Kingdom Hearts

This is the kind of crossover you would never had expected, but mixing Final Fantasy with the Disney franchise in a PlayStation 2 game oddly works very well.

Kingdom Hearts is one of the licences with a huge fanbase that it has built over the years and the different opus, and I can understand why this franchise is so loved. At some point, I should spend time to learn about the genesis of the project; I’m sure the creation background of the game and the discussion with Disney and Square are worth digging into.

The protagonist is Sora, a 14-year-old boy living with his friends on an isolated island and dreaming of exploring the outside world. After his world being attacked by creatures called the “Heartless” is absorbed into the darkness, he became chosen to wield the Keyblade and will meet Goofy and Donald. The team, with the help of the Gummy spaceship, will travel between worlds in search of Sora’s missing friends and King Mickey. During their explorations, they’ll seal the keyholes in every worlds in order to save them from darkness. That’s really a simple summary, even it’s not already the case with the first opus, the franchise is well known for its complex (too complex?) plot.

The game is an action-RPG, “hack and slash” for the fights. I’ve found the difficulty quite harsh, nothing insurmountable but can sometimes be frustrating. The camera can be a bit approximative, especially when fighting on narrow areas. Likewise for the movements in the Little Mermaid water world.

It is fun to explore the worlds from the Disney Franchise and to fight alongside Disney characters. Even if the objectives are not always clear, we often end up lost in the levels, not finding the path to go and we often need to do lots of back and forth. The invocation system is present, but Shiva, Ifrit and co. are replaced by Simba, Dumbo or TinkerBell. We also meet with famous Final Fantasy’s characters; Leon, Luffy, and Aeris are main allies to the group.

The soundtrack is at the same level of the best Final Fantasy productions and the voices cast for the French dubs is awesome (same for the English and Jap dubs). The voice for Sora is good, and efforts were made to preserve orignal voice for the Disney characters.

Now that I have just completed again this first opus in the series, I’ll probably give it a try to all of the “spin off” / intermediate games that were developed to get to finally understand the full plot of Kingdom Hearts.