When I was around 12 years old, my cousin introduced me to a game with a spiky haired
keyblade master running around an Aladdin-inspired world with Donald and Goofy and I instantly
fell in love.
Kingdom Hearts ranked #2 in my Top 10 PS2 Games and as I said in that video, something
about the themes of light, darkness and friendship really tugged at my angsty teen heartstrings.
Plus the combination of Final Fantasy and Disney characters was just crazy enough to work.
Then Kingdom Hearts 2 came along, and while it made some big changes to gameplay and story,
I remember loving it all the same.
But with Kingdom Hearts 3 just on the horizon, I thought it would be a good idea to analyze
the first two installments to see what worked, what didn't work, and what we
might expect out of the newest game later this year.
Let's talk about it.
I think a big part of what made Kingdom Hearts 1 work, is that relatively speaking it was simple.
A young boy on a solitary island gets whisked away to various worlds to go on a wild adventure
to find his friends.
Are we gonna talk about how they all have parents but totally don't care about ever
seeing them again? No?
The threat of a main villain is clear from the beginning and for the most part it doesn't
get convoluted.
Ansem is the big bad, end of story.
Then Kingdom Hearts 2 threw ALL OF THAT AWAY, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
There's a consistent goal throughout and while yes, there are other bosses and smaller climaxes
along the way, it has a lot to offer without bogging down the experience.
Visiting the various Disney worlds and seeing the characters you've loved since childhood
in these new wacky situations that also relate to the main plot was amazing, and something
I'd never really seen before.
Rolling up to a new planet and being like "oh man what is it gonna be, I have no idea!
WHAT a Nightmare Before Christmas Level?
Are you serious!" is something this game only could have done because of its source
material - it creates something familiar and new all at the same time.
A lot of people say the combat was a weak spot in Kingdom Hearts 1, and while I do agree
that near the beginning being limited to the same 3 hit combo over and over got old sort
of quickly, by the end it feels pretty fluid and smooth.
By adding special abilities and extra hits to your combos you really feel like Sora is
growing as a fighter compared to how he began, and combining this with magic, summons and
finishing moves really makes your arsenal feel diverse and powerful.
I hit one major roadblock in my playthrough, and that was the giant Ursula fight.
1 because the controls are a little wonky, but 2 because her attacks are really powerful
and she never lets up on the lightning strikes that wear you down really easily.
What's cool is this teaches you to think outside the box and use Aero as a shield to
stay alive.
She has a weak spot on the back of her head and sometimes you'll have to move way back
to avoid getting pulverized.
It's a pretty dynamic fight, unfortunately it's the outlier, and for the most part
all those extra options for support aren't really that useful and you can stick to button
mashing to get through encounters.
They tried to fix this in Kingdom Hearts 2 with the pirates of Port Royal being weaker
to magic and inflicting status effects on them, as well as being invulnerable in the
shadows so you have to be mindful of the environment, but frankly, the problem of too many options
and not enough reason to use them is one that the series has always struggled with.
Luckily, Kingdom Hearts is about a lot more than fighting through waves of enemies, you
gain powerups like a high jump and glide which allow you to go back through old areas and
find new goodies that you couldn't reach before, but they also help you get around
faster in general.
It was about exploring just as much as killing heartless or unlocking keyholes.
There's a lot to discover, from Trinity Limits, to dalmations, to Torn Pages that
open up bonus worlds!
Perhaps my favorite part though, is the endgame optional boss fights.
They kick my butt over and over again but the fact that they can just pop up out of
the sand to make my day so much worse was an incredible surprise.
I have never come close to beating Sephiroth but I ain't even mad about that, he's
a beast.
They even added a few more in the Final Mix versions, but that's kind of the only noteworthy
thing about them.
It's a full package and one that seems to have something for everyone.
I hate the gummi ship and have no interest in building legos here, but that's sort
of what Kingdom Hearts is at its core - a melding of all sorts of different genres together.
It's got things for kids and adults, noobs or veterans, fans of Disney as well as K-pop.
But what about Kingdom Hearts 2?
In a lot of ways it's a fantastic sequel - new and old Disney worlds, better graphics
and a bigger story.
Probably the best overhaul was the combat, now adding in the drive gauge so Sora can
wield two keyblades at once - seriously as a teenage boy this was a dream come true.
