Pauline Ragny

It goes COMPLETELY off the rails within the first 2 hours of Kingdom Hearts 2

I think the main way that the franchise got its reputation is the sheer number of platforms that the games got released on back in the day - if you skipped Chain of Memories because you didn't have a GBA, much of the opening of KH2 is lost on you, beyond just the metaphors - the game expects you to have that context to understand "why is Sora in a pod?" "Why is Namine important?" Etc.

That on top of the flowery metaphors leaves people with "okay, but is that a metaphor or was that a reference to a mobile game I didn't play?" which I both get but like also just go with the vibes

A generation of kids were felt severely wronged by a GBA game being story-important and everyone on the internet since has mindlessly parroted their confusion for a decade since because haha Nomura game so wacky and weird.

It wouldn't be so bad but there's already so much actual absurdity to enjoy just from watching Mickey Mouse do dumb anime shit without having to make up this concept of it being inscrutible madness. It's hardly ever any more complicated than any other anime or anime-game.

Well. Except the bits about time-travel. Those bits are kind of a mess.

Broadly speaking, Kingdom Hearts isn't convoluted so much as there is A Lot Of It and a lot of it is told abstractly. One factor is memory is a big part of things and that memory can be represented through data and information storage.

It also doesn't help that until 2020 a lot of the story was in side games released across multiple different handhelds, a browser game, and a mobile game, so it could be a pain to get ahold of the whole series and follow it from beginning to end. It's been years since then but the legacy endures, unfortunately.

I do remember hearing KH had its own Mortis, so you might be onto something here.

I think people who talk about Kingdom Hearts being complicated are the kind of people who want to say the media they like (and understand) is complicated so they feel smart by the implication they understand something complicated.

That said, the themes and mechanics of the story AREN'T complicated, but I think what most people find "complicated" is the amount of characters who are in some way part of another character, a different version of another character, connected existentially to another character, etc, because the variety of methods this shakes out in KH remains to be the most varied way I've seen a single media do. But if you grew up watching YGO DM like I did (or any other media with a permanent "dark" version of another character/plurality themes) then you're already like halfway there in having the fundamental guidepath for most of it. 👍

Also, don't know how much you care for Video Game Videos, but BDJ did a video for Polygon that accurately represents the average person's reaction when trying to understand all of KH, all at once. Which is probably mostly people's problem -- they are probably trying to take it in too quickly, whereas longtime fans had years, spread out, to take in information.

Nomura also did retcon stuff a few times 🙄 and that made things... uh... yeah. 😮‍💨
Anyway hi I track the KH tag. :S Hope this was useful or whatever. 💜👋

Nah, I'd say you're about right. It's mostly metaphorical and emotional. As someone else mentioned, I think the main driver of that particular refrain is that the spinoffs were formerly spread out across multiple platforms, which almost nobody had all of, and which contained important plot details. As a result, they became really confused when they came back to the series after missing several entries that introduced new ideas and characters.