A good star to a terrific franchise.
As a fan of both Final Fantasy games and Disney Films, this game was simply made for me.
The gameplay for the Kingdom Hearts can be hit or miss at times. It is not highly immersive, and for some, you may end up resorting only to mashing the X button. The AI The summons are for the most part useless (although Tinker Bell can be a life saver during certain boss fights). The magic is well balance and early on, are pretty beneficial. After making it to the second half, you'll mainly be using cure and aero the entire time. Despite my complaints, I did find the battle system to be quite enjoyable. The heartless, at times, prove to be adversarial foes each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses.
There are really only two main side quest when it comes to this game. Finding the 99 missing dalmations, and Colosseum, battles. Out of the two, the Colosseum will give you the more play time.. The Colosseum, is very challenging, taking several play throughs, and some good leveling, to complete. Their's three ways you can play through the Colosseum,, Together as a Team (with Donald and Goofy), Solo (Sora only), and Time attack (finish the entire tournament in a certain amount of time.) There are also four unlockable hidden bosses in the game, the most challenging being Sephiroth.
While the gameplay henders the game somewhat, everything else is near perfection. The voice acting and the story is terrific. Considering this was a crossover between Final Fantasy and Disney, the stories were put together fairly nice. All the characters remained pretty faithful to their original adaptions. The new characters, Sora, Riku, and Kairi were pretty unique, especially Sora. Sora was an extremely likable main character, who didn't suffer the emo-ness we've all come to expect from the Final Fantasy leads. His interactions with Donald and Goofy were some of the best moments in the game.
The game was lagged down, somewhat, but the average combat system, but the challenging boss fights, beautiful graphics, wonderful voice acting, colorful characters, and engaging story more than made up for it.
