Huh?
Way back when I was still in the target audience for Kingdom Hearts, I thought Kingdom Hearts was the stupidest thing I had ever seen. This wasn't because I was some supreme arbiter of taste at the age of eight — my favorite game at the time was Shadow the Hedgehog, if you need further clarification — but it was an initial conception that never really left me. While a lot of the media that I had dismissed as a child tended to seem a lot more favorable once I grew up and started developing a taste of my own, I've always thought of Kingdom Hearts as being this woefully lame and eternally bad series that was beloved only by children and Disney adults who had played it as children. Grown adults who liked it only did so because they'd never reached an understanding of the idea that something you liked as a kid doesn't need to be something you still like as an adult. But that's an unfair assumption. After all, there are a lot of people I respect who have said that there's something about this game that got to them. Elements that they loved, gameplay they adored, story beats that brought them to tears. There's something about Kingdom Hearts that has managed to hook people, and, as I said in my 2023 year-end list, we owe it to ourselves to get out of our comfort zones and play things we'd never otherwise think to play if we ever want to take ourselves seriously. If I continued to dismiss Kingdom Hearts out of hand because I decided that it looked stupid twenty years ago, then I'm no better now than I was when I was in the third grade. It's only fair — only right — that I investigate it for myself.
I hate Kingdom Hearts.
Either I'm just unable to see the mastery hidden behind Kingdom Hearts that everyone else is, or I'm the only sane man in the madhouse. It hardly matters which one is the actual truth, because the outcome is the same: a lot of people like Kingdom Hearts, the ones that don't like it don't seem to despise it, and I can't fucking stand it. I'm the odd man out.
This camera is atrocious. Controlling it with the L2 and R2 buttons is bad enough when we live in a world where the right stick is purely just a second D-pad, but the lock-on acts as more of a gentle suggestion. It simultaneously has very little interest in actually tracking enemies that move off-screen while also swinging around so violently that it's difficult to keep track of where anything is. Enemies seem to wait until they're off-screen to attack, which certainly makes sense for them, but is incredibly frustrating when you eat a fireball to the back of the head that you literally could not see coming nor tech even if you did. The camera is also a physical object that can't pass through terrain, which means that it's constantly smashing against walls and giving you completely worthless angles the second you enter a hallway that's just a bit too tight. It does everything wrong.
I also found the combat to be a complete mash-fest, largely just focused on getting directly in front of an enemy's face and spamming the attack button as fast as I humanly could. Hopping into the air for a moment before spamming the attack button seemed to make Sora hit things faster, so that wound up becoming a core part of the rotation. Not helping matters is how obscenely delayed most of Sora's kit actually is, with a dishonorable mention going specifically to his jump; there's what feels like a half-second of delay before he actually becomes airborne after you hit the button, which is bad in combat sections and unforgivable in the parts where you need to platform. There's a jump over a couple of mushrooms in the Alice in Wonderland world long before you get the high jump or the glide, and combined with the terrible camera was probably the single most difficult challenge in the entire game. I nearly burst a blood vessel when I found out that your partners have collision and can push you off of edges if you aren't careful. In some areas, this only means needing to hop back up to where you just were. In others, it means needing to transition through several different loading zones as you slowly climb your way back up.
It is a very pretty game, though, both graphically and sonically. Certainly moreso the former than the latter; this might have the single worst rendition of Night on Bald Mountain I will ever hear in my life. It's not hard to look at this and be impressed, especially in the original areas; the final set piece is an absolute treat, with you fighting waves of Heartless in a pitch-black room and only being able to tell where they are by the glow of their eyes. There are a lot of visual elements here that I know get expanded upon in Kingdom Hearts 2, and I think it was pretty smart of the team to keep going further down that path.
For as much shit as people talk about the narrative, I thought it was far and away the strongest thing Kingdom Hearts had going for it. Not the bulk of it, though; the overwhelming majority of the game is spent traipsing through abridged recaps of Disney movies, primarily the more middling ones that the Walt Disney Company presumably weren't all that protective of. Like, Hercules isn't a good film just because you and I and everyone else want Meg to look at us like we're living pieces of trash. Even still, Kingdom Hearts breezes right through a significant amount of plot beats, largely resulting in more of a Disney-World-tour sensation rather than one of occupying an actual world. You're going through the theme park version of these different films and getting the Cliff's Notes of just enough plot to give you an idea of what you're meant to be doing. Characters in the Disney worlds act less like characters and more as mascots. They're wildly flat and underdeveloped caricatures. No, the interesting parts of the Kingdom Hearts narrative are the parts that are wholly original to it.
I actually really like the story that Riku and Sora have got going on here, with Kairi mostly taking a backseat until the final couple hours of the game. People have spoken a lot about some of the gay subtext, and I think it's largely difficult to miss — Riku offering a fruit to Sora with the prompt that sharing it will bind their two souls together for eternity may as well have been delivered while he was on one knee — while still being pretty interesting. Sora is probably the worst fucking friend ever. I get that he thinks of Riku as more of a rival than a buddy, but he only responds to Riku openly lamenting how inadequate and lonely he feels with either literal silence or general disinterest. It's hardly a surprise that he ends up falling to the darkness when he's gotten rebuked at literally every single turn, all the while being manipulated further into thinking he has no other choice. It's neat, and it comes to a nice close when Riku manages to break free of Ansem's control and his own insecurities to help Sora close the door to Kingdom Hearts. Regrettably, he is also forced to share the conclusion of his arc with fucking Mickey Mouse.
Kingdom Hearts has an interesting story running through it, but, again, it's constantly being silenced by the game interrupting itself to say "holy shit, you're in Aladdin world". I don't fucking care about Aladdin. I've seen Aladdin. Aladdin is a fine movie that's significantly more interesting and better written as a movie, and not as this shitty pastiche with Dan Castellaneta doing Homer voice while trying to fill Robin Williams's shoes. God, so many of these actors just aren't doing a good job. It's kind of impressive that the child actors fucking crush it, and not even by comparison; Haley Joel Osment just kills it. Billy Zane's Ansem is pretty solid, as is Mandy Moore's Aerith. The rest I'm ambivalent about, or actively hostile towards. Brian Blessed sounds fucking terrible in this.
I did have a moment while I was playing Kingdom Hearts, right near the end when I was climbing back up to the top of Hollow Bastion. I had the realization that my keyblade looked like a flower. I was mostly just equipping whatever had the best stats, and it just happened to be that the Divine Rose gave me exactly what I needed. It very suddenly occurred to me, at that moment, that I never would have been using it if I had played this when I was a kid. Flowers are for girls, after all. Even if it meant equipping a strictly worse weapon that didn't do what I wanted it to do — one that actively harmed my build, even — I wouldn't have equipped the flower keyblade.
I was a bit of a fruity kid growing up. I wanted to wear nail polish, I liked watching a lot of shows for girls, I didn't really feel the revulsion that a lot of other people seemed to feel at doing things that weren't "for" their gender. Of course, it all kind of ended up making sense once I realized I liked dudes, but it was a pretty strange feeling to have while growing up when I wasn't really allowed to correctly guess the reasoning behind it. My dad made every effort to beat all of that out of me. To mold me into a Man. I think I gravitated more to a lot of these hyper-edgy pieces of media like Shadow the Hedgehog and whatever garbage aired on Spike TV in the hopes that it would impress him. Obviously, this was more than a little misguided. He would have been a lot happier had I picked up a football helmet and a drill and a cigar and acted like what people thought men were supposed to be in the 1950s, but I figured it was worth trying. It wasn't. When you're not allowed to be the person you are, you tend to do a pretty bad job of acting like the person you're expected to be. The flower keyblade was for girls, and that meant the flower keyblade was justification to be punished if I used it. Today, I equipped the flower keyblade and used it all the way until the end.
There's a part of me I lost a long time ago that's made it impossible for me to like Kingdom Hearts.
I don't know if it was a childhood whimsy that allowed me to see the good in anything, or if it was a childish naivety that allowed me to see anything as good.
Way back when I was still in the target audience for Kingdom Hearts, I thought Kingdom Hearts was the stupidest thing I had ever seen. This wasn't because I was some supreme arbiter of taste at the age of eight — my favorite game at the time was Shadow the Hedgehog, if you need further clarification — but it was an initial conception that never really left me. While a lot of the media that I had dismissed as a child tended to seem a lot more favorable once I grew up and started developing a taste of my own, I've always thought of Kingdom Hearts as being this woefully lame and eternally bad series that was beloved only by children and Disney adults who had played it as children. Grown adults who liked it only did so because they'd never reached an understanding of the idea that something you liked as a kid doesn't need to be something you still like as an adult. But that's an unfair assumption. After all, there are a lot of people I respect who have said that there's something about this game that got to them. Elements that they loved, gameplay they adored, story beats that brought them to tears. There's something about Kingdom Hearts that has managed to hook people, and, as I said in my 2023 year-end list, we owe it to ourselves to get out of our comfort zones and play things we'd never otherwise think to play if we ever want to take ourselves seriously. If I continued to dismiss Kingdom Hearts out of hand because I decided that it looked stupid twenty years ago, then I'm no better now than I was when I was in the third grade. It's only fair — only right — that I investigate it for myself.
I hate Kingdom Hearts.
Either I'm just unable to see the mastery hidden behind Kingdom Hearts that everyone else is, or I'm the only sane man in the madhouse. It hardly matters which one is the actual truth, because the outcome is the same: a lot of people like Kingdom Hearts, the ones that don't like it don't seem to despise it, and I can't fucking stand it. I'm the odd man out.
