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Hello hello, and happy May everyone!

And welcome to the first review for A Month of Keys: The Kingdom Hearts series reviews

For the month of May, I'll be reviewing the Kingdom Hearts series, which includes:

*Kingdom Hearts & Final Mix
*Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories + RE Chain of Memories
*Kingdom Hearts II
*Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days
*Kingdom Hearts: Coded
*Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance
*Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep 0.2
*Kingdom Hearts III& REmind

I won't be reviewing the Back-cover movie since it's a movie, nor will I be reviewing Union Cross (Soon to become Dark Road apparently) since it's still an ongoing game.  However, I do highly, HIGHLY recommend getting through at least one of those two titles to get some big insight into the lore if you plan on making it through III without scratching your heads at some of the references and characters.  If you want the easier of the two to get through, I'd recommend the Back-Cover movie, as it's actually a good watch.  If you prefer more interactive, Union Cross isn't a bad game by any means (just very, veeeeery different compared to normal KH), but it does also have a bit more that the Back-Cover movie doesn't get into.

That being said, let's start this May review month off with the first in the series!



So, this is one of those games back in the day when Squaresoft and Enix were still their own thing, and Squaresoft was still known for putting out excellent work (whereas nowadays, it can be pretty iffy).  I was still in high school when it came out, and boy was it advertised everywhere.  Gaming magazines including Game Informer were talking about it, and there was always a lot of media coverage talking about it...especially on the Disney Channel when they had segments on Disney 411 (which was later named Disney 365) going into detail about it.

And god was it gorgeous to look at during that time.  It was basically Final Fantasy mixed with some nostalgic Disney, and I was absolutely set on getting it.  Unfortunately, I didn't actually get my hands on it until 2004, when my grandma got me a PS2 and Gamecube for my birthday, and the games list (she gave me about 5-6 games for each system) included Kinddom Hearts...as well as my all time favorite game Skies of Arcadia Legends.

Man...it was absolutely worth the wait.  There's always those games that exist that you're just so hooked playing it the first time, you lose track of time and only realize late in the day that you spent almost 8 hours playing it.  Kingdom Hearts was definitely one of those games that did that for me (again, Skies of Arcadia Legends was another one).  Everything about it at the time was so awesome that I just was in awe throughout my whole playthrough.  It was by far one of the best looking games on the PS2 (realistically, no.  But it took a style and ran with it), the voice acting was great at the time, the soundtrack was lovely, and overall it was just such an amazing experience.

But how does it hold up today?  Actually...with the remasters, it holds up pretty damn well.  In fact, I'd say the remasters not only helped emphasize what made it nice, but the inclusion of the previously japan-only released Final Mix as well as some of the overall changes made it an even better experience the first time.

Story
You play the part of Sora, an almost annoyingly optimistic and cheerful teenage boy who has the gleeful innocent personality of a 5 year old.  He's so magnificently innocent that there are times that you'd believe he actually really was 5 years old in a teenager's body, because you couldn't see a lot of kids his age acting the same way.  You're on an island with your best friends, Kairi: a spunky girl who will clearly obviously have some romantic connection to Sora because of course she will, and Riku: the more serious teenage boy who acts much more like a regular teenage boy.

The three of you are having a normal great time on the island, working together to build a raft since you have dreams of leaving the tiny island (which we learn later in the series has an island with a lovely looking village nearby, which we never get to explore (cries), but okay). 

After some events happen involving Donald and Goofy in another world going on a quest, and Sora skipping out on the wonderful dinner prepared by Dexter's his mom only to be swept away in a mysterious storm with something called a Keyblade in hand, his true Destiny begins...one that will promise to unlock some truly bizarre mysteries and thrust him an adventure that he didn't expect.

Did I mention the kickass intro?

Overall, I actually enjoyed how Kingdom Hearts unfolded.  Throughout your adventure, you're going through familiar worlds and meeting familiar characters from Disney properties, from Alice in Wonderland to Peter Pan, and even the long forgotten Tarzan(since it unlike the other worlds, it only got a brief 3-5 second mention in Kingdom Hearts II).  I also enjoyed the story itself and all of the original game-centric stuff, such as the world of Hollow Bastion.  It also really made me enjoy the character of Maleficent even more, whom you learn very early on is the game's main antagonist for most of it.  Her character was just so enjoyable and voiced very well to where I had a great time with her as an enemy.

