Note: There are spoilers, but seriously who cares.

I had to suppress a mild fanboy squeal when loading up Kingdom Hearts the first time for the purposes of this blog; when I saw the "Squaresoft" logo I was reminded this was still the small bit of time left in the aughts before they became Square Enix in 2003. Kingdom Hearts is one of those classic "I should go back and play that" games that have devoted followings and many, perhaps too many, games across various platforms. When I saw the hysterical reactions to the announcement of Kingdom Hearts 3 during Sony's 2013 E3 Press Conference, some of which I'm pretty sure broke the fucking sound barrier, I knew it was only a matter of time until I ended up playing them to see what the fuss was about.

I actually have a black-label release of Kingdom Hearts from back in the day. This was an era where Square was still king, and even though I was never much of a Disney person as a kid, Square had built enough goodwill with me that I was going to give pretty much anything they made a shot. Afterall, this was not long after the years when everything Square touched turned to gold on the Ps1. So, a new RPG from Square? I was there.

It didn't last long with me, though. I didn't know anybody who was all that into it and after playing it for what I can only assume was a few hours of being completely fucking lost, I moved on to something else, hoping to get back to it some other time. That never happened, of course. I went through life preferring the comfort of my turn based RPGs instead, and nothing I ever really saw from the series dragged me back. It didn't help that whenever I did see a Kingdom Hearts fan, they seemed slightly unhinged. It's understandable to be a little judgmental when you're fairly young, right?

So with a fresh pair of grown-up eyes, a bit more patience, and an open mind, I dove into Kingdom Hearts expecting good things. I felt like the first hour of the game or so was a fairly good impression, too, feeling distinctly Square-like. After the tutorializing, though, I was bummed out that Kingdom Hearts became very frustrating, very quickly.

I expected a convoluted story, but Kingdom Hearts doesn't have much of a plot to begin with.

Before we begin I would like to introduce you to the completely nonsensical opening video to Kingdom Hearts, because if I had to deal with it, then so do you.

What, it doesn't make perfect sense to you? I was on board until the bizarrely out of place pop song began playing. Ugh, this game is why AMVs are popular, isn't it?

Back in 2003, G4 ended up presenting Kingdom Hearts with the "Best Story" award, leading me to wonder if they considered other games that even had stories, if this is what ended up winning. It's not that Kingdom Hearts has a bad story, there's just very little to it. Going into Kingdom Hearts I had heard all sorts of things about how the series is one of the worst examples of incomprehensible JRPG nonsense and well-worn power-of-the-heart tropes, but the story Kingdom Hearts tells isn't very convoluted or bizarre, it's just very thin, which was a bit of a let down.

The game begins with Sora on a series of stain-glass window islands that more or less teach him the basics of CQC, and after that he's on some island that resembles Besaid to such an extent that Tidus and Wakka are even there, for some reason. Kairi and Riku are your childhood friends, and you're all working on a grand plan to venture out and explore other worlds by building a raft of some sort. Look, they're kids. Let them have their imagination. Sora and Riku are all sweet on Kairi, the girl of the group, and after a tedious scavenger hunt, the Heartless attack the island, the world is destroyed, and the three of them are scattered to other worlds. The beginning mission: Find Riku and Kairi. Donald and Goofy are also on a mission, to find you, wielder of the keyblade, as ordered by King Mickey.

The story never really progresses much beyond this premise, though. Riku ends up finding Sora first, and becomes wrought with jealousy that Sora has been having fun with his new friends, pissed that Sora is out saving worlds instead of looking for Kairi... who he already has found. It turns out Kairi lost her heart in the attack on their home island, and Riku is desperately searching for a way to get her out of her effective coma. The conflict between Riku and Sora never really makes much sense, though, because if Riku is pissed that Sora isn't helping save Kairi, why does he deliberately hide information from the person most capable of saving her life, for hours and hours? Whatever.

My real issue with the plot of Kingdom Hearts is that very little of the game's progression actually moves the plot forward in any meaningful way. Out of all the worlds you go to, a very small amount of them ever directly deal with Riku and Kairi, and the Heartless just become this irritating nuisance you need to get rid of, not really presenting themselves as the world-ending threat the game insists that they are until very very late. You eventually find out that Maleficent is kidnapping the "seven maidens of the purest heart" to open a door to "untold wisdom" aka huge evil, but you don't even directly interfere with this plan in any meaningful way. Most of the princesses have already been abducted, and the two you come across along the way are easily snatched away from under your nose. The party doesn't even really seem to be aware that this is a plan until you stumble across them in Hollow Bastion.

The crux of the game's plot is really caring about getting your best friend back and saving her life, but Kairi is in a vegetative state for the vast majority of the game. She's a total non-entity. In fact, none of the characters ever really grow over the course of this journey like I'd hoped they would. Seeing King Mickey at the end of the game was a great "Fuck yeah!" moment that I didn't think it would inspire in me, but it's a bad sign that a Mickey Mouse cameo at the end of the game inspires more emotion than saving the girl who most of the game was about.

I guess what disappointed me the most is that Kingdom Hearts' story is exactly what it says on the tin, no out-of-left-field weirdness included.

Kingdom Hearts' camera approaches game-ruining levels of bad throughout the journey.

I wanted to dive into a run-down of the individual Worlds of Kingdom Hearts and how I felt about them, but I felt like I needed to get out ahead of what will immediately become something of a running theme throughout this writing: The camera of Kingdom Hearts is borderline non-functional. I do not use these words lightly and I don't mean to sound hyperbolic. What ruined my enjoyment of Kingdom Hearts more than anything else was the fact that I had basically no camera control. Not only is camera control mapped, bafflingly, to the L2 and R2 buttons, but the view of the action is zoomed in so closely behind Sora that it's incredibly difficult to have a good grasp on what's happening around you. What makes this even worse is that it's more or less impossible to even nudge the camera in one direction or another when target-locked.

Last year I remember reading a study about how frustration with video game controls is actually one of the contributing factors to increased aggression in people who play video games. Kingdom Hearts is my proof. No matter where I was, what world it was, what enemies I was fighting, I was always pissed off by my inability to control and have a good view of the action. But it's not like the world design was much of a help.

Wonderland.

Wonderland is the first major area that you're introduced to after meeting up with Donald and Goofy, and is what makes it clear that you're going to be gallivanting around a variety of different Disney themed worlds from the beginning of Kingdom Hearts to the end. The Greatest Hits are all here: The rabbit runs around screaming that he's late. Cheshire Cat acts coy and speaks in riddles. The Queen of Hearts repeatedly threatens people with decapitation. You fight card guards. Etc. etc.