This camera is atrocious. Controlling it with the L2 and R2 buttons is bad enough when we live in a world where the right stick is purely just a second D-pad, but the lock-on acts as more of a gentle suggestion. It simultaneously has very little interest in actually tracking enemies that move off-screen while also swinging around so violently that it's difficult to keep track of where anything is. Enemies seem to wait until they're off-screen to attack, which certainly makes sense for them, but is incredibly frustrating when you eat a fireball to the back of the head that you literally could not see coming nor tech even if you did. The camera is also a physical object that can't pass through terrain, which means that it's constantly smashing against walls and giving you completely worthless angles the second you enter a hallway that's just a bit too tight. It does everything wrong.
I also found the combat to be a complete mash-fest, largely just focused on getting directly in front of an enemy's face and spamming the attack button as fast as I humanly could. Hopping into the air for a moment before spamming the attack button seemed to make Sora hit things faster, so that wound up becoming a core part of the rotation. Not helping matters is how obscenely delayed most of Sora's kit actually is, with a dishonorable mention going specifically to his jump; there's what feels like a half-second of delay before he actually becomes airborne after you hit the button, which is bad in combat sections and unforgivable in the parts where you need to platform. There's a jump over a couple of mushrooms in the Alice in Wonderland world long before you get the high jump or the glide, and combined with the terrible camera was probably the single most difficult challenge in the entire game. I nearly burst a blood vessel when I found out that your partners have collision and can push you off of edges if you aren't careful. In some areas, this only means needing to hop back up to where you just were. In others, it means needing to transition through several different loading zones as you slowly climb your way back up.
It is a very pretty game, though, both graphically and sonically. Certainly moreso the former than the latter; this might have the single worst rendition of Night on Bald Mountain I will ever hear in my life. It's not hard to look at this and be impressed, especially in the original areas; the final set piece is an absolute treat, with you fighting waves of Heartless in a pitch-black room and only being able to tell where they are by the glow of their eyes. There are a lot of visual elements here that I know get expanded upon in Kingdom Hearts 2, and I think it was pretty smart of the team to keep going further down that path.
For as much shit as people talk about the narrative, I thought it was far and away the strongest thing Kingdom Hearts had going for it. Not the bulk of it, though; the overwhelming majority of the game is spent traipsing through abridged recaps of Disney movies, primarily the more middling ones that the Walt Disney Company presumably weren't all that protective of. Like, Hercules isn't a good film just because you and I and everyone else want Meg to look at us like we're living pieces of trash. Even still, Kingdom Hearts breezes right through a significant amount of plot beats, largely resulting in more of a Disney-World-tour sensation rather than one of occupying an actual world. You're going through the theme park version of these different films and getting the Cliff's Notes of just enough plot to give you an idea of what you're meant to be doing. Characters in the Disney worlds act less like characters and more as mascots. They're wildly flat and underdeveloped caricatures. No, the interesting parts of the Kingdom Hearts narrative are the parts that are wholly original to it.
I actually really like the story that Riku and Sora have got going on here, with Kairi mostly taking a backseat until the final couple hours of the game. People have spoken a lot about some of the gay subtext, and I think it's largely difficult to miss — Riku offering a fruit to Sora with the prompt that sharing it will bind their two souls together for eternity may as well have been delivered while he was on one knee — while still being pretty interesting. Sora is probably the worst fucking friend ever. I get that he thinks of Riku as more of a rival than a buddy, but he only responds to Riku openly lamenting how inadequate and lonely he feels with either literal silence or general disinterest. It's hardly a surprise that he ends up falling to the darkness when he's gotten rebuked at literally every single turn, all the while being manipulated further into thinking he has no other choice. It's neat, and it comes to a nice close when Riku manages to break free of Ansem's control and his own insecurities to help Sora close the door to Kingdom Hearts. Regrettably, he is also forced to share the conclusion of his arc with fucking Mickey Mouse.
Kingdom Hearts has an interesting story running through it, but, again, it's constantly being silenced by the game interrupting itself to say "holy shit, you're in Aladdin world". I don't fucking care about Aladdin. I've seen Aladdin. Aladdin is a fine movie that's significantly more interesting and better written as a movie, and not as this shitty pastiche with Dan Castellaneta doing Homer voice while trying to fill Robin Williams's shoes. God, so many of these actors just aren't doing a good job. It's kind of impressive that the child actors fucking crush it, and not even by comparison; Haley Joel Osment just kills it. Billy Zane's Ansem is pretty solid, as is Mandy Moore's Aerith. The rest I'm ambivalent about, or actively hostile towards. Brian Blessed sounds fucking terrible in this.
I did have a moment while I was playing Kingdom Hearts, right near the end when I was climbing back up to the top of Hollow Bastion. I had the realization that my keyblade looked like a flower. I was mostly just equipping whatever had the best stats, and it just happened to be that the Divine Rose gave me exactly what I needed. It very suddenly occurred to me, at that moment, that I never would have been using it if I had played this when I was a kid. Flowers are for girls, after all. Even if it meant equipping a strictly worse weapon that didn't do what I wanted it to do — one that actively harmed my build, even — I wouldn't have equipped the flower keyblade.
I was a bit of a fruity kid growing up. I wanted to wear nail polish, I liked watching a lot of shows for girls, I didn't really feel the revulsion that a lot of other people seemed to feel at doing things that weren't "for" their gender. Of course, it all kind of ended up making sense once I realized I liked dudes, but it was a pretty strange feeling to have while growing up when I wasn't really allowed to correctly guess the reasoning behind it. My dad made every effort to beat all of that out of me. To mold me into a Man. I think I gravitated more to a lot of these hyper-edgy pieces of media like Shadow the Hedgehog and whatever garbage aired on Spike TV in the hopes that it would impress him. Obviously, this was more than a little misguided. He would have been a lot happier had I picked up a football helmet and a drill and a cigar and acted like what people thought men were supposed to be in the 1950s, but I figured it was worth trying. It wasn't. When you're not allowed to be the person you are, you tend to do a pretty bad job of acting like the person you're expected to be. The flower keyblade was for girls, and that meant the flower keyblade was justification to be punished if I used it. Today, I equipped the flower keyblade and used it all the way until the end.
There's a part of me I lost a long time ago that's made it impossible for me to like Kingdom Hearts.
I don't know if it was a childhood whimsy that allowed me to see the good in anything, or if it was a childish naivety that allowed me to see anything as good.
Kingdom Hearts is a series I've been wanting to invest in for years now, and I finally managed to do so, and I fucking loved it. People shit on this game for being corny and outdated, but I love that shit so much. I see people say Sora is shallow and not very likable, but man, Sora moved me so fucking much, and it's only the FIRST game. I'm aware this series is kind of controversial, but if any of the other Kingdom Heart's games are as good as this, then I'm beyond excited to play the future titles. Also, the soundtrack is INCREDIBLE. The soundtrack has been on loop for a long ass time now for me, and I never get tired of it.
Color me impressed.
Kingdom Hearts is the impossible game. I’ve been looking back on how the hell something like this came into existence for years and still fail to come up with a proper answer. If Square Enix tried to go through Disney to get something like this made today, Disney wouldn’t even do them the courtesy of laughing at them. Square would just be completely ignored. 2002 Square though? Those guys were kings of the ring. People thought they were the BEST storytellers, the BEST game designers. Nothing could possibly go wrong when it came to a crossover between the biggest name in animation and the biggest name in video game RPGs.
And honestly? Not that much went wrong here. Yeah, I went into this fully aware of the series’ reputation. “It’s convoluted,” they said. “It’s cringe,” they said. Yeah, those things are kind of true, but this first game isn’t dragged down much by some earnest silliness. I’m sure a lot of people decry that this isn’t a more explicit crossover of IPs, as the Disney worlds and characters are isolated from each other and the FF characters are full-on reinterpretations that play pretty small roles, but the presence of the original characters competently stands in for how you might imagine something more explicitly Japanese colliding with western products would go. Having a new character act as the lead allows both newcomers to and fans of one or both of the IPs involved to have some kind of anchor. While the worlds you visit generally retread the content of their film counterparts, they were also an opportunity to see a different angle of each setting and respective principal character, something a kid who knows those stories would probably be wowed by compared to a normal video game adaptation.
Among KH’s many surprises was its combat. Something that was called “mashy” even close to its original release date. While that can be true, and you can have a good enough time just running up against a wall until it breaks, I found the combat’s quirks fun to master. Your basic three hit combo can have its level of commitment reduced by timing swings correctly. Your air combos are faster and can be sped up even further by canceling them with short hops. You have a quick select menu for spells that adds a layer of decision-making to major encounters. You have a spell that grants greater protection from damage but costs more than a normal healing spell. Get caught in the wrong string of attacks and you’ll be reeling over having picked the wrong defensive spell between the two. Your weapon of choice has different passive abilities like a higher critical hit rate or more slots for MP, and comes in a variety of lengths that act as compensation for or counter to their other qualities. So you now have to make a choice over how much keeping a little bit of space between you and a boss means to you.
A bit less intuitive are your party members. By default, Donald and Goofy are programmed to commit suicide in front of you. I understand that classic cartoons are very different from what we expect from our modern, sanitized lives, but watching beloved single father Goofy Goof repeatedly set himself aflame as Bill Farmer screamed in anguish was a little much for me. You will have to set Donald to favor defensive actions to make sure your party is of any use to you.
Outside of wanting to forget Donald's attempts at "help" as readily as Disney wants to forget Song of the South, this simple combat system gives you a surprising amount of control over the flow of fights, and you can make conscious optimizations to reward yourself with more expedient encounters. This includes some added replayability with what kind of build you select at the start, favoring attack, defense, or magic while limiting one of those traits in turn. Beginners are told to pick the shield and discard the staff, while players going for pure speed grab the staff and discard the shield. You can have a pretty distinct experience based on your play style despite seeming fairly limited to start with. I don’t think a game that wasn’t confident in its combat would give me the option to completely disable gaining exp. While I think that is an addition rom the Final Mix version that I played, it’s still a pretty incredible testament to how far this game lept from the turn-based games that inspired it. I don’t think there would be a game that really captured the ideas around Final Fantasy’s active time battle system in a fully real-time format until FF7R, but KH was a strong early outing.
