(2 / 4)
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IN THE MIDST OF LIFE, WE ARE IN DEATH
What a bummer. Knowing how strongly Kingdom Hearts resonates within certain people, I hate to write this review. It might be the worst feeling, raining on another's admiration, especially when it's an expression of such deep, heartfelt love. So let me get it over with: Having replayed Kingdom Hearts for the first time in roughly 15 years, I am no longer a fan. Although it boasts exquisite presentation - for its time - too much is holding its great potential back.
I can very well understand the enduring love. The soundtrack, voice acting and visuals make for some undying memories. These qualities have been stuck in my memory throughout all those years, too, and come together nicely in certain story vignettes (I shall not spoil them) that still get to me. If they still ring true to you, by all means don't let me ruin them for you.
Having just played Kingdom Hearts again, however, I cannot let them stand as the pillars of my time with it. In such a long game, the heartfelt moments are too few and too concentrated to the back end of the playthrough. To reach the good stuff, I had to endure some deeply frustrating level designs and control decisions. As I try to gather my opinions, they all jumble together in dissonance.
You assume the role of the young kid Sora (voiced by the Sixth Sense star Haley Joel Osment). In the beginning he's caught in a foreshadowing nightmare. He dreams of being trapped in a perpetual darkness, running along floors of stained glass depicting different classic Disney princesses. A faceless voice guides him as he's repeatedly assaulted by dark, ant-like shades. He fends them off with his dream weapon of choice - either a sword, shield or magic wand. This choice determines your character build.
After defeating a giant, horrifying shade, he awakens to the smiling face of his friend Kairi (Hayden Panettiere) on a sun-drenched beach. Sora's back in his idyllic, tropical homeworld Destiny Islands. The music shifts from fatefully orchestral to dead silence to blissful calypso, leaving behind any lingering tension. Sora's other friend, the brooding Riku (David Gallagher), is there as well.
As we first meet them they're already in the early stages of a new project. Looking out at the vast ocean, Riku utters the thought: "What if there are more worlds out there? Ours can't be the only one." The trio decide on building a raft, ready to set sail the next day and explore the universe. But they're about to get more than they bargained for.
During the following night, darkness sweeps in and threatens the land. Witnessing the approaching storm from his room, Sora leaves home and runs towards the beach to protect their raft. To his horror, he finds his nightmare is coming true. The "Heartless", as they're called, are invading his paradise. Kairi is already gone, and as soon as Sora gets to the beach Riku is swallowed by the darkness, soon followed by Sora. They're all swept away to different worlds.
Sora finds himself alone in a place called Traverse Town, which becomes the starting point for a fantasy adventure unlike anything you've seen. He teams up with the most unlikely duo: Goofy and Donald Duck. They are on a mission from the king of Disney Castle, Mickey Mouse, to find the Keyblade Master. This turns out to be Sora. You see, in the final moments on Destiny Islands, before being swallowed by the darkness, he was handed the Keyblade, a big key doubling as a weapon.
This new trio of friends must travel from world to world in their gummi ship (engineered by Chip 'n' Dale), in search of Kairi and Riku as well as King Mickey, who is also missing. Jiminy Cricket also tags along, chronicling the travels in his journal. Almost all of the worlds they visit are Disney-themed and populated by their most popular characters. Each one's got its own share of problems involving Heartless and classic Disney villains. Naturally, armed with the Keyblade, Sora is destined to help out.
In the unlikely event you haven't yet played it, I won't spoil what worlds you'll visit, nor what characters you will meet. Rest assured you will be able to recruit some pretty cool world-specific characters to your party. This means having to leave either Goofy or Donald behind. This worried me a little, since the game relies on standard role-playing character advancement through combat experience. My worries were unfounded, however, since passive characters level up in the background.
Kingdom Hearts became known as the Disney/Final Fantasy-mash up, but that description alone is selling the game short as some sort of cash grab. You've got to admire the way Squaresoft managed to make the different universes blend so well together and form a universal statement. There's a sweet, Disney-like naivete to the early parts that gradually transitions into something more melodramatic, reminiscent of any Final Fantasy game.
In that sense, it portrays the wonder and confusion of maturing and exploring the world, finding it more complex than you first thought. This includes drifting apart from your childhood friends and safe havens, only to find new ones. The story ends in some of the most gut-wrenching scenes I've witnessed in a video game, which caught me completely off guard. Back in the days, Squaresoft truly were the masters of melodrama.
