Kingdom Hearts review

This game bears witness to possibly one of the greatest cross-overs of all time. Bringing the rather serious world of Square-Enix and the more (But only slightly) light-hearted world of Disney is not something that you would immediately think will work, but it does. Seeing the Disney logo on the game may well have been something that put gamers off of buying the game. Perhaps they thought it would be too childish for them. All I can say is, how wrong you were. The game pulls the two worlds together with masterful flair, making sure not a single thing feels out of place, which adds a lot to the quality of the game. Each of the characters from the different worlds have their own story of how they got there, and how their planet was destroyed by the Heartless, the villains of the piece.

The story follows Sora, the chosen one of the Keyblade, on his journey to find his two missing friends, Riku and Kairi. This journey takes you through a whole host of recognizable places, including the Olympus Coliseum from Hercules, and Agrabah from Aladdin. On most worlds, you can choose to have the Disney character from that world in your party, which is a nice addition. It’s also worth noting that the difficulty in this game is higher than in the sequelKingdom Hearts 2.

The combat in this game is remarkably well-handled, with a menu in the bottom-left hand side of the screen allowing you to choose what to do next, while you can also equip various abilities, such as Dodge Roll (Allows you to quickly roll out of the way of an attack) and Guard (Which allows you to block an attack if you get the timing right).

The game starts with a small, slow-paced tutorial, which teaches you all the basics you need, and asks you questions that have a direct effect upon your development as a character. This adds a small personal touch to the game, as you answer the questions as you would in real life. Sora becomes almost a vessel for yourself, albeit with big hair and even bigger feet. The slight anime styling really shows through regarding character design, something to be almost expected from Square-Enix, who developed and published the game.

The game itself is a pure RPG at heart, featuring upgrades, levels, different weapons and so on and so forth. The traditional Square-Enix 3-tiered magic system is in place here, featuring “Fire” “Fira” and “Firaga”, for example.

The soundtrack is one to be reckoned with in this game. Starting with the song “Simple and Clean”, what seems to be a very bubbly song, to the looming music at the end, the music suits every single occasion, and is extremely well written.

Summing up:

Gameplay- 9/10. Call me a sucker for a good RPG combat system, but that’s what this is. Learning to strike at the right time also added to the skill needed to master it. The exploration and puzzle solving is also done extremely well.

Replayability- 6/10. There isn’t too much replay value here, but it’s always good to have another play-through.

Lifespan- 8/10. Being an RPG, you can expect it to be quite long. And so it is, so don’t be expecting a quick 10-hour jaunt with this game.

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