The series as a whole ends up meaning more to me as years go on. My feelings on it can be reflected honestly entirely by how I look at the first title. The personal journey started with me when I was 12 and had a heartful powerful time, then a late high school set of irony poisoning set my sentiments towards it back, followed by years of cynicism and a rampant fervor of 'kh is cringe' adoption. Remarkably similar to my Sonic adolescence really.

The rekindling to talk about it now is almost a petty one even, sparked from a very disgusting dismissive argumentation that sent me spiraling down a set of familiar dead end corridors. But I choose to talk so now with earnest love, because the silver lining is that I did find further re-evaluation, and another reason to love this game the way I do now.

I want to start on its most ethereal edge, that preteen mysticism and awkward conversation we had with others during that time. I think it's KH1's least praised talking point, the way these characters all act almost in their own worlds and open up to each other in stilted but earnest paths. I love it so much, and moreso even in terms of the subtle but absolutely present queer coding I keep thinking about. Initially the way Riku acts towards Sora is one I thought of as an embittered friend, giving a paopu fruit to Sora and sort of egging him on, and then growing detached when he finds Sora switches him out for other people. What I didn't realize until maybe even up to recently is how much that feeling is empowered when you take Riku's eyes as someone who had a childlike passion for Sora, wanting to personally share that paopu fruit with him (not even mentioning Kairi in the scene btw) and then seeing that love practically betrayed when it feels like Sora completely forgot about him. There's a clear obsession there, the way he practically tries to prove himself with his edge to Sora, fueling his isolation further and further and dropping into darkness when he finds himself walled off more by his actions. Sure it's maybe an overtly charitable read of a preteen relationship, but it's something that grows retrospectively stronger considering how more boys love and gay the series goes from here, with themes of identity, true emotions of the heart... further emphasis on how much Riku revolves around Sora.

On more tangible ground though there's still so much to appreciate, especially in regards to the series how this is really the only entry to embrace that early PS2 platformer fantasy, with worlds you go through really reflecting their unique vibes, levels less acting like combat justified corridors and really their own memorable extensions. It also highlights my only real incriminating issue, p much my personal beef with how much of a chore a lot of them are to navigate and do very standard aerial string combat in, to where I don't really have any recurring thoughts to replay because they die to this issue quickly. But the fact of the matter is KH1 feels so strongly alive and only propels Sora's fall into a twisted hero's journey in ways I so vividly recall with pinpoint accuracy to this day. Hollow Bastion is still one of the best handcrafted worlds I've ever seen and experienced and that will maybe never go away. The bosses are all just grand designs too, and while they're not all fun to fight they almost all are perfect creations that are so super cool and distinct.

I do want to end this looping back to that toxic verse that started this late night's boulder rolling though, I think there's some sort of propensity to reject this age's prepubescent thoughts and emotions. Some people look on the complex beast that KH ends up being from the outset, look upon the heavy darkness term usage in later entries, see the plot machinations for just the constructs alone and throw them out of the face of it. And I don't think they're entirely not valid, but I think the series more than finds a way to demonstrating what the Heart is, and life, because it's not a crazy thought to think that the only way to open up who we really are is going to be in a messy smorgasbord of dreamlike avenues. Tonight I seek to reclaim KH as the earnest preteen dive it really is, and the series as a whole for the threads we made upon that foundation.

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

In its attempts to combine the lengthy story and battle system of Final Fantasy VII with the fully real-time movement and exploration of Super Mario 64, Kingdom Hearts is a slam dunk. Everything from the subtleties in Sora's movement to the smooth integration of context-sensitive actions in the game world is handled with a level of care and precision that you wouldn't expect from a game that's seemingly being pulled in so many different directions. It's not necessarily the best at the many things it attempts, even at release, but it's admirable just how cohesive the entire package feels. Kingdom Hearts has a lot of meat on its bones, and it feels pretty evenly-spread across the whole game.

In much the same way that its gameplay derivatives form something greater than the sum of their parts, the story utilizes its oddball premise and several disparate IPs to create an unforgettable atmosphere and tone. The nostalgic whimsy combined with somber melancholy and an abstract presentation lend the game a distinct, bittersweet feel. If you played this game at the right time in your life, you know what I felt.

Kingdom Hearts II is an outstanding action game and a great sequel, but outside of that I feel completely indifferent towards all the sequels and spin-off games. Putting aside the fact that I think a couple of them are just straight up bad, they generally just don't understand what made the series special in the first place. Somewhere in its quest to become... whatever the hell it is now, it lost much of its identity in the first place. I won't hammer on about this since there are people who enjoy these other games, but frankly they are the furthest thing from what Kingdom Hearts represents to me and their existence cheapens the original game.

So, ahem, this is when I give a whole-hearted recommendation to this game and say that it's great and awesome and super fun and unique and every other positive descriptor. If you'll forgive me for going for such low-hanging fruit, this game has a whole lot of heart.