If you want it, there's also some depth to the RPG-systems not obvious at a first glance. You may customize the way your companions behave. Feel free to let them use all their magic skills liberally, making short work of vanilla enemies - or you can have them conserve mana for longer battles. If an enemy proves too difficult, you have great tweaking options available through your equipment slots. Just one or two points added to the attribute you find lacking can make all the difference in the world.
Describing it like that, it sounds like a terrific game, and it's got admirable intentions for sure. But playing Kingdom Hearts just doesn't match the fun of philosophizing about it. Playing it actually frustrates me to no end.
Something about nearly every world bugs me:
- It might be in the way it relies on precise jumping when the game's controls clearly wasn't designed around platforming. "Don't tell me I have to start the entire level from the beginning because I missed one jump!?"
- It might be in the way the third person camera refuses to cooperate with the level design to show you how to progress. "Where's the bloody exit?"
- A level may suddenly, without even prompting it, force you to ditch the world-specific character and have Donald and Goofy in your party to proceed. "I thought trinity marks concealed only secret collectibles, not exits and items essential to progress!"
- Or, worst of all, the game frequently leaves you without any clear objective whatsoever. "What do you even want me to do, game?!"
This last flaw is especially prevalent in the early parts of the game. Traverse Town has a ridiculous, overwrought screwball section, where you're running aimlessly around the big city looking for God-knows-what, trying to trigger cutscenes of Donald and Goody looking for you. Is that supposed to be funny? Also, one world called Deep Jungle might have the worst level progression I've seen. It forces the player to travel back and forth along a drawn-out, tedious path seven times (allegedly; I didn't keep count myself).
So I mostly avoided the menus altogether, denying myself all the depth and finesse of the items, summons, magic or attack combos. Spamming the attack command was the only option left, alongside casting the occasional spell I was foresightful enough to assign a shortcut button. This removed the strategic elements from the combat. It was a functional, but very tedious way to play and obviously far from what Squaresoft intended.
So here I go again, undermining a game's artistic intentions with complaints about the surrounding mechanics. I keep complaining, even as storytelling is what interests me the most. And I keep complaining, even as I'm impressed by the flair of just about everything I see and hear in Kingdom Hearts.
Even travelling in your gummi ship, the space between worlds isn't black. It rather reminds me of the ever shifting hues you perceive when you shut your eyes on a summer's day. If there's a veil around us at all times, separating the mundane from some fantastical realm, at its best moments Kingdom Hearts lifts a corner of that veil.
It's just that the magic happens too rarely and too briefly, and usually in a cutscene drastically heightened by the score (composed by Yoko Shimomura). As I write this review, I've got the soundtrack playing in the background and it still affects me. This prompts me to ask if it isn't all in the music, a question that's been burning in my mind since I got captivated by Final Fantasy VII.
Since video games usually allow the player to control the narrative flow, a long game played over 30-40 hours might fail to keep the story going. There's too much distraction. You might forget plot details, characters and even whole locations before you're done. Some of these problems are present in Kingdom Hearts, although it handles it pretty well overall.
I'm not even convinced longer games necessarily need overarching main stories. Maybe video games get their meaning across better by just telling a series of short stories, like the tales of H.P. Lovecraft or Edgar Allan Poe come together to form weird worlds with their own inner logic. Each tale would be winnable in a gaming session, but the game would keep going. Kingdom Hearts manages this very well for its time, allowing the universe to come alive through the micro stories told at each location. They're bound thematically together and tell the same, cyclical tale of darkness across all worlds, only with mounting dread and urgency the further you go.
So sure, there's magic at the core of the Kingdom Hearts experience as well. It's evident in the soundtrack combined with the art design. It's a rare thing to feel in a video game and still I'm dissatisfied, because the game doesn't give me the instruments to fully unveil this fantasy I sense. Playing the game with all its flaws feels like an amateurish reenactment of the real magic behind the curtain. Occasionally, I get to peek through a corner, but this happens during a few cutscenes where I control nothing.
This makes me depressed. Maybe over the years, darkness finally got the better of me. I never saw it coming, but I suppose that's the way it usually prevails, methodically infiltrating your heart. One day you discover it's there, and by then it is too late. You are become death, the destroyer of worlds.
I can very well understand the enduring love. The soundtrack, voice acting and visuals make for some undying memories. These qualities have been stuck in my memory throughout all those years, too, and come together nicely in certain story vignettes (I shall not spoil them) that still get to me. If they still ring true to you, by all means don't let me ruin them for you.
Having just played Kingdom Hearts again, however, I cannot let them stand as the pillars of my time with it. In such a long game, the heartfelt moments are too few and too concentrated to the back end of the playthrough. To reach the good stuff, I had to endure some deeply frustrating level designs and control decisions. As I try to gather my opinions, they all jumble together in dissonance.