Kingdom Hearts was apparently out to prove it really was an RPG, because unlike most action games, it leads with its weaker material and ends much stronger. A straightforward tutorial is followed up with a leisurely stroll around an island doing some fetch quests. This would be mostly inoffensive, if not for one brief attempt at a “race” that clued me into how odd some of the platforming was going to feel. Sora lands like a rock, so jumping from platform to platform felt far from fluid. This sequence and the optional fight with your friend/rival Riku is meant to be revisited and trivialized on subsequent playthroughs of the game, but I know with certainty I would neve get these right, especially after getting used to my other abilities gained down the road.
Trouble in paradise arises as the island is enveloped in darkness, Sora’s oneitis is whisked away, and Riku is absorbed into a Lovecraftian ether assuring us that he’s just going to ask some perfectly reasonable questions about the history of central banking. The slow pace of the game continues as we are made to walk around Traverse Town. Combat encounters are not going to feel very exciting here. I feel like the game waiting to give you a dodge roll was a mistake. Even when you aren’t getting much use out of it, it can add a bit of dynamism to the flow of each fight. This is where I first picked up on how the game spares me the horror of having to deal with enemies respawning every time I reenter a room. It takes a couple of reentries before they rear their heads again, and they can often be ignored once you know where to go.
So you link up with Donald and Goofy, deciding to need it rather than keep it. You blitz on over to Wonderland, and this first Disney world does a solid job translating the film’s content into a video game setting. It only takes two-ish locales from Alice in Wonderland, the room with the potions and the queen’s garden, but a decent amount of variety is pulled from them. Negotiating with flowers is thankfully straightforward as they will just tell you what they want, so no guesswork is needed. This is one of the better examples of back-and-forth tasks the game is going to burden you with. It’s a short checklist of things that tend to open up a little more of the area as you go. We are not at the worst of this yet. The boss fight here can sadly take a while if you’re a bit sheepish over your capabilities or did not spec into magic. However if you’re willing to just dive in on this lanky fella then it’ll be over quickly.
Your next options are the jungle and the colosseum. The colosseum can come off as a fat load of nothing to those just trying to get through the game normally, but it’s the source of a substantial amount of optional content and some of the game’s best boss fights. If you do not make an attempt at Sephiroth, you will have sorely missed out. Interesting to note that this is actually the first time a character like him or Cloud would even be shown in a real-time format, so it’s no wonder these depictions had such a huge impact on their later incarnations. Though I wouldn’t be a real FF fan if I did not take a moment to seethe over “emo Cloud” being such a cool guy when his original depiction was much more of a dweeby weirdo getting made fun of for trying way too hard to act cool.
The jungle kind of sucks. I have trouble finding much defense for how much needless backtracking there is in this one just to activate cutscenes. In fact it’s often a bit unclear that’s what you need to be doing so you could waste even more time unnecessarily. I have seen some pretty neat optimized routing for this section but it’s sadly not quite enough to salvage it for me. I do get to take a moment to look at Jane, the best Disney girl, so it was kind of worth it in the end. I also got to beat up a leopard, which is something I always wanted to do in real life. Also, did you know that leopards only have a lifespan of 10-12 years? If a leopard killed Tarzan’s parents twenty years ago, then who the fuck did Tarzan kill in the movie?
As another aside, Tarzan claims that the boss here is “ooh ah ooh ah Not-Clayton” but what did he mean by this exactly? Is it a heartless posing as Clayton? Is he merely referencing that Clayton is not alone and is accompanied by a giant chameleon? Is it physically Clayton but possessed or enhanced by the power of darkness in some way? My friend Mike (whom I have blocked on twitter) insists that it is literally not Clayton. I think the following cutscene where the chameleon falls on Clayton implies that it was the real Clayton. If he was possessed, then we have just killed a man who was mostly innocent in this version of the story and even the actions of his own agency could have been manipulated by the heartless. Even Kerchek gets to live here. Clayton was tragically cast as the villain of this story because a higher power deemed it so. In another life, we could have been friends.
Revisiting Traverse Town demands a fair amount of busy work, but you do get to open up an optional minigame world to communist China and climb trees with Xi Jinping and friends. You also get to run into Riku again. It seems that, since we last saw him, Riku has been doing a lot of reading and insists that we should read the passages from Deuteronomy that he texted us earlier. He’s also believing every word from someone who has literal devil horns adorned to her head. I am a huge Sleeping Beauty fan, so getting to see Maleficent be so involved in the greater scope of the game is fun for me, especially since many of the other Disney characters seem more confined to their own worlds.
Agrabah is another generally well designed world. The combat here implements a bit of platforming so you think more about your positioning and try not to fall from your advantageous spot. You also have a nice variety of areas within the streets, outside the Cave of Wonders, the upper level of the cave, the lower level, and the treasure trove. The only thing that’s really missing is the palace interior. You also have to get a truncated version of the film’s character arc for Aladdin, rushing us to his third wish to free Genie. So Al wastes his first two wishes with shit we could have accomplished easily. This is one of those retreads that I accept as a necessary concession. It’s not just the film’s plot, but if you stray too far and have us dealing with like, animated series Aladdin, people who aren’t me wouldn’t be that interested
Jafar’s boss fight is a bit of a dud. The preceding sorcerer Jafar fight isn’t bad, but genie Jafar has the worst aim of all time and you’re mostly waiting for Iago to pass by so you can eviscerate Gilbert Gottfried.
Monstro is one of those worlds I had heard was infamous, only to find it totally inoffensive. It’s a small maze. What was so objectionable about this? Is it just one of those things people blow up because they got lost as kids? Why don’t I hear that about the following world? The fucking water one. Anyway, Riku is here again and this time he’s going on about how his ideology is totally predicated on economic reform only. Pinnochio is here, btw. He and Gepetto have been swallowed up here. Pinnochio is then swallowed up by a big heartless and you have to save him. Now, from my understanding, KH fans like some guy called “Chibi” really enjoy this kind of thing. I am personally not a huge fan of witnessing double-vore, but we end up leaving Gepetto and Pinnochio in this place to supposedly digest for all eternity anyway. Mission accomplished, boys. We entered the belly of the beast and took responsibility for our capital B Being, cleaning our room and slaying the dragon, bucko. (Note: We really will be slaying a dragon later)
The next world is Atlantica. Thankfully this is KH1 so dad is yet to walk in on us having a dance party with Princess Ariel the pretty mermaid. First and foremost, this world is a better example of the abridged/altered plots of the movies. Atlantica wisely ignores the movie’s plot of Ariel wanting to walk on land so she can get laid. However it successfully honors the spirit of the film with its cliff notes still focusing on the conflict between the free-spirited Ariel and her overbearing father, which leads to a deal with Ursula. Maybe praise for such sparse storytelling is unnecessary, but when you have to do something like this eight times per game you should give credit where it’s due.
I’m not really sure how much of Atlantica’s issues are its own versus mine. There are literal arrows pointing me in the right direction for the Final Mix version of this game, and I still managed to get lost trying to find my way back to Ariel’s hideout so I can progress the story. I don’t know how people feel about the swimming here, but it seems deliberately designed to not be as frustrating as underwater segments of the previous era. You move quickly and combat moves about as fluidly as it does on land. Still, the world is a little too large and there are too many enemies to fight per room in order to progress with a shy dolphin to the next area. Twice. I still found this meandering more engaging than the jungle, and I thought it ended pretty strong with both Ursula boss fights. I hear the second one, against giant Ursula, is infamous online for being incredibly frustrating. I’m assuming this must be referencing the original release which has a less free camera, because I found this to be a fun challenge among the required boss fights of the game. There’s plenty of healthy telegraphing of attacks, and conditioning that teaches you to not be greedy with openings. Ariel is also one of the more useful guest party members. I’m sure many peculiar folks online were saddened to find out she did not whip out her feet in this version of the tale, but she can absolutely throw hands.
Halloweentown is here. It is in this game. I liked it. I certainly didn’t dislike it. It’s like if the jungle section was less of a slog. A lot of quick back-and-forth running around to trigger cutscenes before you open up another small area. The combat here against the trash mobs can actually get a little dicey, with these guys who leap down and slash to deal huge damage. So the game is officially not pulling punches at this point. You also have another gimmicky boss fight waiting for you at the end of this segment. While the flow here is notably more in the game’s corner than your own, you still have a lot of control over how quickly this fight concludes. Again, whatever distaste I saw for this online prior to playing for the first time seems to be a projection of childhood frustrations. There’s also an additional fight against a house because the developers really wanted you to appreciate the exterior of this environment and not just run by all the enemies. Fair.
I don’t know if making Neverland the final world in a game about coming of age and loss of innocence was intentional, but I like to pretend it was. Of course, Neverland being last in line here means that apparently Captain fucking Hook has a higher in-universe power level than the likes of Jafar, Ursula, Oogie Boogie, (possibly) Hades, and Not-Clayton. He truly has climbed the competency hierarchy and channeled his inner chaos. Neverland is a fairly brief and confined world, and I can imagine it might’ve been frustrating with the original release’s camera, but it works fine in Final Mix. You are even granted the ability to fly freely here, something the swimming section preps you for. The movement feels very natural even if you only have access to a downgraded version of it outside of this world. Hook’s fight, like several others, is fairly accommodating in granting you extra enemies to beat up on in order to restore your magic. Pan is another one of the more fun guest party members with the ability to freeze enemies in place the way Bobby Driscol wishes he could have frozen time before getting blacklisted. There’s also a pretty neat optional gimmick fight here with a super boss that demands hyper awareness of a ticking clock that will kill your party one by one. It’s a great use of an iconic setpiece from Disney’s catalog.
