It’s the mashup that shouldn’t work – Final Fantasy and Disney. As a fan of both, however, I didn’t hesitate to buy the game when it originally came out way back in 2002, and I loved it. I loved the gameplay, I loved the way the story managed to weave in Disney characters with the excuse the main character, Sora, was traveling between worlds to defeat evil in each one. What a fantastic game.

The problem was, the game was only for the Playstation systems, and it was about the only game I’ve ever been really interested in playing on the Playstation (though I did want to play a few of the Final Fantasy games). That, along with the fact I already owned a lot of Nintendo systems and couldn’t afford to buy more systems on top of that, pretty much meant my journey ended in Kingdom Hearts when Kingdom Hearts II came out in 2006.

I have to say, however, that I was grateful that Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories was available for Game Boy Advance, and it gave me hope that one day in the future, I could one day play Kingdom Hearts again on a Nintendo system (though I hated the gameplay of Chain of Memories).

Decades passed, and I stopped being excited to find Kingdom Hearts merchandise or see a new game had come out because they were all painful reminders that I would never play any more games in the series – I just couldn’t justify buying an entirely new system for one or two games.

And then, half a year ago, wishful thinking guided me to type in “Kingdom Hearts” into the search engine for the Nintendo Switch eshop, and there they were. Kingdom Hearts I and II were bundled together, and there was Kingdom Hearts III, all available to download and play on the Nintendo Switch. I wanted to cry I was so happy…until I saw the price. The three games would set me back about 13,000 yen, which I think is fairly reasonable for three games, but I don’t have that kind of money lying around at the moment to buy games. The other problem was the games could only be played if a steady Wi-Fi connection is available, which meant the games could suddenly crash on me, and I’d lose all my data until the last point of saving.

So, I fell into deeper despair (as far as one can go when it comes to gaming, anyway), all the more painful because they were right there for me to download.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I gave into temptation and checked on the Nintendo eshop again.

And they were all on sale – 60 percent off.

I nearly kissed my Switch as I bought Kingdom Hearts I-III and then rejoiced that Kingdom Hearts III came with the DLC and the Kingdom Hearts I and II bundle came with a few other games (including the terrible gameplay of Chain of Memories).

So now, I’m trying to push through Kingdom Hearts I again as quickly as I can (because it’s been over 20 years and I don’t remember the storyline that well anymore) so I can run through Kingdom Hearts II so I can get to Kingdom Hearts III. The gameplay is fantastic, and considering how old the game is, I’m shocked at just how much you’re expected to do in the game and how much stuff there is to do.

Looking around online, I found that Chain of Memories is a crucial bridge between the events of Kingdom Hearts I and Kingdom Hearts II, but I just can’t bring myself to suffer through the cards again, so I’ve been reading summaries of the story online and hoping that’ll do the trick.

I’m about 17 hours of gameplay into Kingdom Hearts I, and I’m in the grinding phase where, like in Pokemon, I need to level Sora up, so I’ve been wailing on enemies, praying I can get the level high enoguh that I can breeze through the final phases of the game without too much hassle.

And for now, I’m in full Kingdom Hearts mode.