PARADISE LOST
Let's start with the good news. It truly shines in the storytelling department. Kingdom Hearts tells one of those stories (like the original Star Wars trilogy) that carries universal appeal through the use of the simplest of metaphors: light and darkness. In the Kingdom Hearts lore, light and darkness holds sway over the hearts of people and kingdoms alike. There's strength in the camaraderie of sharing, but also a strong allure in the dark loneliness of keeping all the power for yourself.
You assume the role of the young kid Sora (voiced by the Sixth Sense star Haley Joel Osment). In the beginning he's caught in a foreshadowing nightmare. He dreams of being trapped in a perpetual darkness, running along floors of stained glass depicting different classic Disney princesses. A faceless voice guides him as he's repeatedly assaulted by dark, ant-like shades. He fends them off with his dream weapon of choice - either a sword, shield or magic wand. This choice determines your character build.
After defeating a giant, horrifying shade, he awakens to the smiling face of his friend Kairi (Hayden Panettiere) on a sun-drenched beach. Sora's back in his idyllic, tropical homeworld Destiny Islands. The music shifts from fatefully orchestral to dead silence to blissful calypso, leaving behind any lingering tension. Sora's other friend, the brooding Riku (David Gallagher), is there as well.
As we first meet them they're already in the early stages of a new project. Looking out at the vast ocean, Riku utters the thought: "What if there are more worlds out there? Ours can't be the only one." The trio decide on building a raft, ready to set sail the next day and explore the universe. But they're about to get more than they bargained for.
During the following night, darkness sweeps in and threatens the land. Witnessing the approaching storm from his room, Sora leaves home and runs towards the beach to protect their raft. To his horror, he finds his nightmare is coming true. The "Heartless", as they're called, are invading his paradise. Kairi is already gone, and as soon as Sora gets to the beach Riku is swallowed by the darkness, soon followed by Sora. They're all swept away to different worlds.
Sora finds himself alone in a place called Traverse Town, which becomes the starting point for a fantasy adventure unlike anything you've seen. He teams up with the most unlikely duo: Goofy and Donald Duck. They are on a mission from the king of Disney Castle, Mickey Mouse, to find the Keyblade Master. This turns out to be Sora. You see, in the final moments on Destiny Islands, before being swallowed by the darkness, he was handed the Keyblade, a big key doubling as a weapon.
This new trio of friends must travel from world to world in their gummi ship (engineered by Chip 'n' Dale), in search of Kairi and Riku as well as King Mickey, who is also missing. Jiminy Cricket also tags along, chronicling the travels in his journal. Almost all of the worlds they visit are Disney-themed and populated by their most popular characters. Each one's got its own share of problems involving Heartless and classic Disney villains. Naturally, armed with the Keyblade, Sora is destined to help out.
THE BEAUTY
Tetsuya Nomura, directorial debutante and character designer of Kingdom Hearts, doesn't paint his characters in nuances, nor does he try and disguise their alignment. Everbody's intentions are clear as a day or dark as the night. The Disney stuff is fluff, but feels right at home with the central themes of innocence lost to darkness.
Kingdom Hearts became known as the Disney/Final Fantasy-mash up, but that description alone is selling the game short as some sort of cash grab. You've got to admire the way Squaresoft managed to make the different universes blend so well together and form a universal statement. There's a sweet, Disney-like naivete to the early parts that gradually transitions into something more melodramatic, reminiscent of any Final Fantasy game.
In that sense, it portrays the wonder and confusion of maturing and exploring the world, finding it more complex than you first thought. This includes drifting apart from your childhood friends and safe havens, only to find new ones. The story ends in some of the most gut-wrenching scenes I've witnessed in a video game, which caught me completely off guard. Back in the days, Squaresoft truly were the masters of melodrama.
If you want it, there's also some depth to the RPG-systems not obvious at a first glance. You may customize the way your companions behave. Feel free to let them use all their magic skills liberally, making short work of vanilla enemies - or you can have them conserve mana for longer battles. If an enemy proves too difficult, you have great tweaking options available through your equipment slots. Just one or two points added to the attribute you find lacking can make all the difference in the world.
Describing it like that, it sounds like a terrific game, and it's got admirable intentions for sure. But playing Kingdom Hearts just doesn't match the fun of philosophizing about it. Playing it actually frustrates me to no end.
