Kingdom Hearts
Who would have thought that a union of Square and Disney would produce a game on a caliber such as this?
You play as Sora, a boy from a place called Destiny Islands. You and your friends are eager to see the world beyond your horizons so you build a raft and get ready to set sail. The night before you're set to leave however, a door opens in a dark and secret place on the island. From it seeps creatures of darkness. The Heartless. You and your friends are seperated and through the chaos, a weapon comes to your aid. The Keyblade.
Using the Keyblade, you fight against the Heartless but to no avail. You are sucked into the darkness and end up in Traverse Town. Where your journey begins. You are soon joined by Donald and Goofy (Yes, that Donald and Goofy) and you go off in search of your friends and King Mickey, who left in search of a way to stop the Heartless.
Kingdom Hearts is a real-time RPG, very much unlike Square's "other" series, Final Fantasy. Instead of waiting for your characters to attack, as in a turn-based game, or waiting for them to be ready to attack, as in a Active Time Battle System, you move and attack whenever you want.
In terms of gameplay, Kingdom Hearts is great. Easy to understand and use controls, you have your allies in Donald and Goofy and both of them can hold their own, and you have a plethora of abilities and magic attacks to use.
Something I thought was interesting was that the order in which you learned the abilities throughout the game depended on your own choices at the beginning of the game. Like magic? You can choose to specialize in it. Choosing the path of the mystic will give you stronger magic attacks and more MP. Prefer to attack? Choosing the Warrior path will give you more strength and HP. The Defender path is the one I liked the least, but it is still useful in it's own right. More defense and HP is certainly a healthy option. You don't just choose a specialization though. You also have to give up one of the above abilities. That doesn't mean that if you give up the Warrior path you can't attack, just that you won't be as strong. Likewise, giving up the Mystic and Defender paths will make your magic and defense lower, respectively.
As you search for your friends, you come across many worlds derived from their Disney movie counterparts. Agrabah (from Aladdin), Wonderland (from Alice in Wonderland) and the Jungle from Tarzan. Because you'll be spending alot of time in Disney locales, it would be best if you at least didn't abhor Disney to enjoy this game. If you do like the Disney portion of the game, you'll enjoy this game.
There's plenty of things for the FF Fanatic though. Squall Leonheart and Selphie from FF 8; Moogles; Wakka and Tidus (in kid form) from FF X; Yuffie, Cloud, Sephiroth, Aerith from FF 7; and Cid as well (The character model is obviously taken from FF 7 but Cid has existed in more than that so I'm grouping him by himself).
I could write pages on the various things in this game though so I'll keep it brief.
Overall, this game is everything an RPG fan could want. Deep, rewarding and interesting. The Disney and Final Fantasy elements aren't the main selling points, they are just a bonus.
Graphics: 9
Sound: 10
(The Title Theme, Simple and Clean is absolutely wonderful)
Story: 9
Enemies: 6
(They get a little repetitive at times)
Settings: 9
(I'm a fan of Disney ;))
Battles: 9
DarthSupero's Overall Score (out of 100) for Kingdom Hearts for the PS2: 86
Written: April 16th 2005
Reviewer: Musa Mack
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