You get a pocket Tinker Bell here. I have no comment. I just want you to know that you will have Tinker Bell available to summon and there is nothing else to think about in regards to Tinker Bell but she is literally right there in your pocket like seriously imagine though.
Hollow Bastion is where the game goes from pretty good to outright excellent for a while. Your movement is all freed up now, so traversal through the area is about as smooth as it’s going to get. The rooms here vary in size to let you judge the space between you and enemies in a variety of ways. The enemy types are split between bulkier damage dealers and flying enemies, both of which force you to reposition constantly. Beast is here as the only guest party member to not be present in their own world. While I was deprived of a Gaston boss fight, I could still breathe a sigh of relief as the game reassured me that the entire country of France had been obliterated by the Heartless.
The string of boss fights here are all high quality. Dragon Maleficent is a great example of how broken Tinker Bell is, but can be defeated without assistance once you understand that the massive tail whip attack is actually telegraphed. It’s just tough to see because it’s a giant dragon that takes up 75% of the screen. Riku is fully possessed here after going on a rant about how Bob Chapek “cucked out and deserved what he got” without any elaboration. The fight is a 1v1 that puts your understanding of the mechanics to the test. You can either totally crush it or struggle for longer than necessary. The original release is notorious for an unskippable cutscene preceding this fairly tough fight. Although this boss only took me a couple of tries, an unskippable cutscene probably would have made this totally intolerable and borderline drop-worthy as an adult. As a kid in 2002 with much fewer games to play, it would have been incredibly frustrating but probably something I would have stomached.
So Riku is then transformed into a chiseled greek god by the powers of evil and we bail on the Hollow Bastion. After a brief reprieve we dive right back in and head to the endgame so we can take on Ron DarknesSantis and stop him from taking over Disney World. Some of the newer enemies here are a real challenge to get through, but they also outstay their welcome after a while. They have a tendency to shield themselves or outright disappear, so you have to constantly shift focus to new targets and come back to finish off the previous enemy later. It starts out pretty interesting but becomes tiring after a while. The Chernobog reveal completely blew my socks off as I had no idea it was in this game, it helps that the fight itself was pretty damn good. The following room is a seemingly endless gauntlet of enemies that would have utterly destroyed my will to continue had I died in there, on account of the aforementioned defensive enemies, but thankfully I got through it on the first try. Apparently you can also just summon Simba to clear each wave near-instantly. So fuck me.
All that’s left of the game are a couple of fights with Ansem. It’s a pretty strong finish but the second phase is what really feels like the final boss in terms of difficulty. Some might hate the borderline un-reactable attack that virtually incapacitates you and drains your resources to stay alive while it’s active, but I think this lends the encounter a distinct sense of danger not present anywhere else in the game’s required fights. If everyone had something like this, then I’d hate it. As a single endgame boss fight, I love it. A final boss with a few things that are oppressive or unfair makes it more satisfying when you realize they can be beaten. The boss is also very generous with checkpoints and does not force you to redo any phases.
Ansem ends up turning into a giant flesh monster devil god with a sexy Billy Zane proxy attached to it, and watching Donald Duck and Goofy go toe-to-toe with this kind of thing is the stuff not even my dreams could have come up with. I’m sure this bizarre juxtaposition will not become a trend with the series going forward.
Idk the ending is nonsense. Kingdom Hearts is light but also we still have to close that door and Riku has to be on the other side of it rather than just pushing it with you and Michael Mouse is here and we’re gonna explain why he’s shirtless later thank you Nomura very cool.
So suffice to say I was actually pretty pleased with this one. While familiarity with the IPs will certainly enhance enjoyment, and I wouldn’t really recommend the game to someone who hasn’t seen or played any of the source material, it’s shocking to think the aesthetics and gameplay might be enough to carry this experience. If you’re used to more modern games deftly blending snappier combat and customization then you might not click with it, but it’s not hard to imagine why this game is a favorite of so many people who played it near release. Not just because of its recognizable foundations, but because it takes those things and earnestly crafts something totally new and novel with them.
Try not to take its storytelling all that seriously and lecture people over how this ridiculous concept is, in fact, ridiculous to watch unfold. There’s value in the absurd, and not just in an ironic sense. If a group of people made an enjoyable piece of entertainment out of an utterly insane idea with bizarrely broad, abstract, and robotic storytelling that it confidently seems to think is none of those things, then that is absolutely worth giving some thought to, even with a few laughs at its expense.
Kingdom Hearts is the impossible game. I’ve been looking back on how the hell something like this came into existence for years and still fail to come up with a proper answer. If Square Enix tried to go through Disney to get something like this made today, Disney wouldn’t even do them the courtesy of laughing at them. Square would just be completely ignored. 2002 Square though? Those guys were kings of the ring. People thought they were the BEST storytellers, the BEST game designers. Nothing could possibly go wrong when it came to a crossover between the biggest name in animation and the biggest name in video game RPGs.
And honestly? Not that much went wrong here. Yeah, I went into this fully aware of the series’ reputation. “It’s convoluted,” they said. “It’s cringe,” they said. Yeah, those things are kind of true, but this first game isn’t dragged down much by some earnest silliness. I’m sure a lot of people decry that this isn’t a more explicit crossover of IPs, as the Disney worlds and characters are isolated from each other and the FF characters are full-on reinterpretations that play pretty small roles, but the presence of the original characters competently stands in for how you might imagine something more explicitly Japanese colliding with western products would go. Having a new character act as the lead allows both newcomers to and fans of one or both of the IPs involved to have some kind of anchor. While the worlds you visit generally retread the content of their film counterparts, they were also an opportunity to see a different angle of each setting and respective principal character, something a kid who knows those stories would probably be wowed by compared to a normal video game adaptation.
Among KH’s many surprises was its combat. Something that was called “mashy” even close to its original release date. While that can be true, and you can have a good enough time just running up against a wall until it breaks, I found the combat’s quirks fun to master. Your basic three hit combo can have its level of commitment reduced by timing swings correctly. Your air combos are faster and can be sped up even further by canceling them with short hops. You have a quick select menu for spells that adds a layer of decision-making to major encounters. You have a spell that grants greater protection from damage but costs more than a normal healing spell. Get caught in the wrong string of attacks and you’ll be reeling over having picked the wrong defensive spell between the two. Your weapon of choice has different passive abilities like a higher critical hit rate or more slots for MP, and comes in a variety of lengths that act as compensation for or counter to their other qualities. So you now have to make a choice over how much keeping a little bit of space between you and a boss means to you.
A bit less intuitive are your party members. By default, Donald and Goofy are programmed to commit suicide in front of you. I understand that classic cartoons are very different from what we expect from our modern, sanitized lives, but watching beloved single father Goofy Goof repeatedly set himself aflame as Bill Farmer screamed in anguish was a little much for me. You will have to set Donald to favor defensive actions to make sure your party is of any use to you.
Outside of wanting to forget Donald's attempts at "help" as readily as Disney wants to forget Song of the South, this simple combat system gives you a surprising amount of control over the flow of fights, and you can make conscious optimizations to reward yourself with more expedient encounters. This includes some added replayability with what kind of build you select at the start, favoring attack, defense, or magic while limiting one of those traits in turn. Beginners are told to pick the shield and discard the staff, while players going for pure speed grab the staff and discard the shield. You can have a pretty distinct experience based on your play style despite seeming fairly limited to start with. I don’t think a game that wasn’t confident in its combat would give me the option to completely disable gaining exp. While I think that is an addition rom the Final Mix version that I played, it’s still a pretty incredible testament to how far this game lept from the turn-based games that inspired it. I don’t think there would be a game that really captured the ideas around Final Fantasy’s active time battle system in a fully real-time format until FF7R, but KH was a strong early outing.
Kingdom Hearts was apparently out to prove it really was an RPG, because unlike most action games, it leads with its weaker material and ends much stronger. A straightforward tutorial is followed up with a leisurely stroll around an island doing some fetch quests. This would be mostly inoffensive, if not for one brief attempt at a “race” that clued me into how odd some of the platforming was going to feel. Sora lands like a rock, so jumping from platform to platform felt far from fluid. This sequence and the optional fight with your friend/rival Riku is meant to be revisited and trivialized on subsequent playthroughs of the game, but I know with certainty I would neve get these right, especially after getting used to my other abilities gained down the road.
Trouble in paradise arises as the island is enveloped in darkness, Sora’s oneitis is whisked away, and Riku is absorbed into a Lovecraftian ether assuring us that he’s just going to ask some perfectly reasonable questions about the history of central banking. The slow pace of the game continues as we are made to walk around Traverse Town. Combat encounters are not going to feel very exciting here. I feel like the game waiting to give you a dodge roll was a mistake. Even when you aren’t getting much use out of it, it can add a bit of dynamism to the flow of each fight. This is where I first picked up on how the game spares me the horror of having to deal with enemies respawning every time I reenter a room. It takes a couple of reentries before they rear their heads again, and they can often be ignored once you know where to go.
So you link up with Donald and Goofy, deciding to need it rather than keep it. You blitz on over to Wonderland, and this first Disney world does a solid job translating the film’s content into a video game setting. It only takes two-ish locales from Alice in Wonderland, the room with the potions and the queen’s garden, but a decent amount of variety is pulled from them. Negotiating with flowers is thankfully straightforward as they will just tell you what they want, so no guesswork is needed. This is one of the better examples of back-and-forth tasks the game is going to burden you with. It’s a short checklist of things that tend to open up a little more of the area as you go. We are not at the worst of this yet. The boss fight here can sadly take a while if you’re a bit sheepish over your capabilities or did not spec into magic. However if you’re willing to just dive in on this lanky fella then it’ll be over quickly.
