Kingdom Hearts

It's rare that a game comes along that reminds you of the best moments in your childhood and yet is still fun enough to keep you interested beyond mere nostalgia. Kingdom Hearts does just that through solid action-RPG gameplay which balances the timeless history of Disney with the unequaled gaming pedigree of Square. In this tale, you play the role of Sora, a young boy who lives on a small island and dreams of exploring the world beyond with his two best friends, Riku and Kairi. He has been having visions of creatures known as the Heartless, who have gotten loose and are spreading through the skies, wiping out every world in their path. It’s Sora’s destiny to wield the keyblade, a mysterious weapon that can stop the Heartless. It doesn’t take him long to confront these monsters, get separated from his friends, and start a quest to save countless worlds across the galaxy.

Sora quickly meets up with Goofy and Donald and starts their journey, traveling from world to world in search of their friends. Most of the worlds they visit are based on an animated Disney film, including recent movies like Aladdin and Tarzan, as well as classics like Peter Pan. There’s also a couple other unrelated worlds that are developed specifically for the game, and the surprising inclusion of Halloween Town from The Nightmare before Christmas, which is a Disney film but unlikely to be considered alongside movies like The Little Mermaid or Alice in Wonderland. In many cases, the plotline of the movie is matched up with the plotline of the game, making each world’s story a bit of a mish-mash of both. In almost every case, this works very well. You’ll find yourself facing off with Captain Hook, battling his legions of Heartless while fending off his attacks and flying around like Peter Pan. The battle ends exactly how the cartoon did, with Captain Hook running across the surface of the sea while being chased by the crocodile. The scene is just as goofy as it was in the film, but you'll find that you can’t help from getting a smile on your face as you watch it and remember the first time you saw that scene in the original movie. In the few cases where the world doesn’t use its movie’s plot for inspiration, the story still nails the feel of the cartoon perfectly.

Square is known for the graphical polish on their games, and Kingdom Hearts is no exception. Each world looks just like it should, and each character looks like they were ripped right out of their respective cartoon and plopped right into the game. Even The Nightmare Before Christmas, which was animated with stop motion puppets, looks spot on as a videogame. No matter where the character comes from, he or she is rendered perfectly.

Unlike many of Square's games, all of the action in Kingdom Hearts is in realtime, and is pretty entertaining throughout. You start out very weak, but your skills ramp up quickly as you level up. While you do collect summons and magic spells, you’ll get the most mileage by hacking away at the Heartless with your keyblade. Fortunately, battles aren’t always just won by wailing away on the X button. Several enemies require some skill to pick out their weaknesses, and many of the great boss battles in this game are surprisingly difficult. You have to be careful to not just wander into a battle swinging away, or you’ll find yourself at the Game Over screen. Donald and Goofy are AI-controlled, though you can tweak their settings a little, and are very useful in battle. Donald is a magic-user, and is good about casting defensive and healing spells on Sora. Goofy is a good defender and attacker, with a lot of hitpoints, so he makes an effective tank throughout the game.

There's a lot of characters to meet in Kingdom Hearts. Beyond Donald and Goofy, most worlds will give you the option to add a new Disney character to your party for that specific world. They're all competent fighters, but you might find that you can’t do without Donald in your party because he is able to heal you. You’ll also collect other Disney characters as summons, including Simba, Tinkerbell, Mushu, and Bambi. Each Square cameo is a treat, especially when you meet up with your favorite Final Fantasy characters, who challenge you to a fight. It’s with a lot of love that characters from each company are presented, and the regularity with which your favorite characters are introduced keeps the game fresh throughout.

While the character roster is impressive, it's the voiceover talent that will make your jaw hit the floor. Many of the cartoons' original voiceover artists reprise their roles, including James Woods as Hades, Chris Sarandon as Jack Skellington, and Sean Astin as Hercules. In the cases where the original actor wasn't used, the voice actors used still sound terrific. As the Genie, Dan Castellaneta does the best Robin Williams impersonation that you'll ever hear. Even the new characters have some star power as well, including Haley Joel Osment and Billy Zane. Haley Joel Osment turns in a great performance as Sora, and captures Sora's mix of innocence and fighting spirit with all of the skill that you'd expect from an actor as gifted as he is. Likewise, Billy Zane's low and calm voice makes his character ooze evil.

