Kingdom Hearts Review

Darkness V Light: The Video Game

                                         Kingdom Hearts
                          A Journalistic Review by DefiantParrot
                              *Warning: Contains Spoilers*
                            Originally Written: 12/16/2018
                                                                                           
Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: Playstation 2
Genre: Action RPG
Release: September 17, 2002


Oh my god Kingdom Hearts III is almost here!! Oh it looks so good! Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. and the Pirates AHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, okay chill the fuck out Parrot. Ahem, with the Kingdom Hearts game myself and so many others have waited so long for finally, finally coming to us soon, I figured now was the best time to look back at where the series started. This is Kingdom Hearts.

I remember the advertisements for this game vividly, this was such an odd thing to see, disney and Final Fantasy what is this? But nevertheless I was intrigued, mainly for the Disney as I didn't play Final Fantasy at the time.

I ended up playing the hell out of Kingdom Hearts II and replaying it a number of times but I never actually finished the original so this has actually been a long time coming for me.

I was so curious. I had to try it

Aside from the Disney fan service I loved, another thing that caught my attention was how the game played. This was an action RPG, none of that turn based Final Fantasy stuff this was an RPG the way I like it, and let me start there I love the combat in this game.

It can take some getting used to, because it does sort of blend the two styles together almost like Ni no Kuni did. Selecting your action from a menu in battle can be disorienting if you're not used to it, but once down it becomes second nature. Only problem in combat or platforming is the fucking camera. This is an early PS2 game, meaning we're back in the dark ages folks where no one knew what to use the second analog stick for. As such the camera is controlled by the L2 and R2 buttons here and while not terrible all the time, can fuck up where you are sometimes, whether in the middle of a heated battle or just trying to jump to the next platform.

Fast and frantic is how I like it

Of course combat is what you'll mainly be doing in this game, and admittedly it can get a tad repetitive I suppose, hell the magic abilities aren't all that useful so hacking and slash will probably be the bulk of your damage output.

But look at me jumping to controls and combat and not even touching the story. You play as Sora a typical anime hero who lives on an island with his friends Riku and Kairi. Together they dream of leaving their home to explore different worlds. One night terrible creatures known as the Heartless, that really reminds me of those shadow creatures in Ghost attack their home separating the youngsters.

Sora is bestowed the Keyblade a weapon that.... okay yeah I know it's fucking silly but Donald Duck is also a black mage here, what-the-fuck-ever I can get over the car key weapon.

Anyway the Keyblade can defeat the Heartless and as the seemingly chosen one Donald Duck and Goofy team up with him to fight the Heartless, look for Sora's friends and search for their missing king.

The story here is fine, easy to follow and nowhere near as convoluted as it will be in the next games but it's nothing really spectacular to me. I don't recommend this series because of the plot I recommend it for fan service and for the gameplay.

The game looks pretty good on the PS2 still. The colors and animation is really good and can be a sight to behold, of course when the game saves on animation, and everyone gets to puppet mouths and lip animations are almost nonexistent it can be annoyingly noticeable.

Now fan service isn't really a bad thing, even though I wasn't and still aren't much of a Final Fantasy fan the first time I saw Cloud I was excited, and Sephiroth is here too! That's awesome but fuck he's kicking my ass!

WHY MUST YOU HURT ME?!

The different worlds Sora and company explores are mostly from different Disney movies.

The lush jungle from Tarzan
The Acid Trip from Alice in Wonderland
The motherfucking whale from Pinocchio
The gladiator arena from Hercules
The scurvy riddened ship from Peter Pan
Prince of Persia from Aladdin
Deep Blue Sea from The Little Mermaid
Tim Burton Land from Nightmare Before Christmas
and finally the storybook from Winnie the Pooh

In many of these worlds you do the same thing, follow an abridged story of the world/film. Battle some Heartless and seal the Keyhole, kinda like the Heart of the world. Although some world's do mix it up, for instance in the 100 Acre Wood you're not really battling and monsters instead you're playing Mini-games with Pooh and his friends.

In Atlantica while you are still fighting Heartless, the controls are altered as you are now, UNDER A SEA!!!! Which I remember being the fucking worst when I played this game growing up, I hated this world and the Ursula boss fight I just stopped playing.

As for replaying now it, really wasn't bad at all. Guess I just need to git gud back then.