What makes Wonderland so frustrating, and such a poor first impression of how the game will progress for the next 15 hours, is that it really explains absolutely nothing of what you need to do, and doing it is a chore. The entire world only actually consists of about four different rooms, which you will constantly backtrack through to get pieces of a puzzle, all while doing platforming that controls like garbage. The platforming demands such precision, with no clear idea of where you're even going, that this was my first clue I was in for a rough ride. I bashed my head against figuring out The Bizarre Room for far too long, and if you screw up some of the platforming in finding the pieces of evidence for Alice's trial, you'll have to go all the way back through the rooms again. The only thing that made this tolerable was save states. To top it all off, nothing really even happens here that's all that interesting, plot-wise. You fight a boss, do what you will later find out is locking a key-hole that seals the world from danger, and you move on, failing in your mission to protect Alice.

The Gummi Ship Interludes.

I don't even understand why these are here. In between worlds you will have to do a few minutes of ship combat that feel about as enjoyable as the combat portions of a 90s FMV game.

Actually, I take that back, because unlike the Sewer Sharks of the world, the Gummi Ship combat is stupidly easy. In fact, that's probably my main complaint with these sections of the game. Flying between worlds feels slow, targeting is too touchy to have that great of control over the action, and in general Kingdom Hearts never really forces you to upgrade your Gummi Ship to get better at it. I went through the entire game never building a new Gummi Ship and always using the default. I was never punished for this and at no point had trouble flying between worlds. Why create a chain of systems to build new ships when the game is never hard enough that you have to do this? It's a waste of Square's time in addition to mine.

In general the Gummi Ship portions feel like a victim of trying to split the difference between audiences, but I'll ramble about that later.

The Deep Jungle.

The world of Tarzan and Jane has one major point in its favor: It's better than Wonderland. This is only achieved by virtue of not having a giant inscrutable puzzle room and instead having outside areas you just sort of run back and forth between. The Deep Jungle trades puzzles for backtracking.

And backtracking this world has in spades. Multiple times after a story-related event would occur, I would run after them, and end up clearing through the world in its entirety once or twice, trying desperately to find where the hell I was supposed to go, only to discover I needed to talk to Jane again to trigger the next event. This is how, it ends up, the entire world will progress. Something happens, you run through all the areas and wind up back at the camp, there's a cutscene, you talk to someone, you run through all the areas and wind up back at the camp, there's a cutscene, you talk to someone, you run through all the areas and wind up back at the camp, there's a cutscene, a boss fight, then you leave.

In keeping with Wonderland, nothing really happens here that advances the plot in any way either. You learn nothing about the main characters, nothing about the nature of the Heartless, and nothing about your friends.

Agrabah.

The world of Aladdin is where things finally clicked in my head about what Kingdom Hearts is. I had been in denial about it up to this point, but it was impossible to ignore the reality that this game is really half-RPG, half-shitty kiddy platformer ripped out of the late 90s. Gameplay wise, the crux of Agrabah involves running around the city portions looking for switches to open doors, which you will only really find by (sensing a common theme yet?) blindly running around the areas looking for anything interactable until you stumble upon the solution.

The underground portion of Agrabaha, the ruins, are among my least favorite sections in the game. Falling off the platforms causes you to fall into the waterway at the bottom, and climb all the way back up. I'm still not clear on exactly how I unlocked the boss area. You sort of have to poke at different things in the waterway until a pillar of some sort is destroyed, and this somehow shakes the boss room door open.

On the plus side, Agrabah is where you finally learn what the evil plan even is. Maleficent is collecting the seven princess of pure heart to "unlock the door" to the Heartless dimension, or whatever. This is why Alice mysteriously disappeared, and why Jasmine suffers the same fate. It's also the first world that finally nails the style. The music, world design, and enemy design all play together really well, and even though much of the world is backwards and confusing, it at least has more than about five different rooms to it. So kudos.

Monstro.

Monstro manages to be the least frustrating world to complete, with little to no necessary platforming or unlock-this-thing-to-get-to-this-place puzzles. Consequently it is also the shortest; I completed it in what felt like twenty minutes, but in reality was probably barely over a half-hour or so.

This world is all about rescuing Pinocchio, who has ran off with Riku for seemingly no reason, as Riku exposes the fact that he's working for Maleficent because of stupid jealousy reasons. Sora is off playing hero and allegedly not taking the matter of finding Kairi seriously enough - whom Riku has already found; she's a vegetable due to having lost her heart - and antagonizes Sora over.. something. To be honest, it's not all that important.

I try to keep pretty lengthy notes as I play through the games I care enough to write about, and my notes from Monstro consist of about two sentences. You fight a weird parasite in Monstro's stomach and then you move on. Ain't much to it.

Atlantica.

"Okay guys, I have a great idea. Let's take the bad camera controls and simplistic combat, right? Then we put the player underwater for an entire world, adding an extra layer of bullshit with descend/ascend buttons, and slow everything way down so it's harder to actually hit things. Do I get a raise now or what?"

Atlantica is the underwater level, and like any underwater level, it feels awful to control. Yet, because Kingdom Hearts loves to throw in bad platforming all over the place, it has the accidental benefit of having none of those sections. Also, in a pleasant concession to the fact that even the developers know finding your way through Atlantica would be a hellish nightmare, there are direction markers placed throughout the environment that guide you back to the palace, so you actually have a general idea of where you're going. The downsides of this world are obvious, however. Combat is sluggish and hard to control, and prompts don't always appear due to issues with being on the same plane as the object. There is also a point where the game actually decides to tell you what to do next - something of a rarity for Kingdom Hearts - but actually manages to confuse you even more. Ariel tells you to ride the dolphin, as it can lead you through powerful currents you otherwise can't swim through, but the first dolphin you encounter actually doesn't take you anywhere. It just flings you around in circles. You actually have to go to a different area and ride that dolphin. Why is the first one even there in the first place?

The Ursula boss fights take the cake, however. Ursula's second form is incredibly difficult, and the bad swimming controls are partially responsible for this. Timing on her attacks is very tight, and you must stay in constant motion or she will hit you with electricity. She has an attack that sucks you in, which you can swim out of, but you have to move Sora to face in a direction away from her. What's the problem? In high-speed swimming mode, you can only barely turn Sora, so unless you're already facing away from Ursula's mouth, you're likely to just swim right into her on accident, because there's also no real camera control for this fight if you're locked on. Afterwards you seal the keyhole and move on, like always, learning very little in terms of story in the process.

Halloween Town.

I don't have much reverence for The Nightmare Before Christmas, but even I can appreciate how much style this world has. The music the great, the characters are alright, and there's very little confusion about what you're supposed to be doing.

Halloween Town's main faults come from its boss fights, that are too long and tedious. The two final boss fights are Oogie Boogie, the first form of which takes place around a giant roulette table. Oogie Boogie throws objects and enemies at you from up top, and you have to land on the appropriate buttons on the wheel to raise the platform to where the boss is, but you can only really get a few hits in before getting knocked back down to the wheel and having to repeat the process, and even when you know what you're doing you will often over-shoot and miss Oogie Boogie's platform altogether. It takes far, far too long.

