Before starting, I'll mention that this review is based on my most recent playthrough in April 2023, but comes from someone who has enjoyed the series since I was a little kid. My latest playthrough is the first time I ever committed to doing the optional content in the game, and does heavily affect the rating.
For starters, this is one of my favorite RPG games due to how much life it has put into it. A lot of people consider the storyline of the Kingdom Hearts series to be wacky and convoluted, but I have always found that to be what makes it unique and creative. Sora is a pretty plain protagonist all things considered, and yet I find it hard to actually dislike him at all due to how it actually fits the story well. The inclusion of your partners, while questionably useless at times as these things go, really makes the game feel like a true "journey with the bros" which is an integral part of the experience to me. And of course, there are all the various tie-ins from stuff like Final Fantasy or Disney, which in some instances are barebones but others are pretty neat. Probably the best part though is the world itself, the concept of Heartless and Kingdom Hearts is fairly neat and to me has always been interesting to see built upon. Music is another great factor too, I think Kingdom Hearts has one of the most memorable and best soundtracks of any series.
Gameplay-wise, this has some good days and bad days. A lot of the features from later games are missing from this one, making Sora have way fewer capabilities than he would have in the future. Some of the combat especially feels a bit sluggish, such as the dodge roll barely making much distance, or the guard being not very reactive. A lot of the magic also feels rather useless in comparison to Thunder or Aero, the Stop spell especially feels a bit tedious since enemies won't die until it ends. This being said a lot of the fights are actually pretty fun, mostly the bosses. A lot of the end-game content is pretty exciting to fight, the secret bosses themselves are all spectacular and the last secret one is quite a climatic final showdown that serves as a perfect teaser for KH2. I know some people have a lot of grievances with the Gummi Ship, but I actually found this part of the game to be mostly fun (I did not do every mission but I obtained all related trophies).
Now as for my grievance: Synthesis. This is a good system conceptually that allows you to use enemy item drops to form equipment and weapons you can use. If you've played 2 or 3, you know that for the most part, it's fairly simple to do too since you can get items from mobs that are easy to grind out and then can take them to the local Moogle to use. Kingdom Hearts 1 however has these two aspects reversed, you can only synthesize in Traverse Town and you cannot grind out some items from just normal mobs. Part of the Synthesis item list are these things called "Stones", and they only drop from rare enemies that are rather obnoxious to get to spawn. Sometimes you can leave and re-enter a room over and over again, sometimes you have to leave the world itself and re-enter via the Gummi, and for one set I even had to back out to the title screen and rejoin to get them to respawn again. The grind for the final reward here was over 15 hours and that's with using a very detailed guide (KHGuides.com), I believe it would truly be unreasonable to expect people to do such without one, and did not find it very fun with it either.
Overall, I think Kingdom Hearts is a very solid success in making an RPG series that's unique and memorable. Given the simplicity of the combat and the inclusion of all the Disney worlds, it would probably be one of the best starting points for kids to get into, and even as an adult it still feels incredibly fun to play and finally do all the harder content in the game.
For starters, this is one of my favorite RPG games due to how much life it has put into it. A lot of people consider the storyline of the Kingdom Hearts series to be wacky and convoluted, but I have always found that to be what makes it unique and creative. Sora is a pretty plain protagonist all things considered, and yet I find it hard to actually dislike him at all due to how it actually fits the story well. The inclusion of your partners, while questionably useless at times as these things go, really makes the game feel like a true "journey with the bros" which is an integral part of the experience to me. And of course, there are all the various tie-ins from stuff like Final Fantasy or Disney, which in some instances are barebones but others are pretty neat. Probably the best part though is the world itself, the concept of Heartless and Kingdom Hearts is fairly neat and to me has always been interesting to see built upon. Music is another great factor too, I think Kingdom Hearts has one of the most memorable and best soundtracks of any series.
Gameplay-wise, this has some good days and bad days. A lot of the features from later games are missing from this one, making Sora have way fewer capabilities than he would have in the future. Some of the combat especially feels a bit sluggish, such as the dodge roll barely making much distance, or the guard being not very reactive. A lot of the magic also feels rather useless in comparison to Thunder or Aero, the Stop spell especially feels a bit tedious since enemies won't die until it ends. This being said a lot of the fights are actually pretty fun, mostly the bosses. A lot of the end-game content is pretty exciting to fight, the secret bosses themselves are all spectacular and the last secret one is quite a climatic final showdown that serves as a perfect teaser for KH2. I know some people have a lot of grievances with the Gummi Ship, but I actually found this part of the game to be mostly fun (I did not do every mission but I obtained all related trophies).
Now as for my grievance: Synthesis. This is a good system conceptually that allows you to use enemy item drops to form equipment and weapons you can use. If you've played 2 or 3, you know that for the most part, it's fairly simple to do too since you can get items from mobs that are easy to grind out and then can take them to the local Moogle to use. Kingdom Hearts 1 however has these two aspects reversed, you can only synthesize in Traverse Town and you cannot grind out some items from just normal mobs. Part of the Synthesis item list are these things called "Stones", and they only drop from rare enemies that are rather obnoxious to get to spawn. Sometimes you can leave and re-enter a room over and over again, sometimes you have to leave the world itself and re-enter via the Gummi, and for one set I even had to back out to the title screen and rejoin to get them to respawn again. The grind for the final reward here was over 15 hours and that's with using a very detailed guide (KHGuides.com), I believe it would truly be unreasonable to expect people to do such without one, and did not find it very fun with it either.
Overall, I think Kingdom Hearts is a very solid success in making an RPG series that's unique and memorable. Given the simplicity of the combat and the inclusion of all the Disney worlds, it would probably be one of the best starting points for kids to get into, and even as an adult it still feels incredibly fun to play and finally do all the harder content in the game.