Still not great but, not as bad as I remember it

Ahh there's something to talk about, the difficulty this is not a really difficult game. Fun to play absolutely but the Heartless aren't much of a threat from Sora's keyblade attacks, magic, limit abilities he can get from leveling up, assistance from Donald, Goofy or whoever else may be in the party the Heartless really stand no chance against you, and that's not even taking into account the summons you can get.

My Battle Mistress

Yeah just like in FF, Sora can summon some allies to help in battle. But all these are Disney characters even some that really don't fit in with a battle to the death. Like Bambi, or Dumbo but hands down the best one is Tinker Bell, once you get her there's no reason you should ever die, I don't care what you're fighting. Also no real reason to use the other summons, fuck you get Mushu aftert Tinker Bell and the poor red fucker never got invited to play with me. It was just me and Tink the whole way through.


I played this game on the highest difficulty and I didn't have too much trouble, save for some bosses, like the superbosses. Yeah the superbosses in this game were originally exclusive for North America, but Japan would later get them with the Final Mix version of this game.

And the superbosses are a blast to fight, I already mentioned Sephiroth who is the hardest boss in this game. But the Ice Titan and Phantom from Neverland were also cool as hell. My biggest disappointment is that from defeating these tough bastards you get.... nothing.

Now in Final Mix you get cool rewards for defeating them, like a new Keyblade for kicking Sephiroth's Lance Bass voiced ass. But in vanilla Kingdom Hearts here in the north? We get jack and shit.

Of course we later got the Final Mix versions too, but I'm not reviewing those, I'm looking at what we got on the Playstation 2.

Now for those rare occasions where you do die, like for me in the boss fight with Maleficent, you will have to sit through an unskippable cutscene to get to the fight again, and after two times it got annoying. Unskippable cutscenes are always irritiating, that's just a rule folks.

God I just don't fucking care

To get to these different worlds, Sora and the gang travel by ship. A gummi ship that is, and the game becomes a 3D galaga style game and I fucking hate these. I just do, yes it's true you can customize this thing to hell and back and can come up with some really cool designs with awesome capabilities that mow down the fucking enemies. But it looks dull and I just wanna get back to the ground combat and seeing Goofy smack a fool.


I played throughout the entire game this time without upgrading or even touching this fucking thing, if you like it cool, I don't. Then again maybe the reason I didn't bother upgrading or cuztomizing this thing is because the screens in which you do that are confusing and convoluted as fucking hell.

Exploration in the different worlds is a big thing. Particularly for the bigger ones, you may find a chest, new enemies one of the many Trinity marks that can be activated to get you new goodies. There's alot to find even Pongo and Perdita have lost their puppies throughout the worlds and you can find the littles guys. Doing so gets you goodies and if you collect them all you get the final upgrade to your wind magic. So you're usually rewarded for exploring.

THE MUSIC!!!!!!!!

The music in this game is definitely a win as well from the anime as shit opening song Simple and Clean. To the various music in the different worlds with every one having a different battle theme which is nice!!!!


The Agrabah theme is cool as hell and I couldn't stop bobbing my head and dancing along to Nightmare Before Christmas. Of course the drawback I have to these worlds is that often times they are almost barren.

We're not at the worst of it yet, but aside from a few characters the worlds seem empty. Not really many inhabitants of this world, which since these are based off of films many of us grew up with can be jarring.

Fuck you Frosty!

Which speaking of that last comment, I think you have to really be a fan of Disney to enjoy this game. Yes most people grew up with these movies but for those that didn't. I don't think these worlds would mean much to you. As I said the stories are heavily abridged and they are lacking the charm that the original movies had.

So there's some good and there's some bad where do I fall on this game?


Well I can see why I ended up putting it down back in the day, I picked this game up after I had already played Kingdom Hearts II which does alot of what this game does, but better. I know that's not really fair to this game but, unless you really care about the story. I think Kingdom Hearts II is the better game to play.

Kingdom Hearts receives my Silver Seal of Recommendation

For when fan service is your ally

As an action RPG Kingdom Hearts is a great game, the story is basically gibberish the gummi ship missions are just not needed and the difficulty can be disappointing. But the game shines where it needs to I think, and I know I said the sequel is better in every way but that's what a sequel is supposed to do. This is a good game and if you somehow have never played this series then I suggest you do so. Either start here, or try to start at two. But good fucking luck understanding any goddamn thing either way.
















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