Your next options are the jungle and the colosseum. The colosseum can come off as a fat load of nothing to those just trying to get through the game normally, but it’s the source of a substantial amount of optional content and some of the game’s best boss fights. If you do not make an attempt at Sephiroth, you will have sorely missed out. Interesting to note that this is actually the first time a character like him or Cloud would even be shown in a real-time format, so it’s no wonder these depictions had such a huge impact on their later incarnations. Though I wouldn’t be a real FF fan if I did not take a moment to seethe over “emo Cloud” being such a cool guy when his original depiction was much more of a dweeby weirdo getting made fun of for trying way too hard to act cool.
The jungle kind of sucks. I have trouble finding much defense for how much needless backtracking there is in this one just to activate cutscenes. In fact it’s often a bit unclear that’s what you need to be doing so you could waste even more time unnecessarily. I have seen some pretty neat optimized routing for this section but it’s sadly not quite enough to salvage it for me. I do get to take a moment to look at Jane, the best Disney girl, so it was kind of worth it in the end. I also got to beat up a leopard, which is something I always wanted to do in real life. Also, did you know that leopards only have a lifespan of 10-12 years? If a leopard killed Tarzan’s parents twenty years ago, then who the fuck did Tarzan kill in the movie?
As another aside, Tarzan claims that the boss here is “ooh ah ooh ah Not-Clayton” but what did he mean by this exactly? Is it a heartless posing as Clayton? Is he merely referencing that Clayton is not alone and is accompanied by a giant chameleon? Is it physically Clayton but possessed or enhanced by the power of darkness in some way? My friend Mike (whom I have blocked on twitter) insists that it is literally not Clayton. I think the following cutscene where the chameleon falls on Clayton implies that it was the real Clayton. If he was possessed, then we have just killed a man who was mostly innocent in this version of the story and even the actions of his own agency could have been manipulated by the heartless. Even Kerchek gets to live here. Clayton was tragically cast as the villain of this story because a higher power deemed it so. In another life, we could have been friends.
Revisiting Traverse Town demands a fair amount of busy work, but you do get to open up an optional minigame world to communist China and climb trees with Xi Jinping and friends. You also get to run into Riku again. It seems that, since we last saw him, Riku has been doing a lot of reading and insists that we should read the passages from Deuteronomy that he texted us earlier. He’s also believing every word from someone who has literal devil horns adorned to her head. I am a huge Sleeping Beauty fan, so getting to see Maleficent be so involved in the greater scope of the game is fun for me, especially since many of the other Disney characters seem more confined to their own worlds.
Agrabah is another generally well designed world. The combat here implements a bit of platforming so you think more about your positioning and try not to fall from your advantageous spot. You also have a nice variety of areas within the streets, outside the Cave of Wonders, the upper level of the cave, the lower level, and the treasure trove. The only thing that’s really missing is the palace interior. You also have to get a truncated version of the film’s character arc for Aladdin, rushing us to his third wish to free Genie. So Al wastes his first two wishes with shit we could have accomplished easily. This is one of those retreads that I accept as a necessary concession. It’s not just the film’s plot, but if you stray too far and have us dealing with like, animated series Aladdin, people who aren’t me wouldn’t be that interested
Jafar’s boss fight is a bit of a dud. The preceding sorcerer Jafar fight isn’t bad, but genie Jafar has the worst aim of all time and you’re mostly waiting for Iago to pass by so you can eviscerate Gilbert Gottfried.
Monstro is one of those worlds I had heard was infamous, only to find it totally inoffensive. It’s a small maze. What was so objectionable about this? Is it just one of those things people blow up because they got lost as kids? Why don’t I hear that about the following world? The fucking water one. Anyway, Riku is here again and this time he’s going on about how his ideology is totally predicated on economic reform only. Pinnochio is here, btw. He and Gepetto have been swallowed up here. Pinnochio is then swallowed up by a big heartless and you have to save him. Now, from my understanding, KH fans like some guy called “Chibi” really enjoy this kind of thing. I am personally not a huge fan of witnessing double-vore, but we end up leaving Gepetto and Pinnochio in this place to supposedly digest for all eternity anyway. Mission accomplished, boys. We entered the belly of the beast and took responsibility for our capital B Being, cleaning our room and slaying the dragon, bucko. (Note: We really will be slaying a dragon later)
The next world is Atlantica. Thankfully this is KH1 so dad is yet to walk in on us having a dance party with Princess Ariel the pretty mermaid. First and foremost, this world is a better example of the abridged/altered plots of the movies. Atlantica wisely ignores the movie’s plot of Ariel wanting to walk on land so she can get laid. However it successfully honors the spirit of the film with its cliff notes still focusing on the conflict between the free-spirited Ariel and her overbearing father, which leads to a deal with Ursula. Maybe praise for such sparse storytelling is unnecessary, but when you have to do something like this eight times per game you should give credit where it’s due.
I’m not really sure how much of Atlantica’s issues are its own versus mine. There are literal arrows pointing me in the right direction for the Final Mix version of this game, and I still managed to get lost trying to find my way back to Ariel’s hideout so I can progress the story. I don’t know how people feel about the swimming here, but it seems deliberately designed to not be as frustrating as underwater segments of the previous era. You move quickly and combat moves about as fluidly as it does on land. Still, the world is a little too large and there are too many enemies to fight per room in order to progress with a shy dolphin to the next area. Twice. I still found this meandering more engaging than the jungle, and I thought it ended pretty strong with both Ursula boss fights. I hear the second one, against giant Ursula, is infamous online for being incredibly frustrating. I’m assuming this must be referencing the original release which has a less free camera, because I found this to be a fun challenge among the required boss fights of the game. There’s plenty of healthy telegraphing of attacks, and conditioning that teaches you to not be greedy with openings. Ariel is also one of the more useful guest party members. I’m sure many peculiar folks online were saddened to find out she did not whip out her feet in this version of the tale, but she can absolutely throw hands.
Halloweentown is here. It is in this game. I liked it. I certainly didn’t dislike it. It’s like if the jungle section was less of a slog. A lot of quick back-and-forth running around to trigger cutscenes before you open up another small area. The combat here against the trash mobs can actually get a little dicey, with these guys who leap down and slash to deal huge damage. So the game is officially not pulling punches at this point. You also have another gimmicky boss fight waiting for you at the end of this segment. While the flow here is notably more in the game’s corner than your own, you still have a lot of control over how quickly this fight concludes. Again, whatever distaste I saw for this online prior to playing for the first time seems to be a projection of childhood frustrations. There’s also an additional fight against a house because the developers really wanted you to appreciate the exterior of this environment and not just run by all the enemies. Fair.
I don’t know if making Neverland the final world in a game about coming of age and loss of innocence was intentional, but I like to pretend it was. Of course, Neverland being last in line here means that apparently Captain fucking Hook has a higher in-universe power level than the likes of Jafar, Ursula, Oogie Boogie, (possibly) Hades, and Not-Clayton. He truly has climbed the competency hierarchy and channeled his inner chaos. Neverland is a fairly brief and confined world, and I can imagine it might’ve been frustrating with the original release’s camera, but it works fine in Final Mix. You are even granted the ability to fly freely here, something the swimming section preps you for. The movement feels very natural even if you only have access to a downgraded version of it outside of this world. Hook’s fight, like several others, is fairly accommodating in granting you extra enemies to beat up on in order to restore your magic. Pan is another one of the more fun guest party members with the ability to freeze enemies in place the way Bobby Driscol wishes he could have frozen time before getting blacklisted. There’s also a pretty neat optional gimmick fight here with a super boss that demands hyper awareness of a ticking clock that will kill your party one by one. It’s a great use of an iconic setpiece from Disney’s catalog.
You get a pocket Tinker Bell here. I have no comment. I just want you to know that you will have Tinker Bell available to summon and there is nothing else to think about in regards to Tinker Bell but she is literally right there in your pocket like seriously imagine though.
Hollow Bastion is where the game goes from pretty good to outright excellent for a while. Your movement is all freed up now, so traversal through the area is about as smooth as it’s going to get. The rooms here vary in size to let you judge the space between you and enemies in a variety of ways. The enemy types are split between bulkier damage dealers and flying enemies, both of which force you to reposition constantly. Beast is here as the only guest party member to not be present in their own world. While I was deprived of a Gaston boss fight, I could still breathe a sigh of relief as the game reassured me that the entire country of France had been obliterated by the Heartless.
The string of boss fights here are all high quality. Dragon Maleficent is a great example of how broken Tinker Bell is, but can be defeated without assistance once you understand that the massive tail whip attack is actually telegraphed. It’s just tough to see because it’s a giant dragon that takes up 75% of the screen. Riku is fully possessed here after going on a rant about how Bob Chapek “cucked out and deserved what he got” without any elaboration. The fight is a 1v1 that puts your understanding of the mechanics to the test. You can either totally crush it or struggle for longer than necessary. The original release is notorious for an unskippable cutscene preceding this fairly tough fight. Although this boss only took me a couple of tries, an unskippable cutscene probably would have made this totally intolerable and borderline drop-worthy as an adult. As a kid in 2002 with much fewer games to play, it would have been incredibly frustrating but probably something I would have stomached.
So Riku is then transformed into a chiseled greek god by the powers of evil and we bail on the Hollow Bastion. After a brief reprieve we dive right back in and head to the endgame so we can take on Ron DarknesSantis and stop him from taking over Disney World. Some of the newer enemies here are a real challenge to get through, but they also outstay their welcome after a while. They have a tendency to shield themselves or outright disappear, so you have to constantly shift focus to new targets and come back to finish off the previous enemy later. It starts out pretty interesting but becomes tiring after a while. The Chernobog reveal completely blew my socks off as I had no idea it was in this game, it helps that the fight itself was pretty damn good. The following room is a seemingly endless gauntlet of enemies that would have utterly destroyed my will to continue had I died in there, on account of the aforementioned defensive enemies, but thankfully I got through it on the first try. Apparently you can also just summon Simba to clear each wave near-instantly. So fuck me.
