I suspect because the site may skew older as "retro" games have a large presence. I think I was at the low end of the target audience for the first game (9 years old) when released but I think it gets too much hate. I was originally thrilled gb decided to do a series but it then became a bad running gag. Without making ben focus or someone to guide them through the bumps, i don't blame him for not getting into it. Not all 15 year old games age well, especially an action platformer. it does have depth in moves with different types, actions, ap, the trinity puzzles and different keyblades. I'm not here to say its perfect or the story is concise and easily understandable but its 2018. there are plenty of videos explaining it in 10-20 minutes that will give you an understanding of the large arch of the story and in playing you get the details.

It doesn't; because the games didn't age well; because just cause you think it's good doesn't mean others do; because your incorrect in assuming they hate the entire franchise; because its actually just a straight up bad series and always has been; because you failed to understand that a series called "Kingdom Heartache" was a goof from the very beginning and thus Ben's attempt at making a humorous series instead came off as insulting the game's fan base/the game.

Take your pick from any of those as it suits you.

@bladededge: This is a very good post.

I know that Giantbomb have gotten into Monster Hunter and Dragonball Z lately, but they're more likely to retroactively start obsessing over the recent crop of CRPG's than they are to start liking Kingdom Hearts.

Kingdom Hearts's overall aesthetic is the complete opposite of what most members of Giantbomb are into. I'm not just talking about art style - I'm talking about tone, dialog, characterization, pacing, and everything about the way it presents itself. The series has become a singularity of anime melancholy and when it's not that, it's a mess of utter nonsense. I don't personally dislike this - Kingdom Hearts 1 is a lot of fun, I like 2 a lot even though I've never finished it - but it's enough to turn some people completely away from it.

Even if the GB crew were on the fence about the series's aesthetic, the gameplay would make them turn tail and run. Kingdom Hearts 1 is rough in many spots, from the garbage level design of the early levels to the ever-finicky camera to the imprecise and tedious platforming. I've finished that game a couple of times in my life but I still sometimes wonder just what I find so fun about it. 2 improves things greatly, but I still feel like I spent a lot of time in that game merely locking on and mashing X and not really doing anything else.

And there you have it. Short version, I guess, is that it's a matter of taste and if Kingdom Hearts isn't in your wheelhouse, there's nothing about it that's worth paying attention to.

Kingdom Hearts more so than most other franchises was for a very specific audience at a very specific time. Most of the crew were not in that age group at the time and it hasn’t aged well for anyone coming to it for the first time.

I’m a fan of the games but I was right in that sweet spot of age bracket and Final Fantasy fan when they were first coming out.

As it turns out it’s ok for other people to not like something that you do

I feel like the staff is mildly predisposed to dislike any jrpg these days. Or at best look at it like this curiosity that they won't ultimately get into. There are exceptions, but generally I think that's true. And let's face it, the franchise hasn't done itself any favors in recent years of engendering good will towards it with people that were outside their hardcore fanbase. Even people that have an open mind about it just look at the convoluted naming conventions and needlessly obtuse story line and it becomes like this impenetrable thing. I'm honestly a bit surprised Disney signed off on the path the franchise has gone down. FWIW, I liked what I played of the first game. Square was riding high at the time and it was cool to see all these Disney characters in a rpg. It didn't purport to be anything more than fan service and I kinda dug that honesty about it. It started to go off the rails with KH2, and then just fully off the reservation after that.

As Jeff once said: "We put our voice and personalities out there, so you better understand where our opinion comes from."

Listening to this crew since 2005, you could say that I have a general idea about their tastes. There are some things that they simply won't give the light of day, and some things that they will surprisingly come around to appreciating. The GB crew never seemed to get a grip, a handle, on KH, but I can see why Monster Hunter had traction: they had some aspect to appreciate, which kindled a fire.

Personally, I treat it like a friend, whom I cannot convince to try some new music nor eat exotic cuisine. It's still an opinion I respect, and I've gotten more out of understanding why we disagree rather than just getting an echo chamber.

