Kingdom Hearts

This game was an instant classic. Fewer and fewer games nowadays can claim that title. Many games in today's world thrive on celebrity franchises, like Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy, and the like. While this particular game's PR strategy is that way, the game itself shines brightly, just like the light of Kingdom Hearts. The biggest original selling point was the integration of two VERY different franchises: Final Fantasy and Disney. Bringing these two realms together into one product, particularly an RPG-style video game, must have been a big gamble. However, the geniuses at Square Enix pulled it off spectacularly, and created an entirely new franchise (that can now succeed in part because of its name).Kingdom Hearts takes the story of three young teens, Sora, Riku, and Kairi, who seek the unknown; what lies beyond their tiny island? What other worlds are out there? When their home is attacked by the Heartless and swallowed by the darkness, they are thrust into an imaginative adventure, and find out. Also, King Mickey (yes, it is that Mickey) of Disney Castle senses trouble brewing across the worlds, and departs to fight it. He leaves a note for his Royal Guard, Goofy, and Court Magician, Donald, ordering them to "find the key" and follow it. Sora finds himself in Traverse Town, a safe haven for people whose homes also fell to darkness, where he learns about the power of his new weapon, the Keyblade, and the Heartless that destroyed his home. Donald and Goofy also land here looking for the "key" mentioned in the note. Eventually, the three cross paths and decide to journey together to find Riku, Kairi, and the King, and return to their homes.The gameplay is also very noteworthy. It takes all of the elements of standard RPG's, like menus, countless items of all kinds, magic, summons, experience, HP, MP, etc, but eliminates all of the waiting. Battles start instantly, right in the field, and the basic menu, with all your commands, like Attack and Items, has to be sorted through on the fly, literally. Certain menus and actions can only be reached in the pause menu outside of battle. These include equipping items, choosing weapons and accessories, and customizing your characters. You have no control of any partners; just Sora. Given the gameplay style, this was a very wise choice. Also, in certain Disney worlds, new partners will join you, all Disney heroes. This game is not nearly as difficult as many RPG's can be, but you will likely struggle at points. Fortunately, the exploration in the game, trying to find all of the treasures, makes an easy excuse to fight some more battles and boost your stats. By then, that boss fight, or whatever it is, shouldn't be too hard. Battles could get a bit repetitive as well. The game has plenty of puzzles as well, most of them optional. However, since the rewards are usually great, I wouldn't miss them. While some of the enemies may be a bit irritating (like Black Fungus), for the most part, they're all pretty enjoyable. Here's a hint to make this game a bit easier: you can never overuse the Dodge Roll or Cure magic. Trust me, they will save your life. I'm not sure they picked the best Disney worlds, but what they did use, they used well. Certain Disney worlds contributed to the overall story very well.As for as technology is concerned, I'd say Kingdom Hearts is pretty average for PS2. It does feel very old when you go back to it after playing the sequels. The animation style is completely anime, in every way. The English dubbing is okay, but it feels awkward sometimes. The gestures and facial expressions don't always match what the characters are saying exactly. However, since that would require completely new animations, it's understandable why they kept it. Still, the voiceovers were well done, and they recreated the Disney characters pretty well. The music is cool. Some more of the original music from the movies would've been nice, but, again, that's expensive. At any rate, for its level, and time period for the system, Kingdom Hearts is pretty good.Overall, I'd give Kingdom Hearts five thumbs up, if I could. The story is immaculate, well-paced, and has a good balance between the somber Final Fantasy world, and the lighthearted, feel-good Disney world. The gameplay defines true action-RPG style. It's not too hard, not too easy. There are lots of fun cameos, good animation, and fun voiceovers. It creates an entirely new aspect of life, the heart, and explores it, with a little magic, and a little science. It's something that could only make sense in the world of Kingdom Hearts. Again, Kingdom Hearts is an instant classic, the perfect action-RPG, and a game for every RPG fan to try (and yes, I could write a book about it if I wanted to). Remember, there will always be a door to the light...

This game is the essence of minr and many childhoods.Thank you for providing the best possible condition, and it has been playing perfectly!Brand New as listed!I would recommend this seller to anyone! Thank you again for such an excellent video game!

I'll admit that I didn't think that this game was the greatest idea to start with. I like turn based combat, I don't like the saccharine side of Disney, and I wasn't expecting a whole lot out of this strange union. That said, I was pleasantly surprised in a lot of ways by this game. It deserves its status as one of the best selling RPGs of the past few years, and at the current price ($20 as a greatest hit title) every PS2 owner should buy it.Now, don't get me wrong--there's a lot that's not right with this game. We'll start, as most people do, with the camera. These developers should be ashamed. I've met people who've failed out of community colleges that could have done a better job. It's simply awful. There's no other word for it. The camera gets stuck on things. The camera forces its way into awkward positions for no apparent reason. At several points I felt as though the level designers had specifically tried to use the horrible control on the camera to make things more difficult. Even .dot//Hack, which is not comparable to this game in a lot of ways, managed to build a camera that was responsive and let you keep your eyes on what you were doing. The levels are poorly designed for as terrible a device as they're using, and there's simply no excuse for this kind of shoddy workmanship.Another annoying problem for me was the dialogue. It's not that it was badly done (though there are some points at which the players don't deliver their lines in quite the fashion they were intended to)--it's that whoever scripted this thing didn't put enough in it. There were several points in this game where the dialogue simply cut off and you were abruptly switched back to floating text boxes. Very disconcerting and it did a lot to dull the experience for me. And just as an aside--I know that it's the theme of the plot, but did the designers really have to try and set the record for most uses of the word "heart" in a ten minute span? There are plenty of synonyms available, people--use them.All of that aside, though, this game still succeeds admirably despite its flaws. The combat system, while not perfect (I didn't much like the ability system, and I particularly didn't like having to stick items on your characters before a fight) is remarkable. The menu system is quite effective and the AI for your party companions is....well, it's terrible, but it's better than most of the ones I've seen in similar games. The plot is involving and scripted better than normal for Square. Rather than spiraling out of control near the end (as their stories so often do) everything remains tight and compact. The characters feel real and you actually care about what happens to them. Graphically, this game looks better than an awful lot of what I've seen on other platforms, and never mind how inferior the PS2 is supposed to be to the other two major consoles. Square, as usual, has assembled a great looking product. The music is also tolerably good, though perhaps not up to the standards fans of the Final Fantasy series might hold. The mini-games are there for you to play, though once again you're forced to jump off of the plot in the middle of the climax and go slog through all the worlds you've already been to if you want to accomplish everything. The game clocks in a little shorter than most Square RPGs (I finished up in a little over thirty hours with about half of the mini-games completed, and I spent a fair amount of time jumping into walls I wouldn't have had to if I'd gone to a walkthrough), but frankly I think most of their games run a little on the long end anyway, so that worked out well for me.On the whole, I'd recommend that any PS2 owner who's entertained the notion of purchasing this game go ahead and do it. For twenty dollars, this is probably one of the best values that you can get.