His second form turns him into a giant that you have to climb on top of and destroy various darkness... nodes of some sort all over his body. This also takes far too long, because you have to stop in the middle of the action and go into first person view - an inclusion that you know is always a good sign that the developers know their default view is inadequate - to have any idea where the circles of darkness even are. This fight combines some of Kingdom Hearts' worst elements: the bad camera, bad platforming, and unclear instructions. Like most of the other worlds, nothing about Halloween Town contributes to the over-arching narrative or builds Sora as a character at all.

Neverland.

The camera angles are at their very worst in Neverland, which takes place primarily on Captain Hook's ship. The areas in the ship are so tiny, and there are so many ladders and posts scattered throughout the environment, it's virtually impossible for the camera to not get stuck on the level geometry, and you may as well forget even trying to manually control the damn thing. It'll just snap back to whatever place it feels like it should be in whenever you hit a wall.

Neverland in general feels like a wasted opportunity. Neverland is a much more vast world than Kingdom Hearts would lead unknowing individuals to believe, and sticking the whole world onto a pirate ship is really disappointing, considering all there is in the Neverland canon. You don't even get the defining-fucking-attribute of being in Neverland, the ability to fly, until the final boss fight of the zone.

Nothing about Neverland is all that bad, necessarily, aside from aforementioned camera issues and a particularly stubborn ladder that Sora will constantly try to immediately jump off of for some stupid reason, but the whole thing sort of encapsulates my biggest problem with Kingdom Hearts: It doesn't make good use of the amazing things in the Disney library. The concept of Kingdom Hearts is amazing, but levels like Neverland make me feel like so much of it has been squandered. I would've much rather Square built original levels if this is the best that they can do with the source material, which leads me to...

Hollow Bastion.

In my mind it is no coincidence that my favorite area of the game is not an existing Disney creation. Hollow Bastion has haunting music that isn't aping from an existing Disney style and is a huge, sprawling zone, actually feeling like it was designed to be a proper video game area instead of shoehorning in half-baked Disney fanservice. With less camera issues due to the larger environments, puzzles that feel satisfying to figure out instead of seeming convoluted, and incredibly satisfying boss fights, the area is genuinely a lot of fun.

Really, the only negative point for the zone would be that you have to run through the whole thing again after completing it the first time, and that some of the late-game enemies, particularly the aerial ones, can be difficult to fight due to ledges.

The boss fights here are all fun, but the fight against Keyblade-Riku is a real test of skill that the rest of the game doesn't come near. All of your abilities are tested in a one-on-one fight, no summons, nothing cheap, in a wide open area so the camera is a non-issue. In a weird way it gave me a Dark Souls feel, with the need to predict his attacks, dodge roll, and read his patterns. No other fight in Kingdom Hearts comes close to feeling like an accomplishment the way this one does. I just doubt any child had a very fun time with it.

End of the World.

Honestly? The less said about this area the better. First of all, I don't understand why it's even called "End of the World" since you travel to several different worlds in what I assume is a great big universe. It should've been called "End of Worlds." Oh well.

If there was a single level that showcased the weakness of Kingdom Hearts' combat systems, End of the World would be it. According to the IGN Wiki Guide to this level, there are no less than twelve bosses you have to fight. Most of the Ansem fights are great fun, only a notch or two below Keyblade-Riku, but the rest? They're pretty dull mash fests. Along the way you'll also deal with several forced encounters with trash mobs, which is only more annoying than the rest of the game because Kingdom Hearts is usually pretty good about not forcing combat with random enemies against your will. It just led to me spamming Thunder spells a lot.

I would like to call attention to one of the areas in the middle of the world, though, because it's sort of odd. There's a series of cliffs and platforms that lead to the penultimate area of the game. What makes this so peculiar is that it's a series of platforms leading downwards. Meaning the entire area can just be bypassed by looking down at where the Bright Glowing Light of Obvious Progression is and just leaping down to it and gliding right over. It's a strange choice. I don't think anyone bothered informing Square Enix that platforming sections don't really work as well when you're going straight downwards. At least the final boss is fun.

I liked the combat overall, but didn't like much of the interface. Or lack thereof.

A lot of people decry the combat system of Kingdom Hearts for being too mashy and unsatisfying. It's hard to deny the fact that it's mashy in the sort of swarm encounters that the final areas of the game absolutely drown in. Yet, for a game aimed at kids, the combat had more depth than it needed to have, and I can appreciate it. The Keyblades and various equipment make two completely different styles of play very feasible, as either a mage or melee oriented character, and even though the initial skill choices at the beginning of the game are deliberately vague, when you do know what your choices affect, it does allow for very different progression from one playthrough to another.

Spells, summons, a proper skill system; Kingdom Hearts has what it needs to be a legit RPG. It's all passable.

What makes the combat of Kingdom Hearts frustrating, camera aside, is that the AI of Donald and Goofy basically make giving them items totally pointless. They'll just blow them at their first opportunity, often at the exact same time, and there isn't much of a way to control their actions. There's some sort of button to get their attention, but it's unclear what it even does, and it certainly doesn't affect item usage. This problem would be less annoying if you could open the menu mid-combat, but you can't do that, which is a choice I just don't like. I understand the desire to tune the combat encounters, but this could be accomplished in other ways. Some late-game combat encounters go on for a very long time, and you can't even open the character menu to equip new abilities during a fight if you level up. It makes more sense to only equip Donald and Goofy with items prior to boss fights, but there's no way to know a boss is coming, and since you can't open the menu in a fight... you see the conundrum there.

One minor, but easily avoidable problem is also that the descriptions in the item store are utterly useless. Weapon descriptions may as well just say "It's designed as a weapon! Could be useful!" for all that they include. It's bizarre to me that you have no idea how powerful they are until you buy them, and money is at a bit of a premium in Kingdom Hearts for the majority of the game. I ended up wasting 2800 munny on a weapon that just popped up for Goofy, only to find out it was weaker than what he had equipped. There's no reason this problem should exist!

Oftentimes when quality of life complaints are made about older games, people are quick to pipe up with "Well you're being unfair, judging these games by the standard of today instead of the standard of when it was released." Being released in 2002 does not excuse Kingdom Hearts from having poor tooltips and crappy camera controls. A mini-map would've also been very helpful, and I hear Kingdom Hearts 2 solved that problem. So for that, good on 'em. I just really hope they zoomed out the camera, as well.

I come away from Kingdom Hearts not knowing what audience it's meant for.