Actually, all of the villains were great.  It was fun seeing some old favorites all come together because they were brought together with a common goal.  They had great lines of dialogue, and overall they greatly enhanced the gaming experience among with all of the other characters.

Admittedly, there was some off-balance with some of the original game elements though, such as the original game villains.  There was just a sort of fun goofiness to the game with the Disney villains, and then the original game villain was this dark broody and serious guy that was just an overall odd counter.  In the grand scheme of things it was fine, though.

I also appreciated a lot of the added cutscenes from Final Mix/1.5 Remix, since they answered a lot of questions about unaccounted time for some characters (as well as some info regarding the past).

Gameplay
Right after that bumpin' intro, you're thrown into what's called the "Station of Awakening" which acts as a tutorial for the game mechanics.  You pick a weapon out of 3 choices to hold onto, and one to give up.  This affects which stat (HP/MP, Attack, Defense) will get built on more, and which will be built on less.  After that, the game walks you through the basics of combat, breaking things, and retrieving items.  After that, you have 3 characters who will each ask you a seemingly pointless question...which will actually affect how quickly you'll level up (Dawn meaning you'll level up quicker, Midday meaning you'll level up at a normal pace, and the last option meaning you'll level up slower).  After that bit, you'll fight a battle, learn how to save/open your menu, and then fight a boss battle before the main story starts.

Okay, so out of all of the hybrid-battle games that try to mix turn-based and real time (think Final Fantasy 12, 15, Crisis Core, and the Tales/Star Ocean games), Kingdom Hearts was (almost) always my favorite.  Unlike games like Tales/Star Ocean, battles happen right then and there where you're standing, no battle transition or anything.  You can escape battles simply by running away and going to a different area rather than always having an invisible "barrier" surrounding you.  You have a list of commands like a turn based battle, but your main thing is pressing X (or A for Xbox I believe) to attack.  Your menu shortcuts are: Attack, Item, Magic, Summon.  The latter two you won't get until you hit certain points in the game, and you're limited to how many items you can use at a time since you equip them to your character.  Magic and items can also be assigned to button shortcuts, and you'd hit a combination of one of the front trigger buttons as well as the assigned button to use magic/items quickly.

Your party members do their own thing.  You can assign them different tactics, such as using healing at a certain percentage amount, but they basically do their own thing.  You'll hear a lot of jokes about Donald being a terrible healer even when he learns Cure/Cura/Curaga, and they're pretty true.  Personally I've never had issues with it since he's always healed me when I needed it, but apparently he basically waits until most people are a hit from dying before he heals them.  Never assign items to a character unless it's a boss battle, as they'll always work their way through items first.  Sometimes, two characters will use an item at the same time, which is equally as annoying as Donald using an Elixir to heal barely dealt damage compared to just using his cure spell.

Battles give you experience, which in turn will eventually level you up.  Leveling up earns you: Added defense, added MP, added HP, AP, or attack.  You also have the chance to learn different abilities, which can be equipped using Ability Points (AP).  Abilities can be passive such as Treasure magnet (which makes gold/items and HP/MP balls gravitate to you), and there are also Skills that you can learn such as Sonic Sword (which will of course use MP).  There's actually a nice variety of skills that you can learn including Shared Skills such as Double Jump and Glide.  You'll actually learn to block once you learn the ability, though the game does give you Dodge Roll at the start to start with.

Worlds themselves are fairly standard for the most part.  You'll walk around, sometimes having to do something such as light a torch or two to either open a new area or progress the story along.  While walking around, at any point in time unless there's a save point, the game's enemy known as Heartless can appear out of nowhere to fight.  Along with getting EXP, Munny, and HP and/or MP balls, defeated enemies will drop an item of 3 possible types: ingredient items, regular items, and weapon/accessory items.  Successful blocks or certain enemies you hit correctly (such as the rare truffle with every successful hit) will also gain you Tech Points, which are basically a secondary EXP gain.

You'll most likely find yourself ingredient hunting a lot since the game also has a Crafting/Synthesis mechanic for making new and better items.  This is also the way of getting the game's best Keyblade, the Ultima keyblade...but making it requires the most rare ingredients which can be a pain to get.

