Kingdom Hearts Final Mix:
The game that started the whole series, Kingdom Hearts. This is the Final Mix version which contains some extra content including additional (minor) cutscenes, new weapons, accessories and abilities. Apparently, they also made some modifications to the game such as making the Triangle button to be the context sensitive button for interacting, making the "Summon" command as the fourth option and mapping the camera to the right-stick. I've never played the original, so I'll take the internet's word for it. The game has a slow start in terms of story and gameplay. The opening cinematic was gorgeous (since it was a pre-rendered scene) but was confusing in what it was trying to convey. The opening gameplay wasn't too spectacular either as you're basically just waiting until the game picks up steam or unlocks more of the battle system. After the second world where you would have gotten used to the battle system, it is really fun to play. The exploration nature of the levels is also a plus. However, sometimes you don't know where to go and that can get mildly annoying. The story also starts making sense because at the beginning, it felt episodic in that you were just travelling from world to world, sealing that world's keyhole. As the background story was revealed more, it got more interesting. It picked up near the end when it started to wrap things together (by this stage though, you feel that you have gotten sidetracked a lot). There is a really nice scene near the end of the game when Sora finds Riku. The boss battles near the end of the game were also pretty epic.
It is noticeable that this is an early PS2 game. The pre-rendered cinematic may be great but the in-game graphics are still jagged (especially the character models) and the environments lack specific details. Some objects look flat and I don't know if this was their intention or not. The lip syncing can be off by all of these are minor qualms. The cartoon nature of the game helps to stave off the lower quality in graphics (it gets better later on, that, or you got used to the graphics). While they mapped the camera to the right-stick makes it easier to use, it can still be improved. It still fights against you and camera angles aren't optimal most of the time. This is especially true when you're platforming as it gets stuck or objects block the view. Speaking of platforming, it is fairly horrible in this game. Sora's jump can be inaccurate, a lot of the times, you can easily overshoot the object you're trying to jump upon. Sometimes, when jumping from platform to platform, he might not jump when you wanted him to but instead will fall off. This gets much better later in the game as you get abilities that improve it such as higher jumps and gliding (which is super fun!). The infamous gummy ship levels feel like they're padding out the game. It's okay when you have to play through them the first time you go to a new level but when you're forced to play it travelling back and forth to older levels, the it gets annoying.
The controls feel awkward and nowhere near tight enough to be fun. The graphics (and the ship in general) in these levels look terrible, like a PS1 game. The music is memorable, even the early tunes were great, it felt smooth and natural. While they may not seem catchy, they fit in with the game and what is currently onscreen. Some of the melodies are really beautiful such as "Dearly Beloved" and "Hikari". Another good point are the remixes on familiar tunes from the Disney world it's based upon. Of course, the big selling point is the visits of well-known Disney world and characters. To this day, I am still amazed that Square managed to get Disney to agree for it's cherished and protected characters to star in a dark-ish action game. Anyway, this concept pulls you through the game as you can't wait to see which Disney world will come next (especially since it has such a large pool of source materials to pick from). After visiting a world, you can't help but feel like you want to watch the movie again. There's a certain nostalgic factor seeing all these familiar characters. What's cool is that if you're playing this for the first time and haven't seen those Disney movies/cartoons in a while, you'll often see characters that you have forgotten, and it feels as if you've just met a long lost friend again. Then there are the Final Fantasy characters and they now have voice actors. For the most part, these voices suit the characters. A negative though would be that the Final Fantasy characters don't play a large role.