I get the sense that part of the reason I feel the story suffers so much is that it's trying to split the difference between two audiences. On the one hand: traditional Final Fantasy fans. I mean, this game has Final Fantasy splooged all over it. Various characters, item names, spells, and abilities. Traverse Town is littered with Moogles. The storytelling delivery is even so Final Fantasy for the era that it hurts. The flashback scenes of Sora's childhood with kid-Riku in the cave may as well have been ripped directly from Final Fantasy VII with Cloud's inner monologues, or FFX's scenes with the child Fayth. Yet on the other hand, you have kids that clearly aren't going to understand these references or narrative devices. The game is rated E for fuck's sake. Not even E 10+, straight-up E. A four-year-old could buy this game.

This splitting-the-difference feeling fits with my issues toward the gameplay as well. The Gummi Ship is a perfect example. There exists a system where you can build various Gummi ships with parts you collect throughout the game, and blueprints you can collect to build others, but there's never any push made upon the player to do this, as if the game doesn't want to be too hard because it might alienate the kids. Yet, by not sufficiently creating a demand to build powerful ships, there's no reason for the player to supply them. The end result is a series of gameplay mechanics effectively invalidated. Another example: When escaping Agrabah, you're riding on the Magic Carpet while speeding out of a collapsing cavern. Think of it a lot like the jet ski sequence from the ending of Resident Evil 4. Except, in this case, I quickly realized that it didn't seem like I could lose, so I just stopped steering or controlling the character in any way. I survived with plenty of health to spare.

And the platforming, why does that exist, except that it was 2002 and we were still fresh out of the era where kids games were almost obligated to be colorful platformers? Kingdom Hearts would've been made better if it focused on being an RPG instead of including random gameplay elements to try and please all ages, or at the very least, given you the glide ability up-front, which eases the frustration.

While these aspects of the game feel dumbed down and made easy for the kids, other elements seem unfairly difficult to the young 'uns. The Ursula fights, and the end-game boss fights are legitimately quite hard, several orders of magnitude harder than most bosses. I'm not sure I really believe that the Keyblade-Riku fight was even possible for someone under the age of 10. I doubt a child would discover much of the game's optional content, either. The Curaga spell, which is very useful for the end-game even if you're skilled at the combat to begin with, requires you track down Aerith in the library of Hollow Bastion after you no longer have any reason to go there, and talk to her multiple times. Kingdom Hearts oscillates between being easy to the point of making its own gameplay sequences obsolete, and difficult to the point of being a barrier to entry for kids to complete. Who was it made for?

Kingdom Hearts is beautiful, even today, and cleans up nicely. Its combat is passable, its story is not worthless, even if stretched pretty thin. Its music is fantastic. I don't mean to be completely dismissive of what this game is. With better camera controls, some HUD improvements, ramping up the challenge of certain parts, ditching the platforming... etc, I might've even considered it pretty good. But these complaints add up, and playing it can be aggravating on a level that "But it was 2002" doesn't excuse.

I end up falling somewhere in the middle, and more than a little puzzled that this is the game that spawned millions of sales and a deeply devoted following. Yet after all of this, I'm still curious to play more of the series to see where it goes. I suppose that is to Kingdom Hearts' credit, if nothing else.

It has been many years since I've played 1 and 2. All I remember about the franchise is

• The vast majority of my love for it came from visiting all of the Disney related worlds because I watched the movies when I was a child.
• The combat is passable. I didn't think it was great but not completely terrible to make me not want to play. It was enough for me to not hate as I made my way to the next cutscene.
• Kingdom Hearts 2 was where the plot started to become needlessly convoluted and began the journey up its own ass that continued with each of the many spin-off titles that I barely played. (Birth by Sleep, Chain of Memories, that one title with all the numbers) The unhinged people you were encountering were most likely the ones who did their best to wrap their heads around the insane story and its many aspects.
• Great music
• Camera control was kinda shit.

So yeah looking back now, Disney was what made that game work for me. The "Final Fantasy" side of the game in terms of story and characters ranged from batshit crazy to OK. I will play Kingdom Hearts 3 even though I remember little to nothing of what happens beyond the first game because I want to see how those Disney universes are rendered on current gen hardware.

Oh and fuck Organization 13. No, I don't "got it memorized", Axel. Fuck you.

All your points about it's downsides are true.

The game, for me, was entirely nostalgia. I never even particularly cared about the story. The camera was always garbage. The combat was always simplistic. The AI was always horrible/wasteful of resources (there are ways to ease that a little, though, if you know how). The cheesy space shmup between worlds is a drag. I know all the bad things about the game (and there are a lot).

I purely liked the first game because of the mixing of characters and Disney movies I loved and the way they set all of that up.

That being said, all the down sides of the game have never been something I've ignored; they just never got in the way of me enjoying the game at a base level that was enough for me to finish it twice (and probably a third time as I've been playing the HD version).

I never held up the sequels and whatever the same way. KH 2 is ok, and it improves some things (having Jim Cummings in a more significant role among other things), but because of what the game is it only works the first time. The second one is still fun if you like playing just for nostalgia (like I did) but if you don't care about the story the second game becomes a real drag (and also incredibly confusing if you ignored all the other games that came out on other platforms). I know some people disagree, but that's how I've always seen it.

The games capture pure nostalgia and bottles it up in a satisfying enough way that the downsides didn't matter.

No matter where I was, what world it was, what enemies I was fighting, I was always pissed off by my inability to control and have a good view of the action.

So I've been trying to go back to Kingdom Hearts and play through 1 so I can play through 2, which I actually liked... but I'm only in Traverse Town and I'm fed up with the camera. Reading through the other areas and hearing it never really hits the same heights as KH2, I don't know if I might just go straight to KH2.

Great post was fun to read through. I actually think I was around 10 when I played through this game and I played the SHIT out of it and part two (none of the other ones I'm not a crazy person). I would pretty much agree to all the points you made about what's bad about it. When Kingdom Hearts 3 was announced I thought back towards my time with these games and some friends of mine were super pumped about it but I told them pretty quick hey guys... I don't think those games were actually that good we were just young..

Having said that I'm excited to see what's up with the next entry, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

That music though, fuck

Shit still gives me chills. STILL

Kingdom Hearts is a very hard game to explain what makes it appealing and why I have such fondness for it even now. Part of it is nostalgia, for both Disney and the game itself, but it's more than that. I picked up the HD remix on the PS3 when it came out and enjoyed playing through it again about as much as I remembered.

If I were to break down it's various components and analyze them like you did I probably would end up with many very similar complaints. The main story is pretty paper thin until the last few worlds and the Disney worlds are largely watered down rehashes of their movie counterparts. The Final Fantasy characters are mostly forgettable and unnecessary. The combat is decent enough, but often kinda clunky. The level design is often sub-par and the platforming is bad.

And yet, the game is more than a sum of its parts for me. It manages to hit just enough of the right notes that appeal to my brain's pleasure centers that even after numerous playthroughs I still consider that game one of my favorites from the PS2 era.

