Goofy kicks ass!!
When I first heard that the guys who made Final Fantasy and Disney were making a game, I was a little weary of the concept. Disney movies had started to slowly decrease in quality as the years had gone on (and as they had stolen more souls), and I was never really a fan of RPGs, so when I bought this game on a whim I was pleasantly surprised. Kingdom Hearts is an action role-playing game from Square and Disney. The story follows Sora, the player character, Donald Duck, your parties mage, and Goofy, your parties defender, as they try to stop creatures called the Heartless from stealing the heart of a world, ultimately destroying it. This is shown to the other worlds as a star going out in the sky. This game is surprisingly complex. While in combat, it is kind of basic one button attack, but it has the classic RPG corner menu. Through this, you can access your spells (which can also be mapped to hot keys), including elemental spells and Summons, and your items. But it's not all ground combat. Depending on what world you go to, you can be fighting in the air or underwater. As you travel between the worlds, the game becomes a flight combat game, as you maneuver your way around objects and shoot down enemy ships in the Gummi Ship which is completely customizable by you. As you progress through the story you collect new key chains for the Keyblade, your main weapon, and new weapons for Goofy and Donald. Each comes with its own set of stats which affect the characters performance in battle. Each character also levels up, giving them increased stats, health, MP, or skills. Each world in the game is based off an older Disney movie, the most recent one being Tarzan. As you go to these different worlds, you encounter new breeds of special Heartless which are specifically characterized for the world. You will also run into some iconic Disney characters, some which will be set pieces and give you some kind of textbox dialogue, some which will be bosses at the end of each world, and some that you will be able to put into your party. This can be a little bit problematic. If you always take out the same character from permanent party to be replaced by the world-specific character, that character will be severely underleveled later in the game. But don't think that it's all Disney. Almost all of the game in Kingdom Hearts is a modified version of FF gameplay. As stated earlier, you have the menu in the corner for access to your attacks and items. There are Summons in this game, but instead of summoning strange creatures, you summon Disney characters, each with their own abilities. Some of them can be pretty useful when your in a pinch. Others, not so much. When you do summon someone, you party members disappear until the summon is over. Battles randomly start, but instead of everything freezing then wiping to a battle screen, the enemies come out of shadows and start to attack, moving seamlessly from exploration to combat mode. When you enter combat mode, the corner menu turns red. There are also many characters from the Final Fantasy series, all from FFs VI through X-2 (Bahamut was originally supposed to be a summon, but was removed before release). Most of these characters you fight or they are just there to progress the story and explain stuff to you. While there are all these FF and Disney characters, Square managed to get in a few original characters as well. The main character, Sora, is the wielder of the Keyblade and hero of the universe. As you go around saving the different worlds. You are also on a search for Riku, one of your best friends from the island you live on, and Kairi, your other best friend and (possible) love interest. You do run into Riku a few times, but you never see head nor over-sized feet of Kairi until you are an hour or two from the end of the game. Taking me about 24 and a half hours, the game ends with a bigass boss battle, a rendered cutscene (one of the only two in the game), and a cliffhanger ending. If you can find it in your hearts, why not give Kingdom Hearts a chance.
