Kingdom Hearts has a lot of worlds. Each of them has a different aesthetic, new and old characters, and usually a Disney property with all the same story beats from a movie you’ve already seen before.
I’ll be ranking these worlds based on how important they are to the story, how fun they are to play, and the vibes in general. Though, I wont be counting the mobile games, since I can’t exactly rank a PNG on a list of full 3D environments.
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Considering how different every Kingdom Hearts game is, I can only really consider gameplay in broad strokes, so it will come down to whether I enjoyed playing through it or wanted to get back on the Gummi Ship after landing.
Bonus points go to those standout worlds that actually diverge heavily from their source material, creating a new story within an old world you want to explore. Though fair warning, those are a bit few and far between.
44
Datascape
Spaghetti Coded
Ah, Kingdom Hearts re:Coded, what a mess of a game. Even if Coded were a great game, the Datascape has almost nothing interesting going for it. It’s just the connecting location, and is pretty boring aside from the bugs they put in Riku.
In the Datascape, you fight a bunch of monsters, find another world, and leave after staring at the repeated cybernetic textures and a looping background that I hate looking at. This thing deserves to be at the bottom.
43
Atlantica
Pick Your Poison
Aside from the admittedly half-decent showing in Re:CoM, Atlantica has either been a horribly confusing water level or minigame hell, with one of the worst rhythm games ever put on this earth.
I can bear with the
Kingdom Hearts 1 version of Atlantica
, but the fact that KH2 Atlantica throws a giant dousing of input lag onto every button press makes it infuriating, even if you’re good at rhythm games.
42
Mirage Arena
Gimmick Central
The Mirage Arena in Birth By Sleep is completely optional, and that’s a great thing, because it sucks, and I’m glad I skipped it entirely on my first playthrough. Especially if you’re playing the HD version with no multiplayer, you do not want to be here.
It’s just grindy combat, random waves of enemies, or big bosses. While that could be fun if this were a game with fun combat, we’re playing Birth By Sleep, with the worst combat in the series, making it an awful time.
41
Castle of Dreams
Sleep on It
Now, for the first entirely normal world on this list, the Castle of Dreams puts me to sleep almost immediately. All I remember from here is the main characters’ meeting. I genuinely cannot remember a single boss from here.
The aesthetic is the most stock, bland Disney movie licensed-game-looking thing ever. None of the bosses are particularly memorable. The tiny bit of story integration is nice, but that isn’t saving an incredibly boring world.
40
Country of the Musketeers
Childish Chicanery
Birth by Sleep and Dream Drop Distance are in a deadlocked battle for who has the most boring worlds in the series, and Country of the Musketeers is a strong showing from the latter, being all over the place and uninteresting.
It tries to cover so much stuff that everything sorta falls by the wayside and ends up melting into a soup of middling set pieces and Pete’s shenanigans. It’s perfectly tolerable, and I remember nothing from it.
39
Deep Jungle
They Tried
The only Kingdom Hearts 1 world to never return in any other game, Deep Jungle, is a world I don’t want to play ever again. The best part about this world is getting Cure for the first time, nothing else.
You’d think Tarzan would have a very easy-to-follow plot, yet you spend so much time doing tedious things like swinging from vines and getting slides that you forget all about the story, and it’s a rehash to add salt to the wound.
38
Wonderland
Boxed In
Wonderland is where these worlds start getting a little interesting, with a fun evidence-finding gimmick abstracted by it looking hideous, being pretty confusing, and barely having any story at all.
Two of those things are reflective of the movie, sure. That doesn’t mean I want to play through it, though. It’s just not fun to go through, and is an incredibly lame first impression as the first Disney world most people will come across.
37
Dwarf Woodlands
Pretty Toxic
I think Dwarf Woodlands is really similar to Castle of Dreams in terms of how much I really care about the world itself, but this time the story elements happening do pick it up a bit, on top of the mines looking really cool.
Getting to fight the mirror is a genuinely sick set piece and a fun fight, and even though there’s a lot of plot rehashing, it feels far more focused on the main trio, which makes it more interesting than the usual fare.
36
Pride Lands
Lion Around
“We should put Sora in a form that limits half the things he can do, and isn’t very fun!” is a sentence uttered by the deranged, and is the exact mission statement of the Pride Lands, making Sora a lion that isn’t fun to control.
On top of the unnecessarily restrictive moveset, the Pride Lands is 90% massive open area with nothing in it. At least the Groundshaker is one of the best bosses ever, or this world would be at the back of the line.
35
Deep Space
I’m Just Disappointed
I adore Lilo and Stitch, so the fact that it only has a world in Birth By Sleep where they never go to Hawaii, 90% of it is just boring mob fights, and the entire thing looks super generic, hurts my soul.