Given that so much of this game is a reminder of the kid in all of us, it's a bit of a shame that the gameplay isn't geared towards a child. An experienced gamer won't have much of a problem beating Kingdom Hearts, but the controls and enemies are far too complex for a younger player to take on. For example, very early in the game you'll encounter a type of rotund Heartless who's impervious to attack from the front. You have to hop over it and hit it from behind, or jump up and smack it in the head. As it wears down in health, it will start charging at you and can do some major damage. This isn't terribly difficult to counter, but a youngun would get repeatedly wiped out and have to call for mom and dad to step in and take care of it. It would have been nice for Square to add an easy mode that would allow a young boy or girl to tackle the Heartless.

Navigating the menus in Kingdom Hearts is not exactly easy to do, and in the heat of battle becomes frustratingly difficult. The way the menus are set up, you're expected to be able to drill down several layers to pick the proper spells, items, or summons while you're in the middle of combat. In a turn-based RPG, this would be an acceptable setup. However, all of the action in Kingdom Hearts is in realtime, so diving through a menu while you're also dodging, attacking, and blocking incoming fire is virtually impossible. A few shortcuts are available for spells, but some more user testing would've helped Square realize that using items and casting spells is just too much to ask the player to do while fending off the Heartless' relentless attacks.

The camera is another feature of Kingdom Hearts that should have spent more time in development. It is simply awful, and requires more babysitting than a newborn with colic. You'll find your thumb constantly moving to the right thumbstick to get the camera focused on something other than the wall. At best, the camera is a nuisance during platforming. At worst, it will cost you your life during a boss battle. You can lock onto a particular enemy, which does give the camera a better idea where to aim. However, it never quite keeps up with where the enemy is, and you'll still have to do a quick visual sweep to find out where you're supposed to be attacking.

Despite those few shortcomings, Kingdom Hearts excels brilliantly at mixing the best parts of Square with the best parts of Disney. What's more impressive is that this game keeps the epic feel of Final Fantasy even though the gameplay is totally different. While Kingdom Hearts isn't perfect, its heart is always in the right place, and the blemishes can be easily overlooked.

    Kingdom Hearts is a game that meshes together two unique worlds, those being Disney and Final Fantasy, to create a creative and compelling piece of interactive entertainment.  With a great mix of excellent story, intense battles, and worlds to explore Kingdom Hearts is easily recommended to anyone, but is a must buy for any die hard  fan of SquareEnix  games.

    One of the most appealing things about this game is to find out about the world created from mixing Final Fantasy and Disney together and how that all comes together in the story.  Throughout the story of Kingdom Hearts there are tons of cameos from both protagonists and antagonists of both universes with characters ranging from Mickey Mouse and Cid to Oogie Boogie and Sephiroth.  The story begins with Sora's desire to find his friends Riku and Kairi after something happens on their island, but quickly escalates into something far more epic.  I'm not going to spoil anything, but the story can and will hold your interest.

    While the story is great, this is a game and as such it has to have great gameplay to be a great game.  In battle,
it is all real-time, action-oriented gameplay and you control only Sora while your two teammates (normally Donald and Goofy) are controlled by AI that you can adjust the behavior of.  You can choose between attacking, magics, summons, and items in a battle.  You can also parry your enemies attacks by attacking at the same time (if its physical) or casting a magic that would counter it such as casting fire against blizzard (in the case of magic).  To enhance you battle capabilities you need to equip abilities, which are pretty similar to the badges in Paper Mario.  Each ability gives you a new skill, such as adding another hit to your combo or gaining MP when you take damage, but each skill cost a certain amount of ability points or AP, of which you only have some many.  The abilities you choose can change how you can tackle battles.

    Exploration is also a big part of any RPG and of course with the vast variety of IPs from Disney there are myriad world to explore, like Agrabah or even the Hundred Acre Wood.  The only problem with this aspect of the game that is like with most RPGs there will be one or two spots in the game that take me forever to get through because I have absolutely no clue what I'm supposed to be doing.  So I kind of just wonder around for a good half-hour using the guess and check method and eventually I find that cutscene that lets me push forward.