I think @justin258summarized it well: KH is a singularity of 2000s sanitary anime melancholy that has a large draw from a crossover that was once thought impossible. This will either appeal, stir curiosity from a distance, or invite derision.

I played KH1, because I appreciated the novelty of the crossover and the general quality of presentation.

I played KH2, because of leftover novelty and some surprising tonal directions it lightly explores.

I don't know how much of that old fascination could push me to play KH3, now that I'm goddamn 30 year old man, who has had to re-evaluate his love and tolerance for Japanese-style teen-rated melodrama.

I have bigger issues as to what GB has become, and why their critical opinions on current games aren't as clear as they were. However, that is a completely different thread, so I digress.

I wonder if anyone likes those Disney characters, if it was just Kindom Hearts with the Keyblade characters I would probably be okay with it but the dialogue from those Disney characters are like nails on a chalkboard. Also when the first one came out we were young and Disney was part of our life, we grew up and moved on. It's also a hard franchise to like because of its incomprehensible playing order, naming and being spread across multiple platforms plus that it lingered in purgatory for a decade.

It's because they've already lost their hearts to darkness. Xeff, Xrad, Xan, Xinny, no wait, that's not how it works. "Fexfj," "Arxdb," no I give up. Fuck these games.

Really it's probably because story-wise they're kinda insane and gameplay-wise they're kinda odd. "Never clicked with any of em" is always the most sensible bet.

I only ever watched the cutscenes, but everytime I see the gameplay the combat seems like you're fighting with foam weapons or something. There seems to be like zero impact to your attacks. Started the PSP one but never stuck with it.

Follow the munny

Those early parts of KH1 really are rough, as is a lot of the game in the modern age, so I'm not surprised Ben bounced off. I'm one of the people that played through it again when they did the first re release for Ps3. I had a fun time... revisiting something from my childhood that I still had a great fondness for. Having the recollection on many parts of the game allowed me to push through some of the more boring parts. Haven't replayed it again yet, but the same will go for KH2 when i inevitably go through it as well.

When Kingdom Hearts 3 eventually comes out I imagine the existing fan base will have a fun time with it and new people will approach it cautiously maybe even enjoying it to a degree depending on how modernized aspects of it's combat and level design are. There is just something I still find appealing about those first two games. And a lot of that comes from nostalgia, spending a lot of time with it as a kid, and the vestigial mystique media had back then that just can't be newly experienced as an adult. I feel like it's a series very much dependant on "time and place". The first game came out in 2002. I actually played some of 2 first and then went back to one. 2 came out in 2006, so I would have been like 10 or 11. The perfect age to get super into Kingdom hearts and other anime bullshit (I use this term endearingly)

Oh, and I'm one of the people that came to it for the disney parts rather than final fantasy. I actually remember hearing about it on the fucking Disney Channel and getting hyped. Never touched a single one of the square games until after I played kingdom hearts. So characters like Leon, Cloud, Aerith, etc. were new to me; adding a lot more to the mystique.

Because "Anime is for jerks." Different year, same shit.

@jetmet:I don't think the cast hate the games. They just make fun of them as they do other games. The community sometimes runs away with these jokes and it all gets very hyperbolic.

The series of Ben playing KH seems like a joke that just landed flat. It could've easily been done in a single episode if it was intended to be a goof. I'm not sure if he's confirmed if it was or wasn't meant as a goof - but in it's current state it looks like it was either a weak joke or the series just didn't take off/there wasn't time for it so it got left behind as other series have been in the past.

High school me loved Kingdom Hearts. Post college me tried to play them again and got to the beginning of two and just didn't like it anymore. They are not bad games but I do not think they are as amazing as I once thought they were. That being said, the staff can be very dismissive to certain games sometimes. I think very unfairly too and it gets annoying sometimes. It makes me want to listen to other, unnamed much more positive video game coverage sometimes.

the psp version=gross

also now I need a comparison of organization 13 with the gb crew thanks lol

I completely agree with this. the way the franchise was handled I think was poorly done. I never bothered to touch any of the handled games/ didnt even know they came out with them until 3 years after they started doing it. going from kingdom hearts 1 to 2 is almost a mistake considering how much happens in the games in between i.e. the whole roxas tutorial part in 2 was confusing and way too long if you never played the 3ds games. which were bad imo with the card engine and what not. never will play them but its so much info for the story

