Planted my flag in this series for the first time so while I don't have the nostalgia for the game or that PS2 gen particularly this is a good game. The story is not all that interesting nor is it nonsensical acting similarly to Final Fantasy 7 in the lead up to all the story revelations, we're not chasing Sephiroth but we are closing doors to protect worlds and the real plot is rumbling behind the scenes. Although it pulls you in for the final 3-5 hours Simple and Clean HITS when it happens. Some boss fights are great others are questionable the movement and camera especially damage the experience they clearly hadn't figured everything out here. Chernabog feels better to play and experience than Ursula while being functionally the same type of boss. Aerial combos feel wrong but somehow better than the modern iterations of this kind of gameplay like FF7 Remake (Rebirth fixes this hopefully KH2 does too.) I felt this keenly in the first Jafar boss. I didn't go for all of the super bosses or the real challenges, I'm here for the story and the experience more than anything. But the ones I fought were good to great feeling better and larger in scale like Weapons from FF7. While other Final Fantasy games exist in Kingdom Hearts for this one at least 7 is the most relevant to my mind in both story and gameplay. The trinities are such a good base idea and they're charming but the back and forth between zones was a little much like a metroidvania secret hunt at times, will be cool to see them applied in combat. Sora, Kairi, and Riku are all fine characters but they don't shine as much as any Disney character/s interacting between one another. I think as far as a kids game goes it expects too much of a player to understand what happens with Kairi in the opening and how that all spills out and is "resolved" in the final acts of the game especially things relating to family. I was hanging onto hearing Sora's mother (?) trying to call him for dinner for a while before I realised we're not playing that type of game. This games universe exists outside of that reality up until whenever these kids conflicts and hearts I guess are resolved. Until then I look forward to playing more action romps with Donald and Goofy.