To this day there's a lot I still don't like about this game. The combat can be clunky (especially early on), the Disney worlds present these lackluster abridged versions of their respective movies, boss fights range from super easy to excruciatingly annoying with no consistency to the difficulty, the gummi ship straight up sucks, and navigating some of these worlds can feel completely aimless at times if you don't know exactly where to go or what to do. There were instances where I considered dropping my score to three stars during this playthrough, like that second phase of the Ansem fight. Seriously fuck that shit.

But with that being said, despite its many flaws I still love this game to pieces. I think that largely has to do with the music and atmosphere, both of which Kingdom Hearts excels at with flying colours. Presentation as a whole is stellar across the board and the Final Mix version makes an already beautiful game look even better. The Traverse Town theme is etched deep in my brain and whenever I hear it it's like I'm being transported back in time. And I never owned a PS2; I only ever played it at a friend's house as a kid and never saw past the Tarzan world. It wasn't until I was well into my twenties that I finally experienced the game front to back. So there definitely is some nostalgia playing a part in my enjoyment, and I can totally understand someone jumping into this for the first time today and just finding it painful. Aspects of the story aren't thoroughly fleshed-out but it is deceptively simple; these were the days before this series became a narrative clusterfuck. There's no keyblade war, or nobodies, or clones, or power vacuums, or anything of the sort...it's just a kid searching for his friends while encountering some colourful characters along the way.

I've always loved Disney animation but I've long been hesitant to dive deep into this series as a whole. This is the only KH entry I've completed and now I intend to change that. I absolutely hated Chain of Memories when I played it on PS4 some years ago, but now that I finally have this collection on Series X I'm very eager to just skip that one and jump right into Kingdom Hearts II. I've heard great things.

Reviewed on Jan 08, 2023


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