All that’s left of the game are a couple of fights with Ansem. It’s a pretty strong finish but the second phase is what really feels like the final boss in terms of difficulty. Some might hate the borderline un-reactable attack that virtually incapacitates you and drains your resources to stay alive while it’s active, but I think this lends the encounter a distinct sense of danger not present anywhere else in the game’s required fights. If everyone had something like this, then I’d hate it. As a single endgame boss fight, I love it. A final boss with a few things that are oppressive or unfair makes it more satisfying when you realize they can be beaten. The boss is also very generous with checkpoints and does not force you to redo any phases.
Ansem ends up turning into a giant flesh monster devil god with a sexy Billy Zane proxy attached to it, and watching Donald Duck and Goofy go toe-to-toe with this kind of thing is the stuff not even my dreams could have come up with. I’m sure this bizarre juxtaposition will not become a trend with the series going forward.
Idk the ending is nonsense. Kingdom Hearts is light but also we still have to close that door and Riku has to be on the other side of it rather than just pushing it with you and Michael Mouse is here and we’re gonna explain why he’s shirtless later thank you Nomura very cool.
So suffice to say I was actually pretty pleased with this one. While familiarity with the IPs will certainly enhance enjoyment, and I wouldn’t really recommend the game to someone who hasn’t seen or played any of the source material, it’s shocking to think the aesthetics and gameplay might be enough to carry this experience. If you’re used to more modern games deftly blending snappier combat and customization then you might not click with it, but it’s not hard to imagine why this game is a favorite of so many people who played it near release. Not just because of its recognizable foundations, but because it takes those things and earnestly crafts something totally new and novel with them.
Try not to take its storytelling all that seriously and lecture people over how this ridiculous concept is, in fact, ridiculous to watch unfold. There’s value in the absurd, and not just in an ironic sense. If a group of people made an enjoyable piece of entertainment out of an utterly insane idea with bizarrely broad, abstract, and robotic storytelling that it confidently seems to think is none of those things, then that is absolutely worth giving some thought to, even with a few laughs at its expense.
A great start to a great series. This game takes what is probably the weirdest crossover you could possibly think of and blends it together to make a very fun action RPG. It's like Final Fantasy but more melodramatic, and Disney but more cartoonish. I love it.
I love how outlandish this universe is and this game is the catalyst to it. It is nowhere near as crazy as the most recent games are, but it's still practically bananas. It has an endearing plot with found family tropes and doing extraordinary things with your friends, two themes that are found very prevalent in this game's source materials. I am begging people to simply kill the part of them that cringes instead of killing the cringe, and just simply enjoy themselves.
Yoko Shimumura is a legend and this soundtrack reigns supreme. Utada is a saint, and Simple and Clean will always be a classic.
If I have any criticisms for this game, some of the level designs are bad and the game's platforming suffers because of it. I'm not talking about rope swinging in the jungle, but Sora's ass is a clunky mess and he is just unable to land on platforms without completely fumbling like an idiot. The combat can be a bit jank at times, especially aerial combat, but it's a perfectly respectable combat system for a first time entry to a series.
The Final Mix version of this game adds a ton of new content that is a worthy challenge for the most dastardly daring hard mode enthusiasts as well.
I love how outlandish this universe is and this game is the catalyst to it. It is nowhere near as crazy as the most recent games are, but it's still practically bananas. It has an endearing plot with found family tropes and doing extraordinary things with your friends, two themes that are found very prevalent in this game's source materials. I am begging people to simply kill the part of them that cringes instead of killing the cringe, and just simply enjoy themselves.
Yoko Shimumura is a legend and this soundtrack reigns supreme. Utada is a saint, and Simple and Clean will always be a classic.
If I have any criticisms for this game, some of the level designs are bad and the game's platforming suffers because of it. I'm not talking about rope swinging in the jungle, but Sora's ass is a clunky mess and he is just unable to land on platforms without completely fumbling like an idiot. The combat can be a bit jank at times, especially aerial combat, but it's a perfectly respectable combat system for a first time entry to a series.
The Final Mix version of this game adds a ton of new content that is a worthy challenge for the most dastardly daring hard mode enthusiasts as well.
I fell in love with gaming from this game. I'm not sure if I'll ever find a game series that means more to me. the platforming issues and some general roughness make it harder to play than more recent titles, but it's still worth it.
Please remember that you can bind magic and potions to the shortcut/quick commands so you don't have to dpad down the menus in combat. it's always been here. I hear one more complaint...i swear.
All of the characters are my babies. I grew up with them for a while, watching my sisters play before they would let me have the controller. Warm, gentle memories come to mind from this game.
Please remember that you can bind magic and potions to the shortcut/quick commands so you don't have to dpad down the menus in combat. it's always been here. I hear one more complaint...i swear.
All of the characters are my babies. I grew up with them for a while, watching my sisters play before they would let me have the controller. Warm, gentle memories come to mind from this game.
Um potencial gigantesco, porém mal aproveitado e problemas impossíveis de serem ignorados.
O primeiro jogo dessa grande e confusa frânquia tem muita personalidade, a ideia de viajar entre mundos da disney junto aos personagens de Final Fantasy, além de uma história original bem interessante, é muito do meu agrado, pois amo a disney, e tenho grande apresso por FF (mesmo ainda não sendo um grande conhecedor da IP).
A história me agradou bastante por mais simples que seja, ela é funcional e cativante, definitivamente não é algo extremamente coerente e com explicações lógicas, inclusive tem muitos "furos" e complicações que vieram a ser explicados ao longo da série, porém isso não atrapalha a experiência, pois amei a relação entre o grupo principal, os personagens são bem carismáticos, e o universo do game é MUITO RICO, os desenvolvedores tem quase um potencial infinito aqui.
Os mundos temáticos são bem simplificados em geral, infelizmente são pequenos e sem muito conteúdo, porém são maneirinhos, pois além de serem histórias de filmes clássicos, tem uma modificação pro Sora e seu grupo encaixarem nela, e eles sempre acabam fazendo amizades nessas jornadas; Além disso, eu nunca vou enjoar de quando o trio muda a skin pra ficar parecido com o mundo, sério, sempre que os personagens trocavam de roupa pra algo parecido com o universo daquele mundo, eu sorria genuinamente.
As músicas e as trilhas sonoras são INCRÍVEIS, extremamente boas de ouvir e muito marcantes.
Infelizmente após alguns elogios tenho que reclamar, esse jogo é MUITO quebrado, chega a ser irritante, tem muitas decisões de design extremamente questionáveis, além de controles bem ruins.
A jogabilidade desse game é muito problemática, os pulos são muito duros e imprecisos, e a movimentação do Sora é bem limitada, isso com o tempo vai irritando de uma forma absurda.
O combate não é algo incrível, mas é bem maneiro, porém a câmera atrapalha em alguns momentos contra mais de um inimigo.
Os menus são muito confusos, eu tive muito tempo de gameplay até começar a entender, e isso me tirou um pouco da imersão de experimentar táticas e mecânicas de combates novas.
A nave gummi é um LIXO, cara como eu odiei ter que viajar nessa coisa, é basicamente uma fase obrigatório para acessar os mundos, e o pior de tudo é que SEMPRE são ruins, é literalmente uma nave em um universo com um monte de fórmulas geométricas sem sentido, junto disso com vários modelos 3d aleatórios de objetos não identificados, com uma colaração de massinha e bichos extremamente genéricos te atacando, sério, era terrível.
Além disso a personalização da nave é extremamente confusa e nada autoexplicativa, parecia um protótipo de um jogo lego infantil.
Os mundos, como dito antes, são muito limitados, e isso é bem triste, o design dos mundos perde muito em detalhes e conteúdo, já que são extremamente pequenos, além disso, a cada 4 metros que você anda o jogo troca de tela, basicamente tem um mini loading pra entrar em outro cenário, tudo bem que é um jogo antigo, mas esse game foi lançado em um console que tiveram vários clássicos mais ambiciosos e maiores do que ele.
E por fim, o pior ponto desse jogo pra mim, ele não é NADA intuitivo, NADA, eu devo ter usado detonados em 60% ou mais da minha gameplay, além do jogo não te explicar exatamente o que tem que ser feito, o level design não te ajuda a entender sua próxima etapa, e isso é extremamente frustrante.
Ainda tem mais alguns probleminhas que me irritam no jogo, mas acho que já foi o suficiente pra entender; Infelizmente é um game com muitos problemas, que poderiam em geral terem sido evitados, mas ainda sim eu gostei do jogo, e fico feliz da frânquia ter crescido e ter virado algo grande, e não só um crossover entre FF e disney pra farmar uma grana
O primeiro jogo dessa grande e confusa frânquia tem muita personalidade, a ideia de viajar entre mundos da disney junto aos personagens de Final Fantasy, além de uma história original bem interessante, é muito do meu agrado, pois amo a disney, e tenho grande apresso por FF (mesmo ainda não sendo um grande conhecedor da IP).
A história me agradou bastante por mais simples que seja, ela é funcional e cativante, definitivamente não é algo extremamente coerente e com explicações lógicas, inclusive tem muitos "furos" e complicações que vieram a ser explicados ao longo da série, porém isso não atrapalha a experiência, pois amei a relação entre o grupo principal, os personagens são bem carismáticos, e o universo do game é MUITO RICO, os desenvolvedores tem quase um potencial infinito aqui.
Os mundos temáticos são bem simplificados em geral, infelizmente são pequenos e sem muito conteúdo, porém são maneirinhos, pois além de serem histórias de filmes clássicos, tem uma modificação pro Sora e seu grupo encaixarem nela, e eles sempre acabam fazendo amizades nessas jornadas; Além disso, eu nunca vou enjoar de quando o trio muda a skin pra ficar parecido com o mundo, sério, sempre que os personagens trocavam de roupa pra algo parecido com o universo daquele mundo, eu sorria genuinamente.