    Kingdom Hearts has a great story and gameplay that never gets stale.  Between hidden boss battles, ultimate weapons, and an extra difficultly setting this game has plenty of stuff to keep you hooked for a while.  I really enjoyed Kingdom Hearts and I can wholeheartedly recommend that you give it a go.

This game truly came out of nowhere for me, it had become the object for ridicule for me however i came to love it. sure the concept sounds ludicrous, Disney and square that is absolutely unholy! however seeing classic Disney worlds come to life in front of your eyes and being able to explore them is incredibly fun and makes sense. The game play is a mix of RPG elements wrapped in a stranded hack and slash as you would expect,  this can often make using magic pretty comersome but with persiverince you can get used to it. as a whole it is great game to play with the family. if you are a fan of square or disney you shouldnt pass this one up.

Kingdom Hearts is an easy game to get into. The original characters and story didn't exactly grab me, and the Battle system wasn't all the hot either but visiting Disney worlds and finding all the sidequests was really fun and a good challenge. If you're wanting alot of Final Fantasy out of this, then you'll be sorely disappointed. Despite some small dislikes, the game was pretty fun to play.


----------Battle System----------
The battle system is pretty shallow action hack and slash. Anyone can get into this since all you do is hit attack over and over again and occasionally jumping or switching target. The only magic I ever used was Cure, and I rarely had to use Items in battle. From the outside looking in, it might look like a Zelda clone, but this is closer to a platformer than an adventure game like Zelda. The puzzles are simpler, the levels are shorter, there's alot more platforming elements to it.

You fight in a party of 3 the entire game. You control the game as Sora, the keyblade master. Goofy and Donald the Duck are your two other characters, Goofy is strong with a good defense, and Donlad is a great magic user. When you visit other worlds, for example, Nightmare before Christmas, you get the option of subing out a character (either Donald or Goofy) with that character from that world, for this example, Jack from Nightmare before Christmas.

The AI of Donald and Goofy is really good. You'll never have to babysit them or escort them anywhere. They'll heal themselves if they're in trouble, but that can be a problem. They'll heal themselves to much wasting potions. Goofy is the worst about this, he can't keep items in his stash for long.

I had a ton of issues with the camera and targeting system. The camera seems to always give you the wrong angle at the right time. The Target system rarely gives you the enemy you want to target.

Like most RPGs your team gains experience for everything you defeat. Once you gain a level, you'll either raise your Attack power, Defense, Hit Points, Magic Points or Ability Points. Every once in a while you'll also gain an ability. The abilities are a mix of status boosters, combos and new attacks. There's only a few magic abilities in the game, but they can be upgraded about 2 times. The Fairy Godmother will grant you summons aswell, like Bambi, Dumbo and so on. I never had to or wanted to use them.

The sidequests are the best thing about this game. There's a TON of them. You can collect the 101 Dalmations, many Trinity Marks, 4 optional bosses, Ansem reports, 100 Acre Woods (Pooh), Gummi parts, plus many many more.

Overall the game is super simple, that is until you unlock the 4 optional bosses. They might not be on the level the Ultima Weapson in Final Fantasy 7, but they are extremely tough compared to the rest of Kingdom Hearts.


----------Characters / Story----------
The dialog can get totally cringe worthy. The story is a little hard to believe that a 10 year old with a Key for a weapon, and a talking duck and dog can take on Leon (Squall), Cloud and Yuffi from Final Fantasy in battle. This game was mostly Disney with a dash of Final Fantasy tossed in at the last minute. Out of the few Final Fantasy characters in the game, they only used the ones from 7, 8 and a couple from X. The only Disney complaint is; where's the Seven Dwarfs? Snow White is in the game, but the Seven Dwarfs isn't? Doesn't make sense.

I really hated the original characters, they're everything I despise about modern RPGs. Baggy oversized clothes? check. Spikey hair? check. Annoying love interest? check. Arrogance? check. Metrosexual pre-teens? check.