I didn't mind the addition of reaction commands taking a more dominant role, unless it was
the only way to defeat a boss or something.
It definitely felt more stylized and an improvement on what the first game lacked.
Sora has grown up now, just like me so I felt an even stronger connection with him this
time around.
Things are more mature, but still lighthearted enough to not be uncomparable.
The new locals and friends you meet along the way were really great expansions on the
original, like The Pride Lands allowing you to become a lion and move around super fast,
or entering the real-life realm of Pirates of the Caribbean.
Even the aesthetic changes you undergo in the Timeless River or the Tron stage make
you feel like anything is possible and you can't wait to see what happens next.
The old worlds you visit are also wonderfully innovative, like entering the Underworld with
Hercules or meeting Sandy Claws with Jack Skellington.
It feels like a natural progression of their stories, and is a perfect blend of recognizable
areas and uncharted territories.
While Kingdom Hearts 2 has a lot going for it, there are some pretty pervasive downsides
that I noticed on this recent playthrough.
The first is what I'll call "the minigame dilemma".
Your second adventure definitely gets more creative with the tasks it wants you to do,
but it falls into this trap of framing everything in the form of various minigames that need
completed in order to progress the story.
Protect Minnie Mouse as she walks slowly down the hallway, Defeat these Heartless but make
sure your morale meter doesn't deplete, Beat these guys before the time runs out,
or also beat these guys until the time runs out.
It feels like you go from watching a cutscene to being put in a closed off box to deal with
a situation and then watching another cutscene - rinse and repeat.
To be fair, this occasionally leads to some cool encounters, like making sure all the
cursed gold is in the chest to be able to damage this boss, or battling 1000 heartless
at once in an all out war, but most of the time it feels like an arbitrary limitation
placed on a battle for little to no reason.
Remember how I said Kingdom Hearts 1 was all about exploring and solving the puzzles of
how to advance in the world or open new pathways?
Kingdom Hearts 2 feels like you're walking down a 1-way street with no other options
of how to get around, it's much more linear with less freedom to discover what to do on
your own.
Your goal is very clearly placed in front of you, and it feels like you're just working
your way through chores on a checklist to reach the next mission.
Like look at Monstro's Belly or Agrabah in the first game, it pretty much just lets
you go to figure out how to proceed by exploring the maze and finding the key to open the exit
or secret door.
Wonderland makes you track down the hidden presents around the world, once you unlock
the mermaid kick ability in Atlantica you have to go find the hidden alcove that Ursula
is hiding in, good luck.
Now I'm not saying all of these are perfect either, The Deep Jungle has you backtracking
all over the place for seemingly no reason, and in Atlantica, sometimes you have to activate
certain dialogue before it will let you proceed even if you know exactly where to go.
But all over Kingdom Hearts 2 there are these sections where you watch a cutscene, then
simply walk a couple steps outside of a room to begin yet another cutscene.
Look, it's fine to have minigames - 100 Acre Wood is an optional world for some great
downtime and an adorable side story, but here in the 2nd game it seems like it invades all
the other worlds too.
Gotta help the Beast's servants sprinkle water on these lanterns in this totally empty
hallway, wanna ride on the Jafar roller coaster in Agrabahland?
Oh Ariel, yeah, she's just a quick time event sing-along now.
I think a big part of this lack of freedom and exploration comes down to how they handle
leveling and upgrades in this game.
Instead of gaining the ability to glide or jump higher naturally throughout the story,
now it's locked behind leveling up your Drive Gauges, so while that means you COULD
grind and unlock them early, if you have no idea about them, you might go through the
whole game without any clue of how to reach these higher ledges or be able to get around
faster.
And because it isn't a focus in the plot, exploration plays less of a role in gameplay
as well - those Trinity Limits and dalmations are nowhere to be found, and the Torn Pages
are simply along your main path instead of hidden amongst the various environments.
It took several worlds for me to realize this but you don't actually gain any experience
points from defeating bosses.
Instead it gives you a "bonus" attribute that's assigned to that specific fight.
You could argue that this equips you with even more abilities and options to become
a heartless killing machine, but it means that the only way to really level up at all
is to grind on optional, low level fights along the narrow hallways it tries to lead
you down in between cutscenes and minigames.
But because of how the game is structured, you're not incentivized to waste your time
doing this.
Instead of scouring the worlds for solutions and fighting heartless along the way, now
it's better to just speed on by.