As músicas e as trilhas sonoras são INCRÍVEIS, extremamente boas de ouvir e muito marcantes.
Infelizmente após alguns elogios tenho que reclamar, esse jogo é MUITO quebrado, chega a ser irritante, tem muitas decisões de design extremamente questionáveis, além de controles bem ruins.
A jogabilidade desse game é muito problemática, os pulos são muito duros e imprecisos, e a movimentação do Sora é bem limitada, isso com o tempo vai irritando de uma forma absurda.
O combate não é algo incrível, mas é bem maneiro, porém a câmera atrapalha em alguns momentos contra mais de um inimigo.
Os menus são muito confusos, eu tive muito tempo de gameplay até começar a entender, e isso me tirou um pouco da imersão de experimentar táticas e mecânicas de combates novas.
A nave gummi é um LIXO, cara como eu odiei ter que viajar nessa coisa, é basicamente uma fase obrigatório para acessar os mundos, e o pior de tudo é que SEMPRE são ruins, é literalmente uma nave em um universo com um monte de fórmulas geométricas sem sentido, junto disso com vários modelos 3d aleatórios de objetos não identificados, com uma colaração de massinha e bichos extremamente genéricos te atacando, sério, era terrível.
Além disso a personalização da nave é extremamente confusa e nada autoexplicativa, parecia um protótipo de um jogo lego infantil.
Os mundos, como dito antes, são muito limitados, e isso é bem triste, o design dos mundos perde muito em detalhes e conteúdo, já que são extremamente pequenos, além disso, a cada 4 metros que você anda o jogo troca de tela, basicamente tem um mini loading pra entrar em outro cenário, tudo bem que é um jogo antigo, mas esse game foi lançado em um console que tiveram vários clássicos mais ambiciosos e maiores do que ele.
E por fim, o pior ponto desse jogo pra mim, ele não é NADA intuitivo, NADA, eu devo ter usado detonados em 60% ou mais da minha gameplay, além do jogo não te explicar exatamente o que tem que ser feito, o level design não te ajuda a entender sua próxima etapa, e isso é extremamente frustrante.
Ainda tem mais alguns probleminhas que me irritam no jogo, mas acho que já foi o suficiente pra entender; Infelizmente é um game com muitos problemas, que poderiam em geral terem sido evitados, mas ainda sim eu gostei do jogo, e fico feliz da frânquia ter crescido e ter virado algo grande, e não só um crossover entre FF e disney pra farmar uma grana
when you walk away
(flushed)
8.5/10
(flushed)
8.5/10
Trying to explain to my friends why this game is so compelling to me makes me feel like I'm going insane. On the surface it can look a bit rough, so it's hard to describe exactly what I see in it. It's a coming of age story, which isn't exactly uncommon, but the way it communicates the hostility of the world and the drifting of old friendships from a kid's perspective really resonates with me. Growing up is confusing, the world can feel hostile, and at the end of the day you might not have the chance to return to what you thought of as home. The way it's told can sometimes be a bit stilted and campy to the point of losing its charm (darkness, light, heart, key, etc), but the music, visual design, and gameplay all come together to make it work anyways. The Disney stuff walks a fine line between supporting that tone perfectly or destroying it in favor of brand recognition.
Beyond all of that, it's just really fun to play! This is peak PS2 era platforming level design! Playing through these worlds genuinely feels like exploring, even if it's a bit too easy to get lost in some of them. They're also just really fun places to fight in. The combat system is simple but engaging. There's a crazy amount of enemy variety and a steady progression of new abilities and items that keep it fresh throughout. The camera is your enemy more often than not (my fault for playing the original, I guess) and I really dislike the flying/swimming sections but any further complaints feel like nitpicks.
As a kid I only played Kingdom Hearts 2, so I didn't really know what to expect when I started playing this one in preparation for returning to 2. I enjoyed it way more than I expected! Not life changing like it might've been if I had played it when I was 10, but still very fun and touching. It definitely deserves to be revisited and remembered.
Beyond all of that, it's just really fun to play! This is peak PS2 era platforming level design! Playing through these worlds genuinely feels like exploring, even if it's a bit too easy to get lost in some of them. They're also just really fun places to fight in. The combat system is simple but engaging. There's a crazy amount of enemy variety and a steady progression of new abilities and items that keep it fresh throughout. The camera is your enemy more often than not (my fault for playing the original, I guess) and I really dislike the flying/swimming sections but any further complaints feel like nitpicks.
As a kid I only played Kingdom Hearts 2, so I didn't really know what to expect when I started playing this one in preparation for returning to 2. I enjoyed it way more than I expected! Not life changing like it might've been if I had played it when I was 10, but still very fun and touching. It definitely deserves to be revisited and remembered.
I didn't play the first Kingdom Hearts until I played the second. My aunts co-worker in 2006 asked my aunt while at work what kind of things I liked. She then suggested I play Kingdom Hearts at the age of 11 as I was into Disney and Anime. Since then, I've been hooked on it and it's become one of my favourite game series. Overall, Kingdom Hearts is a solid game and a great entry into the open world of Kingdom Hearts. I would of course, suggest playing it before the second, unlike me lol. I'd rate it a solid 9/10
dogshit
im not 9 years old sorry
"𝒯ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑑𝑜𝑤 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑠."
Que jogaço, demorei para jogar por causa do "preconceito" com o tema (desenhos de infância), parece que todo mundo tem isso, e por eu não ser familiarizado com JRPG.
Além de extremamente nostálgico e leve, o enredo tem partes complexas, também é divertido e bem construído. O conceito de "multiverso" nesse jogo é muito interessante, onde as obras da Disney e Final Fantasy se entrelaçam.
É legal poder interagir com personagens da infância, uma loucura pensar como a Square Enix conseguiu juntar JRPG com Disney e fazer isso dar certo.
O jogo é de 2002 mas é cheio de coisas para fazer e vários mapas. As spells e skills são bem úteis, bem-feitas e necessárias. A navegação com a nave eu não esperava e é boa .
Por ser um jogo de aventura, me lembrou bastante Ocarina of Time e em uma parte parte específica lembrou Fullmetal Alchemist. As boss fights são muito boas, ponto positivo.
Alguns mapas têm um level design confuso e o mundo da Pequena Sereia é chato. O boss é bom.
Vi pessoas que reclamam da gameplay, eu gostei, a movimentação as vezes é um pouco travada mas não incomoda.
Leva de 18 até 22 horas para zerar.
Joguei a versão de PC remasterizada na Epic, recomendo por ser configurada com os controles de pc.
Que jogaço, demorei para jogar por causa do "preconceito" com o tema (desenhos de infância), parece que todo mundo tem isso, e por eu não ser familiarizado com JRPG.
Além de extremamente nostálgico e leve, o enredo tem partes complexas, também é divertido e bem construído. O conceito de "multiverso" nesse jogo é muito interessante, onde as obras da Disney e Final Fantasy se entrelaçam.
É legal poder interagir com personagens da infância, uma loucura pensar como a Square Enix conseguiu juntar JRPG com Disney e fazer isso dar certo.
O jogo é de 2002 mas é cheio de coisas para fazer e vários mapas. As spells e skills são bem úteis, bem-feitas e necessárias. A navegação com a nave eu não esperava e é boa .
Por ser um jogo de aventura, me lembrou bastante Ocarina of Time e em uma parte parte específica lembrou Fullmetal Alchemist. As boss fights são muito boas, ponto positivo.
Alguns mapas têm um level design confuso e o mundo da Pequena Sereia é chato. O boss é bom.
Vi pessoas que reclamam da gameplay, eu gostei, a movimentação as vezes é um pouco travada mas não incomoda.
Leva de 18 até 22 horas para zerar.
Joguei a versão de PC remasterizada na Epic, recomendo por ser configurada com os controles de pc.
Cringe can be a beautiful thing
there’s plenty of kids media that adults can relate to, but KH is just completely disconnected from me and my own experiences. without that childhood wonder and nostalgia, all that’s left are a bunch of disney IPs waggling in front of my face
A game that I have a personal connection due to many reasons. While the game itself is a JRPG through and through (lots of grinding), I still love it despite its flaws. Fun combat, story and setting.
Finalmente joguei Kingdom Hearts, tenho uma vaga lembrança de ja ter jogado na infância pq lembro de uma fase no País das Maravilhas, mas n tenho certeza pq n bate com o mundo q aparece no game.
O jogo é incrivel, a gameplay dele é bem fácil de se acostumar e avançar no jogo. Meu mundo favorito é o de Halloween Town tanto pelo cenário quanto pelos trajes dos personagens, oq menos gostei foi o do Monstro e oq achei mais criativo foi o da Deep Jungle.
N sei oq foi mais irritante, se foi passar por Hollow Bastion 2 vezes ou aquele monte de batalha do End of the World, o x1 contra o Ansem foi uma dor de cabeça. Só acho q poderiam ter desenvolvido mais algumas interações com os mundos da Disney, principalmente na parte da despedida dos personagens
>> Game finalizado 100% ( todas 46 trinities, todos 99 dálmatas, todas 5 páginas livro, recorde nos 5 minigames Pooh, todas as 11 keyblades, todos 10 relatórios do Ansem ).
>> Prós
• HISTÓRIA : A proposta do game é bem interessante ( e isso q consolidou a franquia ). Achei mt boa essa introdução para um primeiro game e uma grande sacada dos criadores de juntar esses universos em um jogo foda desses.
• JOGABILIDADE : Boa parte dos controles são bem fáceis de controlar, principalmente nas batalhas.
• CENÁRIOS : Mt bom viajar pelos diversos filmes da infância.