----------Graphics----------
The graphics are just short of being amazing. All the characters are perfectly designed, the enemies look great. There's no slow downs or any bugs I've noticed. The worlds are small, but they have the most important aspects of the worlds and everything looks great within them. The Gummi Ship however looks worse than Star Fox for the SNES. I have no idea why they dumbed down the graphics so much on the Gummi levels. There's only a couple pre-rendered cutscenes, the game is mostly all told with in-game cutscenes.

----------Sound----------
The music is perfect, pure Final Fantasy goodness here with some of the best Disney has to offer. Most of the dialog is voiced over. The Disney characters are great, James Woods does the best job with Hades though. The original characters like Sora, Kiari, and Riku really grate on my nerves. I didn't like the Final Fantasy voice overs, maybe because it's not what I had in my head over the years of what they should sound like.

----------World Map----------
The world map is a dot to dot collection of world in space. To travel to another world, you fly in your Gummi Ship from planet to planet. You manually fly the Gummi Ship to the planets, but it's always a straight line dodging rocks and other ships that rarely if ever shoot at you. You can upgrade your Gummi Ship later into the game to have better defense, offense and speed, but I didn't bother since it took to much time and it was simple enough to complete on my original Gummi Ship. Later on in the game you can warp to the worlds without having to manually fly them, so that makes the game flow alot easier.

There's only one real safe town in the game where theres shops, people to chat with, houses to walk in and monsters won't attack. The rest of the worlds have safe areas and an important house to visit, but no actual shops or people hanging around.

----------Time to Complete Game (second run through, last save before final boss)----------
41:01

The game is roughly about 25 hours long if you rush through it, but if you do everything the game has to offer then you'll get a great experience out of it.

If you beat the game in expert you get to see your final stats. If you beat the game with all the sidequests completed, you get a secret ending.

Kingdom hearts is one of the most overrated games on the ps2, its not that its a bad game but it doesnt stand anywhere upto the massive hype that surrounds the game. As far as rpg's go this was pretty average and as far as games in general go, this was pretty average.

The battle system is horrible, maybe fun for about the first half hour but it then just becomes a button mash, repeatedly tapping the X button to try and string together combos. healing is also poorly executed, you can have three of you magics set to a shortcut which is fine as you can heal rather fast but as soon as your MP is gone and you want to access a potion or ether you have to scroll down with the analog stick or the d-pad and select each item individually, this is time consuming and a battle can turn from fine to game over in a matter of seconds, death is a frustrating and inconsistent factor in the game.

Upon defeating any opponent you must collect the small balls they drop to increase your HP, MP or money, this seems like a chore, having to run around the battlefield collecting the balls before they disappear when all you really want to do is continue the fight.

the battles do have some perks like the ability to summon, string together some nice combos, even if they do get repetitive and in latter battles the ability to fly makes for something interesting.

Kingdom hearts has a strong cast of characters as you can imagine, alot of well known characters from both the disney films and square games play a part. It is mostly the disney characters with the final fantasy characters making more of a guest appearance throughout the game, the name disney the game would have been a fitting title. voice acting is good especially from the disney characters who all resemble the voices from the films.

The story wasnt bad but it wasnt anything special, you can tell almost instantly the game is aimed at a young audience and i think this would be a great place for them to start playing rpg's. For more of an adult gamer or someone experienced with rpg's i dont think this would be such a great title to pick up.

Flying around from world to world is very boring and must be done at least once, each time you want to access a new world. you have control of a block like ship called a gumi ship and have to shoot your way past other square like ships or blocks, it looks really bad especially compared to the graphics in the rest of the game.

Graphics are quite nice in kingdom hearts and you can tell from the opening cut-scene that square have an involvement. There didnt seems to be alot of cinematics but they are a nice treat any time you had the privilege of seeing one, alot of normal scenes are used in the game to show off the different disney characters and to explain the story, this is fine and is always a nice break unless it is before a boss battle. There is no way to skip through the normal scenes and getting stuck on a boss becomes very frustrating as you have to watch a certain scene over and over.