I remember playing through and generally liking Kingdom Hearts 2, but I couldn't tell you any specific details whatsoever. There was a Tron world, and that was actually sort of cool. I also remember the plot being totally nonsensical, so if you thought the first game's relatively straightforward "Final Fantasy x Disney" plotline was too straightforward, don't worry. The best is yet to come.

I loved the original two games when I played them as a kid. I was probably one of those ten-year-olds that you mentioned getting frustrated fighting Riku. I recently played the HD versions of 1 and 2 and I think the core about this game that I really enjoy stays true with the combat and memorable boss fights and the new versions fix a lot of the camera and more clunky parts of the originals.

I suppose that my love for Disney makes me forgive a lot of the platforming and confusing level layout because I just enjoyed so much of simply existing in these worlds and the care that went into creating them.

When I played this game I was pretty young. I was only seven when this game released and I probably didn't play it until a year or two later. I hadn't played any Final Fantasy games before this (I still haven't, actually) so all of the charm of seeing that world mixed with Disney's was lost on me. I suppose that shows the game's strengths that even without half of the Disney/FF equation I still enjoyed the hell out of it.

I really lost track of the series after KH2, though. Even looking at some of the wiki entries explaining the later games gets completely lost on me now with how time moves in this universe, keyblades and who holds them, darkness and light, heartless, nobodies and unversed. It really gets exhausting.

I'm right at the beginning of Birth by Sleep and I'm questioning if I'll pick it back up again after not touching it for a few months, let alone finishing it before KH3 comes out.

I'm glad you wrote this because it gave me an excuse to write about some of my thoughts on the series.

I'm really glad I played this in 2002, when seeing Disney worlds and FFVii characters rendered like they were felt novel and cool, because reading this it makes me question whether I ever liked Kingdom Hearts. As opposed to the usual narrative of it went wrong later.

I suspect I never truly did.

kinda funny you did this now @marokai given this was posted the day before

http://www.giantbomb.com/kingdom-hearts/3025-414/forums/the-keyblade-chronicles-1771193/

Man, where's Hailinel when you need him, that dude would tear your ass up...

Anyway, yeah, I think KH just came out at the right time, and many of its most glaring flaws were outweighed by the batty novelty of a Disney x Square crossover. They've clearly been laboring to keep the brand alive during Nomura's decade-long sojourn into FFXV, and I'll be curious to see how keen the console audience will be to revisit it, come KH3.

I still have no idea why anyone loves this series so much. I mean I can understand why it sold well since it's Square Enix + Disney but holy hell...

I own all of the games...sorry everybody. It's hard to describe why i really love them because for all intents and purposes they are kind of awful. For me it was the adventure, as a kid, and being able to explore all my favorite Disney movies. Charm and art (that Tron level is still amazing) are what really carries these games and its what its been leaning against since KH2. I just kinda stuck with it after that even after i grew up I play them to remind myself that I wasn't as jaded as I am now.

so TL;DR nostalgia is why these games are appealing.

Also, the story isn't that hard to understand its that they find the most convoluted roundabout way to explain everything for no reason.

In Kingdom Hearts 2, Sora slices an entire building in half while flying.

Look forward to that.

You probably should've just played the HD version. Full camera controls, and some new abilities/equipment that makes the combat a little more varied (there are reasons to hit buttons other than X during combos).

KH2 has better looking levels than KH1, but there's no more platforming. It's just room after room of enemies with cutscenes spliced into it. The combat is more varied, like a more expanded version of what they added to the Final Mix edition of KH1, but they lock away all the traversal abilities behind completely optional stuff so they can never have any areas or treasures that are out of reach for the default movement. KH1 worlds actually felt explorable, with reasons to come back to them when you got new abilities. KH2 doesn't really have any of that.

KH1 has a lot of jank regardless, but it just makes me happy to play for whatever reason. Nostalgia is part of it, but there's a lot of charm that I get from it that it seems like most people don't. The series after that point goes in different tonal directions that wind up losing all of the charm that first game had (seriously, everything is "data" in KH2 onwards, and it's just as meaningless and nonsensical in context as it is when I say it offhand like that). I'm basically doomed to play through every entry in the series though, because there's still a tiny chance they'll recapture some of the charm of the first game.

So that might change depending on which character you're playing. Terra is a frustratingly dumb character who moves slowly and has a terrible dodge (unfortunately, he's the one you're "supposed" to play first). Ventus's story is more lighthearted and Disney-centric, and sort of hits some of the same notes as KH1. Aqua is very weak and hard to play to start with, but gets better after the first world or so, only her story is very doom-and-gloom, but not as annoying as Terra's because she's not a complete moron.

Also, you'll probably have like 10 years to finish it before KH3 comes out.

The story didn't get convoluted and terrible until the game immediately after this. (Actually I think Chain of Memories has a decent enough plot, but II and the endless series of spin-offs after it don't) Kingdom Hearts 1 is just a super plain good versus evil plot, which I feel is appropriate for a Disney themed Square RPG.

@teddie: I think Aqua is the main reason Birth by Sleep is worth playing. She's definitely one of the more well rounded and mature characters in this series. There's an endearing quality to Sora's hopeless optimism (most of the time), but it's a nice change of pace to have a character that actually has a degree of intelligence and reason, rather than the usual hopelessly optimistic "friends are my power" hero or brooding "I'm ridiculously easy to manipulate" anti-hero/rival.

I also thinks she's by far the most unique and fun to play of the trio and is where I found the combat of that game to shine the most. In fact I think I had the most fun playing her of any character in any of the games.

All I read was "this is bullshit, this controls like bullshit, this story is bullshit, all of this is bullshit, let's continue..."

Yeah the camera control is horrendous and it seems like they were mostly doing it because they wanted players to be able to move, control the camera, and select menu items at the same time. It's weird but it gets fixed in 2.

As already said there's little platforming in 2 and it's when the series goes totally nuts. It's great.

You can hate on KH all you want but if you didn't get feels when Kairi see's the stone drawing you probably need not play any of the sequels.

I appreciate all the comments talking about they feel about the series and why, it's what I was super interested in seeing. Even though I didn't like KH1 too much I really did want to understand the appeal and long-lasting devotion to the series, as well as how people feel about it in adulthood. So thanks for all of that.

For those who have played it, is Re: Chain of Memories actually, like, worthwhile? I'm more interested when someone says "card battling game" than most people probably are, and it being a story bridge between games seems useful, but from what I've seen of it, it just seems to re-use assets, and the reviews of it are pretty mediocre.

@teddie: Hearing that KH2 has a better camera, no platforming, a crazier story, and a map, among other things, sounds really encouraging and seems like Square was at least aware that a lot of those things were a bit frustrating. I feel much more likely to at least continue through Re:CoM and KH2.

@encephalon: I do miss that guy.

