Kingdom Hearts is the unexpected offspring of Disney and Squaresoft (the Final Fantasy people.) In fact, for months this was all anybody talked about: the strange mix of the two seemingly disparate companies. Although initial reaction from critics was glowing, many gamers were/are put off by the Disney focus... but you can chalk that up to the usual gamer stereotype of immature teens who require GTA-style bloodletting before they'll get near a game. Lots of Square fans were also confused, since the game includes lots of random Final Fantasy characters in supporting roles.
Me, I'm an unabashed Disney fan. And this is the first game to take the whole Disney oeuvre seriously. This isn't some simple movie-to-game translation, like the recent raft of Lilo & Stitch/Treasure Planet games, nor is it some kind of wacky platformer with a cartoon license. This is an emotional, dramatic, evocative journey through the Disney Universe. I cried. Many times. Regardless of your opinion of Disney's everpresent merchandising and rampant marketing, this game returns the characters to their original form: actors and entertainers.
At the parks and in the cartoons, we've gotten used to the idea that the Disney characters all live together in the Magic Kingdom and put on parades every day at 3pm and 7pm. But that is purely a result of profiteering on the company's part; obviously The Little Mermaid doesn't exist in the same world as Merlin from The Sword in the Stone. And Mickey Mouse can't leave his house and walk over to visit Tarzan. Kingdom Hearts throws aside that "House of Mouse" happy family model and lets each set of characters exist on their terms, just as they did in the films. These separate worlds are at the core of Kingdom Hearts' storyline, and it's just one example of how the game puts an adult, thoughtful veneer on the Disney characters.
Kingdom Hearts is the story of Sora, a young boy from Destiny Islands. But the peaceful life of his world is destroyed by dark monsters called the Heartless... Sora is split up from his friends and falls in with Goofy and Donald Duck, who are searching for the missing King Mickey. Sora soon finds that his world was not the only world in trouble, and the trio must travel to nine Disney worlds (and several new locations) to track down the source of the Heartless and stop them from consuming everything.
You can tell that the design team spent a lot of time integrating themselves into the Disney mindset, because there is a ton of Disney touches to the story. And I don't mean just the characters and settings. It's full of Disney's usual metaphorical touches: the use of keys, the symbology of hearts, magic used to indicate creativity and wonder, and princesses as the emotional center. The whole thing is pure Disney from intro to credits. But despite all that, the plot avoids cliche and ends on a surprising downer.
Kingdom Hearts also handles some video game traditions with a feather touch. Although there is plenty of hacking and slashing, Sora carries a non-violent-looking key instead of a sword. (Goofy's only weapon throughout the entire game is a shield, and Donald carries a magic wand.) The game's monetary unit is "munny," which subtley sidesteps notions of physical wealth and real-world capitalism. I shouldn't need to add that there is no blood, the Heartless tend to fade away when they "die," and every battle is a festival of colored lighting and sparking stars.
Sounds great so far... but Kingdom Hearts has a terribly inauspicious, non-Disney beginning. Your New Game begins with Sora's Dream. It's mainly a standard tutorial level, framed by a nightmare where Sora first encounters the Heartless. I don't mind the introduction to fighting and jumping and pushing; what bothered me was the series of obtuse questions designed to silently alter the speed of the game and the strengths of Sora.
During the dream, Sora battles over beautiful stained glass windows of the Disney Princesses. (This is the only Disney element to be seen for quite a while, until the first Magic Kingdom movie in the next section.) I was pretty disappointed with this beginning, since it seemed like the game was actively avoiding the Disney characters. Also, it is way too early for the kind of drama this level tries to create, with all the overblown cutscenes with anime characters. You end up rushing through it because you just don't care about Sora at this point. You don't know who he is, so the whole thing just seems pretentious.
After the dream, you're forced through a painful item-gathering mission. This level establishes the relationship between Sora and his friends Riku and Kairi. Riku is something of an older brother type; he tends to play up his experience when he beats Sora in mock-combat and tests of athleticism. They have a friendly rivalry. Kairi is the girl they both kinda sorta like. All three wish they could leave the island and see other worlds.
This is still all tutorial, as far as I'm concerned. You don't get any important plot points until the end of it all, when two movies tell how Donald and Goofy leave the Magic Kingdom in search of Mickey, and how a storm breaks over Sora's home - Destiny Islands, ironically - and summons the Heartless. The storm leads you into your second match against Darkside, a gigantic Heartless boss. By this time, you're probably suspecting Darkside is the game's villain, but you'd be wrong...
Then Sora's quest to rejoin his friends coincides with Donald and Goofy's mission to find King Mickey, and the trio set off on the game proper. Unfortunately, the first few Disney worlds are ultimately lousy as well... giving Kingdom Hearts an extremely difficult first few hours. It's easy to feel yourself turning against the game when you enter Alice's Wonderland and find the whole thing a maze of perfectly flat, square rooms with painted textures. You could blame this on the film's visual style of Wonderland, but I'd call that a cop out. The Wonderland of the movie still had a real forest in it, not a box with heavy angular partitions for walls.
