Kingdom Hearts. The video game series with one of the biggest fandoms in the video game industry. For me, and a lot of other gamers, this video game invokes a lot of childhood nostalgic feelings. Disney, Final Fantasy, video games. My three favourite things from my teenage life made an epic collabration. I can't begin to describe how much fun I had with this game back then. But now it's almost fifteen years later. And I'm here to give my honest thoughts and opinions about the first game of the Kingdom Hearts series.

The Graphics

The graphics seem to be praised by both fans and critics. Even though the worlds are varied and pretty detailed, and all the Disney and Final Fantasy characters are designed really well and instantly recognizable, I still feel that the graphics in Kingdom Hearts just aren't what they're cracked up to be. In some parts of the cutscenes the facial motion of the characters look amazing, while in most parts, they're standing there with two-dimensional faces, with their mouths moving up and down to indicate speech. It looks really awkard. It wouldn't have mattered so much if it all looked like this, but at some parts, the game really shows you what it's capable of by showing off the character's emotions in its fullest detail, and when you see those characters just weirdly blabbing away in the next shot, you realize that this isn't perfect in the slightest. What's more, I felt that there are quite a few environments that felt cluttered, and didn't give you a lot of space to move around. This made some of the worlds feel a little linear, but I think that's just a little nitpicky of me.

The Sound

I really liked the overall sound design of the game. The voice acting is great, and the Disney cast is largely spoken-in by their original voice actors from their respective movies, which is very impressive seeing the age of some of the Disney movies. The Final Fantasy characters like Cloud, Squall and Yuffie also got voice actors in the game, and their voices fit their characters to a T. The music is wonderful and varied, and each Disney world you explore has a theme music that fits the atmosphere of the movie.

The Story

Three friends, Sora (this is you) Riku and Kairi (and three Final Fantasy characters, but they don't really matter) spend their days on a lovely island just outside their hometown. One day, darkness swallows the world, and Sora wakes up in a place called “Traverse Town”. Here he joins Donald and Goofy in order to search for both Mickey Mouse, and Sora's friends, Riku and Kairi. I know this sounds basic and frankly kinda ridiculous, but putting the vast plot of this game onto paper takes quite a lot of time and I think this is really all I can give you without giving too much away in my review. Pay in mind that Kingdom Hearts is partly a Disney game, so expect a lot of drama, and the story to have a nice feel-good vibe to it. If that's your sorta thing, you can't really go wrong with following Kingdom Hearts' plot.

The Depth

Meaty story aside, Kingdom Hearts is a little simple.

It features a unique control system, called the 'Command List'. This small list is on the lower-left corner of the screen at all times, showing the various actions that Sora can do. It flexibly changes according to the situation. When enemies show up, the 'action' command changes to 'attack', which you can use to defeat the enemies. When you're standing next to an item chest, it changes into 'open', which you, naturally, open the chest with. Even with all the game's sequels and prequels, which basically incorporated the same core gameplay, the Command List still manages to feel fun to use. There is a flaw here, though. Even though there is a button shortcut you can use to cast spells quickly in-battle, you can't do the same with items. So when you're low on health, and out of MP so you can't cast a healing spell, you need to select the 'items' tab on the Command List, and then select the item you want to use at that moment. This all needs to be done in real-time because you can't access the items menu in-battle. This leaves you open for enemy attacks, since you can't fight back because you're in the items tab of the Command List, and can't select 'attack' to defend yourself in the meantime. You could say this is part of the challenge, but it is in a sorta cheap way, because if you die in the short period, because you can't fight back, you really couldn't have done anything to prevent it from happening.

Since Kingdom Hearts a game made by Squaresoft, you would expect there's a lot to earn by the tons of optional side quests. However, aside from playing through the storyline, there isn't a lot to do. There are a couple of tournaments being held at the Olympic Coliseum, which are more or less all the same aside from some surprise contestants; Finding Pongo's and Perdita's 99 dalmatian puppies who were scattered throughout the worlds; Fighting a surprise boss. The reason why I'm still giving Kingdom Hearts' depth a 6, is because of the vast storyline, and how it sets up so much events for the future games.

Also, there is a problem I had with the controls. For some reason, even though DualShock camera movement was already there since the PS1 era, Squaresoft decided it would be a good idea to still assign the camera control to the L2 and R2 buttons like in earlier PS1 games. What does the right analogue stick on your PlayStation 2 do? It lets you scroll around the Command List as an alternative to the up and down arrows. This is very primitive considering Kingdom Hearts is a PlayStation 2 game from 2003, and it allows for very restricted camera movement. If you wish, you could use the Select button for a first-person camera mode, which lets you pan the camera all around, but it stops you from moving around yourself. This makes exploring some of the more interesting environments not as fun and immersing as it could've been.

The Addictiveness

I can't say I'm a huge fan of Kingdom Hearts. The Command List is innovative but flawed, and the story consist for a large part of cutscenes, and even though the storyline is intricate, this alone isn't enough to cover up the flaws that the gameplay has.

The Difficulty

Kingdom Hearts offers a challenge, mainly due to the fact that you need to get used to the Command List. The fact that you can't pause the action to select a healing item adds a great deal of strategic planning of when to start to use the item. What's more, after you've selected and used the healing item, the effect of said item takes a second or so to kick in, which means if you're hit by a fatal attack after you used the item, but before it actually replenished your health, you'll still be dead. This is borderline-cheap, and caused me quite a little frustration at some moments. Then there's the fact that some of the worlds you visit offer you such a vague explanation of what to do in order to make progress that you might get stuck in them. Seriously, beating the Monstro level got me scratching my head numerous times because of how poorly designed it was.

VERDICT:

The first Kingdom Hearts game is good, but overrated. It feels awkward having to switch commands all the time to do a single thing, which makes combat messy and, when you end up getting killed, frustrating because you couldn't do much to prevent it. The music and voice talent is amazing, and the collabration of Disney and Final Fantasy made for a story like no one had ever seen, but is it fun to play now, with it's primitive camera controls and straight up better sequels? I honestly don't think so.

Pros:

• Some of the worlds are a blast to explore

• On-screen Command List is unique, even if it's flawed

• Story is feel-good and interesting

• Rich with all your favourite Disney and Final Fantasy characters

Cons:

• Shoddy, dated combat and movement, even for 2003

• Fighting the same enemies in areas you revisit grows repetitive really fast

• Gummi Ship levels aren't fun

• Not as many side quests as you may expect from a Squaresoft RPG