So how do you take two random things, mesh them together and get something epicly awesome? Well somehow Squaresoft managed to do it in the master piece. At first I was unsure of what to make of this union, since Final Fantasy in of itself is more adult where as Disney was on the other side of the coins and catered to children. But right out of the gate, Square does it right, as the story doesn't center around the Disney cast, but rather an original character, Sora.
Now I will say up front, I am a Riku fan girl, and where Sora isn't a bad hero, I would have really liked to see more of Riku. But for what the game can offer, you'll still be eager to see the story unfold. The blend of both Final Fantasy and Disney is well polished as the Final fantasy characters are sprinkled in here and there and they never upstage the spotlight. Though I have to wonder how it was decided that these Final Fantasy characters were chosen instead of others;
"We need Final Fantasy characters! Any suggestions?"
"How about characters from 7, 8 and 10?"
"Brilliant!"
"What about 9?"
".... We don't talk about 9."
Yeah, yeah, I know Vivi is in KH2, but for the moment we are talkin KH1. Anyway, the game play was inventive and the redesigns for some of the FF characters were flawless in how they melded into the Kingdom Hearts world. Even in personality, the characters seemed to be better than they had previously. Seriously; Leon > Squall, he's not a complete emo git.
So the basic run down of the story is that Riku wants to set out on an adventure and get of his home island and his two best friends; Sora and Kairi, decide to go with him and build a raft. In the middle of the night a storm breaks out and Sora is worried about the raft so he rushes out to keep it safe, but he then sees Riku in the midst of the storm proclaiming "I'm not afraid of the darkness" and thus they are swept away to new worlds and Sora is chosen by the mystical Keyblade. Sora meets Donald and Goofy not long after he awakens in Traverse Town and learn that they are looking for their king. Since Sora is looking for his friends too, they team up and travel to other Disney worlds. Along the way you begin saving each world and learn of the Princess' of Heart, you see no sign of the king, but you run into Riku from time to time and he becomes a major douche bag. He tells Sora that Kairi has lost her heart and that he's determined to get it back for her since Sora can't be bothered. Upon reaching Hallow Bastion Riku shows Sora that he is not fit to be the Keyblade Master and takes the weapon from him, baffling Sora's companions as Sora was supposed to be "the one" and as such, Donald and Goofy follow the Keyblade. Not long after Sora regains control of the Keyblade and Riku gets possessed by the main villain; Ansem. Sora and company now knowing partly with who they are dealing with, save the Princesses and Kairi and now move forward to save Riku, with hopes of also finding the king. We end with Ansem opening Kingdom Hearts, a giant door, and gets obliterated by a huge flash of light. Inside you see countless Heartless and darkness, but who should appear with a solid gold keyblade, but Mickey Mouse, the king they had been searching for the entire game. He tells Sora that the only way to gold off the heartless is to seal the door once again; Sora, Donald and Goofy push from ones side and have trouble moving it, but then Sora is surprised to see his best friend on the other side helping to pull the door closed. Once the door is shut the ground begins to crumble as Kiari made her way to Sora. They hold hands briefly as Sora says; "I'll find a way back to you I promise." The ground splits and their hold on the other is lost as they are separated once again. So we leave our three heroes to once again go in search of their friend and king.
Overall the story was simple and well thought out, but when you think about it, the worlds you go to kind of have no impact on the main story, save for their being a Princess of Heart in every world. And that brings up a question; why wasn't Aeril a Princess of Heart? Anyway, the worlds that were chosen were interesting and pretty much stuck to their original stories from their movies with only slight alterations to compensate for the additional characters. The soundtrack was fantastic, using original music as well as renditions of the classic Disney tunes. Of course, my favorite part of it all was that Utada Hikaru, a very well known J-Pop artist, did the opening in both Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II.
Kingdom Heats was also the first in a series to get an abridge sequel with Chain of Memories. For being on the GBA the graphics were really impressive as its cutscenes, though not voice acted, were in game graphics of the PS2. In all honesty this game kinda sucked... kinda. The only pieces of story you actually needed to see were between floors of Castle Oblivion, but what made playing this worth it was that after you completed Sora's story you opened up a mody entitled; "Reverse Rebirth" where you played through as Riku (fangirl squee). Basic run down for Sora was that this castle was slowly erasing his memory. Really, that's it. At the end he is placed in this egg thing for one year so his memories could be reconstructed. Also I would like to point out that you revisit all the worlds from the first Kingdom Hearts, literally making this "Kingdom Hearts Light", with the exception to the first Disney world you go to; Tarzan. So... yeah, did he forget all about Tarzan just by stepping into the castle? Riku's story is slightly more complex as it reflects on his actions in the previous game and his inner struggle with himself. At the end he and Mickey are approached by a man known as DiZ and he seeks their help in learning about the mysterious Organization.
And a few years later the fans were graced with Kingdom Hearts II. In the original game you could unlock a secret movie that foreshadowed this sequel game, but it was in the Final Mix version that was only released in Japan (I WILL rant about this later), that really nailed the anticipation amongst fans. My boyfriend and I even started to theorize what was to happen and even paused the secret ending video to write down what was being said on the countdown. But now, with KH2 out it was time to see if we were right.