@slag: Yeah! I'm interested in seeing his rundown of it, too. I started playing KH1 about a week ago or so, and got sidetracked due to watching through the first two seasons of Veronica Mars. Given the choice, you can understand.

@hypnotoadbrwowrowrow: I need to stress that when I started playing this game I actually thought I was going to love it. Disney's cute, I have a great deal of affection for Square and FF, the combat was fun enough, it was gorgeous. But then I had such trouble controlling the weird platforming race with Riku on the island, and everything went downhill from there, for me. I genuinely wanted to like it, though. I still want to keep going with the series to give it more of a shot. A lot of people clearly love this stuff.

@brodehouse: How's this view of Goofy's action?

KH will always be a nostalgic trip for me if only because the PS2 was the system I 'grew up with'. I bought the HD rereleases day one because of that (and also because of the Final Mix content finally seeing an English release in PAL regions), but the series as a whole has issues.

First, spinoff games should not be required reading to know just the basics of what is going on in the core numbered series (at least they bundled in CoM and BBS in the HD rereleases). Second, the game tries make stuff like the 'strength of heart/darkness/light/whatever' turn into tangible and measurable concepts. Third, tied with this, is the way the series becomes pretty convoluted after 2. I won't lie though, if I have a console capable of playing it by release, KH3 would probably be a day one buy for me. Fourth, I really think that Sora is not a great character. As others have mentioned, Aqua is way better (even Roxas is in my opinion). The issue is that Sora never really has to emotionally deal with anything major, and his character doesn't go anywhere beyond OPTIMISM (CoM briefly had some development, and I don't know anything about the 3DS game). Fifth, and I know this might seem like a dumb thing, but some of the optional fights in these games feel as though they were not made for the combat systems, especially in 1. Fighting them is less of a case of mastering the combat and more of a case of mastering the jank in the combat. Sephiroth's moveset in 1 feels like it was meant for a different, faster game.

As a neat little thing, did you ever notice that the original characters made for the game (Sora, Riku, Kairi) have both Final Fantasy and Disney characteristics? They mostly have the faces and hairstyles of a FF game, but the body proportions themselves are way more akin to Disney.

Some specific stuff for 2, if you decide to touch it.
-Combat is kind of better, they really addressed a lot of the complaints from 1, and the reaction commands add a nice twist on things. However, the crazy moves and gapclosers you pick up turn the whole thing into "press X to win". They also changed magic so you can't exploit i-frames during cure to cheese your way through tough optional fights. Though this is a bit of a cop-out, play 2 on Proud or (if you feel daring), Critical.
-Almost no platforming like there was in 1.
-Drive gauge is good fun.
-When fighting bosses, for whatever reason they made it that the killing blow has to be a combo finisher. Or a single magic attack. I'll leave it up to you to decide which one is easier to do.
-Gummi ship stuff is really good compared to 1. We're talking, "almost-could-have-been-it's-own-game" tier here.
-Mute your TV when in Atlantica. It's fucking terrible.
-Halloween world is still best world and I won't hear otherwise.

Overall though, KH resides in that same mindspace as FFX; games I played as a kid and still sometimes play again (and thoroughly enjoy, there's not mistake about that), but I'm well aware that parts of it are not great and other parts are downright cringey. FFX is a bit worse in that I am forced to watch all the cutscenes again, even in the HD rerelease (maybe super-PS4 tech will finally introduce skippable cutscenes).

The first Kingdom Hearts remains the only one that I've completed, way way way back in middle school. I had some friends that were big fans of the games so I got it for Christmas one year and dabbled in it for a little while and just got stuck in the fucking jungle. Then I went back to it, finished it, and I remember liking the game more and more as I progressed. I've since tried to replay it several times but I don't ever remember getting past the fucking jungle. Fuck that jungle. Also fuck Wonderland. And most of the first few hours of that game, really.

I still really enjoy the first game's opening. It's nonsensical and has a silly Japanese pop song (sung in perfect English! Because Utada lived in New York or something), but I like anime and practically every anime ever has a nonsensical opening with a silly Japanese pop song playing over it. It looks cool (and also like lots of anime represents a lot of potentially interesting but only halfway explored story beats).

I played through a large chunk of KH2 last year, actually. Didn't finish it, but the gameplay is a massive stride above the first game due to a better camera, less platforming, and less backtracking, but the first few hours are the Squarest of Square storytelling and it takes far too long. If you managed to finish the first one and think that a greatly-improved version might be interesting, give the second one a shot. But use a guide until you take control of Sora. Really.

Kingdom Hearts is a really weird game with a lot of missed opportunities. It basically retells the main story of every Disney movie in it and it barely bridges the gap between the Sora stuff and the Disney stuff. Like you said, there are entire worlds with no central plot development and then there are these giant Riku-based info dumps that use a lot of words to say a whole lot of nothing (this gets even worse in KH2 fyi). However, the combat is surprisingly solid for a game that usually is so easy. I'm not sure if you went to Olympus based on your review, but that world has a bunch of good arena fights in open areas where you can really focus on the combat. The unlockable Sephiroth fight is one of the more intense action rpg battles I've played.

The game's appeal was always about the fan service for me, but I was pleasantly surprised by the combat. You can actually approach battles a number of different ways based on your abilities and I always thought that the different mobility options made the game stand out.

When you mentioned that the game felt kind of Dark Soulsy at its best, I couldn't help but notice how a lot of your criticisms could be levied at that series (and by extension Monster Hunter as well). The game does a poor job of telling you where to go, it has a poor camera that you have to fight with frequently in tight spaces, and the item descriptions are obtuse and sometimes useless. I wonder if people are just more tolerant of the nonsense now, or Dark Souls just appeals in a way that makes the jank acceptable.

KH2 is a huge step up in terms of the game focusing on what it does best: combat. However, it also goes into JRPG nonsense way more than KH1 does.

@believer258: I'm somewhat ashamed to admit the weird pop song has grown on me a bit. It's still blindsided me, though. I actually thought the pop song over the ending cutscenes and credits kind of ruined the mood of the ending, more than anything else.

Once you get the ability to glide, the platforming becomes tolerable and, almost, enjoyable. But since you go the vast majority of the game making tight jumps with bad controls and a poor view of the level, it's very very frustrating. I'm psyched that KH2 ditched most of it.

@thatpinguino: I did go to the Coliseum, yeah, I just didn't feel like I had much to flesh out about it. The boyfriend was on FAQ duty and guided me through random optional content, including tracking town the second-tier Aero spell, which requires beating Hercules. I never did much more than that. I really enjoyed most of the arena fights, though. It's totally true that in smaller scale battles, especially in one-on-ones, in wide open rooms, the combat is pretty fun and a test of skill. But in cramped quarters there was nothing more frustrating.

I think Dark Souls is something I've gotten used to because Dark Souls has a much slower and more deliberate pace, and it's mostly super predictable so you know what to expect. Of course, I make no excuses for the Souls camera, which is certainly subpar.