The Wayfinder story with Stitch tying all the trio’s journeys together without them meeting is a nice bit of story, and the few characters here are as fun to be around as ever, but man, it’s such a massive waste of potential.
34
Disney Town
More Like Toon Town
Disney Town feels like they just wanted an excuse to shove a kart-racing minigame into Birth by Sleep, so they made a vaguely Toon Town-ish location to justify its existence, and it’s just kinda gimmicky.
The multitude of minigames are all one-note and feel especially boring if you replay them, but the aesthetic is nice, and the underground part of town is home to some genuinely fun gameplay.
33
Enchanted Dominion
Mal-intent
I think Enchanted Dominion is the best out of the generic-feeling classic Disney movie trio, mainly because it’s focused around Maleficent. Watching her gaslight, gatekeep, and girlboss Terra is an awesome bit of story integration.
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The aesthetic is still boring, mind you, but fighting the dragon as Aqua and fighting the giant wheel as Terra make for really memorable bosses, and I think that makes just enough quality content to put it here.
32
Arendelle
Bit Too Cold
I think it’s funny how
widespread the opinion that KH3 sucks is
, given its worst world still clears most places from BBS without even trying, due to excellent world design, fun puzzles, and beautiful visuals.
The only thing dragging Arendelle down is the refusal to stray from the source material. You go through the exact same plot as Frozen, you hear the entirety of Let it Go for some reason, and that just numbs the brain.
31
The Mysterious Tower
Thanks, Old Man
Of all the original locations in the numbered titles, The Mysterious Tower easily has the least aura. Coming in on a magic train to this island suspended in some sort of mystical space is neat, but that’s all it has going for it.
Plenty of story beats happen here, but it’s mostly just exposition and whatever the hell was happening at the end of Dream Drop Distance. If there was more substance, it’d be higher, but I’m simply tired of seeing Yen Sid’s face.
30
Land of Departure
Definitely Not Destiny Islands
In the opening of Birth by Sleep, we essentially got a retake of the Kingdom Hearts 1 intro, with our main characters going through some very basic tutorials in a serene area that you quickly leave to go explore new worlds.
Unlike Destiny Islands, though, the Land of Departure has far less comforting, homey vibes to it. It does serve its purpose, but doesn’t feel like somewhere I want to live, and the gameplay of hitting balls for your final exam isn’t exactly the most engaging.
29
Prankster’s Paradise/Monstro
Too Many Walls
I think Prankster’s Paradise is pretty alright, it’s just about the most consistently OK world in the series. Monstro in KH1 is fine, despite Riku’s unfinished business with that puppet, and the version in Dream Drop is similarly fine.
I think it’s pretty exemplary of how broken Flowmotion is, as any platforming challenge the game poses can be overcome by jumping and dashing across the far too plentiful walls, but that’s also somewhat fun, so whatever.
28
Disney Castle
Push That Rat
While I respect the idea of seeing Disney Castle in the first game, then exploring it in the second, it’s mostly only cool for that reason. The gameplay is alright and pushing Minnie across the room is ok. The aesthetic, however, is excellent.
It’s overall a decently fun experience, it’s fun to drop in and explore the place where Goofy got beamed in the head, and it’s nice to explore the few rooms you’re allowed in. A decent midway break, overall.
27
Kingdom of Corona
Good Place to Find Ingredients
The Kingdom of Pandemics is in a very similar situation to Arendelle, but the adherence to the plot gets played a bit looser with Marluxia’s meddling. Plus, it looks even prettier since Tangled was already a beautiful movie.
I think any cutscene that focuses on Rapunzel drags on and is the main reason this game gets critiqued for its cutscenes. Still, the world is fun when we aren’t just watching movies. We also get flowmotion here, so that means it’s the goat.
26
Port Royal/The Caribbean
Ship Has Sailed
I have around the same opinion on both Pirates of the Caribbean worlds. Both have some meaningless exploration that mostly amounts to more inconvenient doors between areas, and story-wise they’re uninteresting.
The only difference is that The Caribbean looks amazing – despite Port Royal looking egregiously bad. Still, they have good bosses, some sense of exploration if I suspend my disbelief, and crabs.
25
Quadratum
Get Real
I can only really judge Quadratum by what I’m able to play through, and while it looks awesome in Kingdom Hearts 4, in Kingdom Hearts 3, it’s just an arena for Sora to fight Zack from the hit Disney Channel show Zack and Cody.
The fight is great, even if it
makes me want to throw my controller
right through the wall, and the aesthetics are breathtaking, but that’s all it is. I expect this to rise way higher soon, but we’ll have to see about that.
