I’ve never played a Final Fantasy game, I’M SORRY. Other than Persona 5 I’m just not much of a JRPG guy, so I’ve never tapped into the long-running series at all. I can certainly respect the legacy that Square Enix has been building since 1987, recognise many iconic characters (especially from the 7th installment), and am always blown away anytime I hear one of the FF games’ incredible soundtracks. So going into Kingdom Hearts for the first time, an ambitious crossover series between the worlds of Final Fantasy ( with other Square properties in later entries) and Disney, I wasn’t expecting the game to resonate with me all too much. Sure I enjoy most of the old Disney films, but mixed with characters and concepts I knew very little about was worrying me a bit going in. Turns out, those worries didn’t really matter at all, and as a plus, I ended up having a really great time with the first Kingdom Hearts.

Now, before any actual review stuff, I’ll preface that the version of the game I played was on an HD compilation disc for the PS4 with an overblown stupid title, Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 Remix and Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 Remix. Instead of trying to explain every minor difference between this version and the PS2 original, I’ll just say, the game’s graphics are updated and look great, additional voice acting and changes from region-locked variations are all added, and additional post-credits bosses, as well as a handful of others. Right. Now that’s out of the way…

You play as Sora, a young boy destined to “seal the darkness” with his, now iconic, Keyblade. Alongside classic Disney icons Donald Duck and strange dog creature Goofy, you travel to various Disney worlds attempting to stop the troublesome Heartless while also searching for Sora’s childhood friends, as well as the king of all things Disney; Mickey Mouse. As a game that came out in 2002, the scale of this crossover is incredible, and for the most part, it’s executed pretty spectacularly.

It’s always a treat finding out just which Disney property was chosen to be in this game, as you travel from the ever-trippy Wonderland to the streets of Agrabah, even winding up in Halloween Town as you meet classic characters such as Alice, Aladdin, and Jack Skellington. Of course, you also meet a handful of characters from the independent Final Fantasy games, such as Cloud Strife, Cid, Leon, and Yuffie, but thankfully for me, the presence of these characters is often reserved for cinematics and story beats, rather than the main focus of the different Disney worlds.

Speaking of story, this original game hasn’t yet reached the mind-numbing degree of convolution that I know the series falls victim to with all the spinoffs, cinematic “games”, and overblown title names such as 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue. That being said, you can see the seeds being planted in this game, with abstract concepts being used throughout. The ol’ classic Light and Dark, the strength of friendship, heart, and some stuff that is even more ridiculous are all used as plot points within this game, and knowing that they attempt to explain all of that in later games is already making me anxious, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Regardless of how messy the close-up camera can become at times, I really enjoyed the combat that makes up the majority of the game. Leveling up felt perfectly incorporated into the natural progression of the game, grinding for upgrades only felt necessary in the endgame, and the selection of different abilities, moves, and summonable allies kept the combat exciting throughout the 20ish hours it took me to reach the credits. There’s a huge variety in enemy types, whether they’re themed to a certain Disney world like the monkey or pirate Heartless goons, or later game variants that really put up a fight, It’s enjoyable to learn what each has up their sleeve and how best to counter them. The boss fights range from overly simple, as is the case with Jafar, Ursula, Oogie Boogie, and Hook, to incredibly hard without the right preparation. I think a real turning point in terms of difficulty completing these fights comes with the almost (and I hate to say it) “souls-like” Maleficent-Dragon fight. While the fight had different telegraphed attacks, It whooped me senseless, meaning I went back and explored some earlier parts of the game before trying again. To be fair, I feel that part of the game qualifies as the “endgame”, with every subsequent boss feeling pretty difficult regardless of your setup. One of these bosses began with a musical cue from the 1940 classic, Fantasia, and when I realised I was gonna be fighting the massive demon Chernabog, I was almost annoyed by how perfect a fit that character is in this game, and that I hadn’t thought that before he appeared. Bloody brilliant.

On the subject of music, this being a Final Fantasy spinoff with the large catalogue of Disney film soundtracks at its disposal, the soundtrack was destined to be great. Other than the weirdly placed pop songs at the beginning and end’s “music video-like” cinematics, the original soundtrack is amazing. The renditions of classics like “This is Halloween” and “Under the sea” succeeded in getting those songs stuck in my head all over again, while the accompanying original songs incredibly matched the emotional drive of Sora’s journey. The adorable Winnie The Pooh book/world, while plagued with tedious minigames, had a rendition of the classic theme that genuinely sounded like it was out of 2017’s La La Land, and as odd a comparison as that sounds, you’ll understand when you hear it.

As an enhanced version of an RPG, there’s more than enough content to fill every corner of the game, be it Collectables in the form of the 101 Dalmations, items and alternate weapons to find and use, and (pretty underwhelming) minigames. this, however (as with a lot of games similar) leads to some less than necessary gameplay elements. I enjoyed having the option to summon classic Disney Characters to help you fight such as Dumbo, Simba, and even Bambi of all characters but found myself rarely using them, maybe due to the unskippable cutscene it plays when using. Where that feature can be used as you see fit, I think the main point of contention in terms of what needs to be in the game comes from the Gummi ship travelling. In order to traverse the many worlds, you must go through a trench run of sorts, in which your blocky ship aimlessly shoots at objects on the screen, filling in a space where you could just be playing the actual game. I can’t focus on this too much, as not far into the game you gain the ability to skip this section entirely, with a warp straight to any planet you’ve already been to. What I can focus on though, is the gummi ship-building/upgrade screen. 

MY god, what a mess. I was deterred from using any of the many, many ship upgrades found literally everywhere in the game because I didn’t want to learn the crappy UI of the ship-building screen. This meant that I simply avoided it until after I completed the game, where I learned you can add a ton of stuff to make the mode semi-enjoyable, but if initially scared me off from even giving it a go, then that speaks volumes. I get them trying to make what could essentially be a 3-second long cutscene into a playable part of the game, however in execution, perhaps it was a bit too ambitious or lazily designed. Either way, it’s no good. 

As with the ability to warp to different worlds instead, I found that most problems I had with the game were eventually redacted through abilities and upgrades you receive the more you play. I thought early on how it was strange you had no option to block or dodge, until later on, when I obtained both of those abilities on top of more that felt like luxuries instead of necessities, such as sliding towards a targeted enemy to close the gap and make for a more fluid combat system.

By the end of the game, regardless of the faults, I had a blast with the first Kingdom Hearts. It’s a monumental crossover game, that fulfills almost everything you could want from a game of this nature. The strange joy felt from simply fighting alongside Aladdin, Tarzan and Beast made me feel like a kid again and made me realise I would have absolutely adored this game growing up. Like Star Wars, Its dialogue can be pretty awful, and some story beats are kind of ridiculous, but It’s obvious why the series is as iconic as it is today. Regardless of its known faults down the line, I’m actually excited to play the second game, or 2.5 HD ReMix, or whatever the actual shit it’s called.