Kingdom Hearts - hands-on impressions

Shinji

/ Hooooooooge post as a result of waking up early on Sunday morning
and being bored This originally posted to the UKGamer mailing list, thought I'd duplicate it here in case anyone is interested. /


Started playing the US version of Kingdom Hearts yesterday, and since
I'm about three and a half hours in, I thought I'd let everyone know
how I'm getting on with it so far.

For anyone who doesn't know about it, this is the collaboration
between Disney and Squaresoft... Well, I say collaboration somewhat
loosely. It was created entirely by Square, but it uses Disney
characters and locations, mixed in with characters (and hopefully
locations, although I haven't seen any yet) from the Final Fantasy
games as well as new Square-styled characters. Sounds weird? Well, it
feels pretty damn weird to play, too.

The game is an action RPG, with plenty to do in terms of levelling up
and learning abilities and magic and so on for the Square RPG fans.
You can have multiple party members, but you don't get any direct
control over your other characters other than the ability to modify
their battle AI a bit - for example, setting how often they use
magical and physical attacks, and under what circumstances they'll use
items.

The start of the game is pure Square, and it's a pleasing reassurance
that Disney haven't forced the company to sugar-coat everything
because of the involvement of its franchises. We're introduced to our
hero, Sora, in a bizarre (and beautifully animated) dream sequence
which involves a lot of strange messages, the ability to choose your
path in the game (choosing either a sword, a shield or a magic staff
in a strange kind of character class choosing procedure) and finally
an encounter with a really very dark and unpleasant boss creature....
After which, well, Sora wakes up washed up on a beach. Wahey!

Except he's not been washed up, he lives on this island and just fell
asleep on the beach. Sharing the island (which is tropical paradise
central) with him are two new Square characters, Riku and Kairi, and
three old ones - Wakka and Tidus from FFX, and Selphie from FFVIII,
albeit in "chibi", or younger, versions. There's all manner of stuff
you can do on the island - some simple fetch quests, a bit of free
levelling up by duelling with the other kids on the island, a fair bit
of character development and the occasional dark premonition - and
elsewhere we occasionally cut to the Disney castle where Donald and
Goofy are mucking around doing some stuff and Mickey (the king,
apparently) has gone missing.

No spoilers here, but basically, some stuff happens on the island
(which is in true Square "er that's a bit dark really" style), Sora
receives a mythical weapon (the Keyblade) and various running around
proceeds to introduce him to Cid, Aerith and Yuffie from FFVII, as
well as Squall from FFVIII, and eventually teams him up with Donald
and Goofy to run off and Do Various Things (saving the multiverse
being a fairly safe bet). And that's where I am now - off in the first
true "dungeon" of the game, playing my way through a quest to rescue
Alice from the Queen of Hearts in Wonderland.


Right, good things so far. The animation - both in-game and CG - is
beautiful, as are the characters. Square has taken the Disney
characters and made them look fantastic, and they've fitted it up such
that Disney characters and Square characters move and act totally
differently - sometimes even conforming to different, more cartoony
laws of physics. This works really nicely. Sora is a little odd, he's
somewhere halfway between the two extremes - a kind of bridge between
Square and Disney.

The voice acting is uniformly superb, far better than any other game
I've ever played. No expense was spared on acting talent, and it
really shows - especially where characters who previously went
unvoiced in Square games start talking, because they just sound RIGHT.
Looking down the list of voice actors, the obvious big names doing
Square voices are Haley Joel Osment (Sora) and David Boreanz (Squall)
- both of whom stand out as being superb - with quite a few other well
known names in that camp. Not to mention other voices in the game
coming from James Woods, Jim Cummings, Dan Castellaneta, Brian Blessed
and piles of other recognisable names. I'm sure this is down to
Disney's pulling power, but god, if Square could secure talent like
that for all their games...

The gameplay, at the end of the day, is simple and a lot of fun.
Admittedly I think I'm having an easier time than Ben, who chose a
magic using path and had to do a lot of levelling up to defeat the
first really difficult boss. Then again, I have a deep suspicion that
was a Skillz Related Issue



Aaaaaand, the bad things.

Mixing Disney and Square works okay in a limited sense. At one point
in the game, you have Donald, Goofy... and a huge cast of Square
characters, and frankly, Donald and Goofy feel like the light comedy
characters you get in a lot of Square games - you know, you can
chuckle at them but they're instantly forgettable. Square characters
have personalities, relatively complex psychologies and a bit of
depth; Disney characters have, er, the ability to be flattened against
a wall, peel off and flop on the ground in a funny way.

This is all very well when the balance is 85% Square, 15% Disney; but
when it shifts to having Sora as the only Square character in a world
full of Disney characters, the game starts to flag badly. Wonderland,
where I am now, just isn't very interesting... The Queen Of Hearts
chops people's heads off because she just DOES! Off with their heads!
It's funny! Laugh! .... Christ, it's not exactly Sephiroth is it? I'm
really hoping that most of the game will be more like the first hour
and a half, which was very Square, and that it won't turn into a
Disney game.

The flying mini-game. There's a system where you can design your own
spaceship ("gummi ship") for flying from world to world by sticking
blocks you find together - there are engine blocks, weapon blocks,
armour blocks... The flying sections happen in a vaguely Starfox-esque
mini game. I say "vaguely", because Starfox didn't suck, and this
really, really does. Maybe it gets better when you build a better ship
or something, but frankly it still looks like a SNES game slapped bang
in the middle of one of Square's best looking titles yet. It's woeful.