While some of the boss fights are epic, other feels like they had more potential. Instead, it was just the character shifting away and firing at you. The final boss battle/area was one of the longest I have ever played, it felt dragged out. It breaks the mold of only having three final bosses that JRPGs likes to do. I was worried going into the final area when I've read that it's really tough and I was below the recommended level (I was playing on Final Mix/Normal difficulty) but apart from one solo battle which I had to redo around four times as I perfected my strategy, everything else wasn't too hard. The game in general, on Final Mix mode, isn't terrible difficult. Anyway, the final final boss was disappointing, there were a few before it that was more interesting and epic. The ending was slightly disappointing in the open-endedness. In hindsight, it was probably that I know there are sequels so it feels like the first game didn't wrap it up as tightly as I would have liked. Apart from the main story, there are a lot of other optional things that you can do. It's pretty crazy with all the optional bosses, exploring all the worlds for their secrets (since you get new abilities further along the game which lets you seek out additional hidden areas that you couldn't get to the first time around) and collectibles. It is a big time sinker. In the end, Kingdom Hearts was a fun and solid game, the story wasn't particularly captivating since it got somewhat episodic in the middle and there are some minor annoyances in terms of controls.
Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories:
Re: Chain of Memories is a remake of the GameBoy Advance game, so it is surprising to find that the graphics are good although apparently, they had reused the assets from the original Kingdom Hearts game so that is probably why. Still, apart from the "rooms" which are segmented by loading screens, there's nothing much here that indicates that it is a remake of a GBA game. The idea of the game is okay, I find it hard to believe that after all the adventures in Kingdom Hearts (in which this is a direct sequel), that one step into Castle Oblivion makes Sora and gang lose all their memories. It really sucks and makes you feel like you've wasted all that time back in the original game. The memories theme runs deeply throughout the whole game and is one of the biggest downfalls, no matter how interesting it was. The fact that in the beginning of the game you end up returning to all the worlds (Disney or otherwise) that was in the original Kingdom Hearts, with either exact copies of the layout or very similar, makes it feel lazy. Each world is separated into multiple small rooms split by a loading screen and there is a lack of explorative activities. While this is understandable from a GBA game perspective, this still sucks. The rooms in each world also have similar (or sometimes, the exact same) layouts as rooms in other worlds. The storyline in each world feels episodic, with cutscenes for the overall plot after you complete each world/floor. The events that happen in each world are very similar with what happened in the original Kingdom Hearts, usually with a little twist (i.e. more aligned to its source material).
Yet it still feels too familiar to the point where it's not interesting and more like it's redundant. Yes, these encounters are based on the memories of Sora but fact is fact. That said, I liked how you could influence some of the mechanics/traits of the room you're going to enter next. I found that the last dungeon to be too big, it felt as if they wanted to waste heaps of your time before letting you finish the game. The Castle Oblivion scenes get interesting towards the end of the game as questions are finally answered and plot elements revealed. We get explanations on how Sora managed to forget something supposedly very important to him. The ending was actually pretty sad and plays into the memory theme well. I did notice that characters use the phrase "chain of memories" way too many times. It was great when someone uttered it the first time (since it is the title of the game after all) but when a few other bosses spout out this line later on, it feels contrived. Another major flaw of the game is that once you get into the meat of it, the predictability of the events skyrocket. You enter one world (that you have already been into in the original game), you will end up trying to go to three rooms which means three cutscenes, face a boss in either the second or third cutscene, then you get to Castle Oblivion for another cutscene (and maybe a boss battle) before the whole process repeats again. This gets sickening by the middle of the game. There feels to be a large number of bosses too... which kinda makes each one less special. You roll your eyes as yet another boss battle happens, especially near the end of the game where you'll be fighting bosses you have already fought before (but more powerful in this encounter).
The biggest change in this game though is the card battle system. Don't be fooled, it's not your typical trading card game. It's still very much action oriented but you can't blindly attack as there are some strategic elements at play. I hated this battle system in the original GBA game (ended up quitting the game after a few levels) but it's not bad once you get used to it. It makes the game easier compared to the original because if you time and chain your cards correctly, you can cancel the enemies' attacks very easily. Of course, other factors come into play such as chaining your cards together to create a more powerful attack that's less likely to be blocked at the cost of permanently giving up one card or you can try to use individual cards to attack but being more likely to not land a hit. One of the really cool things is that you have your "normal" deck that you just use for random encounters, when you hit a boss and you die miserably, you end up creating and tailoring a new deck that exploits the boss's weakness. It's really satisfying when this works and you end up beating the boss so much easier than you expected, especially when compared to your first failed attempt. The game feels very smooth during exploration and combat but I found that in the voiced cutscenes (a large majority of the cutscenes that happen in Disney worlds are text based) the frame rate drops and the movement of characters stutter.
