Kingdom Hearts Switch Ports Are Still Totally Broken
Excitement is building around the new announcement of Kingdom Hearts 4, but the Nintendo Switch ports of the Final Mix titles are still a mess.
What should have been a welcome arrival of the beloved Kingdom Hearts series onto the Nintendo Switch still remains a messy, broken port collection. Originally released February 10, the Final Mix versions of the Kingdom Hearts titles were released separately and as a bundle, titled the Integrum Masterpiece. However, the ports turned out to be much less than masterful.
The Nintendo Switch ports of the Kingdom Hearts games don’t run natively but instead are streamed, hence the titles’ “Cloud Version" suffixes. Cloud-exclusive ports of games are already questionable, as players who don’t have a steady internet connection will be unable to play, and once the server hosting the game goes down - which will happen inevitably, just like the upcoming Nintendo 3DS and Wii U eShop closures - players will lose the ability to play the games entirely. But even while the servers are up, Cloud ports can have massive drawbacks, and the Kingdom Hearts Switch ports are no exception.
Because a stable internet connection is required to play the Kingdom Hearts ports on Nintendo Switch, any minor lapses in connection can cause the games to completely crash, with players losing any unsaved progress. Even putting the system into sleep mode can cause such crashes, which when combined with the required internet connection, effectively removes the portability benefit that comes from the titles being on Switch. Over time, players have also noticed lag, audio desync, and input delay, sometimes even when on wired internet connections. Having a good internet connection isn’t a magical Panacea that absolves the ports of all their legitimate problems.
The Nintendo Switch's hardware isn't as powerful when compared to its contemporaries, but developers can still make fantastic games on it so long as they account for their limitations going in. A game like Kingdom Hearts 3 + Re Mind, made for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, could potentially warrant a Cloud-exclusive port considering the technology the title was originally working with. But games from the early 2000s such as Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts 2 could run on Nintendo Switch with little drawback as long as they’re running natively.
Although graphical fidelity would still likely remain an issue due to the Nintendo Switch’s hardware, many of the ports’ issues could be resolved if they ran natively rather than being streamed through the Cloud. Lower graphical resolutions and compression would be a lot more excusable if the games actually played well, but in their current state, there are no upsides to balance out any of the games' Nintendo Switch ports' downsides. Although the additional console accessibility would normally be celebrated, just being on the Switch itself isn’t enough of a benefit this time. This is especially true since the same collection of Kingdom Hearts games can be bought on PlayStation 4 with an MSRP of $39.99, which is less than half the price of the Integrum Masterpiece collection. On top of that, the PlayStation 4 collection is usually on sale for $29.99, making it much better value on top of the fact it runs much better on that console.