I mean, what the hell was I expecting, right.

I had tried and failed to play through this game several times in my life, the first being as early as my grade school days. I should’ve seen that as a sign, but for whatever reason I just recently purchased this game (for the first time, mind you - said grade school copy was a friend’s that was borrowed and never returned. Sorry Brandon), which refueled my determination exactly enough to say I did it.

It was shocking, I guess, to see just how humble the beginnings of the series were. I don’t know jack shit about the tale of Sora and co., a story which continues to gain a seemingly bottomless supply of infamy for its overcomplications and addendums, but the fact that this game ended and I went “huh, that was actually pretty straightforward,” is bonkers considering what I was expecting. I mean, that’s not necessarily a compliment considering how trite the dark/light concepts became by the end (I hear the rest of the series continues this trend...), but the story of Sora, Riku, and Kairi confronting their futures as individuals was a compelling FF-type of experience that, unfortunately, was geared for an audience that I’m not a part of. As a personal aside, I always find myself at odds with Square games because they require quite a bit of emotional vulnerability to be impactful, and sometimes that just ain’t me. I’ve made my peace with other games in this world like FFX, a game which is very earnest and tender should you be willing to let it move you. Here? Umm, oops, I think I waited too long to feel impacted by this coming-of-age story!

As for the combat and stuff, it’s surprisingly(?) solid. The fundamentals of your attacks (long-startup, short-startup, final long windup, x100,000 times) don’t get old as much as they get squared against things which always feel like they could be more interesting in either a specifically-RPG or specifically-action context. But they do work, and given that they have to carry you through a 20-30 hour game, that ain’t too bad. However, the magic components here feel pretty weak, both in use and concept. I did go shield/wand at the very beginning, so I’m not sure how much that affected my experience, but especially late-game I found it a lot more effective to just stack physical abilities and equip Divine Rose to erase health bars that were peskily larger than I wanted to deal with. Oh, and graviga, of course. Busted-ass spell.

In the end, though, I think the thing that broke the spell was ultimately just realizing I was sort of playing it out of an obligation to finish. I enjoyed bits, of course: even with the unpleasant level design, it’s hard not to be charmed by these worlds which fit the criteria of their respective movies in a sort of Disney dark-ride way. And as expected, Yoko Shimomura was fucking COOKING here. But the stretches of mediocrity ran too long, and the corners were too tempting to cut when the things I enjoyed were beginning to drift away to leave behind Ansem. What a shithead.

I dunno, sorry I don’t have that many insightful things to say. I just practically shooed the kids out of the Mcdonald’s playplace and then complained that I got stuck in the tubes. I can’t say I regret finally toppling one of my all-time rivals, but I do kind of regret spending time here hoping something would change my mind when clearly this silly little game about a lil boy and his lil-but-slightly-bigger friend who has a crush on him was never going to be my thing, lol. Shoutouts to goofy and donald tho them boys my slime fr😤

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.

Why is this considered one of the greatest things to come out of the PS2, exactly? Gameplay that's clunky and slow, with enemies spawning before you finish the other group kicking your ass being incredibly annoying. Worlds that range from decent like nightmare before Christmas to actively frustrating like Tarzan and Little Mermaid. Decent final stretch that makes up for it however, I'll admit. And the story is just as meme worthy as people make it out to be. Like, I'm a 100% unironic JJBA and DBZ fanboy, yet I cannot take a single thing in this fucking game seriously. Anyway, play it if you want, I guess. I don't understand any of it

Kingdom Hearts... what a game. Often called the ARPG that put them on the radar for most people, it certainly does live up to it's legacy in some aspects. Sora is extremely fun to smack the heartless around as-- his various upgrades and magic spells really sell the idea that this RPG is one you yourself have control over all the time. The aesthetic is unparalleled-- the game captures a magical sense of whimsy every moment and it sells the fact that Square and Disney names can coexist to create a cohesive story. It's hard to not like the game when you see these things. Unfortunately, though, many issues rear their ugly heads and get in the way of the main experience: there are many times where areas and bosses are simply poorly designed, and they usually waste your time. Nobody wants to wander around totally aimlessly until the game arbitrarily decides you can now progress. And though this is Square Enix's first 3D game, the camera cannot be given a pass. It is horrid. It alone brings the game down IMMENSELY, with it locking on to targets you aren't even facing and getting caught constantly. But if you can ignore these things, Kingdom Hearts is a good game. And even if you can't, the game will still atonish you with its pure charm and soul it emits. At the very least give a try-- you might find it worth the jank.

