Kingdom Hearts Minus Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix
By jeremyf 0 Comments
My last blog post was all about how much Kingdom Hearts sucks on a conceptual level. Spoilers: My feelings have not changed. To recap, all the overdesigned original characters, awful plot, and backseating of Disney characters take away from what could have been a great crossover game. Now, I didn't know if it was fair to criticize a game I've never played, even if none of it was directed at the actual playing part. So, I picked up the big ol' collection for PS4 and played through the first installment. It's only right that I fill in the rest of my opinions spent on my time with the game.
Let's start with the presentation, because it's the most appealing part of the game to me. Yoko Shimomura of Mario RPG fame (or I guess Kingdom Hearts fame if you're a fan of these games) does the music, and some of the battle songs sound like they're right out of Superstar Saga. It's a great fit for the whimsical Disney worlds. The licensed Disney songs are also not bad, but listening to Under the Sea over and over drains me quite a bit. The visuals look great, especially in HD. The colorful anime attack effects and explosions are very pretty. The Disney world designs are very faithful and look fantastic. It looks like you're in Aladdin or Hercules, even if it's a 3D environment. Again, the artists clearly had a love of the movies.
With that out of the way, it's time to move to the gameplay. The game starts with an unskippable cutscene/music video that's really trippy before moving into the tutorial. This is slow, to say the least, but for new players I guess it's important to explain the movement and combat. The tutorial is so shallow, though, that it's not excessively helpful. New mechanics are dumped onto the player throughout the game at random intervals.
Sora has to choose one weapon and give up another. This affects the skills you learn as you level up, from what I understand. I choose the sword and gave up the shield, because I figured I wouldn't need defense if I just got good at the game. Well, my defense certainly sucked, but so did my offense, and I felt like I was learning skills at a slower rate. Cool. Then some Final Fantasy guys asks you some seemingly pointless questions, which probably are actually pointless. Overall, I wish the game was more up-front with how these choices will affect the game. Oh, and the first save point is after you spec your character, so if you want to try a different configuration you have to sit through the custscene and tutorial again.
Somewhere around here we get into the battle system for real, and this is one of the more annoying parts of the game for me. The targeting is often wonky, often creating scenarios where an enemy hits Sora in the back while he's focused on the guy halfway across the room. Basic combos are the bread and butter, and magic often doesn't give you the results. You can only put three spells on shortcut, one of which is going to be cure and another probably aero, so going into the menu to cast spells is not effective enough for me. Summons are also kind of lame and you have to watch a cutscene every time you use one.
Your HUD can be red or blue. When it's blue, you're free to interact with anything. In a battle, it turns red, and you can't. That chest you were thinking of opening? That switch you were about to press? That door you need to examine for some reason? Well, you'll have to waste your time killing all the heartless first, which will spawn in waves and waves ad nauseam. Yes, it's a step up from random encounters that take you out of the game completely, but there was nothing more frustrating to me than seeing some guys spawn as I was one second away from a chest (which, by the way, is probably some crafting component or a gummi block).
One thing I do like is the way they handle abilities, and that's because it's basically the badge system from Paper Mario. You have a number of ability points from leveling up, and can assign whatever combination of moves you want if it fits under the limit. It gives you more customization of your character, which I really appreciate, and it's more liberal than the badge system.
Donald and Goofy are... not great. Well, Donald's okay because he can save your ass by casting cure on you. This tends to coincide with the exact same moment you decide to cast cure on yourself. I guess their hearts are linked or something. Goofy is pretty useless, though, and he was always the one swapped out for the world-specific Disney guys. They love to run right into attacks and die. Fortunately, they will revive on their own after a cooldown, so you don't have to waste any items or MP on them.
I will never play Dark Souls, because I struggled with a good few of the bosses in this game. Maybe I wasn't using magic right, maybe I was supposed to level grind, maybe I just suck, but a whole lot of bosses kicked my ass. I don't really have any commentary beyond that. It wasn't enjoyable.
These are a lot of personal gripes, I know, but the one thing I think is unambiguously bad in this game is the level design. Most of the worlds are mazes that look the same and are connected by black doorways. They don't make sense spacially like, say, a Zelda dungeon does. I get it's a cartoon world, but it's still frustrating. You frequently loop back around to areas you've already been to - or have you? and sometimes a poorly aimed jump or knockback from a hit can send you a long way backwards. The boss fights take place mostly in the same areas as regular gameplay, and as a result feel cramped and wonky. Even one of the NPCs (in the hub town, no less) admits, "Yeah, this place makes no sense. Fucked up, right?"
So, for all the complaints about the story and setup, the first Kingdom Hearts has... actually some serious issues in the gameplay department as well. Possible explanations:
- I went into the game predisposed to disliking it
- It's the first game, give them a break
- The game is old, it just hasn't aged the best
- It's just like that
Whatever the reason, playing this game burned me out on the possibility of going through the rest of the games on the collection any time soon. Maybe next year or later, but things are coming out and I don't want to spend that time watching the series go even further off the rails. I think I'll go watch Lion King and take a nap. My parting words to you: beware the darkness, because all things are darkness, yet the heart rejects darkness and turns that darkness into light which will open the door to the world heart door.
Or, as Mickey Mouse would say, "See ya real soon!"
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