Anyone who says the games are incomprehensible haven't played them. It's a fairly straightforward franchise and since all of the main ones are playable on one console the story is accessible. The gameplay in KH 2 is legitimately good and challenging if you play it on anything above the normal difficulty. It's not a game for everyone, it's very much in the JRPG camp where friendship is magical and darkness is generally the ultimate evil and the villain has a maniacal plan and blah blah, but there's nothing incomprehensible or hard to follow about them unless all you do is play the numbered titles.

Metal Gear Solid is more incomprehensible and stupid than Kingdom Hearts lore wise.

Kingdom Hearts 3 will win Giant Bomb's 2018 Best Style award. Ha.

Ive been lifer with the crew and they are really the ones i followed when i started really getting into the gaming industry. I never imagined that the crew in general would ever like KH and I can live with that. they were never in the demographic, they never cared about disney (for the same reason as just mentioned), and jrpgs were never going to be any kind of popular. I had hoped that KH would get the same treatment that the garfield game got. it sucks, we all know it sucks but lets just see where this goes. I think partly its because garfield is an older character that would be their equivalent of a disney for jeff. I have cautious optimism about KH3 being that its the first game that was on a real machine in 13 years. I do like your mention of monster hunter because Im so curious if KH 3 is released and if it is a considered a great game how the crew will think about it. we are seeing jeff starting to get into dbz with the new game coming out so im hoping KH 3 will have the same effect.

i can 100% see this happening because the art style is pretty cool and with sora goofy and donald changing per world it gives it a Mario Odyssey advantage at the styyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyle category

idk if you should expect everyone to play other the other titles because the only thing they share are the titles and the stories. if you got 4 people in a room and they played 365/2 days, dream drop distance, kingdom hearts 2, and kingdom hearts x together it would be completely possible for each person to like only one of those versions. I dont have any reference to MGS but when you have completely different games over completely different consoles its harder not to just play kh 1 and 2.

Because it's aimed at children, confusing, and nonsensical if you look from the outside in. The big hook of the first game was also that it meshed 2 properties that none of them could care any less about. Pair that with a very very dedicated fanbase and it makes for a series that's super easy to mock. I bet if there were 8 Ni No Kuni games and the plot got to a point where it was as crazy anime as KH, people would start mocking that too.

And while the quality level of KH 1 & 2 is pretty high, a lot of the smaller games weren't great and diminished the critical opinion of the series. It was also rediculously hard to stay a 'fan', given that you needed to buy like 3,4 different systems to keep up with the series. Luckily that part has been mostly fixed now. Although.. you still need to find out why exactly Kingdom Hearts 2 is not in the 2.8 version but in the 2.5 version. Their naming conventions aren't cute, they're just plain annoying and somewhat deceptive. I've definitly seen people buy the wrong version on a whim, and realizing that they still didn't have Kingdom Hearts 2 despite there being a 2 in the title.

Also a person consists out of a body, heart and soul. You would think that (Person - Heart = Heartless). Wrong. (Person - Heart = Nobody).

also sanctuary kingdom hearts is one of the best theme songs for a game of all time. @me

kingdom hearts is fucking awesome and ya'lls hearts went to the darkness clearly. *middle finger*

I will defend Kingdom Hearts 1 to a certain extent because I have a some nostalgia for that game, and I do think it is a very interesting Action RPG that despite being flawed in many ways really goes for something unique and in certain aspects I think it succeeds.

I played through KH2 in my 20's and had a mostly negative experience. I didn't like much of the level design of the worlds, I didn't like the new characters or where they took the plot. Haven't played any of the other titles but they haven't really appealed to me.

@jetmet: Yeah... I was initially being sarcastic because I know it wouldn't be likely that any of the other games would have ever gotten that, but three does look good. Especially using Pixar's stories could help. I don't think it'll actually win though or probably even be on their mind.

Remember when Jeff sat in with Carrie on the KH2 review? Hmm. Let me see if I can find it. Here we go!