• PERSONAGENS : Outro ponto positivo é o grande elenco de personagens carismáticos.
>> Contras
• JOGABILIDADE CAMÊRA : Era só colocarem o direcional pelo segundo analógico igual a maioria dos jogos. Usar o R2 e L2 pra virar a visão é bem chato.
• CERTOS MOMENTOS : Achei q poderiam ter desenvolvido melhor algumas interações q parecem q ficaram vazias ( tipo o Sora q nem se apresenta direito pro Jack no mundo de Halloween ou em certos momentos q o Sora n tem uma reação condizente com as cenas ).
>> Perso Favorito = Sora, Donald, Pateta, Riku e Gênio.
>> Mundos
• DESTINY ISLAND = 3/5
• TRAVERSE TOWN = 3/5
• WONDERLAND/ALICE = 3.5/5
• DEEP JUNGLE/TARZAN = 4/5
• OLYMPUS COLISEUM/HERCULES = 4/5
• AGRABAH/ALADDIN = 4/5
• MONSTRO/PINOCCHIO = 2.5/5
• ATLANTICA/ARIEL = 3/5
• HALLOWEEN TOWN/JACK = 4.5/5
• 100 ACRE WOOD/POOH = 3.5/5
• NEVERLAND/PETER PAN = 3.5/5
• HOLLOW BASTION = 4/5
• END OF THE WORLD = 4/5
O jogo é incrivel, a gameplay dele é bem fácil de se acostumar e avançar no jogo. Meu mundo favorito é o de Halloween Town tanto pelo cenário quanto pelos trajes dos personagens, oq menos gostei foi o do Monstro e oq achei mais criativo foi o da Deep Jungle.
N sei oq foi mais irritante, se foi passar por Hollow Bastion 2 vezes ou aquele monte de batalha do End of the World, o x1 contra o Ansem foi uma dor de cabeça. Só acho q poderiam ter desenvolvido mais algumas interações com os mundos da Disney, principalmente na parte da despedida dos personagens
>> Game finalizado 100% ( todas 46 trinities, todos 99 dálmatas, todas 5 páginas livro, recorde nos 5 minigames Pooh, todas as 11 keyblades, todos 10 relatórios do Ansem ).
>> Prós
• HISTÓRIA : A proposta do game é bem interessante ( e isso q consolidou a franquia ). Achei mt boa essa introdução para um primeiro game e uma grande sacada dos criadores de juntar esses universos em um jogo foda desses.
• JOGABILIDADE : Boa parte dos controles são bem fáceis de controlar, principalmente nas batalhas.
• CENÁRIOS : Mt bom viajar pelos diversos filmes da infância.
• PERSONAGENS : Outro ponto positivo é o grande elenco de personagens carismáticos.
>> Contras
• JOGABILIDADE CAMÊRA : Era só colocarem o direcional pelo segundo analógico igual a maioria dos jogos. Usar o R2 e L2 pra virar a visão é bem chato.
• CERTOS MOMENTOS : Achei q poderiam ter desenvolvido melhor algumas interações q parecem q ficaram vazias ( tipo o Sora q nem se apresenta direito pro Jack no mundo de Halloween ou em certos momentos q o Sora n tem uma reação condizente com as cenas ).
>> Perso Favorito = Sora, Donald, Pateta, Riku e Gênio.
>> Mundos
• DESTINY ISLAND = 3/5
• TRAVERSE TOWN = 3/5
• WONDERLAND/ALICE = 3.5/5
• DEEP JUNGLE/TARZAN = 4/5
• OLYMPUS COLISEUM/HERCULES = 4/5
• AGRABAH/ALADDIN = 4/5
• MONSTRO/PINOCCHIO = 2.5/5
• ATLANTICA/ARIEL = 3/5
• HALLOWEEN TOWN/JACK = 4.5/5
• 100 ACRE WOOD/POOH = 3.5/5
• NEVERLAND/PETER PAN = 3.5/5
• HOLLOW BASTION = 4/5
• END OF THE WORLD = 4/5
esse jogo é maravilhoso. talvez a reputação dele e o simples conceito possa afastar muita gente, mas kingdom hearts é feito com tanto carinho e cuidado q eu n consigo n amar ele.
é doce, é divertido, é tudo de bom. ele tem mais respeito pelas propriedades intelectuais da disney do q a própria disney teve em toda a sua existência. os personagens são surpreendentemente engajantes e a trama, por mais q boba e as vezes complexa demais pro seu próprio bem, te pega. eu chorei no final, o q eu n esperava q fosse acontecer.
o gameplay é simples e meio repetitivo, mas pelo menos as boss battles são memoráveis e conseguem fazer vc usar tudo o q está a sua disposição. só preferiria q a AI do pateta e do donald conseguissem reagir melhor aos chefes, pois em algumas das lutas eles são incapazes de se defenderem ou desviarem de qualquer ataque.
mas essa é meio q a minha única crítica real ao jogo. eu amei ele de paixão, e acho q pelo menos esse primeiro jogo merece uma chance caso vc ainda n tenha dado. muito bom muito lindinho.
é doce, é divertido, é tudo de bom. ele tem mais respeito pelas propriedades intelectuais da disney do q a própria disney teve em toda a sua existência. os personagens são surpreendentemente engajantes e a trama, por mais q boba e as vezes complexa demais pro seu próprio bem, te pega. eu chorei no final, o q eu n esperava q fosse acontecer.
o gameplay é simples e meio repetitivo, mas pelo menos as boss battles são memoráveis e conseguem fazer vc usar tudo o q está a sua disposição. só preferiria q a AI do pateta e do donald conseguissem reagir melhor aos chefes, pois em algumas das lutas eles são incapazes de se defenderem ou desviarem de qualquer ataque.
mas essa é meio q a minha única crítica real ao jogo. eu amei ele de paixão, e acho q pelo menos esse primeiro jogo merece uma chance caso vc ainda n tenha dado. muito bom muito lindinho.
"The Disney stuff is cringe" "It's just an advertisement" "The story is so dumb and confusing" None of that matters to me. Why did we let some random youtubers decide that this series was cringe. You can fight giant fucking shadow demons with Donald Duck. It's so stupid it loops around to being cool somehow. This game is an enigma
An overall good time. I like the music, and the slower combat does have its moments sometimes. Still, the whole series is so stupid I could never take it seriously. Doesn't stop me from enjoying it though!
As a 6 year old, this game was my dark souls
WOOHOOOO
One of the weirdest things to happen to video games, a complete anomoly by every metric - including the fact that its combat system didnt go on to be waaay more influential than it has been.
An idea that, on paper, should not work and yet exceeds what almost anyone could have probably expected back in 2002. A true "lightning in a bottle" experience that has yet to be repeated in the series. Easily the most restrained title for very easily understandable reasons, though the resulting simplicity coupled with the infusion of Final Fantasy and Disney nostalgia hits in such a satisfying way.
This game is heavy with nostalgia for me, but I can see it's flaws. The platforming is not well done, and the combat is pretty clunky compared to later installments. That being said, the story is so fun, the characters are lovable, and it was literally the multiverse before we even knew what that was.
i will not die for this game like i will kh2 but if you dont like this game fuck you
i honestly do not care that mickey mouse fights darkness creatures or whatever and sephiroth is there in fact I LIKE IT its AWESOME and its incredibly genuine and stupid and that rules.
i honestly do not care that mickey mouse fights darkness creatures or whatever and sephiroth is there in fact I LIKE IT its AWESOME and its incredibly genuine and stupid and that rules.
life changing
Perhaps a controversial take, but this is one of the better KH games. At this point, it was still a weird experiment by Disney and Square, and so hadn't yet become a victim of its own success - the plot was still comprehensible without needing to both play dozens of games across multiple systems and then read wikis for hours. The gameplay is mechanically much simpler than later iterations, but the core action combat is already here. The bosses are interesting since you get to fight a mix of Heartless, Final Fantasy characters and Disney villains, and the OG soundtrack is iconic.
In retrospect, I probably should have expected this. I’m a middle-aged man (with almost zero Disney nostalgia) playing Kingdom Hearts for the first time. I’m so far removed from this game’s core demographic, I might as well reside on an entirely different planet. And yet I played it... and yeah, it just wasn't for me.
So yeah. I found this one to be an interminable slog, with mind-numbingly repetitive combat, clunky mechanics, miserable platforming, claustrophobic level design, and a camera that skittered around in a nausea-inducing loop that often sent me to the medicine cabinet, looking for Dramamine. I admire how earnest and genuinely affecting some parts of it are (particularly the ending, which had me blasting “Simple and Clean” on repeat for weeks), but getting to those moments (and hell, finishing the game) often felt like an absolute chore.
At the same time, I'm vaguely curious about picking up Kingdom Hearts II sometime soon? Maybe that's a dumb idea.
So yeah. I found this one to be an interminable slog, with mind-numbingly repetitive combat, clunky mechanics, miserable platforming, claustrophobic level design, and a camera that skittered around in a nausea-inducing loop that often sent me to the medicine cabinet, looking for Dramamine. I admire how earnest and genuinely affecting some parts of it are (particularly the ending, which had me blasting “Simple and Clean” on repeat for weeks), but getting to those moments (and hell, finishing the game) often felt like an absolute chore.
At the same time, I'm vaguely curious about picking up Kingdom Hearts II sometime soon? Maybe that's a dumb idea.
It doesn't hold up incredibly well, but the nostalgia never truly leaves either.
the stepping stones to eventually one of the greatest RPGs (in terms of gameplay youll catch me dead before i praise the story)
aged poorly but still pretty alright i think. combat is kind of stiff no thanks to the game physics kind of sucking ass. but music and atmosphere bangs
aged poorly but still pretty alright i think. combat is kind of stiff no thanks to the game physics kind of sucking ass. but music and atmosphere bangs