Along with the regular enemies, you'll sometimes hit an area with different types of "mushroom" heartless...either Black Fungus, White Mushroom, Rare Truffle, and the Pink Agaricus (exclusive to Kingdom Hearts Final Mix/1.5 Remix).  These enemies require different strategies as (with the exception of Black Fungus) killing them normally doesn't work.  White Mushrooms require you hitting them with the right magic spell, Rare Truffles require you keeping them in the air as long as possible (hitting them 50 or 100 times to satisfy them), and the Pink Agaricus requires that you hit it as many times as possible while it's under the Stop spell (again, netting you rewards for the number of successful hits, the best being at 100 hits).   Beating these creatures correctly will net you one of the most difficult synthesis items to get in the game: mystery goo, which is required for the Ultima Keyblade.

Outside of battle/travel mechanics, the game offers some sidequests in the form of finding all 101 Dalmatians, riding along tree branches and gathering a certain number of fruits (which opens up another area and grants you an item when you hit that number), and the Olympus Colosseum tournaments...which boast some long challenges such as the dreaded Hades Cup, as well as matches against incredibly formidable opponents such as the Ice Titan...and Sephiroth.

There's also gummy ship traveling between worlds until you learn how to fast travel, but even that only applies to worlds you've already been to.  This is probably the bit more basic part of the game with the battles being shoot-and-hit-ships-in-front-of-you and destroying most of them in a single hit.  Every ship destroyed will earn you a Gummi part so you can remodel your ship, but unless you're blueprint hunting and really wanting to put some effort into making a nice ship, then the ship portions are probably the most forgettable.

Finally, there's the Hundred Acre Wood sidequest, filled with little mini games that are both okay time-wasters, but they also have some really nice cutscenes that add some story for that world.  The best part is that it's not something that you can complete when you first get access: Throughout the game in certain chests are "Torn Pages" which you have to gather to unlock a new area of Hundred Acre Wood.  You won't find until pretty far in the game (and one requires finding a certain number of Dalmations first), so it's a world you'll be coming back to a lot.

But I will knock the gameplay again, specifically against the entirety of "Neverland."  And no, once again before you ask, it's not what you're probably expecting.  Unlike later games that revisited it and would explore the actual place (except Chain of Memories), the entirety of "Neverland" in Kingdom Hearts one falls on two places: The majority of the time spent there is in Hook's Ship, and the end of it is spent at the top of Big Ben overlooking London.  Yes, that's right, you don't get to actually see Neverland despite what the world name is telling you, which was a somewhat deceptive move.  Hook's Ship was basically "eh" to look at because, whoopie it's the interior of a pirate ship.  I will give credit that the top of Big Ben was lovely to look at though. But overall, it was a bit deceptive to call it Neverland but not include actual Neverland.

On top of that, Kingdom Hearts up until 3 actually suffered greatly from Empty World Syndrome.  That translates basically to: characters will usually appear for cutscenes, but places will otherwise normally be empty, including towns.  Kingdom Hearts II fixed this a little by adding some more characters to their towns, but they were big towns...and only like a handful of people.  3 fixed this even further by making town areas actually populated.  But Kingdom Hearts 1 was pretty bare.  One example of this is the Olympus Colosseum during the tournaments.  Normally, you'd expect the seats to be filled, right?  Eh...



I mean, maybe he's not a popular fighter?  But I mean 2 and even Birth By Sleep kept that, and at one point the audience actually cheers, but there's nobody in the seats.  Are they all invisible or ghosts or something?

However, I will say that the giant boss battles (in other words, battling against a giant character) were fun.  Actually, I can't think of a boss battle that I didn't enjoy, especially against some of the memorable Disney Villains such as Jafar, Hades, and especially Oogie Boogie.  They were all exceptionally entertaining, and made some of the slog through worlds like "Neverland" worth it when the main boss was entertaining to fight.


 
Overall though, any of you completionists will be pretty busy.  And if you're looking for post-game stuff, beating the game after collecting all 101 Dalmations and getting the Hades Cup will unlock the secret ending on the highest 2 difficulties (known as Proud Mode and Critical Mode), while doing those and completing Jiminy's Journal (including hitting a certain score in the Hundred Acre Woods mini games) will open it for you in the other modes.

But overall, the gameplay was spot on for the most part, and the game was enjoyable.

