So I'm bored, and I haven't been on here for a while, so I figured I'd review the entire Kingdom Hearts series. Because why not. A few things first: I'm going to be focusing on only what you could consider the "mainline" games. This means X and X Unchained will not be included. Second, I will be reviewing the most recent and complete versions of the game, which means the 1.5 - 2.8 versions. Finally, for Days, Coded, and Back Cover, I will only be reviewing them as movies. Which means they have to get by on the merits of their story above all else.
Which will be far more difficult for some entries than it will be for others. Spoiler alert, as much as I like the series as a whole, it can get rough. REALLY rough.
So let's dive right in with the game that started it all.
Story
The game focuses on a trio of three characters: Sora, Riku, and Kairi. The three young teenagers all live on a world called Destiny Islands, a nice little paradise that consists mainly of a few small islands where the group hang out and spend their days with each other. Riku, however, is convinced that there are other worlds to be found, and alongside his two best friends, plans to build a raft that will take them to those other worlds.
How exactly they plan to travel through space via boat is a mystery, but hey, you kinda have to leave logic at the door with this series.
Before they can finish, however, a catastrophic storm hits Destiny Islands, and a legion of monsters known only as the Heartless ravage the world. Kairi disappears, Riku vanishes into the darkness, and Sora is left to fend for himself with a mysterious weapon known only as the Keyblade, a seemingly sentient sword that has (supposedly) chosen him to be its master. Despite Sora's best efforts, the world is consumed by darkness, and Sora is cast away to a new world known as Traverse Town.
It's here that Sora meets Donald and Goofy, a cartoon duck and dingo respectively, who are travelling across various worlds in search of their king, who has also vanished to investigate the Heartless. With specific instructions to "follow the key," Donald and Goofy join Sora on his mission to find his friends and return home, all while darkness continues to spread and evil conspires behind the scenes.
I know that sounds like a lot, but part of what really hooked me in to this was how relatively simple it was. At it's core, Kingdom Hearts 1 is a pretty straightforward plot about a boy looking to find his friends, with themes of darkness vs light, friendship, destiny, and betrayal all thrown into the mix. Ordinarily, this would cause the story to feel tired and somewhat predictable. But what makes it work is the strangely brilliant mixture of Square Enix (Squaresoft at the time) characters and writing, alongside DISNEY of all things. You would think it was a disaster in the making, yet despite all logic and common sense, it works. And it doesn't just work, it works WELL. You wouldn't think that a meeting between James Woods' Hades and god damn Cloud Strife (played by Steve Burton, who would go on to play the character in every voiced appearance since then) is something you always needed to see. But it is.
Kingdom Hearts also does a good job at integrating the Disney properties into the story itself. Later games in the series would have the Disney Worlds act mostly as filler between story beats, but that's not the case here. Despite every world more or less following the plot of the movies they were based on, they each move the main plot forward in their own ways. You can't write off a single world in the game as completely unimportant, something that can't be said for later games in the series.
One area that it DOES fall flat is with the villain. For most of the game, the main antagonist is Sleeping Beauty's Maleficent, with a string of Disney villains as her underlings. Honestly, it works for the most part, and Maleficent, having always been one of Disney's best villains, is a great choice for the big bad. Sadly, at the end of the game, she's more or less cast aside in favour of a new villain, who has had little screentime or development beforehand. Worse yet, once he's introduced, he doesn't really appear again until the endgame, so we learn nothing about him besides the fact that he's evil and loves saying "Darkness." There are reports written by him that you can find throughout the game, but besides a bit of backstory about the Heartless and the nature of the worlds, they provide little insight into his actual character.
But despite this setback, the story works pretty well for what it is. Despite the inherent silliness and absurdity of the game's concept, it has (forgive the pun) heart. And that's what ties everything together. The characters all grow, are all challenged in different ways, have their spirits broken, and have to crawl their way up from their lowest points to fulfil their destinies. It hooks you, and it even has a few tearjerkers thrown in the mix, as well as a VERY bittersweet ending.
