This will probably come across as petulant or entitled to some...and maybe it is. For that matter, I'm probably not the first person to say it. But I still feel the need to bring it up. Because exclusivity has pretty much ruined Kingdom Hearts for me.
I like Kingdom Hearts a great deal. I'll shortly be starting my second play-through of Kingdom Hearts 2, and I expect to have fun with it. But not as much fun as I could, because I've only played Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2. And that's a pain, because that means the story is nearly incomprehensible due to the missing content from the other games.
Because games containing necessary story information are tied to multiple exclusive platforms, trying to understand the story of this series becomes either boring or expensive. I think it's ridiculous that I have to buy a PSP and a 3DS to understand what exactly is going on. Is it not enough that I bought the sequel to Kingdom Hearts? Why do I have to buy a game from 3 completely different systems, from 2 completely different companies, to understand the very first thing about Kingdom Hearts 2? Do I seriously have to resort to watching hours upon hours of condensed cutscenes to figure out what I'm missing?
I imagine this is what fans of Final Fantasy felt like when the series made the switch to Playstation exclusivity, or when Bayonetta became a Nintendo exclusive. In the case of Final Fantasy, at least, the lack of an overarching story meant that you didn't need to make the jump to understand the plot, and Bayonetta 2 at least had financial reasons for why it made the jump.
I'll still enjoy the game, but the fact is that the series will always be less, for me, by virtue of the way it was released. And that's really just sad.
I believe in honesty, civility, generosity, practicality, and impartiality.
