Disney, Final Fantasy. Two things that most sane people would not think to put into the same sentence, let alone go the distance and make a game on it, and then to go even further with at least thirteen (oh Arceus I just thought of something about that... more on that next week) games, a card game, manga and novels. along with countless other bits of merchandise. It's honestly quite baffling that this exists, especially when you consider that all of this started cause one guy happened to be in the right place at the right time, yet here we are, with one of the biggest releases of the month being the Third game, while also being the thirteenth game, so long before I get to Kingdom Hearts 3 (as I still don't have the console to play it), let's look at the first game, that's also the fifth game? I think that's right at least... or maybe it's the forth because one of those is just cutscenes based on a mobile game...Kingdom Hearts.
The story for this and every Kingdom Hearts game is... weird to say the least. Excluding the obvious reason why, there isn't that much of a big overarching story, but rather smaller stories that phase in and out of priority. What do I mean by this? How well do you know Allice in Wonderland (not that live action remake), Hercules, Tarzan (the animated one Disney did), Aladdin, Pinocchio The Little Mermaid, Nightmare Before Christmas and Peter Pan? For the record, there was a strong temptation to keep doing the "not the remake" joke, but that would only get old fast. When the game travels to the worlds based on those films, the story from those films takes a higher priority than the overarching story, and for the most part, they are faithful recreations of the stories. The only major differences coming from the integration of things like the main cannon fodder of the game, the Heartless. There are some worlds though where the main focus is brought back to the main story, and even a world that has got nothing to do with anything, how fitting it is that it's the 100 Acre Wood.
As for the main story though, our hero for this tale is Sora, a child on Destiny Island that one day dreams of travelling the world with his two friends, Riku
Not that one, she's in the next numbered game and Kairi
No, not that one, though your confusion is understandable, they are similar. One has a special cat and is actually willing to fight, the other... does next to nothing for almost the entire franchise...
Anyway, when a freak storm happens, Kairi is kidnapped by a shadowy force while Riku appears to have been corrupted by the Darkness enveloping the island. Sora is saved from the disaster thanks to a key-shaped bludgeoning stick (I've always struggled to call Keyblades swords). Sora wakes up in another world called Traverse Town. Upon meeting his two glorified meat shields for these adventures, Donald and Goofy (yes really), and getting a basic description on what the hell just happened to him thanks to Leon from Final Fantasy 8, Cid, Aerith and Yuffie from Final Fantasy 7 (again, yes really), and undertake a journey to find Rikku, Kairi, King Mickey (who Donald and Goofy are looking for), and save the worlds from the Darkness being controlled by our main villains for the story, Maleficent (who is a great choice I will admit) and Ansem, the one who was controlling Riku this entire time... I'll get back to Ansem next week. For now, though, that is the main plot of the game, which for what it is, while basic for RPG's, does work. It's simple, it gets the point across without needing to rely on wiki pages, something I can't exactly say for the later games... The structure leads to constant peaks and valleys, because for many of the worlds, you are playing through the entire story of the movie, which if you're familiar to the films, may make your interest peak at different points, and potentially unable to get back into it especially if you go to a world based on a film you don't like.
Gameplay wise, it's very "this is the first game". It's an action RPG, meaning that all combat management is done in real time. While many of the later games go for a combat arsenal that is extremely flashy, such as bouncing between buildings to attack, the combat here is a lot slower, while it still has it's flashy moves, most of the combat can boil down to "hit with stick three times, dodge until you can hit with stick again", though to be fair, there is something awfully relaxing about it. Kingdom Hearts does have other trappings of JRPG's though, such as late game suffering from "Perfect time for Chocobo Racing is the end of the world" syndrome, mostly because once you beat the final boss, that's it, there's no post game other than going and doing what you didn't do before the boss. Like with Final Fantasy, you do have your collection of spells, special moves and summons (some of which include Genie and Simba), all of which do provide more variety to the combat and give you some ranged options for those who don't wanna stand still, but it doesn't evolve the combat to a high degree.
The presentation is nice, though awkward at times. It goes for a mix between the two sources, which means that you get the Final Fantasy characters looking extremely cartoony, and the Disney characters looking a bit awkward at times, bearing in mind this was originally made for the PlayStation 2, even though I'm reviewing the PlayStation 3 version. The HD port though has been a great benefit to the music department though, going from MIDI files to full orchestral, something that becomes a huge help for next weeks game. It looks great for its time though and has aged really well, even though the flaws of it come from the sources.
While this is the best Kingdom Hearts game to start with for the sake of the story, it's probably not the best one to go to for gameplay, as later games do refine the style and improve on it (or at least when they're not trying to be a children's card game... or have everything revolves around an awful inventory management system... or was a phone game...). It is thankfully easy to obtain though, there's a PS3 version that comes with a port of Chain of Memories and (I believe) the cutscenes of 358 days over 2, and a PS4 port that has both the PS3 Kingdom Hearts Collections on it so it's still worth trying first. Next week we go to the second game... I mean the third game... I mean the seventh game... Nomura you're going to do my head in by the time this month is up, you know that right?
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