There are plenty of reasons to write off the Kingdom Hearts series. From an unnecessarily complex and confusing story to a prolonged wait between mainline entries, it’s an easy series to walk away from, regardless of your affinity for it in your younger years. I started with the first game on PS2 back in 2002 and have sworn off the series at least three times. I’ve heard every dunk on the games and used a few myself. It also doesn’t help that the franchise’s two parent companies, Disney and Square Enix, keep doing shitty things. And with all this in mind, I regret to inform you that I am playing Kingdom Hearts once again.
In a media landscape where everything is a multiverse crossover for novelty and profit, Kingdom Hearts still somehow manages to feel unique. Combining Final Fantasy, Disney, and original Tetsuya Nomura characters works surprisingly well. For better or worse, there’s nothing else quite like it, and that’s what continues to draw me back.
When I recently got the urge to revisit the series, I went with the PS4 version of the first game. These most recent (PC / PS4 / Xbox) ports are my favorite way to play, with their clean visuals, fast loading, and 60fps gameplay. But even with these technical improvements, the first game is still pretty rough in spots. The camera is often fighting against you, literally pushing back on where you are trying to position it. That’s somewhat of a norm of the era, as is Kingdom Hearts’ bad platforming. It’s honestly shocking how a game so laser-focused on reaching a mainstream audiences manages to have such awkward Turok-ass platforming. I’ve played through this game multiple times and I still found myself in a state of despair trying to make it across the hippos in Deep Jungle.
With all of these flaws and baggage, why bother? Well, my controversial opinion is that the good far outweighs the bad with Kingdom Hearts. The simple and clean visuals remain charming today, upscaling nicely to higher resolutions. It also features some absolutely incredible music, from Hikaru Utada’s vocal tracks to Yoko Shimomura’s gorgeous score. If the appeal was mostly aesthetic, I could just watch videos or listen to the soundtrack, but I deeply love Kingdom Heart’s gameplay loop.
Beneath the seemingly simple mechanics lies a complex difficulty system. The game scales from chill hack-and-slash on beginner and normal difficulties to intense, strategic character action in Proud Mode. Regardless of the difficulty you play on, the general world-hopping loop is both satisfying and addicting. The worlds are mostly based on Disney properties, with a few Nomura-originals (and some Final Fantasy characters) sprinkled within.
I’d consider myself a moderate Disney fan. I don’t love their corporate practices, but I appreciate the hell out of (some of) the art and history. I love pretty much all of the Disney films represented in Kingdom Hearts 1, and feel like the stories and characters are handled with appropriate care (and some ridiculousness).
To call my relationship with Disney and Kingdom Hearts complicated would be an understatement. And yet, when the craving comes, nothing else hits quite the same way. The first game (like much of the series) is a beautiful mess. Clumsy yet refined, absurd yet earnest, Kingdom Hearts is exactly the mess I’m craving in this moment.
Played and captured on PS4.
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