This was given to me for a birthday 11 years ago back in 2003. And I have finally finished it now after putting it off for so long due to fear of it's length and the hype built up around the series in general.
Kingdom Hearts as a series has an enormous following. It may be because it is the perfect combination of video games and cutesy Disney characters for those that are into that sort of thing. Myself, I'm more into games. It's not that I dislike Disney but nor does it make me gush at the mouth. That being said, it was still cool to see many characters from my childhood show up in this game like Donald Duck, Goofy, Ariel and more.
The basic game-play of Kingdom Hearts follows basic action RPG premises. You go through a number of areas battling enemies that gradually get tougher as you progress, fight bosses at the end of most of them while along the way, earning experience to level up your characters and hunting down new gear to make them better in combat. There are the usual tropes of melee combat and magic so none of it is that surprising. Along with Sora (your character), for the majority of the game you will always have 2 other characters with you. These start off with Goofy and Donald, but as you travel between planets, which represent different Disney worlds, you will pick up new characters along the way like Ariel, the Beast, Jack Skeleton and many more. You will also encounter some characters taken from the SquareSoft side of things such as Cid (FF VII version), Squall, Aeris and Cloud himself.
The plot revolves around trying to find "King Mickey" who has gone off on some kind of mission and stopping some jerks called The Heartless. These generic shadowy enemies form much of the cannon fodder that you fight throughout the game but these are being controlled by eviler jerks from the Disney films such as Jafar from Aladdin, Hades from Hercules, The Boogie Man from Nightmare Before Christmas, Captain Hook from peter Pan and the Witch from Snow White. Some of these you get to fight and some you do not but it's always nice to lay the beat down onto well established bad guys. The aim of this group is to capture the 7 Disney Princesses (such as Snow White, Cinderella, Belle, etc) to unlock the Kingdom Hearts itself making them all powerful. The heartless (and these other evil jerks) but be stopped by Sora and his friends because only they have the heart to do so (get it?). It's usual fairy tale stuff and can feel a little cheesy at times but is all in good fun.
The basic flow of the game consists of arriving at a new world, moving through it and killing enemies to find some kind of dilemma usually involving one of the aforementioned princesses and attempting to rescue her. You then use the "Gummi Ship" (made by the Chip'n'Dale Rescue Rangers) in a StarFox-esque segment where you fly through space to the next world shooting down obstacles and enemies in your world. While this cycle does get a little repetitive after a while, it's always a little exciting to see what film the next world will be based on and what characters you will meet there.
Kingdom Hearts proved to be overall, an enjoyable animated romp through a lot of familiar places but often with new twists on them and a new element of interactivity that Disney films obviously lack. However, while it was an enjoyable game, I don't think I have fallen for the series as hard as many of it's fans have and do not have much of a desire to continue playing other entries in the series. For me, the journey ends here.
Interesting.... I never played these games but I was always intrigued by them. Did play Epic Mickey (completely different game of course) and wasn't overly fussed on it - had some nice ideas and a good vibe but it just seemed a little too basic for me. Especially when you consider how mind meltingly challenging Disney games from the 90s were!
ReplyDeleteYeah it's a very different kind of things. It's kind of like Diet Final Fantasy with Disney characters mixed in
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