At the end of the day, this is going to be worth a look if you're a
fan of either Square or Disney. Whether it's a great game or not
remains to be seen, and will depend a lot on how they balance the
content. After the first two hours, I thought it was set up to be one
of Square's best games yet. Now after three I'm not so sure. Hopefully
a few more hours play today will rescue my faith.

CodeMonkey

The lack of response might suggests that no one cares but I am interested to know if it gets better or worse...yes, I am a squaresoft fanboy...

Ryo Hazuki

I like the Idea of seeing characters from the FF series in a new game but it could all go terribly wrong (Ehergeiz) so advance with caution or somthing.....

Pugsley

Your can have a mega evil final fantasy style boss (ala sepiroth) in a disney world, just wouldnt be right, and no FF game is complete without the evil guy.....

Ryo Hazuki

While playing Armoured core 2 my friend (who thinks sephiroth is great) wanted a new name for his AC, So the sephobot was born....
The rest is history.

They shoulda put Auron in that Kingdom Hearts game as he could made some witty comments and tell goofy to shut the hell up.

I wonder about the end-boss, perhaps seph will return.
The music for the last battle, im thinking one-winged angel mixed with otherworld and Z.O.E vs Viola music.

however combining good things does not always mean a bigger better thing. (Ehergiez, Heinz Baked beans & pasta etc)

Shinji

Bah, I liked Ehrgeiz!

Sephiroth is in the game, but I haven't encountered him yet. Should be interesting.

All the Disney villians are present and correct, which kinda works nicely actually - Disney bad guys have always been more interesting than the heroes anyway. Zone bad guys are individual movie bad guys - the Vizier from Alladin and so on - while the Big Bad so far has been Maleficent, the deeply creepy witch from Snow White.

This actually works very well, by the way - she is sinister as hell and her voice just drips malice. In fact, you could almost mistake her for a Square villian

The music is excellent as well by the way, composed by Square's Yoko Shimomura rather than by any of the Disney composers.

It's definitely come alive a bit more now that I'm further into it. There's interesting stuff happening with the new characters (Riku and Kairi, primarily), Maleficent is swanning around being evil, the combat has picked up and I'm really warming to Sora as a character. The better Disney franchises are getting an airing, too - realistically, Alice In Wonderland is probably the crappest franchise they used, so it's a bit of a shame that it was the first world I encountered.

Ryo Hazuki

That's a lot of of FF characters, I dont think I saw any in the video preview that came with FFX. I would not have been looking for them, ill go watch it again and see

DrunkLeprachaun

It sounds good from what I've heard, and the old square characters look cool. Only bad thing is one of n-sync(lance something I think) is doing the voice for Sephiroth. That **** is just wrong. I'll be getting the game anyway. I too am a square fanboy.

Ryo Hazuki

Only bad thing is one of n-sync(lance something I think) is doing the voice for Sephiroth.

Ahh crap Something had to go wrong

Vivi

does any1 know when its coming out here??!

Arboration

Wow, Imagin being involved with Final Fantasy Online. <snip odd and vaguely offensive stuff - S.>


I personally think Kingdom Hearts is a joke.
While SquareSoft are quite proud of the tittle, many of the older games ARE disgruntled by the pure and simple fact that it was created with the help of America's reply to Nintendo Kids, Disney.

Giving one of SquarSoft's most feared Villains(Sephiroth.) Lance Bass's voice isn't what I would consider a fitting addition to the great mans acomplishments.

I won't be getting this tittle, let alone be reviewing it- I'll sit and wait for the FFX follow ups to land on Irelands shores(Sometime in 2011 no doubt.)

Ryo Hazuki

FFXI completly online....

I can see it ending very badly.
Full of people with names like DaZo_1524 ooX

There will br a huge monthly fee to play will probably need a very fast connection and in the end Square will stop releasing games outside of Japan.

FFXII is back to normal apparently

Shinji

Ryo - as ever, the main problem with FFXI as an online game is going to be the other people who play it. My experiences with Phantasy Star Online don't fill me with joy at the prospect of FFXI, I have to say; for the most part PSO was a really fantastic game ruined by the idiots who played it, and I only got as many months out of it as I did because I ended up playing with a group of 15 or so people that I knew from other mediums beforehand. In PSO, you could do that easily enough since the party sizes were limited and interaction with idiots could be kept to a minimum; in a true MMORPG like FFXI, I don't think that will be as easy to implement.

The only really consistently good "random grouping" type play I had in PSO was on Japanese servers; they have a very different approach to online RPG stuff, a lot more courteous and helpful and less tolerant of griefer players (who are uncommon in the first place), as well as more "role-play" focused. I'd imagine FFXI is probably good fun in Japan, but if it's been designed with the kind of self-policing and general good attitudes to online gaming that exist there in mind, it remains to be seen how well the whole affair will translate to the West.

Aboration - You're entitled to your opinion, but frankly if you're prepared to pass up on a really good Squaresoft title simply because of the other name involved or the character franchises used, that's your loss pal. And it's pretty childish to boot - I love how people who make posts like this always claim to speak for "older gamers", when realistically any "older" gamer would probably be mature enough not to miss out on a great game because of poorly defined corporate grudges

(By the way, your post has been edited slightly since your first sentence made no sense but had rather a whiff of general offensiveness about it.)