Tarzan's Deep Jungle, the second world, also suffers from boxy rooms. You also spend a ridiculous amount of time here chasing objectives from one end of the map to the other. It wouldn't be so bad if Deep Jungle was easier to navigate, but there's this huge, stupid aerial section of swinging vines smack in the middle of everything. You have to manually swing from vine to vine, and if you fall, you end up in the hated Hippo Lagoon and have to work your way back around. The Lagoon - like all bodies of water in Kingdom Hearts - is disgustingly maddening because Sora can't go from water to land except at designated beaching areas.
Thankfully, those two worlds are easily the worst of the lot. Although the most common feature of all the worlds is a giant labyrinth structure, Agrabah (Aladdin), Atlantica (The Little Mermaid), Halloweentown (The Nightmare Before Christmas) and the rest all shine with much more design, plot, and fun. Of special note is the first fight with Jafar. Jafar snatches the lamp from Aladdin and forces Genie to do his bidding. During the entire fight - while you're trying to whack a flying Jafar - Genie will half-heartedly float around the arena attacking you. I know it's tough, but keep your eye on Genie. He will cover his eyes before his attacks and say something like "Sorry about this pal" or "Get out of the way!" It's a perfect example of Kingdom Hearts at its best. However, problems will still surface; Kingdom Hearts has a nasty habit of giving you puzzles that are impossible to solve.
Obviously, there are puzzles that you won't be able to complete until you achieve a certain ability or level... that's fine. But there are several times when you will be stuck in a room with no idea what to do. Again, it would be fine if there was some hidden solution that makes perfect sense once you figure it out, but often there isn't. Instead, your solution is to simply leave the room. That's not an acceptable device in my book. If I'm presented with a challenge, I want to work to solve it with the tools in my hands, not just walk away from it and trigger a cutscene. I suppose that's my big tip for you in Kingdom Hearts: When in doubt, leave the room.
Battling the Heartless is daunting at first. Unlike most RPGs, combat in Kingdom Hearts is real time... almost arcade like. What this means is no more long, drawn-out battles while you take your time perusing your spell list or swapping items around. You have to manipulate your entire menu heirarchy - items, spells, specials, summons - while you're running around attacking (and being attacked.) It requires a lot of fancy finger work.
You'll spend a lot of time running in circles, dealing with a crazy locked-on camera, hoping that Donald and Goofy are distracting the enemies long enough for you to pull a Potion out of your item slots. Often you'll die while the Potion is in mid-animation. Be heartened (hah!) that combat will get easier and much more fun. Once your party levels up - and once you become accustomed to managing 4/5 of your Dual Shock simultaneously - you'll be able to control your combat situations quite a bit better.
One of the talking points of Square RPGs is the summon animations: long, dramatic mini-movies that reveal your party summoning a powerful beast or monster to aide in your fight. Since combat here is real time, you only ever get six total Summons: Simba, Genie, Bambi, Dumbo, Tinker Bell and Mushu. Each Summon has his/her own unique attacks and abilities, and their biggest downfall is that they kick Donald and Goofy out of the fight for a brief time (except Tink.) In the heat of battle, I tended to forget I had them, despite how cool they look. By the end of the game, I found Tinker Bell the most useful, thanks to her auto-healing ability.
The music is phenomenal. Several classic Disney songs are remixed and included as background music for their appropriate levels, but also of note is the recurring Kingdom Hearts theme. Performed vocally by j-pop artist Utada Hikaru, the game makes excellent use of its underlying melancholy refrain to punctuate important points in the story.
The storyline of Kingdom Hearts is magical. Princesses are being kidnapped, worlds are disappearing (one of the many times I felt close to tears was when I was told that Simba's world had already been eliminated by the Heartless. Hakuna Matata indeed!), and friendships are being destroyed. The most complex new character is Riku, your old friend who chooses the wrong path for the most noble of reasons. Although each world more or less follows each movie's plot, there are still plenty of surprises. Square did an excellent job recreating 2D animation in 3D form, as the Disney characters look, act and move exactly as they should. Having many of the original voice talents return also makes each plot point feel like an alternate look at some familiar stories, with you (née Sora) at the center. The superb quality of the cutscenes makes the non-cutscene moments all the more disappointing, as the game isn't 100% live audio. There are far too many bits with purely subtitled text.
That aside (and it does seem an awful necessity of video games), the presentation of classic Disney movie characters and moments is flawless. From Genie's boisterous introduction, to the boss fight with an inflated Ursula, to flying around Big Ben with Peter Pan, to some tender moments with Winnie-the-Pooh. And Chernabog! Chernabog! Because these are characters you've known your entire life, there's an amazing emotional involvement here. These aren't stock NPCs that need you to fetch Item X or complete Quest Y. This is the friggin' Beast, and he needs your help to save Belle. Yes, every other Disney game revolves around you mimicking the movie in some fashion, but, thanks to a complex, mature presentation, this is a step into Disney like no other. And a damn fine game.