@ntm: Huh weird, I've never seen this and I've never seen any extended video review on GameSpot like this where they are taking questions and stuff. Was KH2 really that huge of a deal?
I guess KH1 was a pretty big thing as well because I remember seeing TV ads for it pretty frequently here in Sweden and that was pretty uncommon for there to be video game ads on TV, especially back in 2002.

@boonsong: Back in 2005 they did it with a few games. Greg Kasavin also did this with MGS3: Subsistence (also with Jeff).

I was 12 when KH1 came out and played it around 14. By that point, I've 100% FFX and a few other JRPG so it seems like my kind of game but the gameplay just didn't sat well with me. I remember really really hating the platforming sections. The only part that I really enjoy is the gummi ship building section. My friend's little brother who was maybe 9-10 at that time loved the story and gameplay. So, I do think that there is a factor of the game being aimed toward children and most defenders of the series played it at a young age.

I agree with OP on this one. I am a KH fan, so maybe I'm biased, but I feel much the same way. I "got" the joke much quicker watching Kingdom Heartache, though it took longer than it should since I was dumb enough to think someone was going to do something more than make a short series which could have been alternatively titled "lol Anime Bullshit".

I'm not saying people should force themselves to like things they don't, but being a fan who was kind of happy "the new guy" was giving this notoriously mocked series an honest try, only to have it slowly dawn on me that Kingdom Heartache was just a Sora dunking vessel... well, I'll admit to being kind of disappointed. I don't think it was mean-spirited and I know I should just go along with it, but it's hard to feel like the joke was "Man, Kingdom Hearts is weird, huh?" as I think was intended and more "Ha-ha, I already know what my opinions on this are."

I have been trying to find a way to make the statement "naive me for believing Ben was giving KH an honest go of it instead of just dunking on it for five hours" without sounding like a cheeky shit; I don't think it's possible. But I mean that in the most straightforward sense. I don't have ill will towards Ben, I just thought his joke was flat.

@ntm: let me live in my fantasy of lies please

also please use the sarcasm font because this is the internet.

Literally all the games leading up to KH3 are available on one console now with enhancements and alterations to make them more familiar and in line with the Final Mix version of KH1 and 2. Granted the change in ability and systems present in Birth by Sleep and Dream Drop Distance are still there but the games play similarly enough, Chain of Memories the exception, that the only difference is in the way abilities are learned and doled out in the ports of the handheld games. And the KH3 prologue game is like a blending of the Birth By Sleep style with mainline KH games.

100% had the same feelings going into it.

*about to make a statement that has nothing to do with the thread but feel like it needs to be said in this context*

with the infusion of ben I feel like he is just an extension of jeff and brad while being younger and more into anime. its why i think he got a lot more hate than abby because we are just hearing the same opinions with a younger perspective rather than hiring someone out of their comfort zone that pushes them to do things they wouldnt. i.e. the sims series and the dating sim series. i digress

If you are a new person coming into a series do you really want to feel like you need to play 6 games to understand the story? especially when the game is called Kingdom hearts 3. Like i said in OP you could 100% watch a video online to get the story but the price of entry is wayy too high when needing to play a game thats closer to 20 years old than 10.

plug for what I think is a pretty good summary on the story

Yes. Absolutely. It's not like Final Fantasy where every game is its own thing. It's a series. And it would be like showing up to, say, Avengers: Infinity War having only seen Avengers 1 and 2. And considering the HD versions are more in line with more modern stylings I dont even think it's that much of a barrier to entry. The games still play well.

@jetmet: There was nowhere in what I wrote that would make sense if I used italicize. To do sarcasm, you don't always need to bold or italicise. I wrote 'ha' as a way to convey that I was joking, and the irony of Giant Bomb giving KH3 a style award considering they aren't so hot on the series was also a way to say I was being sarcastic. Lastly, I am a fan of Kingdom Hearts myself. There are things I dislike, but overall I'm a fan. I still have to finish a few of the games, but I'm not sure I'll do that before three comes out.

