Kingdom Hearts
Who would have imagined a game consisting a mash-up of Final Fantasy and Disney characters would have gained so much popularity? I sure as hell didn't. When I first saw the trailer for this game, in 2002, I was about seven years old. I saw a game consisting of Disney characters and, as a kid, I was very excited to play it. In 2007/2008, I finally got my own PS2 and a chance to play the game. As a gamer, I was skeptical at firt, and now I'll share my thoughts on this game. This is Kingdom Hearts for the Playstation 2.
Graphics
Kingdom Hearts came out in 2002 on the Playstation 2, and the graphics were great. But how do the graphics stand compared to today's standards? To tell you the truth whenever I see the opening scene for Kingdom Hearts I still smile. Kingdom Hearts contains graphics that have stood against the test of time, they look great, very colorful (and dark when it needs to). The characters and worlds all look beautiful and cutscenes are done very nicely and dramatically. All I have to say is that graphics for this game have stood the test of time and they probably will still look amazing in a couple of years.
Gameplay
Kingdom Hearts is a fast paced, hack and slash, RPG from the courtesy of Squaresoft. Kingdom Hearts borrows RPG elements from the Final Fantasy games that inspired it and it incorporates its own fighting formula. You have a basic menu in the bottom left corner, controlled with the D-Pad, which allowed to choose actions such as Attack, Magic, Items, and ?. The ? command will change depending on the situation, it might activate a special attack, or let you speak to someone. Attack would let you (of course) attack, which was mostly just spamming on the X button. You could string together combos which would result in some fancy swordplay. The Magic button would allow you to select from the multiple number of spells (from Final Fantasy) and summons. The spells would vary from offensive spells, like Fire and Blizzard, to defensive spells, like Aero and Protect. The Summons were one of the nicest things in this game, it would allow to get aide from from a Disney character to give you the upper hand in the battle. For example you could summon Bambi and he would drop healing items or Dumbo would spray foes with water. Lastly the Items command let you use multiple items assigned to the slots given to you, simple. The game also added a shortcut menu, pres L1 and a list would appear which would let you use either magic or items which would be mapped unto the X, ■, O, and ▲ buttons for quick access.
In Kingdom Hearts you play in a party, but only a party of three. The party consists of Sora, Donald, and Goofy most of the time and in Disney worlds the you can switch out Donald or Goofy for a Disney character corresponding to the world (Ex. Tarzan in Deep Jungle). It's a bit disappointing that you can only keep a party like this but it works very well and it adds a bit of strategy, letting you decide which party member would be good for the job. Donald is strong at magic, while Goofy is a great defensive and offensive character, when you want a Disney party member you can choose to give up magic or brawns.
The RPG elements in this game are pretty interesting and very well balanced. In this game you can equip different items to boost the stats of your party members. For Sora you can equip different types of keyblades, for Goofy it is shields, and magic staffs for Donald. You can also tweak the AI for your party members. For example you can decide when they should heal you, who they should target, and how often to use magic and special moves. You can also synthesize items at a Moogle shop, synthesizing allows you to mix to items together to make a new one, its useful and very simple to use.
The game takes place in different worlds inspired by movies from Disney's past, to get to them you have to go in an overworld map that allows to move between the worlds, the thing is they are locked at first. To unlocked a world you have to go through an on-rails shooter minigame, the Gummi Ship. These are the most dragging of parts in this game, they are slow and not very pleasing to the eye for there is ain't much in these sequences. The overworld can get annoying sometimes because the ship can only go through one path and to reach farther worlds you have to get a Gummi that allows you to teleport otherwise you have to drag through the shooting sequences again.
Kingdom Hearts has a solid form of gameplay and control. There ain't much to complain about it except for the bad camera (which is mapped on the L2 and R2 buttons instead of the Right Control Stick) and the fact that some summons are pretty useless. Other than that the gameplay is very solid and works extremely well.
Story
Now everyone know that one of the main things that makes an RPG is its story. Square Enix (Squaresoft at the time) is known for implementing great stories unto their games and Kingdom Hearts is no different. The game starts off with the main character, Sora, falling unto an unknown place. This place stands as a tutorial level and lets you choose some choices that will shape Sora's stats in the game. In this tutorial you fight your first boss, which is pretty cool (but even if you die the game continues here). Sora finally wakes up in his home, Destiny Islands. He lives here with his best friends Riku and Kairi. Riku has been Sora's best friend since they were little but Kairi had mysteriously appeared on the beach, she had come from another world. This let Riku and Sora open their eyes into believing there are many worlds out there, and since Riku and Sora feel confined within their small world they want to find more. This leads you to doing some boring fetch quests, but after your done with those the story picks up. In Disney Castle King Mickey has gone missing and he left Donald and Goofy to find the bearer of the "Key" because the worlds are in danger, so they set out to find that "chosen one". Back in Destiny Islands Sora wakes up to a storm, so he hurries out and sees that Riku and Kair are also somewhere in the island and goes to look for them. He finally finds Riku, and while Sora keeps asking where Kairi is all Riku talks about is leaving the island. Sora goes to him but Riku is swallowed by shadow and is gone. Suddenly black creatures appear that attack Sora but he can't attack back, suddenly he hears a voice and he obtains "the greatest weapon against darkness", the Keyblade. The Keyblade is basically a giant key-shaped sword. Sora then gets swallowed by the darkness and he wakes in Traverse Town, and his adventure to search for his friends begins.
The story in this game is simply amazing, I don't how to put it in better words. I fell in love with the story. It contains dynamic characters, plot twists, and coherent storyline, that was in danger of losing itself considering how many worlds Sora visits. I love the character development in the game, and the villains are great. All I can say after this long explanation of the story is that it is amazing.
Presentation
The presentation of this game is done very well. Every world in this game is beautiful and greatly recreates it's movie counterparts. The characters all look very nicely done, the designs are cool (considering they're anime-like), and the appearance of Final Fantasy characters is a very welcome addition. How cool is it to see Squall aka. Leon (FFVIII), Aeris (FFVII), and many more mingle? It's really cool. All in all the presentation is mostly spotless for its great design and attention to detail, Squaresoft did a very good job.
Overall
Finally to verdict the game. While this game started off the series, and it takes a special place in my heart, it's not without it's faults. It gets a bit of a slow grind, the camera is clunky, and the overworld is a mess. While many consider this to be the best one of the series just because it started it is not entirely true for me. It's a beautiful game but it gets difficult to bear with, now it's a great game but compared to the some in the series it has aged. It's a special game in collection and one of my favorites and although Kingdom Hearts is my favorite video game series I'm going to give this game an 8.5/10.
Please look for my other Kingdom Hearts game reviews in the future. Thank you.
