I have been harboring feelings of dissapointment and resentment towards this for a while now. Playing Kingdom Hearts in the modern era is just painfully unpleasant.
Kingdom Hearts is an incredible series for me. The level design, the sound design, the combat, the artistic beauty, this romantic story. . . It is such an amazing experience. It functioned amazingly on PS2. It functioned amazingly on PS4. It emulates greatly. Oh, but between gifts and self purchases, I've had about 250 dollars wasted on the Nintendo Switch and Epic Games store. The release on steam even shows off how other people are still going through what I've been trying to just brush under or accept somehow. The games don't work.
The Nintendo Switch version utilizes the whole cloud gaming thing. Which mostly results in being worried about watching cutscenes too long, getting kicked out after an intense battle and before a save point, and enjoynig a 45 of 60 fps experience with really cool latency! Mid game, you can expect for suddenly too many people to decide to share the server with you, meaning now everything is downgraded from out of your control. I'm pretty sure in those moments there is not an outrageous amount of people trying to play the same game as you, as well.
The Epic Games store forces online only, and the PC version in general is rampant with hardware incompatabiblities that decide to slap you randomly with all kinds of individual-centric errors. With the online only, after finally accepting you don't own the game, you pursue only playing the game when you are at home, cozily locked up with your router that you are forbidden from letting rest. It's troubling, and it's pretty ~heartless~ to enforce. Then, half the pc gaming market has unstable hardware that has not been comfortably addressed whatsoever.
None of these issues have been addressed or confronted properly. It was released on steam with the same issues, which probably entails somebody in the community will fix it instead. Somebody in the community will likely just enforce complete linux compatability. Realistically, pirating the PC version wouldn't even bring closure -- the game is unstable, online only just adds to the pains.
I just want to play this dang game series. I've purchased Kingdom Hearts 3 two times. I haven't played it much at all, because I want to properly replay the games beforehand. I've never managed to really commit to Dream Drop Distance, I want to enjoy the 2.8 collection, and I want to like......feel good about a game that makes me feel good. I am tremendously dissapointed in the parties responsible for making a game so dang innaccessable. I don't really expect good things from anything except the games themselves. How the games are deployed makes things like ~buying Kingdom Hearts~ creations feel very unwise.
One day I will find a personal resolution. Honestly, I am actually doing fine letting these frustrations not affect my playthrough on Epic Games in the moment. I've gotten more acceptance and closure with the Nintendo Switch version being a fancy and convoluted logistics error. I feel a wealth of emotions towards this beyond what I wrote down in this energy burst. Mostly, I'm just dissapointed and sad. There's many cosutmers out there much more furious or devestated than I am. Overall, it just feels like it's been a terrible time to be a fan of Kingdom Hearts.