@marokai: The Coliseum is one of my favorite levels because it is one of the only places where the FF stuff and the Disney stuff actually interact in a meaningful way. Cloud working as a mercenary for Hades and fighting Hercules is the kind of cross-over that I really appreciate. It manages to use both characters in a way that feels in line with their actual personalities without slavishly recreating the exact circumstances of the movie Hercules or the plot of FFVII. In a game that treats Square stuff and Disney stuff like oil and water for much of its run time, it was really cool to see what could happen when the two actually mix.

In terms of the combat, I thought that the glide solves a lot of the problems in terms of spacing. Once you can glide over enemies the mobs of opponents stop being a huge problem since you can always escape. It's a shame that critical ability was placed so deep into the game.

I can see that with the Souls games. When you are much more maneuverable than the enemies and groups of enemies are always in the same place, you grow to accept some of the jank. Though if I remember correctly you can run from almost all of the "random" heartless battles that occur in KH, though you can't interact with environmental puzzles while a fight is ongoing. So running past enemies that you already know how to beat is not as much of a cure-all in KH as it is in the Souls games. I do find it funny that we can have this conversation at all.

@zeik: I remember liking playing Aqua the most also, but I don't remember all that much about it other than that she had a very short, quick dodge, and the best "block" move in the series. The way that it covered all sides of her made it actually possible for me to use practically in combat. Also it looked dope.

Anyway I got into Kingdom Hearts some time before KH2 was released and have since played every major entry (somewhat of a feat considering how scattered across platforms the different entries are) except for Re:Coded. It was back in the days where anime was still relatively new to me and I wasn't as comepletely cynical about it like I am nowadays. So while I can't play one these days without groaning at the dialogue, I've still committed to keep up with the series until I've played 3.

I like where the series has gone since the first one in terms of gameplay. It's still super mashy and simple, with a focus on variety to its flair over complexity but it's also why I've found them all pretty easy to finish, unlike other similarly long games. I want to say that while I thought the platforming in 1 sucked and they fixed the movement somewhat in 2 (but without any reason to use it), they have since sort of gradually brought it back into the series. The 3DS one was weird though because of how movement is almost completely trivialized by your powerful traversal abilities.

The series is dumb, but having gone beyond the pale at a younger age I enjoy sticking around while puzzling its non-sensical narrative together. It's really only rivaled by Metal Gear Solid when it comes to staying true to its long running make-up-as-we-go fiction, and that's kind of the enduring charm of it.

Man, I stopped being ashamed of that opening long ago.

It's worth noting that you also shouldn't run past all of the encounters in Kingdom Hearts or you won't level up enough. I mean, unlike turn based JRPG's, it's probably reasonable to finish the game at a lower level than most, but I can see some later parts being really frustrating if you spent the first half of the game running from every single encounter.

Similarities between Kingdom Hearts and Dark Souls, now that's an odd conversation to see.

@believer258: Sure running will leave you a little under-leveled, but I found the most enjoyment in the entirety of Kingdom Hearts during the Sephiroth fight in KH2 when I was under-leveled. I think I took that battle on when I was in the mid-40s level wise, but I was able to work and work to the point that I was able to beat one of the toughest enemies in the game through precision and item management. It was the closest thing I've felt to the emotional release that Souls players express when they beat a tough boss (at least with an action RPG). I don't enjoy the mechanics of Souls fights or the tactics that Souls bosses tend to employ, but there was something about chasing a teleporting dude with a giant sword across a giant arena and up into the sky that was really compelling. I think I just enjoy the flashy combat and the mobility in KH more than I enjoy the relatively measured pace of something like DS. Yet, by not leveling properly I was able to work a similar experience out of what many would consider a much simpler, easier, and kiddier game.

Kingdom Hearts was, in my opinion, a decent first entry for the series. It's impossible for me to go back and replay that game now, because it doesn't really hold up for a lot of the reasons you mentioned, but as a kid I enjoyed it. Even though I will freely admit that the story and lore at this point are so convoluted and insane that they barely make sense to me and are embarrassing to attempt to explain to anyone who hasn't played even one of the games, I'm still invested and looking forward to KH3. There's just something about it... that series is more than the sum of its parts.

It's not that Kingdom Hearts has a bad story, there's just very little to it. Going into Kingdom Hearts I had heard all sorts of things about how the series is one of the worst examples of incomprehensible JRPG nonsense and well-worn power-of-the-heart tropes, but the story Kingdom Hearts tells isn't very convoluted or bizarre, it's just very thin, which was a bit of a let down.

^ lol. Just wait.

If you are planning on playing on KH2 prepare for the most boring prologue ever. Luckily it gets a lot better after that, also if you want the game to actually give you challenge make sure to play on proud mode.

I too recently played this game. And then I went back and played KH2 again, and Then Birth By Sleep (Which is a great game) and now i'm working on that 3DS one... Dream Drop Distance! I remembered the name! But I haven't played that one very much.

I do not know why I like these games. KH1 is definitely my least favorite of what I've played, just such shitty controls/ combat/ animation/ platforming compared to later games. I beat it for the first time a few months ago and by the halfway point I was wishing for the damn thing to end. FUCK THAT URSULA FIGHT! And the last world in its' entirety!

But KH2 is so good! I Really like the combat, it felt so fluid once you got enough movement abilities. And I love the convoluted story that these games have established, and then with each new release they retcon something about the previous games story (But what Ansem was REALLY Doing in the background was.....) I love that stuff, bring on more KH3!

I fear that if you try to play RE:CoM as your second game you'll drop the series. The card battling is functional, but because of the way you and enemies can cancel each other's attacks, sometimes it just feels like the AI cheats because it can select any move it wants in an instant while you get to scroll through a list one card at a time trying to make the right match/find the right card.

The "Worlds" are actually just a series of rooms that you "synthesize" with special cards that enemies drop. You can make treasure rooms, rooms with lots of enemies, etc. Here's the problem: the doors that you open to get to a new room require a certain colour and number of cards. If you don't have the right cards... grinding time! Oh, and how about that last world where enemies don't drop one of the cards you need to get through some of the doors, so if you run out you need to run all the way out (there's no quick exit once you're in a "world") and down to another world. On top of all that, the worlds you've cleared might actually reset, meaning you need to use even more cards to open more doors you've already opened, but I might be misremembering that part.

Oh, and when you finish playing through Sora's story you get to do it all over again from the start with another character, with the exact same worlds and everything (the story is different though so you "need" to play it).

Basically, it's one of the worst gameplay-wise, even if the card system works for what it is (you're still just mashing on X half the time, by the way). A lot of people like the story, and it's your first taste of convoluted storytelling, but those Disney worlds are all worthless narrtive-wise, and that's coming from someone who liked the way they were used in KH1. The whole narrative is plays out with a main story cutscene, then a world, then another story cutscene and so-on, and you can imagine how that'd wear thin as the worlds get bigger and you need to grind more to get through them to the next chunk of actual story.