There is longevity in the game, the story took me around twenty hours. After that, a new mode pops up called Reverse/Rebirth in which you play as Riku, which was surprising as it's a complete story too. This is even better than a New Game+. It brings in some slight changes such as a predetermined deck of cards to use (which is extremely annoying to be honest since you can't customize it and tone it to your strategy) and additional battle mechanics such as Dark Mode (powered up Riku) and Duels ("easier" way to deal damage). As it is pretty much more of the same, including going through the same worlds (once again...), it's good that the developers had made each world smaller by putting in less rooms that you have to trek through. The story cutscenes are okay as it introduces more characters and shows events that happened concurrently with Sora's. The Disney worlds that Riku visit feels arbitrary because there is absolutely no story that goes into them. He just treks through and literally defeats the boss (with no cutscenes to explain why) and then onto the next. It might be better if they just told Riku's story through like a 2 hour cutscene movie . Riku's story has many dialogue with the word "darkness", it's sickening. While trophies are extra and not mandatory (and thus cannot be used to judge the game), I found the trophies in Chain of Memories to be extremely grindy and in the end, they feel as if they're not worth it. Still, I had a lot of fun with this game. At times it weighs down on you with the repetitiveness but the battle system is interesting and the story isn't too bad.
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days:
As nearly everyone would know, this is a cutscene collection of the DS game, 358/2 Days. It was too hard to adjust the controls without a touch screen (or so you'd assume as apparently the original game didn't use the touch screen much) so all we have left are cutscenes and text. It takes around 3 hours to finish these cutscenes in one sitting. The text scenes are limited, few and far between and they're the substitutes for game play based missions (that actually have some plot significance). One significant flaw of these cutscenes are that by skipping the game play in between, it can feel disjointed, especially when the cutscenes clearly displays the beginning of a boss battle, but then skips to another scene. Other than that, it was well done and keeps the story intact. The story itself was okay, it stars a new protagonist, Roxas. It takes place in the time frame from Kingdom Hearts through Chain of Memories up to Kingdom Hearts II. While the first two hours were fine, it was mainly building up the relationships between the three lead characters (Roxas, Axel and Xion), things go confusing fast in the final parts of the game.
The story shoots off and it's hard to understand what is going on. That said, the ending is sad, especially after all that character building, you care for these characters. There are text reports that are unlocked after you've viewed the movies, they provide a bit more backstory including the thoughts of the characters as the events unfold. The Roxas' diary entries are decent but they tend to just summarise the events while the secret reports can get confusing as it's hard to tell from which character's perspective it is currently from (it keeps changing). Finally, if you're looking for some Disney goodness, you'll be disappointed. It is extremely limited. The cutscenes take place in the same few areas and there are static pictures accompanying the text scenes. You'll also recognise a few reused environments from the original Kingdom Hearts game (as if all the reused stuff in Chain of Memories wasn't enough...). Oh yeah, be aware that these characters LOVE ice cream. Anyway, this is still worthwhile to watch as it helps builds up the backstory of Roxas that will be important in Kingdom Hearts II.
Overall:
Unfortunately I missed the whole PS2 era so it was great news when the HD Collection of Kingdom Hearts was announced. I admit that I was a bit iffed that it didn't include Kingdom Hearts 2 (but at least there's a second collection on the way!) but this is still a great way to catch up on the Kingdom Hearts series, especially with Chain of Memories and 358/2 Days included in the package (since I doubt many people would end up playing most of the Kingdom Hearts games since they're spread over multiple consoles).
---------------------------------
Other game reviews can be found on this page.