My rating for this primarily might be influenced by nostalgia, but having played through the whole game for my first time in over ten years I feel like I can only ever be wowed by the way in which it blends together the Final Fantasy and Disney elements with relative ease, yet that's also only a part of the fun that came by.
It feels like the perfect text for a JRPG, from the way in which it incorporates the worlds where every Disney characters inhabit would build an entire universe where they can co-exist with Final Fantasy characters and the like, but the roots of what I find makes Kingdom Hearts work as well as it does can only be brought down to the ways in which it instills that sense of wonder by allowing for that interaction with those figures whom we've only ever found ourselves loving as we grew up.
Some of the mechanics still are a bit rough (even in the Final Mix version, they show their age) and a few boss fights are relentlessly frustrating (the Ansem one-on-one has always been one of my least favourites as a kid), but I can't help myself when a game like this just brings back so many great memories from growing up.
It feels like the perfect text for a JRPG, from the way in which it incorporates the worlds where every Disney characters inhabit would build an entire universe where they can co-exist with Final Fantasy characters and the like, but the roots of what I find makes Kingdom Hearts work as well as it does can only be brought down to the ways in which it instills that sense of wonder by allowing for that interaction with those figures whom we've only ever found ourselves loving as we grew up.
Some of the mechanics still are a bit rough (even in the Final Mix version, they show their age) and a few boss fights are relentlessly frustrating (the Ansem one-on-one has always been one of my least favourites as a kid), but I can't help myself when a game like this just brings back so many great memories from growing up.