I didn't mean to write quite that much, but I have a new found hatred for it after playing it in the HD collection. You should probably still read a plot summary or watch one of those "Chain of Memories the Movie" things on youtube where they stitch the cutscenes together.

@marokai said:

...

For those who have played it, is Re: Chain of Memories actually, like, worthwhile? I'm more interested when someone says "card battling game" than most people probably are, and it being a story bridge between games seems useful, but from what I've seen of it, it just seems to re-use assets, and the reviews of it are pretty mediocre...

@slag: Yeah! I'm interested in seeing his rundown of it, too. I started playing KH1 about a week ago or so, and got sidetracked due to watching through the first two seasons of Veronica Mars. Given the choice, you can understand.

O for sure, I don't know if I could stomach going back to an early-mid Ps2 action game even if it was an elite one.

I've played Chain of Memories. I can't stand it, one of the few games I've ever put down in utter disgust. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

the game itself is not beyond redemption and it does have some interesting conceits (including the best narrative justification I've ever seen for a second quest/New game + ever in games), but this is the game that turned me off the whole series. And frankly colored my entire impress

Maybe you will feel differently, here's what bothered me

• CoM is when the Disney stuff take a back seat in favor of shadowy secret cabal Spiky haired teens wearing black tench coat stuff in the series. Seems like going forward KH is about these characters I really don't like or care about who just happen to run through Disney environments occasionally.
• There is a very unfortunate amount of Roguelike elements in a game with a permanent progression. The RNG in this game can be a real pain
• All the levels are randomized and basically consist of square box rooms that are mini arenas. They are flat, dull and utterly drab soul-less retreads of Kh1. Most of them are featureless boxes with zone themed wallpaper if you will (the Ps2 version anyway) The production values and new assets in general are very low, far lower than say even X-2.
• You have to grind to build an effective deck and hope you don't get RNGed on bad card drops. Even worse you can permanently lose cards from your deck in battle and then have to go back to grinding just to tread water. I wouldn't say it's hard, just extremely tedious.
• You have to spend cards to unlock/create rooms and to advance to the next level, and they don't stay unlocked
• The story bits are only told after completing levels, and for the most part are variations of the same story beat over and over. Which was admittedly the point, but still very boring to watch.
• The Ps2 version isn't much better, it's the same general concept just with a third person perspective wack KH camera system instead of a stripped overhead view.

here's what I liked

• the Card battle system itself was fast and fluid and intuitive in action. Number values determine outcomes (e.g. you play a 6, they play a 5 = your outcome happens and theirs is blocked) , zero cards serve as combo breakers. I was less crazy about trying to select cards out of the deck while also manipulating sora spatially (i.e. jumping to hit the target etc), but that wasn't terrible.
• The general narrative conceit even if it wasn't realized in my opinion well. At the very least it was a very different kind of story that you typically see in games.

been a very long time since I played these, so my memory might be bit off on some important details. I do distintcly remember that reviewers were waaaay too kind to this one though.

I really really hate that game despite really trying twice to play it.

Argh! I wrote up this huge, long post that got eaten by the bloody internet... ;-;

I'm not going to try and write all of it again but the list was that I went into the game with super low expectations. While I enjoy Disney movies and have come to recent love them again, as a teenager it wasn't "cool" to like them during that phase of my life. So the thought of Square with Disney, along with a KEYBLADE (how the hell is a key supposed to cut anything?!) just didn't sound appealing in the slightest.

However, for God knows why, I decided to get it at/near launch, probably because I would buy anything Square put out at the time, and ended up really enjoying it. It was a pleasant surprise and a nice change of pace from the turn-based RPGs that I was used to playing. It was definitely a "right time, right place" type of game for me and I look back on it fondly, but I know it's with massive rose-tinted glasses and I can definitely admit the game has a lot of faults.

As for CoM, I played it on GBA and it seemed okay but it didn't click with me. I didn't like to have my attacks limited to a deck of cards represented by physical attack cards and spells (offensive, defensive and healing) and re-shuffling them when you go through the entire deck in order to have options again. The storytelling and pacing didn't really improve over the first game so if you're frustrated with KH1, I expect more of the same if you play CoM.

KH2 is much better, gameplay-wise, that I feel you should definitely play that one and maybe consider skipping CoM unless the combat system really interests you and you'd like to see how it actually works.

I was like...13 when the game came out? And I was a big fan of Final Fantasy (particularly VIII and IX) and Disney stuff was a staple in my family, so it was sort of perfect for me at the time. I was still dazzled by colorful, crisp visuals on the PS2, and I preferred the action focus of the game to Final Fantasy X's overly difficult turn-based battles. I really, legitimately enjoyed this game a whole lot at the time. Got 100%, beat all the optional bosses (if you think that keyblade Riku fight was tough...holy crap, try Sephiroth in the Hercules arena) and in general really enjoyed it, even when I recognized the camera and platforming to be clunky.

Going back to the game has proven to be painful though. Even a couple of years later, I tried replaying it and found it to be a clunky mess with a vague, almost nonexistent and stupid story and strange characters. There's also the Kingdom Hearts paradox of the most interesting stuff being the non-Disney, non-Final Fantasy stuff, which was kind of the crux of the reason the game was made in the first place...

Kingdom Hearts II is also a pretty big mess, though it leans harder into button mashy combat and less on platforming. And the super convoluted, self-serious and irritating Hot Topic storyline that people complain about? Try playing literally any game apart from the first one...they're the whole "Kingdom Hearts...is LIGHT" section turned up to a million degrees and thrown at you at random. It makes no sense, and when you try to make heads or tails of it you realize it's really stupid, so why bother?

Also, they've taken so long between iterations that I lost all interest in the series completely well before II even came out. I think I was 16 or 17 when II came out? And I didn't even care. I think I rented it just to see what it was about and beat it in a weekend. But I'm 26 years old now, and the series is so stupid and crappy at this point that it would take a stinkin' miracle for me to even be mildly interested in III. If Jeff finds it appealing, that would be my sign that it's something to play. And we all know that's not gonna happen.

I expected a convoluted story, but Kingdom Hearts doesn't have much of a plot to begin with.

Oh, you fortunate soul. The first Kingdom Hearts game is pure, in that the story is a simple "boy goes on Disney-esque quest to find his friends". It isn't until the end of the first game where it even becomes more...Square. But every sequel (and prequel) has made the plot convoluted and needlessly obtuse. If someone only played the numbered titles (including the yet unreleased KH3) they'd be lost. If you go down the Kingdom Hearts rabbit hole, expect the plot to be there but also be muddied and full of hot bullshit and garbage. The plot in Kingdom Hearts would make Hideo Kojima baffled.