Review

My dearly beloved. Kingdom Hearts is the first video game that I properly got into. I had played games before it, certainly. But I never really got properly attached to them. I was just sort of playing whatever I happened to get for birthdays/Christmases or what was rented from Blockbuster. I didn't really yet have favorites. When I first saw the opening scene of Kingdom Hearts, I was spellbound. The anime nonsense of it was entrancing. I started playing KH1 I believe very shortly before KH2 came out. So it would been sometime in 2004-2005, making me 10-11 years old at the time.

I would describe KH as baby's first RPG. But moreover, baby's first proper RPG. You have the Disney characters as the draw, they're what get you in the door. And then the game itself is deep enough to swim in, but not deep enough to drown in. It's not a complete kiddy pool, to have a good time you do have to put some thought into the abilities you're equipping, what magic you're using. The tactics that you assign to Donald and Goofy. But it's also not deep enough that you have to have a good grasp on the numbers behind the scenes to get through it. KH is a small numbers RPG. Getting 1 or 2 more strength makes a meaningful difference in the damage that you do. It introduces you to a number of elements of deeper RPGs without overwhelming you with the minutiae. But it's not so simple that you're not learning anything. It's honestly a really effective onboarding ramp to deeper RPGs, if that's an aspect that appeals to you while playing. But it doesn't get in the way of the Disney fun.

And that's really the core of it. The Disney fun. There's a magic to it. Sora is without doubt the heart and soul of the series, but seeing all the Disney folks prancing around next to the likes of Ansem, the Seeker of Darkness, and Riku, Hot Topic Connoisseur, is a surreal and magical experience. In particular, it's a magical experience because I don't think it would ever have happened if someone somewhere didn't have a genuine creative impulse to make it happen. It's not something that would ever have arisen naturally. God doesn't build in straight lines. If you had a million EA-Ubisoft-Activision-Blizzard think tanks typing at typewriters, Kingdom Hearts wouldn't have come out of it in a thousand years. Why are we taking elements of Disney, Final Fantasy, and weirdo original people together and having them ramble about the Door to Darkness? Why not? Whatever you may think of the end result, something that cannot be denied is that Kingdom Hearts is a labor of love. It was created because someone had a vision that they wanted to make manifest into reality. A terrifying terrifying vision.

Kingdom Hearts is a lovely game that I experienced long long before any such barriers to nonsense and so I cannot have an unbiased view of it. It is a series that I will happily and easily award any number of pardons to. It's special. But even setting that aside and attempting to look at it somewhat objectively, I think that it holds up remarkably well graphically, gameplay-wise. It still felt good to play 20 years later. Is it stupid? Undoubtedly. Nonsense? Certainly. Even then, I think there is a simple magic present that was also found in the older Disney and Pixar stuff. Something that is deeper than rote childhood nostalgia. And in an era where corporatism reigns and originality is in short supply, I will happily defend a weirdo little series that seems to shrug off any sense of normalcy. Do we deserve Kingdom Hearts? I don't know. But we need it. We need games that say no to established rules and take an original idea and just run with it.

We come to Kingdom Hearts… for magic.
We come to Kingdom Hearts to laugh, to cry, to care.
Because we need that, all of us,
that indescribable feeling we get when Utada Hikaru begins to play.
And we go somewhere we never expected;
not just entertained, but somehow reborn.
Together.

Dazzling images, on a fuzzy CRT screen.
The sound alert of low health that I can feel.
Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place likе this.
Sora feels like thе best part of us, and stories feel perfect and powerful.
Because here, they are.

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