Kingdom Hearts was truly a bizarre premise in the early 2000s. When Squaresoft announced they were making a Disney RPG their fans went crazy, and things got even more wild when it turned out to be a cross over with Final Fantasy characters. I wasn’t sure what to think. I loved Squaresoft, and I was a secret fan of Disney. Kingdom Hearts was released to critical acclaim. Truth be told it was one of the reasons I purchased a PlayStation 2. Obviously this was one of the games I picked up along with my shiny new console. I was initially lukewarm on Kingdom Hearts. I decided to return to the game and see if maybe my opinion has changed. It has, but for the worse. Kingdom Hearts is weird and kind of awkward to be honest. Let’s take a look!
For Kingdom Hearts Square came up with an entirely new character to be the protagonist. They combined elements from both their Final Fantasy series as well as the world of Disney. Sora is what they came up with. He has spikey hair and an obvious anime flair. The Disney side comes in with his oversized shoes and childish demeanor. Kingdom Hearts begins with Sora and his friends Kairi and Riku spending their days playing innocently on a landmass known as the Destiny Islands. This place is one day invaded by evil beings known as the heartless. They have no features, and exist only to consume the hearts of people. During their encounter Sora is granted a mysterious weapon known as the keyblade as the three are thrust from the Destiny Islands to different worlds.
This is where the Disney elements come in to play. Traverse Town is where Sora winds up. This is a fantastical city where the citizens are from both Final Fantasy games and Disney films. As it turns out the heartless are consuming various worlds in this universe, and misplaced citizens seek refuge in this place called Traverse Town. It is here that Sora meets Goofy and Donald Duck who are on a mission from Mickey Mouse himself. They are to follow the one who wields the keyblade. Sora, along with his new friends must travel to a variety of different worlds to fight the heartless and save these places by sealing keyholes using this aforementioned weapon. As you may have guessed (or already know) these worlds are based on various Disney properties.
After saving Traverse Town Sora and friends can travel to a miriad of other worlds via a vessel called the Gummi Ship. The worlds are all based on a Disney franchise and this is the main selling point of the game. The Disney properties here include Wonderland (Alice in Wonderland), Deep Jungle (Tarzan), Olympus Colliseum (Hercules), Agrabah (Aladdin), Monstro (Pinoccio), Atlantica (The Little Mermaid), 100 Acre Wood (Winnie the Pooh), Halloweentown (Nightmare Before Christmas) and Neverland (Peter Pan). Honestly the line-up of film properties here is really good. I really like how each world has its own story. They basically follow the plot of the films, but with the heartless and Sora thrown in. It’s neat, but a little goofy to be honest.
Kingdom Hearts is an action RPG. This is a questionable choice in my opinion because I think it would have been stronger as a turn based role playing game. Nevertheless, this does set itself apart from the rest of Squaresoft’s offerings at the time. Sora can freely move during gameplay using the left joystick. You perform actions with one button (X) but have a command menu on the lower left hand of the screen. You can select from commands such as Attack, Magic, Item, etc. Fighting with the keyblade is done with a series of three different attacks. You can cast spells or use items (and even set shortcuts to these) which requires a little time to perform.
It must be said that Kingdom Hearts’ biggest weakness is how shallow combat is. Even on the highest difficulty you’ll be hard pressed to find anything better than the traditional three hit and then dodge combination. You can jump but will rarely need to do so during combat. This is mostly when the target on a foe is higher up. You can lock on, and the system is pretty much copied from Ocarina of Time, and it works almost as well here. Let me just say that combat is sorely lacking. I went in expecting so much more and Kingdom Hearts let me down by rewarding button mashing.
There’s very little strategy in combat here. It’s basically mash the attack button, retreat, and heal. Repeat that a few hundred times and you have a complete playthrough of Kingdom Hearts no matter which difficulty you choose. You have two partners (Donald and Goofy with a representative of the world you’re in sometimes filling in). Combat is incredibly shallow. Even as you learn new techniques you’ll find any strategy is overshadowed by reflexes.
So the combat system is bland. Usually I can overlook this to some extent, but Kingdom Hearts can be downright painful to play sometimes. This is because of the number of enemies you’ll face. These regenerate every time you return to an area. This is good for grinding up levels, but I’ve never had so litle fun doing so in an RPG. The amount of heartless you fight against is staggering. The real problem is that the game is so repetitive, and it’s tough to run past them because every environment is tiny in scale. Squaresoft failed to take advantage of the hardware in any meaningful way by making each area super small. There’s very little exploration because every environment is about as big as the castle lobby in Super Mario 64. It makes Kingdom Hearts not that much fun to play.
Like I said the key word is repetition. I’m not exaggerating when I say you’ll be doing the same exact thing over and over again. Move to a new area and fight heartless in a small enclosed space. Collect the recovery gems and money (or, munney) that they drop, and move to the next. If you have to return to an area (and believe me you will, and often) you have to fight the heartless that spawn all over again. This issue is only heightened by the fact that you often have to return to different areas in each world to trigger story events. I hated this fact back then, but now it caused me to literally grind my teeth due to the guesswork required and repetition.
At the very least a few of the worlds do offer some gameplay diversity. In Atlantica you can swim around and this dynamic makes exploration more interesting (but increases the guesswork for where you need to go). Additionally you can fly in Neverland, and this area is more enclosed so as to allow you to actually enjoy the mechanic. Interestingly enough the final boss is fought with the ability to fly, but it has its own problems what with varying targets that change frequently. The flying and swimming sequences can become needlessly busy which is made all the much worse by the often small environments.
There’s also not a whole lot of replayability here. The self enclosed Disney stories are fun to watch play out but there’s a decided lack of options and sidequests. Squaresoft tried to compound this issue with different difficulty levels that seriously affect the flow of the game. To be honest I find the higher difficulties more of a nuance than anything. It just takes longer to get to where you’re going with just as little variety as before. You can also set how Sora grows when he levels up with three different focuses; attack, magic, and hit points. It’s pretty interesting but again not a mechanic that makes as much difference as you would otherwise hope. Finally, you can select to gain levels easier in the beginning, at the end, or the same throughout. These are some unique options but they don’t quite have the impact I was hoping.
The most disappointing aspect of Kingdom Hearts is that it barely feels like an RPG. The action elements are prevalent over all, and there’s a weirdly large amount of platforming required both in and out of battle. Movement, in particular jumping, is awkward and these instances become fiendishly tough in the more intricate platforming sequences. Squaresoft would have been wise to have removed the ability to jump altogether because it causes only problems. It’s clear that the developers weren’t focused on the RPG elements and that’s a shame. I think a more traditional route would have been better than this mess, and could have fixed just about every problem from which Kingdom Hearts suffers.
Kingdom Hearts is an amazing looking game, and to this day it’s still one of the best looking titles on the PS2. Squaresoft created a fantastic art style that befits both Final Fantasy and Disney in general. I absolutely love the way that in some worlds Sora and friends adopt different looks to help them fit in. In Halloweentown for example Sora, Goofy and Donald take on more monstrous looks that blend in with Tim Burton’s art style. They also transform into sea creatures (Sora a mermaid) in Atlantica. The framerate stays pretty constant, and I imagine that this is why the developers went for the small environments. The soundtrack is as amazing as you would expect. It’s full of remixes of classic Disney tunes as well as original compositions that fit the atmosphere well. It’s a great soundtrack that I often listen to outside of the game.