THE BEAST
Kingdom Hearts was Squaresoft's first game in full 3D (it was inspired by Super Mario 64). I dearly wish that it wasn't. I rather wish the team would have gotten some experience on a less ambitious project first to get their controls, camera and level design right. Kingdom Hearts is a better game in theory than practice, which I suppose is why it's remembered so fondly. Back then, we just didn't have the same frame of reference.
Something about nearly every world bugs me:
- It might be in the way it relies on precise jumping when the game's controls clearly wasn't designed around platforming. "Don't tell me I have to start the entire level from the beginning because I missed one jump!?"
- It might be in the way the third person camera refuses to cooperate with the level design to show you how to progress. "Where's the bloody exit?"
- A level may suddenly, without even prompting it, force you to ditch the world-specific character and have Donald and Goofy in your party to proceed. "I thought trinity marks concealed only secret collectibles, not exits and items essential to progress!"
- Or, worst of all, the game frequently leaves you without any clear objective whatsoever. "What do you even want me to do, game?!"
This last flaw is especially prevalent in the early parts of the game. Traverse Town has a ridiculous, overwrought screwball section, where you're running aimlessly around the big city looking for God-knows-what, trying to trigger cutscenes of Donald and Goody looking for you. Is that supposed to be funny? Also, one world called Deep Jungle might have the worst level progression I've seen. It forces the player to travel back and forth along a drawn-out, tedious path seven times (allegedly; I didn't keep count myself).
COMBATTING FRUSTRATIONS
I could go on but you get the point. Kingdom Hearts unfortunately puts all the design team's inexperience with 3D on full display. The then brand new real-time combat is not bad, but it is supported by a menu system in the vein of Final Fantasy. To maneuver it you need to tear your gaze from the raging battle and juggle menu commands in the bottom left corner of the screen. You cannot pause the game in the meantime.So I mostly avoided the menus altogether, denying myself all the depth and finesse of the items, summons, magic or attack combos. Spamming the attack command was the only option left, alongside casting the occasional spell I was foresightful enough to assign a shortcut button. This removed the strategic elements from the combat. It was a functional, but very tedious way to play and obviously far from what Squaresoft intended.
So here I go again, undermining a game's artistic intentions with complaints about the surrounding mechanics. I keep complaining, even as storytelling is what interests me the most. And I keep complaining, even as I'm impressed by the flair of just about everything I see and hear in Kingdom Hearts.
Even travelling in your gummi ship, the space between worlds isn't black. It rather reminds me of the ever shifting hues you perceive when you shut your eyes on a summer's day. If there's a veil around us at all times, separating the mundane from some fantastical realm, at its best moments Kingdom Hearts lifts a corner of that veil.
It's just that the magic happens too rarely and too briefly, and usually in a cutscene drastically heightened by the score (composed by Yoko Shimomura). As I write this review, I've got the soundtrack playing in the background and it still affects me. This prompts me to ask if it isn't all in the music, a question that's been burning in my mind since I got captivated by Final Fantasy VII.
SENSING MAGIC
If you ask me, video games still struggle with the best way to convey stories. Are cutscenes the way to go? Maybe environmental storytelling is superior for a deeper, player-driven effect? Or should we rely on gameplay alone to let the player shape their own narratives? As usual, the answer probably is a game-changing combo of everything. The problem doesn't end there, however.Since video games usually allow the player to control the narrative flow, a long game played over 30-40 hours might fail to keep the story going. There's too much distraction. You might forget plot details, characters and even whole locations before you're done. Some of these problems are present in Kingdom Hearts, although it handles it pretty well overall.
I'm not even convinced longer games necessarily need overarching main stories. Maybe video games get their meaning across better by just telling a series of short stories, like the tales of H.P. Lovecraft or Edgar Allan Poe come together to form weird worlds with their own inner logic. Each tale would be winnable in a gaming session, but the game would keep going. Kingdom Hearts manages this very well for its time, allowing the universe to come alive through the micro stories told at each location. They're bound thematically together and tell the same, cyclical tale of darkness across all worlds, only with mounting dread and urgency the further you go.
So sure, there's magic at the core of the Kingdom Hearts experience as well. It's evident in the soundtrack combined with the art design. It's a rare thing to feel in a video game and still I'm dissatisfied, because the game doesn't give me the instruments to fully unveil this fantasy I sense. Playing the game with all its flaws feels like an amateurish reenactment of the real magic behind the curtain. Occasionally, I get to peek through a corner, but this happens during a few cutscenes where I control nothing.
This makes me depressed. Maybe over the years, darkness finally got the better of me. I never saw it coming, but I suppose that's the way it usually prevails, methodically infiltrating your heart. One day you discover it's there, and by then it is too late. You are become death, the destroyer of worlds.
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