What Do You Think the Ideal Difficulty to play KH is?

Gonna order it by game, but feel free to go into as much or as little detail as you want

KH1- Standard
CoM- Standard
KH2- Critical
358/2 Days- Beginner
Birth by Sleep- Proud
Re:Coded- Proud I guess? (when I played I was switching around difficulties all the time to get different rewards, so it's hard for me to say)
DDD- Standard

Overall I think KH1 and CoM have the most balanced difficulty, where Proud is there to give you an extra challenge, rather than to make the game actually have a challenge in the first place.
With DD and Days it wasn't so much what's the actual best difficulty but what makes playing through them less tedious

 

I haven' t played DDD, but I' ve played all the others on their max difficulty settings. I knew it was required to unlock a few things in some of them and since, a few select bosses aside, it never felt particularly difficult I just stuck to it. So far the only game that gave me an incentive to even try the other difficulties was ReCoded.

 

Proud/Critical for all of the games, in my opinion. I think getting the highest difficulty out of all of the games is the only way to play (besides Re: Coded, since I never played it). I think beating a game on the highest difficulty is a lot more rewarding, because you've mastered the worst the devs could throw at you without making the game unplayable. Now, that in my opinion is really satisfying.

It's especially satisfying when you figure out a bosses pattern, find a specific way to dodge/counter their attacks and exploit their weaknesses.

And sure, you might get frustrated and might not wanna play the game anymore, but that usually doesn't happen with me and KH games, since I've always been motivated to see what happens next in the game. Plus, most KH games reward you the secret ending just for completing the game on hardest mode, so there's incentive to do it if you're not a fan of 100% -ing games and hunt and grind for stuff you don't even need. Just takes too much time, imo, so playing on the hardest difficulty is better.

Now, playing on Critical and playing as level 1 for the whole game? Now that's unnecessarily difficult

 

Proud Mode on 358/2 Days? What are you, crazy?
It's a tedious enough game on its own

 

Eh, the only tedious parts I can remember is the Agrabah and Halloween Town bosses.

Plus, the Riku Boss battle is pretty much a joke, even on Proud Mode.

 

The point of that boss battle is to show how OP Roxas was, of course it's easy.
Every boss, every enemy, everything in Days has way too much HP
Takes forever

 

Pretty much what everyone else has said, except CoM/Re:CoM. I choose Beginner for that. I suck at the card battle system. I suck so bad. I just go into the whole thing so haphazardly. Can't comment on Re:Coded as I haven't played that and probably never will.

 

I'm critical of hard modes in general but KH's in particular, so I say normal for all of the games. The trouble is that the games don't take into account that you'd think of playing hard mode right off; they're not designed around that experience, and so they occasionally fail to teach you things in that mode that you would've learned easily in normal. Little things, subtle things, like the size of an attack's hitbox or the best way to avoid a projectile. Things where you'd need time to test different approaches, make mistakes, learn what works and what doesn't. Not so easy when a few hits will kill you.

The only one I'd say maybe easy mode on would be Days, since even on normal it has a fair bit of growing pains. But I never found it so bad I wanted to restart, so I couldn't say for sure.

 

I've always loved playing KH1 on expert mode. I always get a sense of satisfaction whenever I beat that boss that was tricky to beat, and the same goes for regular enemies, especially Large Bodies. Unless, of course, the camera obscures my view in a tight space, in which that's not satisfying, that's just tedious.
I've only played Re: CoM on Normal for my first playthrough and Proud for both Sora and Riku during every other, and I gotta say, I didn't see that much of a difference, mostly because in CoM, as long as you use sleights that are both affective and have a higher card total, there's no way an enemy can break through you unless its with a larger sleight or with a 0 card. This made the game a matter of pressing triangle over and over to use and perform sleights to destroy your foes (although I still really, really like CoM despite that, but that's an entirely different discussion)
I've only played KH2 on proud mode, mostly because there is no way I'm completing Jiminy Cricket's journal to get the special ending. But yeah, I actually dies a lot in 2 on my first try. I've yet to do a 2nd playthrough to see if I can take advantage of the drive moves (because in my original playthrough, I barley used them), but for my first playthrough, I think Proud is comfortable enough.
Other than that, I haven't played any other KH game, but I have to wonder what's so tedious about Dream Drop Distance and 378/Dumb Titled Days. I know that with Days, enemies have large health bars, but DDD? I thought that the game was good.

 

All kingdom hearts games should be played or Critical or Proud. Most of the game is piece of cake, the problem is the bosses some bosses are way overpowered (Organization and such), I am even discovering that Ansem from KH I is pretty difficult even though he has some easy patterns your MP/potions just can't keep up with that many life bars he has. Chain of memories should be always played at the highest difficulty as when you master the cards the enemies don't even touch you.