Gameplay
Kingdom Hearts is an Action-RPG. Which is to say you spend the game beating the snot out of everything you come across in order to earn experience, level up, and learn new abilities. Not unlike Square's OTHER flagship series Final Fantasy, but unlike their (traditionally) turn based setup, all of the action is done in game, with no transitions, and no waiting between turns. As the game progresses, Sora progressively grows stronger, learning new abilities, getting new spells, and obtaining new Keyblades. While you start off with a pretty pathetic starting sword and little more than a basic 3-hit combo, by the end you'll be doing flips, flying, summoning magic barriers to finish off groups of enemies, and calling upon various Disney characters to briefly assist you in the heat of battle.
For the most part, combat is simple but fun. The game controls well enough, your hits have a clear field of range, and landing hits on enemies feels satisfying. That being said, considering this was the first game, there were a few hitches in the design. The combat is never quite as fast paced as the game wants it to be, and Sora at his most powerful still feels kind of sluggish to control. But what really hurts is the camera. While vastly improved in the HD Remix from its ATROCIOUS PS2 counterpart, the camera remains a big issue. It doesn't respond right away, being slightly delayed after you ask the camera to move. Not only that, but it seems to fight you in almost every battle. It ranges from annoying at times, to downright infuriating when fighting in closed spaces. Especially considering how many areas in the game are very vertical, and one wrong move can send you falling down a pit you need to spend 5 minutes climbing out of. At times, the camera can be the biggest challenge you'll face in the game.
Which is another point I feel the need to bring up: Kingdom Hearts is a surprisingly challenging game. For the most part, regular enemies are little more than canon fodder, but the bosses (and especially the secret bosses) will force you to think on your toes and push your skills to their limits. Most of the game requires you to mash X to achieve victory, but you can't get away with that during the boss fights. The bosses each have their own unique quirks, and you have to play by THEIR rules if you want to stay alive. It can get pretty infuriating at times, especially when the difficulty spikes towards the latter third, but for the most part, the challenge is pretty fair. Beyond issues caused by the camera (or the aggressively stupid AI party members not helping me when I need them), most of the deaths I had were fair.
Presentation
Despite originally being a relatively early PS2 game, Kingdom Hearts is absolutely gorgeous to look at. There is a reason that the series stayed with this art style for over a decade: it ages very well. Especially with a fresh coat of HD paint, beyond a few bland textures, the game is pure eye candy.
Another surprise, especially for Square at the time, is that the voice acting was pretty damn good. Kingdom Hearts had a pretty decent star cast, with The Sixth Sense's Haley Joel Osment headlining as Sora, future star of Heroes Harden Panetierre at Kairi, Seventh Heaven's David Gallagher as Riku, and god damn BILLY ZANE as Ansem, Seeker of Darkness. All of them, despite being newbies to voiceover, do a great job, and Billy Zane steals the show as Ansem. While Richard Epcar has come into his own with the role, the loss of Zane is one the series has never quite recovered from. What also helps is how most of the Disney characters have their respective actors and actresses reprising their roles, and those who don't have damn good impersonators.
And then there's the music. Yoko Shimomura has done many soundtracks before Kingdom Hearts (including Mario RPG), and has done many since, but I doubt many will argue that THIS is what put her on the map as one of the greatest composers in video game history. Her soundtrack is absolutely incredible, and she will change her style to fit with every new world, something few composers can do. The game has a wide variety of ambient and combat tracks, and the boss themes are downright incredible.
Verdict
The game isn't perfect. It has more than a few flaws. The camera can be extremely infuriating, combat is sometimes sluggish and difficult to control, there are more than a couple of harsh difficulty spikes, and the main villain (despite having a fantastic voice) is harshly underdeveloped. Yet, it still works. And not just because of the gameplay, or the story, or the soundtrack, or the visuals. It's because the game has heart. It's earnest. It knows exactly what it is, and what it's trying to be. And for the most part, despite its many flaws, it succeeds at that. That's why I'm giving Kingdom Hearts a...
7.5 / 10
This works perfectly as a game for laying down the foundation for the future of the series. It knows what worked, and what didn't, and now with that knowledge, they can deliver a truly stunning sequel.
Coming up next, card games?! In MY Kingdom Hearts?! It's more likely than you think.
