Developer: SquareSoft(now Square Enix)
Platform: Playstation 2
Year: 2002
What do you get if you combined the familiar Disney characters, some amazing characters from the Final Fantasy series and mix it together with some original characters and elements? You get Kingdom Hearts, an action adventure game that became surprisingly popular even with the weird mishmash. This franchise would go on to produce even more games and there are now presently six titles.
Summary:
You start as Sora, the main protagonist, on Destiny islands. Together with his friends, Riku and Kairi, the trio was planning to leave the island to explore new worlds only for their islands to be attacked and destroyed by the heartless, shadowy monsters without a body or soul and borne from hearts that are corrupted by darkness. Sora soon finds himself in Transverse Town where he meets up with Donald and Goofy (yes, yes you heard right). The two promptly teams up with Sora after finding out that he’s the bearer of the Keyblade, a weapon that can be used against the heartless, the ‘key’ that their king (hint: He’s a mouse. A very famous mouse and he’s not mighty mouse) had asked them to find before he left their world to fight off the growing population of darkness.
The three would end up travelling across different worlds, mostly based on popular Disney movies and cartoons, via a special ship called the Gumi Ship manned by Chip and Dale. Donald and Goofy are both looking for the King while Sora is out looking for Riku and Kairi. Each keyhole they find in that world and successfully sealed by using Sora’s keyblade would ensure that the world would not be consumed by the heartless. Meanwhile, one of the big bad in the game is Malecifient (villain of Disney’s sleeping beauty) who is out to capture the seven princesses of heart in order to seek out Kingdom Hearts, a collection of immense knowledge and power and the source of all hearts.
Gameplay:The game keeps to many of the rpg elements, player can level up, pick up spells, learn special abilities, use items and change equipments. However the battles all takes place in real time so you really have to really run around fighting heartless and dodging them. The battles are not alone, as you’ll always fight with partners. Most of the time they are Donald and Goofy but you can switch to other partners, which are special citizens to the world they come from. For example, in Halloween Town, a world based on Tim Burton’s Nightmare before Christmas, you can switch either Goofy or Donald for Jack Skellington.
The gameplay follows a linear story but gives player the choice of which world to go and what to do first. Most of the time you need to revisit the world a few time be it to train and level up or as part of the story.
Something that irks me would be the camera angle in the game. Most of the time, the perspective the camera gives you during the battle fights can give you a headache. You either run around so you can get a clear perspective or play around with the manual camera. Another thing I didn’t like was the Gumi ship mini game level you will have to go through mandatory every time you want to head to a new world. Mainly, it is your typically space shooting game. The problem? I’m terrible at those sort of games. Failing that mini game meant that you could not unlock the world and you have to retry until you get through it.
The summoning part during battles can be weird too. Summon gems can be found by Sora during the journey. These gems are formed when the heart of one of the residents being too strong to be consumed from a world that has been destroyed by the Heartless. When summon, Sora’s partners will withdraw from the battle until the summon’s time runs out. Mainly the weird part comes from the characters used for as the summon. I’m alright with Genie from Aladdin or Simba from the Lion King but Bambi? That’s stretching it a little far
(Bambi's here to save the day!) Graphics:
A standard enough that it seems you are really in a Disney based universe. It blends in the graphics from two different factions perfectly. The graphics is really what makes the whole game seems entirely plausible even with its bizarreness. The game doesn’t heavily borrow on the Disney graphics either. The designs for the heartless are extensive and also the Keyblade collections.
Audio:
Beautiful. Simply beautiful. Sure there are some of the tracks which are based from their original music but you can tell that they put a lot of effort to create the original ones.
Is it fun:
Yes. Surprisingly it was really enjoyable and fun. It's a great game to play if you don't find seeing Disney characters and final fantasy characters together....
Come along and sing a song
And join the jamboree!
M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E
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