Graphics
God is this game fun to look at.  Is it game of the year beautiful?  Nowadays, no.  It definitely has a semi-dated feel to it despite it still looking great.  When it came out?  Actually, yes.  When it came out, it was really amazing with how good it looked.  The worlds each stood out and really made me think the movies they came from (such as Halloween Town), the characters looked great, the enemies were fun to look at, the choice of colors and shades were extensive and fit perfectly with the different moods/worlds...overall it felt like a marvel to look at.

Final mix wise...some of the choices were questionable.  In that version as well as the 1.5 remix, they decided to recolor the heartless.  Now...okay, sure, usage of basically black and purple was maybe a bit much at points.  But good god, some of the re-designs were atrocious.  One example that stands out specifically is the second Heartless boss you fight in Traverse Town.  It looks like an intimidating boss just with the color choice alone in the original game, and the second encounter is even more so:

First Encounter


Second Encounter


But then look at it again with the re-colored choice:

First Encounter


Second Encounter:


I mean, what were they thinking?  Overall though, most of the changes were fine, and some looked even better than the original (such as the Wight Knight and Phantom, who looked way better in their new form), some just had me rolling my eyes with how offputting the changes were.

Specific world wise, I had one or two gripes here and there, but overall I thought they did really well with the look.

My first gripe was with Wonderland.  For some reason, the designers decided that Wonderland was going to have walls and a ceiling.  No no, I don't mean inside of the buildings where it'd normally have one, I mean in the "outside" areas such as the Queen's castle and the Forest of Mushrooms.  If you look not even that closely, there's walls to where the some of the hedges look "painted" as if all of Wonderland itself was secretly just one large building.  It was a really baffling choice to say the least.

My, I love what you did with that wallpaper, it's feels like you're actually outside!


I'll also knock The End of the World for looking incredibly basic.  Like, it's the last area of the game and should look the most exceptional for the final hurrah and all, but my god was it generic looking and boring to see.  Aside from the great battles within it and the awesome music choice, this was probably the most disappointing world out of all of them.

Actually, if it wasn't for the other original worlds (Destiny Islands, Hollow Bastian, Traverse Town) looking so intriguing and nice, I would have said that the game was really leaning on the Disney Worlds to make it look creative (but then again, Hook's Ship and Wonderland, so Square's worlds aren't the only one at fault for "ehhhhh" choices in design).

You know, it's a shame that you could have regular-clothed Goofy or Donald as a choice like in this screenshot.


Oh, as I'm about to write about the voices, I also wanted to comment to absolutely hate on the graphics when characters speak sometimes.  In "important" bits it's great because you see them talking like people.  Their mouths move perfectly with the words they're saying, and they have actual expressions on their face.  This was one of the first PS2 games that I got to experience someone speaking more in "real time" in that way which was nice....as opposed to my other small gripe.

You know when the game has a character speak, but their mouths just move up and down randomly and not even in movement to specific words to where they might as well be saying "Blub blub" like a fish?  Yeah, Kingdom Hearts weirdly and randomly shifts between that both in textual form as well as vocal.  Sora will be saying something important in voiced dialogue, but the game will be using the fish-speak looking graphics to where it looks like he's speaking fish, but his words are being translated into English.  I mean, I get it was probably some form of graphical limitation....or maybe it wasn't and they were just being lazy.

Imagine that dead-eyed staring character speaking to you in blubs.


Now look at this...LOOK AT THIS.


Either way, it was a weird decision that trickled into later games, and really only got solved in Birth By Sleep...but that's probably only because that, Dream Drop Distance, BBS 0.2, and Kingdom Hearts III are almost entirely voice-only (with only some small exceptions).

Not gonna lie though, the intro and ending cutscenes were beautiful to watch because of the graphics style.

Music
So nowadays, I wouldn't put KH1's music on my top list for VG soundtracks since later games have either had better music, or better versions of the original music.  However, at the time I really loved Kingdom Hearts' soundtrack.  Simple and Clean/Hikari in its regular (ending) and more techno short (intro) form were great, and even the instrumental version (pre-menu intro) was phenomenal.  For the most part, I absolutely loved the songs for the different worlds (my favorites are probably Destiny Islands, Hollow Bastian, End of the World, and Neverland's Clock Tower).  There were some "eh" and passable songs as there are on pretty much all soundtracks (Hook's Ship, Deep Jungle...which I was super excited for at first when the intro logo appeared since it had all these drums and animal sounds).  But there were also some really great ones such as the ones I mentioned, as well as the near-end first time trek through Hollow Bastian (You know what scene I'm talking about).  Likewise, I loved all of the boss music, though 2 had more of my favorites in that area.

