If you never owned a PlayStation console and want a crash course on Kingdom Hearts, your wish will soon come true in the form of Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue. While we’ve known for a while that game is coming to the Xbox One, we didn’t know when it would launch until today.
According to the official Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue store page, the game will release February 18th for the Xbox One. However, this collection houses only part of the franchise’s story. 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue contains HD movies that provide the narrative from Kingdom Hearts χ Back Cover (the mobile spinoff), an HD remaster of the 3DS game Dream Drop Distance, and a “new” epilogue episode for Birth by Sleep known as Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep – A fragmentary passage -.
The rest of the overarching story resides in Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX, which contains HD versions of the original two games, HD remasters of Re:Chain of Memories and Birth by Sleep Final Mix, and HD cinematics from 358/2 Days and Re:coded. While 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue has been announced in the Microsoft store —even if it isn’t available for pre-order— 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX is nowhere to be seen. Nevertheless, that collection’s release date is likely not far behind.
If you want to play Kingdom Hearts 3 on the Xbox One and have yet to experience any of the other games, 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX and 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue are essential to understanding the game’s plot. Moreover, when we reviewed the latter collection on the PlayStation 4, we enjoyed the updated visuals and the Birth by Sleep epilogue episode, even if it was extremely short.
With any luck, Kingdom Hearts 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue will run as smoothly on the Xbox One as it does the PlayStation 4.
