Approved Kingdom Hearts: A life-changing game.

[Kyyo]

INTRODUCTION​

In 2002, 2 years after the launch of the legendary PS2, two Disney' employees were talking in an elevator. Until one of these employees comes up with a crazy idea... "What if we combined Disney characters with Final Fantasy characters and made a game about it?". Well... although the idea may seem strange, that's where one of the best JRPG franchises of all time was born... Kingdom Hearts.

STORY​

On an isolated island called Destiny Islands, 3 young people live. These are Sora, Riku and Kairi, childhood friends. The three of them have the same dream of leaving that island to see the outside world, and they decide it's time to make that dream come true. Sora has strange dreams in which he uses a mysterious sword key to face shadow creatures, but it doesn't matter to him as he was about to finally see the world. The 3 build a boat to travel, until one night... a strange black storm happens in Destiny Islands. Sora gets up from his bed to investigate and finds Riku standing with a black hole above him. Riku starts to say that now they "could see the outside world" and says that Kairi would accompany them, but Sora, still confused, denies it, until Riku is taken away by strange shadows and Sora ends up on Destiny Islands. Alone. In just one night, Sora distanced himself from all his friends. After that, several small shadow creatures appear around Sora, and that mysterious sword key appears again in his hands. Sora decides to use it to face the shadow creatures, successfully. Until Sora decides to enter a small secret place that he and his friends used to visit, and there he finds Kairi, standing in front of a door. This door opens and a strong black wind comes out, which pushes Sora back to the island, and there, the ground begins to shake, with a huge shadow creature emerging from the black hole. Using his Keyblade, Sora manages to defeat the huge creature, and then he is pulled into the black hole, which transports him to Traverse Town, where he meets his new friends Donald and Goofy, who explain to him about the mysterious shadow creatures, which in are actually called Heartless, creatures that appear when darkness takes over a person's heart, and about Sora's "sword-key", which is actually called a Keyblade. From there, Sora, Donald and Goofy begin their adventures exploring the Disney worlds to save people from the Heartless and find Sora's friends. Without a doubt, this prologue is very engaging, despite having some holes that only those who are already fans of the franchise will notice. These holes happened because, at the beginning of development, Square Enix had no idea how successful their game would be. This caused the franchise to undergo many retcons and changes to the lore, but still maintaining its wonderful essence. Personally, even though it's the first game in an incredible franchise, I love the story of Kingdom Hearts 1 and I think it's very creative for the time the game came out.

GAMEPLAY​

I consider Kingdom Hearts gameplay to be one of the best for an action-up JRPG. In the game, you have a small actions menu in the corner of the screen to select between attacking, spells, using items and changing your form (Drive).

For your convenience, the game has a "shortcuts" menu where you can designate a shortcut for a certain item or spell and you can access that shortcut menu by pressing a certain button. This helps a lot in battles and bossfights. You gain experience points by eliminating Heartless and you also gain points to increase the level of your drive form. The game has a total of 13 worlds for you to explore and in a normal run it would take you around 30 hours to complete the main story. You travel from world to world in a ship called the Gummi Ship. The gameplay of this ship is very controversial and opinions about it are divided.

In the game you can acquire several different keyblades as you complete the worlds. Unfortunately, one keyblade may simply be stronger than the other, and you can't upgrade yours to keep using it throughout the game (until Kingdom Hearts 3).

MUSIC​

I don't need to say much about this part. The soundtrack for this game is a stunning experience. Simply magic. All thanks to a wonderful human being named Yoko Shimomura. We must also thank Hikaru Utada for singing the games' openings and endings. I even cry every time I hear the opening of Kingdom Hearts 2 (Sanctuary).

CONCLUSION​

Amazing game. Rating 10 out of 10. Even if you're not a fan of Final Fantasy or Disney, it's certainly a worthwhile experience (when I played I wasn't a fan of either). For me, Kingdom Hearts is one of the games that most changed the way a game can be developed and experienced, just like Final Fantasy 7 did. It's definitely my favorite PS2 game. If you play, expect good tears and I wish you a great game!

 

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