On top of this the Coliseum tournaments, one of my favorites aspects of the original, now
no longer give you experience either.
So there isn't really any purpose to completing them other than bragging rights or if you're
bored and have nothing else to do, and therefore you're not required to do most of them anyway
to progress the story.
It's like the game knows what's important and what isn't so instead of changing them
to have appeal, they just leave them as optional filler with no real value.
In fact, a lot of the game feels like filler that didn't really need to be there.
Atlantica is episodic but completely pointless, you visit each world twice now instead of
once to complete them, but the secondary story is much shorter and essentially just fighting
a giant Heartless or tying up loose ends, and I completely forgot that Gummi ship missions
were a thing in the 2nd game because at first it didn't make you do any to reach a planet,
but then it did later on and I was like "oh yeah, these ARE here!"
They were just that forgettable.
I really can't say it's a terrible game, there is a lot that I truly love about it.
It's just bogged down by all this other junk that doesn't emphasize the parts it
excels at.
And that brings us to the story.
All right, strap in everybody.
If Kingdom Hearts 1 was "Simple and Clean", Kingdom Hearts 2 is...Sanctuary...aw crap I
was hoping that the title of the 2nd theme would be called "Convoluted and Lame".
Look, I can get behind the idea of the villain being an entire organization of mysterious
cloaked figures, and they actually are the most interesting fights in the entire game
to their credit, but the way they try to tie it all in with Nobodies and them being the
2nd form of somebody who's gone heartless, like...ugh.
The intro is notorious for being so drawn-out and, yeah, replaying it I didn't remember
it being quite so long either.
I know they're trying to set the stage of this fake world cracking around Roxas, but
it could've been half as long and still had that impact.
Destiny Islands was no thrill ride either but at least it was over in 30 minutes.
But really it all fell apart for me within the last couple hours.
Like, you remember how I said Ansem was the clear cut villain in the first game and that was it?
Well, now Ansem is all of these people at the same time.
If you just take Ansem alone it will take forever to explain his connection to the plot now.
He was this guy, but no that was actually someone else pretending to be him, and don't
forget that it also is Riku too because apparently if you accept evil in your heart you can change
bodies on a whim and Ansem also is this guy but its when his face is wrapped in bandages
so he has a disguise, but he also changed his skin to a different color too so he probably
didn't need to go through all that trouble, but also he dies like right after he's revealed
along with his master plan that was this stupid galaxy contraption that he thought could somehow
suck up a giant moon, so it all is pretty meaningless anyway.
*sigh* A switcheroo can be pretty impactful, like in Kingdom Hearts 1 you think Riku is
evil but it's actually just Ansem taking over his body, okay that was a pretty neat
plot twist, but this is so far removed from a switcheroo you don't even care who the
villain is anymore because it's too complex to follow.
And once you get to the other games like Birth By Sleep it's just a cluster-hyuck!
Old characters have new names, new characters have old names.
I want to play Kingdom Hearts not Captain Ginyu's Body-Swap Bonanza!
Listen, if there's anything the series has going for it, it's visiting the fascinating
Disney worlds and interacting with the characters within.
It's what gives it it's charm, and luckily it looks like Kingdom Hearts 3 is focusing
on that while also bringing a lot of new stuff to the table.
Kingdom Hearts 2 had a better combat system, and while I still wish it encouraged the player
to use the variety of abilities instead of just mashing your sword attacks, it looks
like the third installment is introducing a lot of spectacle to the party - new keyblade
upgrades, special finishers and even switching up the gameplay to take down baddies and bosses.
I can't tell if that'll get old after seeing it for the first time, but it definitely
looks beautiful so far.
My wishlist for this long awaited sequel is pretty small, but it would include more exploration
of worlds instead of an onslaught of minigames, more optional boss fights since 2 sort of
dropped the ball a bit there, a clean combat system that doesn't rely too heavily on
one option but rather encourages a variety of moves, and most importantly a fun story
that takes us on an adventure through Disney worlds that we've grown to love over the
last several decades while not bogging it down with what the series has been known to
do in the last few installments.
Kingdom Hearts 1 is by no means perfect, but we can't forget about what made the series
great in the first place, and I hope that it continues to be exactly we wanted back
when it first came out - something unforgettably magical.
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I'll see you guys next time, stay frosty my friends.
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