Square Enix’s beloved classic RPG series Kingdom Hearts finally makes its way to the Nintendo Switch.
Kingdom Hearts Integrum Masterpiece is a collection that brings all of the main entry titles to a Nintendo console for the first time.
But Square Enix has decided to make this collection only available via Nintendo’s Cloud service.
The Kingdom Hearts franchise has been around since 2002 when the first title was released on the Playstation 2. Since then there have been a plethora of games that make up Sora’s adventure.
Kingdom Hearts Integrum Masterpiece features a selection of HD remasters and the final entry that was released on Playstation 4 and the Xbox One.
However, seeing as these games have been out for some time it’s a weird option to release this collection via the cloud and not to run natively.
But saying that there have been other games ported over from the PS4 and Xbox One, that have either been massively stripped back or had terrible performance.
So the decision to run them via the cloud could be an attempt to allow players to experience them as closely as they were intended.
Square Enix did however allow fans to play timed demos before the collections releases to find out if their internet connection was good enough for a decent experience.
Basically, I think they wanted to emphasise that everyone's experience will vary depending on how strong their internet connection is.
But I think everyone’s main disappointment is that playing these games on the go is pretty much impossible unless you manage to find a stable connection when out and about.
Visually Kingdom Hearts is known for vibrant, alluring graphics that look superb on other consoles like the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One.
But fans of the series will instantly notice a visual downgrade with everything looking less clear, with more fuzzy outlines and massive drops in image quality.
This is more prominent in Kingdom Hearts 1.5 and III which can take a massive hit in certain places.
It's really frustrating because there are times where the games look pretty decent, nowhere near as good as other consoles but much more palatable.
One of the biggest issues is the quality of cutscenes that have just been poorly ported over, as you can see the massive frame drops and out of sync audio throughout each game.
The audio lag was a huge issue even outside of cutscenes as sound effects would rarely match the movements. You could also hear the audio cut out in between scenes.
There was some input lag but that really depended on where in my house I played, but the gameplay was generally smooth for the most part.
I totally understand that everyone’s experience will differ due to their internet connection but at the time of writing this review my internet download speed was varied between 135MPS - 146MPS and my experience was far from what I expected.
Now not all the games suffered heavily from these performance issues and were actually playable from start to finish, especially in 2.8 and the titles in the 2.5 ReMIX.
Playing on the cloud means that players can’t allow the Switch to enter sleep mode as this will result in a loss of connection.
The main issue with this is that the game disconnects and reverts back to the last save point which mainly affects the titles without autosave.
The Switch does allow users to extend how long their console will stay awake which is a good counter for this but not an ideal solution.
Verdict
Kingdom Hearts Integrum Masterpiece for cloud probably isn’t the best way to experience these classic titles, and with its hefty price tag, I would opt for the other versions which aren’t plagued with these needless issues.
Kingdom Hearts Integrum Masterpiece is out now for the Nintendo Switch