So do i recommend kingdom hearts ? well that depends on what sort of gamer you are, if you are part of a younger audience, someone who loves the disney films or looking to start playing rpg's then yes this game is well worth looking into. If you are a final fantasy fan hoping to become involved with your favourite characters again, more of an adult gamer or someone experienced with rpg's then i would probably say no. the game is well worth a look by all but dont be disappointed if its not for you.

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.

Kingdom Hearts was Square's first big hit since Final Fantasy X.  It brought together two popular universes--Disney and Final Fantasy, and melded them into a unique role playing game.  Disney movies and Final Fantasy games contain vastly different stories, but they often have themes of light versus dark, or good versus evil, so you could say that this unique pairing makes sense.  There is a division among fans on whether Disney characters belong in a Square game, so how much you like the game may depend on your feelings towards Disney.  Personally, I am not a huge Disney fan, but I did grow up watching many of the films whose characters are featured in Kingdom Hearts, so I can appreciate many of the voices and songs in the game.

 

Besides the combination of Disney and Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts doesn't have much else going for it.  The combat is a large part of the game and is repetitive and sloppy.  It is an Action-RPG style of combat, with no random battles or warping to different screens to fight enemies.  Instead, you have an even worse system where you mash on the x button to defeat enemies.  Occasionally you can use special moves and magic, but these have little bearing on your success.  For the duration of the game, you control Sora, the main character.  Your two allies, Donald and Goofy, of Disney fame are controlled by the AI, so you will have to put up with their sometimes stupid decisions.  During your quest, you'll fight what seems like countless enemies, so make sure to take a break occasionally from all the button mashing.

 

Repetitive combat is not the only issue that decreases the enjoyment you'll get out of Kingdom Hearts.  The camera is even worse, and spirals out of control more often than the most drunk, obnoxious college student.  Not only does it make you dizzy, but the camera makes it really hard to keep track of enemies, and can cause you to fall off ledges.  During a portion of the game in which you have to swim and fight a boss with magic, the camera was so bad that it brought me to the game over screen.

 

Kingdom Hearts also fails to create a smooth difficulty curve.  Some parts of the game are extremely easy, while others will have you fighting four bosses in a row, or an enemy in which it is difficult to use items, since you are constantly being attacked.  The difficulty level of the worlds is not always clear either, with some 3 star levels being more difficult than a 2 star.  This may create frustration during certain parts of the game for some players, so make sure to spend enough time gaining levels.

 

Although Kingdom Hearts contains a significant amount of problems, it does some things right too.  The Disney characters are superbly rendered and animated.  Many of them have the actual voice actors from the movies.  The Hercules segment of the game was a bit disappointing, since Herc didn't have his movie voice, but for the most part, the voice acting for the Disney characters was excellent.  The Final Fantasy characters on the other hand, leave much to be desired.  Many of the actors just didn't seem to fit, or felt uninspired.  Still, it was fun running into characters from recent Final Fantasy games and traversing amazing Disney worlds.  In the next installment, I hope they add characters from the SNES Final Fantasies.

 

The music in Kingdom Hearts fits the action perfectly.  This beautiful score by Yoko Shimomura contains many original pieces, but also classic Disney songs.  Older gamers will remember the songs from classic Disney flicks, and will likely appreciate the new songs, including the tragic title piece.

 

Square did an excellent job merging the Disney and Final Fantasy worlds, but I would have liked to see a more involved story.  What was there felt basic and disjointed.  The Disney worlds were familiar and will likely please fans, but the original content doesn't feel up to par with the Final Fantasy games.  This tale contains many themes seen in old Final Fantasy titles such as light versus dark, so it is fairly simple content compared to modern games.  In the inevitable sequel it would be nice to see a more cohesive story.

 

Kingdom Hearts is one of Square's first original franchises for the PS2, and it is nice to see them break new ground.  Still, the game had many flaws that were overlooked by gamers eager to see some of their favorite characters from Disney flicks and Final Fantasy games.  I would hope that Square fixes the camera and combat issues in the sequel, and it would be nice if more depth was added to the story.  It will be interesting to see what Square does with the franchise.