Overall, it was a pleasant soundtrack to listen to, and even some of the original renditions (before later games enhanced them I mean) were great such as Hundred Acre Woods, Traverse Town, and Olympus Colosseum.

Sounds/Voices
Okay, sound had its hits and misses in both the original and "remix" versions of the game.  Overall, everything sounded fine.  Save points sounded nice when you landed on them, leveling up and picking up munny/hp/mp on the field sounded fine, summons were nice, magic was fine, hitting and everything else sounded fine.

But I'm sorry, I hated the item pickup sound.  It was high pitched, it could get loud, and I personally just found it annoying.  Everything else was fine, though.

Voice wise, I was thoroughly impressed.  In a game where you have a young shortly-after-AI Haley Joel Osment as the main character, Hayden Panettiere and David Gallagher playing the voice of his friends, Mandy Moore as a very lovely sounding Aerith (especially as opposed to II's choice *shudders*), the Final Fantasy VII Advent Children actors for Cloud and Yuffie reprising their roles, Lance Bass as friggin Sephiroth and friggen Billy Zane as the big bad....and on top of those having James Woods (Hades), Jodi Benson (Ariel), Robby Benson (Beast), Dan Castellaneta (Genie in the Aladdin cartoon series), Pat Caroll (Ursula), Brian Blessed (Clayton), Tony Goldwyn (Tarzan), Naia Kelly (Jane), Kenneth Mars (Triton), Linda Larkin (Jasmine), Chris Sarandon (Jack Skellington), Scott Weinger (Aladdin), Ken Page (Oogie Boogie), flippin Kathryn Beaumont (the original voices of Wendy Darling and Alice Liddel in the cartoons), and Johnathan Freeman (Jafar), and Jim Cummings ( the current Winnie the Pooh/Tigger voice) all reprising their roles. 

Like...goddamn that's a talent-heavy set of voices, especially since some (like Katherine Beaumont) are much older than when they originally voiced their characters, but my god do all of them still do a flawless performance.  Jafar sounds just as diabolical as he did in the cartoons, Oogie Boogie and Hades are still a riot to listen to, and again...damn, all of them did a spot on job.  Even the new VAs for characters such as Maleficent were magnificently done.

Replayability
You have a journal you can 100% complete which includes finding and beating all of the heartless, getting high scores in the various minigames throughout, finding all of the items, and so on.  There's also 2 optional bosses outside of the Olympus Colosseum that you can fight (Phantom and Kurt Zisa), plus an optional boss and optional oh-my-god-I-hate-fighting-you superboss in Olympus Colosseum.  On top of that, during your treasure hunting there's also the sidequest of finding 101 dalmatians to help net you the secret ending, on top of a few tournaments including the grueling Hades Cup that you can beat to also help net you that secret ending.  On top of that, there's side areas such as Hundred Acre Woods that you can do on your own time that aren't needed to progress through the main story (Technically Halloween Town/Atlantica is skippable, you only need to visit one of them to really progress in the game, and you choose which of those two that is.  But I recommend just playing both for fun).

I should also add that the Final Mix/1.5 remix version added another Superboss known as "The Unknown," whom was the first of many secret bosses that the series would implement to hint the villain of the next game.

There's also a new Secret Movie that was added to the Final Mix/1.5 Remix that makes beating the sidequests and unlocking the original secret movie even more worth it.

Overall, there's quite a bit to do in Kingdom Hearts to keep you busy both after the main story or if you want some distraction during.

Overall
Is it perfect? No, no game is.  It has its share of flaws, absolutely.  Some of the choices in worlds and gameplay mechanics was odd to say the least, and some of the graphical choices for the looks of the worlds (and Heartless redesigns in 1.5/final mix) are a bit iffy.  Overall though, I think it's still a pretty great game that deserves to be played.  Any hype it got, it definitely deserves specifically because of how creative it could get most of the time, as well as the absolutely top notch voice cast and great musical soundtrack going for it.

So I definitely recommend playing through this one if you're wanting nostalgic feels or just want to play what I feel is a really exciting game.

Just be careful though, because playing and loving this game may open the gateway for you wanting to play all of the other games, getting yourself sucked into a very convoluted universe.