So I'm bored, and I haven't been on here for a while, so I figured I'd review the entire Kingdom Hearts series. Because why not. A few things first: I'm going to be focusing on only what you could consider the "mainline" games. This means X and X Unchained will not be included. Second, I will be reviewing the most recent and complete versions of the game, which means the 1.5 - 2.8 versions. Finally, for Days, Coded, and Back Cover, I will only be reviewing them as movies. Which means they have to get by on the merits of their story above all else.
Which will be far more difficult for some entries than it will be for others. Spoiler alert, as much as I like the series as a whole, it can get rough. REALLY rough.
So let's dive right in with the game that started it all.
Story
The game focuses on a trio of three characters: Sora, Riku, and Kairi. The three young teenagers all live on a world called Destiny Islands, a nice little paradise that consists mainly of a few small islands where the group hang out and spend their days with each other. Riku, however, is convinced that there are other worlds to be found, and alongside his two best friends, plans to build a raft that will take them to those other worlds.
How exactly they plan to travel through space via boat is a mystery, but hey, you kinda have to leave logic at the door with this series.
Before they can finish, however, a catastrophic storm hits Destiny Islands, and a legion of monsters known only as the Heartless ravage the world. Kairi disappears, Riku vanishes into the darkness, and Sora is left to fend for himself with a mysterious weapon known only as the Keyblade, a seemingly sentient sword that has (supposedly) chosen him to be its master. Despite Sora's best efforts, the world is consumed by darkness, and Sora is cast away to a new world known as Traverse Town.
It's here that Sora meets Donald and Goofy, a cartoon duck and dingo respectively, who are travelling across various worlds in search of their king, who has also vanished to investigate the Heartless. With specific instructions to "follow the key," Donald and Goofy join Sora on his mission to find his friends and return home, all while darkness continues to spread and evil conspires behind the scenes.
I know that sounds like a lot, but part of what really hooked me in to this was how relatively simple it was. At it's core, Kingdom Hearts 1 is a pretty straightforward plot about a boy looking to find his friends, with themes of darkness vs light, friendship, destiny, and betrayal all thrown into the mix. Ordinarily, this would cause the story to feel tired and somewhat predictable. But what makes it work is the strangely brilliant mixture of Square Enix (Squaresoft at the time) characters and writing, alongside DISNEY of all things. You would think it was a disaster in the making, yet despite all logic and common sense, it works. And it doesn't just work, it works WELL. You wouldn't think that a meeting between James Woods' Hades and god damn Cloud Strife (played by Steve Burton, who would go on to play the character in every voiced appearance since then) is something you always needed to see. But it is.
Kingdom Hearts also does a good job at integrating the Disney properties into the story itself. Later games in the series would have the Disney Worlds act mostly as filler between story beats, but that's not the case here. Despite every world more or less following the plot of the movies they were based on, they each move the main plot forward in their own ways. You can't write off a single world in the game as completely unimportant, something that can't be said for later games in the series.
One area that it DOES fall flat is with the villain. For most of the game, the main antagonist is Sleeping Beauty's Maleficent, with a string of Disney villains as her underlings. Honestly, it works for the most part, and Maleficent, having always been one of Disney's best villains, is a great choice for the big bad. Sadly, at the end of the game, she's more or less cast aside in favour of a new villain, who has had little screentime or development beforehand. Worse yet, once he's introduced, he doesn't really appear again until the endgame, so we learn nothing about him besides the fact that he's evil and loves saying "Darkness." There are reports written by him that you can find throughout the game, but besides a bit of backstory about the Heartless and the nature of the worlds, they provide little insight into his actual character.
But despite this setback, the story works pretty well for what it is. Despite the inherent silliness and absurdity of the game's concept, it has (forgive the pun) heart. And that's what ties everything together. The characters all grow, are all challenged in different ways, have their spirits broken, and have to crawl their way up from their lowest points to fulfil their destinies. It hooks you, and it even has a few tearjerkers thrown in the mix, as well as a VERY bittersweet ending.