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.

the common sentiment that people voice about kingdom hearts is that "i can't take this seriously, mickey mouse is there." and that is a sentiment that, as a twenty four year old woman with a job and a lot of social commitments and a bit of well-earned cynicism all culminating in the abstract of having Shit To Do (as well as one who believes the walt disney company to be actual, corporeal evil), i wholeheartedly agree with. but i think that it's commonly expressed from the wrong place, or at the very least from a place that lacks the perspective you kind of need to look at kingdom hearts from.

so like, yeah, there's disney shit in here and looking at it with an adult brain it might be a bit difficult to reconcile that with the melodrama and the convoluted lore and that Special Vibe that only Kitase's crew is capable of, but like. i played kingdom hearts when i was six or seven years old, i didn't know that it Wasn't Cool to make mickey mouse into a political figurehead and i sure as hell didn't know what the hell "tonal clash" was. any differences were reconciled purely by my imagination and a willingness to simply go with it and be taken away - and once again, there wasn't really any publisher willing to go for it with their stories and concepts the way squaresoft was in their final years of operation. kingdom hearts is in many ways a complete encapsulation of that squaresoft philosophy of going as far as you possibly can with your ideas no matter how self-indulgent, wacky or dumb they may be, and that's something i really appreciate and a big part of why i cherish what i consider to be the two definitive examples of that, chrono cross and final fantasy viii.

on top of all of that i think the idea of taking all of the silly kid's movie stuff and putting serious storytelling on top of it and trying to inject it with meaningful ideas on dualism and pseudo-intellectual jungian imagery and incredibly (perhaps a bit TOO) sincere displays of intense emotional vulnerability is like, a pretty perfect encapsulation of what kingdom hearts is fundamentally about at its core; that is to say stolen childhoods and lost innocence.

at the end of the day it's a narrative about a bunch of kids who are being manipulated within or otherwise tossed adrift into plans and greater schemes that they don't really know much of anything about and have no reason to know anything about. they're just kids. you can read this as being part of a greater statement on abuse or trauma or just growing up or something, but what's important is that it's saying something losing one's childhood and that meant something to me even if i didn't realize it, as somebody who even at the tender age of six-or-seven was terrified of growing up and was desperate to cling onto what little childhood i had left. again, taking something so innately childish and injecting it with Serious Stuff is a perfect culmination of that idea.

i haven't touched this game (or KH2, which was my favorite as a wee thing) in years and i'm not sure i will, but that's okay, it's not something that's really meant for me anyway. sure, kingdom hearts is schlocky and a bit embarrassingly self-indulgent sometimes and the concept is a bit too ridiculous for me to stomach even now as i've developed a taste for over-the-top chuuni shit (i like tsukihime for christs sakes). but that's fine. it's not for me, it's for six-or-seven year old me and meant to be experienced through a worldview that i'm just not capable of putting myself into anymore.

growing up sucks, and it's important to cherish the innocence of being a kid for everything it's worth, even when that's actively being taken away from you - if not by outside forces then by the passage of time itself.

Simple and Clean is probably the best way to describe this game. Before you needed to play 15 different games to understand why everyone is Xehanort, it all started with a boy forced to embark on a journey to other worlds with Donald & Goofy in order to find his friends. It had a simple, easy-to-understand story.

Gameplay-wise, its a little bit rough around the edges compared to future titles but it still holds up pretty well. There are a wide variety of spells and abilities that are useful in some way, shape, or form throughout the game and they're all fun to use. The biggest problem I have which is exclusive to this version of the game is that in order to use abilities, you have to scroll down the menu as opposed to just being able to press the triangle button reaction command style like you can in the remaster. This makes fighting Dark Riku extra frustrating as you can easily die if you do not have fast enough reaction skills. The other big issue is you CANNOT skip cutscenes in this version of the game. This inconvenience also adds even more insult to injury when you die against Dark Riku or any other somewhat difficult boss.

The difficulty in this game is the fairest it has also ever been in a KH game. A lot of the future entries are typically a bit on the easy side, but this game has its challenging parts that are very satisfying once you finally beat them. These challenging parts in the game usually come at the perfect time when you will be incentivized to grind a little or develop a better strategy for defeating enemies or bosses.

The worlds in this game were all good choices and they all have a level of interactivity you don't get when playing future games in the series. Riding that dolphin in Atlantica, that mini game where you slide on that tree with Tarzan in Deep Jungle, or being able to light the big candles in Wonderland add that small bit of immersion and attention to detail to them that comes a long way. Exploring Halloween Town, Atlantica, Deep Jungle, Hollow Bastion, and even Traverse Town was just a blast to experience and I wish I could re-experience it all again for the first time.

The last aspect I can give this game props for is that it somehow was able to make the Final Fantasy aspect of this crossover work. Every Final Fantasy character in this game was implemented in a way where it felt natural to see them and make them relevant to the plot. The same goes with a lot of the Disney characters as well. The characters from the Disney worlds also have relevance to the story of the game and Maleficent & her other Disney goons were solid villains for this game.

Playing through this game for the first time was just a magical experience and I always have a good time when I revisit this game. This game easily takes the cake for being my favorite game of all time and if you have a Ps2, Ps3, or any modern console then you absolutely need to play this game.

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.