series to stand above the other, then Final Fantasy has the advantage here.
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