Gameplay
Kingdom Hearts is an Action-RPG. Which is to say you spend the game beating the snot out of everything you come across in order to earn experience, level up, and learn new abilities. Not unlike Square's OTHER flagship series Final Fantasy, but unlike their (traditionally) turn based setup, all of the action is done in game, with no transitions, and no waiting between turns. As the game progresses, Sora progressively grows stronger, learning new abilities, getting new spells, and obtaining new Keyblades. While you start off with a pretty pathetic starting sword and little more than a basic 3-hit combo, by the end you'll be doing flips, flying, summoning magic barriers to finish off groups of enemies, and calling upon various Disney characters to briefly assist you in the heat of battle.
For the most part, combat is simple but fun. The game controls well enough, your hits have a clear field of range, and landing hits on enemies feels satisfying. That being said, considering this was the first game, there were a few hitches in the design. The combat is never quite as fast paced as the game wants it to be, and Sora at his most powerful still feels kind of sluggish to control. But what really hurts is the camera. While vastly improved in the HD Remix from its ATROCIOUS PS2 counterpart, the camera remains a big issue. It doesn't respond right away, being slightly delayed after you ask the camera to move. Not only that, but it seems to fight you in almost every battle. It ranges from annoying at times, to downright infuriating when fighting in closed spaces. Especially considering how many areas in the game are very vertical, and one wrong move can send you falling down a pit you need to spend 5 minutes climbing out of. At times, the camera can be the biggest challenge you'll face in the game.
Which is another point I feel the need to bring up: Kingdom Hearts is a surprisingly challenging game. For the most part, regular enemies are little more than canon fodder, but the bosses (and especially the secret bosses) will force you to think on your toes and push your skills to their limits. Most of the game requires you to mash X to achieve victory, but you can't get away with that during the boss fights. The bosses each have their own unique quirks, and you have to play by THEIR rules if you want to stay alive. It can get pretty infuriating at times, especially when the difficulty spikes towards the latter third, but for the most part, the challenge is pretty fair. Beyond issues caused by the camera (or the aggressively stupid AI party members not helping me when I need them), most of the deaths I had were fair.
Presentation
Despite originally being a relatively early PS2 game, Kingdom Hearts is absolutely gorgeous to look at. There is a reason that the series stayed with this art style for over a decade: it ages very well. Especially with a fresh coat of HD paint, beyond a few bland textures, the game is pure eye candy.
Another surprise, especially for Square at the time, is that the voice acting was pretty damn good. Kingdom Hearts had a pretty decent star cast, with The Sixth Sense's Haley Joel Osment headlining as Sora, future star of Heroes Harden Panetierre at Kairi, Seventh Heaven's David Gallagher as Riku, and god damn BILLY ZANE as Ansem, Seeker of Darkness. All of them, despite being newbies to voiceover, do a great job, and Billy Zane steals the show as Ansem. While Richard Epcar has come into his own with the role, the loss of Zane is one the series has never quite recovered from. What also helps is how most of the Disney characters have their respective actors and actresses reprising their roles, and those who don't have damn good impersonators.
And then there's the music. Yoko Shimomura has done many soundtracks before Kingdom Hearts (including Mario RPG), and has done many since, but I doubt many will argue that THIS is what put her on the map as one of the greatest composers in video game history. Her soundtrack is absolutely incredible, and she will change her style to fit with every new world, something few composers can do. The game has a wide variety of ambient and combat tracks, and the boss themes are downright incredible.
Verdict
The game isn't perfect. It has more than a few flaws. The camera can be extremely infuriating, combat is sometimes sluggish and difficult to control, there are more than a couple of harsh difficulty spikes, and the main villain (despite having a fantastic voice) is harshly underdeveloped. Yet, it still works. And not just because of the gameplay, or the story, or the soundtrack, or the visuals. It's because the game has heart. It's earnest. It knows exactly what it is, and what it's trying to be. And for the most part, despite its many flaws, it succeeds at that. That's why I'm giving Kingdom Hearts a...
7.5 / 10
This works perfectly as a game for laying down the foundation for the future of the series. It knows what worked, and what didn't, and now with that knowledge, they can deliver a truly stunning sequel.
Coming up next, card games?! In MY Kingdom Hearts?! It's more likely than you think.