I have mixed feelings when I played this game. But before that, let me introduce it first. Kingdom Hearts is a popular and commercially successful video game developed and published by Square-Enix. The video game, a collaboration between Square-Enix and Disney, received rave reviews and sold millions of copies worldwide.
The story goes like this. Sora, the main protagonist, is a 14-year-old boy who longs to go on an adventure, travel from one place to another with his 2 best friends, Riku and Kairi. One bizarre night, he was attacked by shadow creatures, known as the Heartless, and was swept away to another world, called Traverse Town. He met Donald and Goofy there, desperately looking for a key wielder that will lead them to the missing King Mickey. Realizing that he was the key wielder, the one wielding the Keyblade, he made a pact with Donald and Goofy and travel from one world to another looking for King Mickey, Riku and Kairi.
Good things first. The plot of the game is very interesting for me and I was very excited to find out how things would turn out. The story is very engaging and sometimes can be very heartwarming. I love everytime a cutscene being played as it was beautiful visually. For me, the opening scene is definitely the best. The voice acting was good too. If you didn't know already, some of the talents behind the voices for the English version are Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense), Hayden Panettiere (TV series Heroes), David Gallanger (TV series 7th Heaven), Billy Zane (Titanic) and Lance Bass ('N Sync).
The gameplay, although confusing and not-so-interesting at first (for me at least), turn out to be very addictive. Players can also play many other mini games / side quests placed throughout the game. Visually stunning, the characters from two different mediums, Final Fantasy games and Disney films, also blend beautifully together, which was very surprising to me. This makes Kingdom Hearts even more special and unique compared to other video games. Oh, I forgot to mention about the background music. They were really good and very suitable with the different worlds they were set in. My favourite music were the ones in the world of Monstro and Halloween Town.
Now for the bad things. I was very frustrated with the Gummi ships section. I didn't even bother to design my own Gummi ship and used the one I was provided with throughout the entire game. It's not like I didn't try, I did made several attempts to build one based on the blueprint but it was too confusing. I rather focus on the story than this ridiculous side quest.
I have problems with the opening section of the game too. For me, it was too childish. I felt like I was playing The Little Mermaid or Lilo & Stitch the video game. Not that it wasn't interesting, but unlike those two video games that I had mentioned, Kingdom Hearts were targeted for kids AND adults alike (eerr...at least that's what I think, correct me if I'm wrong). If it was targeted only for kids, then I wouldn't have mind.
I was also very disappointed with the ending. Yes, I understand they want to build excitement for the sequel but I think they hold back too much. I need more details and longer ending scenes. I was so looking forward to find out how it would end and I got a very disappointing ending. Bummer.
Nevertheless, Kingdom Hearts is a very entertaining game. I would not say that it's one of the best that I've had played before, but it was definitely fun and addictive. I've spent more than 50 hours on it and looking forward to play the sequels. Cheers to Square-Enix and Disney!
*Images courtesy of IGN and Wikipedia.
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