The game opens with you playing as a new character, Roxas, in a place known as Twilight Town. This part of the game I will confess, is rather dull. All you do is mindless chores aka mini games, as the days go by. We are also introduced to 6 new Final Fantasy characters; Siefer, Fujin and Raijin from FF8, Vivi from FF9 and (let my fangirl-ness shine again; squee) Setzer from FF6. Now sadly, like most of the FF cast in this game they play a very minor role. As each of these characters are only here for the tournament being held. Once we go through at least 2-3 hours of game play Roxas now vanishes and we then see Sora awakening from his nap. And from here on, the story pretty much follows that of the first Kingdom Hearts; jump from world to world in hopes of finding Riku and King Mickey. Some new worlds were introduced in place of some of the old ones where as some of the old return. The Aladdin world basically takes on the story of "Return of Jafar" and Atlantica, The Little Mermaid world, takes on the story of.... well The Little Mermaid.
Let me back up a second; in Kingdom Hearts Atlantica was actually one of the harder worlds, as the controls for the swimming were quite awkward and the only real story piece from the movies you saw were her saying one day she would like to go to the surface and the attack by the giant shark. In Kingdom Hearts II... we get this;
They turned the world into blasted mini games! Now I know The Little Mermaid was highly influenced by music since it was Aerli's voice Ursula was after, but seriously? We already have a world that is mini games; The 100 Acre Wood, so why give us another one? Not to mention Twilight Town is littered with them because of the chores. Anyway back to the story; it doesn't really pick up till you hit a world known as Radiant Garden aka Hallow Bastion. It's here where we meet another set of Final Fantasy characters; the Gullwings from FFX-2; Yuna, Riku and Paine. This also where we learn the truth that Ansem isn't really Ansem, and that the person we fight in the first game was called Xeonort and that his heartless looked like Ansem. Make sense? Yeah, I didn't think so. Xenonort launches an attack on Radiant Garden and thus results in my favorite part of the game; the 1000 Heartless fight. On the way to this monster of a battle you get scenes of some of the Final Fantasy characters taking on the heartless. Once the 1000 fight is done there is a boss battle with to be had with a member of Organization XIII, when the battle is finished Mickey comes out of hiding wanting to take over. Goofy sees a bolder being launched towards the king and like any noble knight, Goofy takes a hard hit to the head and is rendered unconscious and presumed dead, filling Mickey with rage as he says; "They'll pay for this", throws off his cloak, summons his keyblade and runs off. It was really quite epic to see Mickey pissed off. We learn more about the nobodies and make our way to "The World that Never Was" where Sora is once again reunited with Kairi, who has her own Keyblade now, and Ansem? No, it's Riku who looks like Ansem. They follow DiZ's instructions and when the same light from the first game appears, Riku shields his friends and when it fades he is once again back to normal. I will admit, I can't for the life of me remember the reasoning as to why he looked like Ansem was in the game, but I think it has to do with how he viewed himself; as a monster. Also we once again get a scene with Roxas and Namine as we learn that they were Sora and Kairi's nobodies and funny enough Kiari isn't phased at all by this. But with all this said and done you are ready to head into the final fight. This boss fight is just interesting because you only have Sora and Riku and it's pretty circumstantial on what needs to be done. But the final round with Xenort/Xemnas is pretty cool. As I said I am a Riku fan girl, but this here gave Sora some serious badassery points.
In the end they are stuck in Limbo so to speak with Riku slightly injured as a bottle washes up onto sure with a letter inside. After reading it a door opens as Sora stands and extends his hand to Riku and says; "We'll go together". They make their way home and all is well, till after the credits and they get a letter with the King's seal on it.
Now let me say, I did enjoy KH2 for what it was, though I did find it rather short. The soundtrack was just as top notch as its previous installment and the gameplay improved as there were less problems with the camera being obstructive. I may be forgetting some key points in the story, such as why is Xeonort called Xemnas? They are the same person, but I don't recall it being explained. (Though it might be in Birth By Sleep or 358/2) And show of hands; who knew that Roxas was Sora's nobody BEFORE the game came out? *raises hand* Where as the story is decent with a lot of fond moments, it almost feels slightly lazy in spots or it could just be to the point that they over hyped the character.
And that will lead me into why I love and loathe this series. I love it because it's very original in the sense of how things can cross over and not suck, the gameplay is unique and it's generally just beautiful to look at and listen to. I loathe it because the challenges they have you do for the secret endings are a tad ridiculous; beating Sephiroth for one.... yeah, no thanks. Yes, I do understand the point of a challenge, but there is challenge and then there is masochistic. But I can look past that in comparison to the fact that the re-release the game in Japan after the NA version comes out because we get extras, so the Japanese want the extra so they get those and even MORE extras. And we will never see these games outside of Japan because they believe that the English populous won't rebuy something they already own and played through. Um... yeah we would, since you added MORE story.
Overall Kingdom Hearts is an enjoyable series, I just wish they would stop milking it with these filler games (though BBS is okay in my book cause it explains the keyblades), but they seriously just need to make KH3. See you all next time! ^^/
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