This review contains spoilers
Kingdom Hearts, as a concept, is an interesting one.
A three-way combo of Disney, Final Fantasy and an original touch to round off the direction has loads of potential, some of which is realised in a good way, some not.
The Final Mix version of Kingdom Hearts improves on some mechanics and adds features that were missing in the original, however, it doesn't escape the balancing issues and bad design that the game is plagued with throughout its runtime.
Sometimes the game will feel fine to play albeit a bit clunky, other times, you'll feel as though you're fighting the game itself rather than the enemies or boss you're up against.
The enemies can gang up on you and overwhelm you because they're able to attack off-screen and invincibility frames can be finicky.
This is especially notorious and obnoxious in the final stretch of the game, where you'll be surrounded by tanky enemies with annoying attacks and ability to deflect your own attacks, all while being stuck in a tiny room with like 8 of them at once.
Kingdom Hearts 1 also has one of the most unnecessarily drawn out and frustrating final bosses I've had the displeasure to fight against in any video game I've ever played.
It has like around 8 phases, felt like it would never end, is super frustrating, and I think it would've been better off being limited to AT MOST 3 phases.
Speaking of bosses, this game has atrocious bosses that, in terms of the fight itself, are either boring, generic, annoying and at times, borderline unfair.
[SPOILERS]
The Ursula boss in Atlantica is one of the most horrible bosses I've ever had to fight in a video game; no openings, no downtime, constant attack spamming and horrible "swimming" controls to boot, so you don't even have the dodge roll to help you.
And this is just one of them, the rest are a little less frustrating but barely any of them are any fun or have anything interesting to offer.
There are secret/bonus boss fights in this game, but I didn't bother with them because I could just marginally muster the will to actually complete the game once I got to the final area.
The writing ranges from good, to ok, to barely serviceable to at times, just straight up cringe-inducing.
"My friends are my power!" is A REAL LINE OF DIALOGUE in this game.
Besides the subpar dialogue, some of the parts of the story and how it was written don't make sense or seem forced, for example [SPOILERS] Riku finds Sora after they were separated and Sora explains to him that he was looking for him and Kairi together with Goofy and Donald and he makes that very clear, but instead Riku decides to ignore that and takes it as an insult because he sees Goofy and Donald as Sora's "replacement" for his friends, even though Sora never said or did anything to imply that he doesn't care about Riku and/or Kairi anymore.
Riku is not a likeable character at all from start to finish (at least in this game), Kairi is barely existent and besides the main trio (Sora, Donald, Goofy), there aren't many characters who get enough screentime to make you feel attached to them unless you've seen the movies, in which case, you won't get much out of these familiar characters that you haven't seen from them already in the movies.
With all this being said, I feel KH1 being massively brought down by its technical side of things is a massive shame, especially since the aesthetics and presentation are very good!
The game's appearance still holds up well enough today thanks to its generous use of colour and vivid environment design, all of the worlds from the Disney properties have been recreated faithfully, and the soundtrack is excellent in capturing the feel and personality of each of the worlds that you explore.
I really enjoyed what the worlds had to offer artistically in terms of how the source material was translated into a video game format, and the selection of worlds is good.
One other thing I thought was neat is that you get different keyblade designs throughout the game based on the worlds you visit, which is a good aspect because they could've easily made the default keyblade the only one you could use and just raised stats so it'd have more power.
But instead, they made various keyblades of various ranges and buffs, such as extending your MP or crit chance.
I can see why people found this game appealing when it first came out, but nowadays, it feels like a frustrating mess with some redeeming qualities but plagued by bad design and clunky controls that do nothing but make it feel outdated.
A remake could save this game, but for now, is better served as a cornerstone of the series to be experienced from afar, but seldom played.
A three-way combo of Disney, Final Fantasy and an original touch to round off the direction has loads of potential, some of which is realised in a good way, some not.
The Final Mix version of Kingdom Hearts improves on some mechanics and adds features that were missing in the original, however, it doesn't escape the balancing issues and bad design that the game is plagued with throughout its runtime.
Sometimes the game will feel fine to play albeit a bit clunky, other times, you'll feel as though you're fighting the game itself rather than the enemies or boss you're up against.
The enemies can gang up on you and overwhelm you because they're able to attack off-screen and invincibility frames can be finicky.
This is especially notorious and obnoxious in the final stretch of the game, where you'll be surrounded by tanky enemies with annoying attacks and ability to deflect your own attacks, all while being stuck in a tiny room with like 8 of them at once.
Kingdom Hearts 1 also has one of the most unnecessarily drawn out and frustrating final bosses I've had the displeasure to fight against in any video game I've ever played.
It has like around 8 phases, felt like it would never end, is super frustrating, and I think it would've been better off being limited to AT MOST 3 phases.
Speaking of bosses, this game has atrocious bosses that, in terms of the fight itself, are either boring, generic, annoying and at times, borderline unfair.
[SPOILERS]
The Ursula boss in Atlantica is one of the most horrible bosses I've ever had to fight in a video game; no openings, no downtime, constant attack spamming and horrible "swimming" controls to boot, so you don't even have the dodge roll to help you.
And this is just one of them, the rest are a little less frustrating but barely any of them are any fun or have anything interesting to offer.
There are secret/bonus boss fights in this game, but I didn't bother with them because I could just marginally muster the will to actually complete the game once I got to the final area.
The writing ranges from good, to ok, to barely serviceable to at times, just straight up cringe-inducing.
"My friends are my power!" is A REAL LINE OF DIALOGUE in this game.
Besides the subpar dialogue, some of the parts of the story and how it was written don't make sense or seem forced, for example [SPOILERS] Riku finds Sora after they were separated and Sora explains to him that he was looking for him and Kairi together with Goofy and Donald and he makes that very clear, but instead Riku decides to ignore that and takes it as an insult because he sees Goofy and Donald as Sora's "replacement" for his friends, even though Sora never said or did anything to imply that he doesn't care about Riku and/or Kairi anymore.
Riku is not a likeable character at all from start to finish (at least in this game), Kairi is barely existent and besides the main trio (Sora, Donald, Goofy), there aren't many characters who get enough screentime to make you feel attached to them unless you've seen the movies, in which case, you won't get much out of these familiar characters that you haven't seen from them already in the movies.
With all this being said, I feel KH1 being massively brought down by its technical side of things is a massive shame, especially since the aesthetics and presentation are very good!
The game's appearance still holds up well enough today thanks to its generous use of colour and vivid environment design, all of the worlds from the Disney properties have been recreated faithfully, and the soundtrack is excellent in capturing the feel and personality of each of the worlds that you explore.
I really enjoyed what the worlds had to offer artistically in terms of how the source material was translated into a video game format, and the selection of worlds is good.
One other thing I thought was neat is that you get different keyblade designs throughout the game based on the worlds you visit, which is a good aspect because they could've easily made the default keyblade the only one you could use and just raised stats so it'd have more power.
But instead, they made various keyblades of various ranges and buffs, such as extending your MP or crit chance.
I can see why people found this game appealing when it first came out, but nowadays, it feels like a frustrating mess with some redeeming qualities but plagued by bad design and clunky controls that do nothing but make it feel outdated.
A remake could save this game, but for now, is better served as a cornerstone of the series to be experienced from afar, but seldom played.