@ntm: im curious what others think and dont want to get off topic

https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/off-topic-31/is-there-such-a-thing-as-a-sarcasm-font-1819040/

@jetmet: No, that all totally makes sense. I definitely don't agree with the hate from people, but I can "get" it. The part where Ben is "Jeff or Brad but more into anime" was why I was optimistic about Heartache. If ANYONE on the past or current crew - besides maybe Austin - would have tried getting into KH it would be Ben. That's kind of why Heartache felt like such a blindside.

I've got no great love of KH and bounced off it more than once, but I really didn't like that feature. Felt like non-stop cheap digs at what they thought was an easy target and I don't see the value in it. Maybe it would work with some steam store broken rubbish but just shitting on a game that a lot of people find pleasure in felt unnecessary to me.

That being said there are plenty of genres that don't get much representation here but they've always said they cover the games they're interested in and I can respect that and accept I'm not gonna get hot JRPG takes here. Hating something and not being interested in it are very different things.

When someone "wants to get into the story" of something, that means they should experience the installments of said franchise that tells that story, no?...I mean what else do they expect? A series is a series.

Also the price of entry is roughly the cost of a full price new game. It's not high and they're all in one place.

Releasing the games on 6 different systems as it was ongoing was silly though, I'll give you that. Thank fuck for the collections. I'm glad to own them myself. They're really well done and make the DS games movies.

Because it's easier to make fun of things you don't understand instead of trying to understand them.

It's not just this site it's the internet at large. It's an easy target because of the funny names and story that's incomprehensible unless you put the work in to actually play all the games. The second part doesn't even really make sense because people love that about MGS4. Also a big part of it might be the size and vocality of the fanbase. When a small fanbase is too vocal about a piece of media the community a large considers "weird" I find there's a large push back and bullying of that fanbase, even by people who I would expect better from. Same thing happens with Homestuck.

However I will admit that while most of the games have stood the test of time, at this point KH1 is very hard to play for the first time. Watching Kingdom Heartache, even though there was an air of sarcasm and nastiness to the whole thing, I really think Ben was planning on finishing it if he hadn't gotten so frustrated with it. I originally played it when I was a kid and had tons of time and patience to find my way around, and these days I can just fly through it because I remember where to go. But Ben was obviously having real trouble getting through it, getting lost for dozens of minutes at a time. Admittedly that was sometimes his fault because he didn't pay attention to the cut scenes, but often it wasn't. Those levels can be real mazes if you don't know them, with little direction towards your goal. I remember as a kid not being able to find the fishes in Destiny Islands, and only figuring it out because I happened to swim over one.

You make it sound like KH is some misunderstood masterpiece.

@crazybagman: You make it sound like anyone who thinks it is a masterpiece is objectively wrong when it's all opinion.

Hey, I like the Kingdom Hearts franchise but even I can accept the fact that it's mostly anime bullshit and is completely impenetrable to the common person. If you don't like Disney or anime there's absolutely nothing there for you.

It makes a bit more sense when the story of Metal Gear is about tough dudes, nuclear war, science and weapons while Kingdom Hearts is about kids in clowny clothes, the power of friendship, pure hearts , nobodies, heartless and you have to hang out with Donald duck.

It's also very much targeted to young kids, while metal gear's substance matter is more targeted at the teen / mature segment. I remember playing Ni No Kuni when i was 22, and it made me realize that i was probably too old for that story. It was a fine game, but all the 'we need to fill this heart with courage' type of quests made me realize that i would probably wince at kingdom hearts if i didn't grew up with it.

I feel like the only way to put this thing to bed is to have Ben do one last Kingdom Heartache video that is sincere instead of sarcastic. He doesn’t have to force himself to like the game, just do it in a way that makes the people who liked Kingdom Hearts not feel like fools.

I think it mostly has to do with the staff's tastes. They are more often to like western games and definitely not JRPGs. I can't even remember the last time they played a non-Final Fantasy JRPG.

@onemanarmyy: No one's "too old" for anything as long as they like it. Maybe you don't like it, but others are allowed to no matter their age. Societal norms have told us that we have to be manly men and not engage with anything too "kiddy" but it's all macho bullshit.