Kingdom Hearts: Nostalgia vs. Reality

I routinely rank Kingdom Hearts among my favorite games, but I haven’t
replayed it since the PS2 days. Sometime in 2018 I decided to write down
how I felt about Kingdom Hearts before I started replaying it. Then I would
write a follow up based on my thoughts from actually playing it, and see
how nostalgia compared to reality. My replay... took much longer than I
initially planned… but I did it, and I’m sticking with the plan. So now I
invite you to read the thoughts of someone who loved Kingdom Hearts as a
child, but hasn’t played it since, followed by an adult who played the game
again on PS4. Enjoy.

I routinely rank Kingdom Hearts among my favorite games, but I haven’t replayed it since the PS2 days. Sometime in 2018 I decided to write down how I felt about Kingdom Hearts before I started replaying it. Then I would write a follow up based on my thoughts from actually playing it, and see how nostalgia compared to reality. My replay... took much longer than I initially planned… but I did it, and I’m sticking with the plan. So now I invite you to read the thoughts of someone who loved Kingdom Hearts as a child, but hasn’t played it since, followed by an adult who played the game again on PS4. Enjoy.

Nostalgia

Kingdom Hearts was one of the first games I purchased for my PlayStation 2. I remember seeing commercials about it on Disney Channel and thinking it looked really cool - they did a whole special segment about it where they talked about how innovative the battle system was, and how it was a mash up of characters from Disney worlds and Squaresoft’s own Final Fantasy. I had never played a Final Fantasy game at that point, but I had a friend whose older brother swore by them. They seemed like these epic fantasy games with swords and magic and monsters and heroes...basically just my kind of thing. But the games were rated T, and my mom was very strict about what games I was allowed to buy. One time, she actually tried to stop me from buying Jak and Daxter because it said “Naughty Dog” on the cover, thinking “naughty” meant...naughty. It took some explaining for her to understand that was only the name of the company who made the game. So I thought maybe this rated E Kingdom Hearts game could be my introduction into the more mature Final Fantasy series I really wanted to try.

The first time I played Kingdom Hearts, I got to the Alice in Wonderland world and got completely stuck. I couldn’t make sense of the perspective warps and the way you had to move from room to room to figure out...whatever you had to figure out. So I asked my mom to buy me a strategy guide, and I started the entire game over again. At the time we had the PS2 set up in our living room, which had this big window that shined right onto the TV in the middle of the day. It made playing games very difficult in the darker sections, so the beginning of the game was particularly rough for me. Funnily enough, I wasn’t even aware of the issue until we moved the system to the basement and I played Halloween Town and could see everything.

But anyway, the game. I fell in love with it immediately and it quickly became just about the only game I played. I eventually 100%’d the entire thing on every difficulty (the strategy guide helped a lot of course). I still don’t think I’ve done that with any other game. I loved the way the game played, it had a fun and physical battle system, you were constantly moving to get the best angle on your enemies. Each of the common enemies had a unique feel to them - you knew right away you would have to fight the Large Bodies differently than you would have to fight Soldiers. And I liked how simple leveling up was, I didn’t have to think much about managing my levels, I just had to assign my skills and magic. It actually did end up being a good gateway to more involved JRPGs in that way. I had to think about managing accessories and weapon stats in a way you don’t in Zelda or even Pokemon, but the core of character progression was simple enough for a beginner. I loved how you could control everything on the fly and it was all so fluid.

I also thought the game was gorgeous. And even now, you can tell that it was graphically a bit ahead of its time. Those pre-rendered cutscenes still look great. The music is still some of my favorite music in gaming, and I think that “Dearly Beloved” and “Simple and Clean” are among the best theme songs ever associated with a game series.

And of course there were Final Fantasy characters. Now at the time I didn’t know that these were like, approximations of the characters rather than completely accurate versions of the characters. “Leon” isn’t quite the same as “Squall,” and Cloud is more like the idea of Cloud than the actual character (and he’s designed as like a Cloud/Vincent mash-up) but meeting them at all was my first introduction to them. I ended up getting Final Fantasy VII solely on thinking Cloud was the coolest damn person in the world (and imagine my surprise when I was given blocky early PS1 graphics when I was expecting something on par with Kingdom Hearts!).

One of my favorite memories looking back on it (and this is going to sound antithetical to “favorite”) is how long it took me to fight Riku in Hollow Bastion. I mean the second time, when he uses the Keyblade of Heart; generally he’s called “Dark Riku” but I still think of him as “Riku II” because that’s what the strategy guide called him. He’s insanely strong compared to what you’ve fought up to that point, and I think he may even be harder than the final boss. I fought him probably 20 times before I finally defeated him, and no you could not skip the cutscene.

The story really stuck with me at the time. I know it kind of has a reputation for being convoluted now, and maybe I’ll discover it really is when I do my replay, but at the time I thought it was incredibly well executed. You had this epic about two friends who just wanted to protect their third friend but they go about it in such different ways. And you can see as Riku is slowly corrupted by forces he doesn’t understand, even though his heart started out in the right place. It’s a great parable of growing up I think, and how easy it is to lose your way. Sora is steadfast in believing in the right things, and he surrounds himself with good people, while Riku goes out on his own and lets other people influence him. I thought the Disney worlds were really well implemented, and you had this feeling of wonder that I don’t think we’ve really had since then in the series. You’re going on this journey through a Disney universe and each stop is more amazing than the last. It’s like going to Disney World for the first time and just being stunned by all the sights and sounds - now it’s somewhat novel in this series but in the original game it just felt special. The way they made each world feel distinct and important shows just how strong the Disney brand or connection is.

And the ending! The timing of that final moment when Sora is reaching out for Kairi and the music kicks in just as they’re separated - it’s brilliant, one of my top gaming moments for sure. Overall I rank Kingdom Hearts among my top games of all time, possibly a contender for the top spot.

Reality

I just read my own nostalgia section for the first time since writing it, so I too am surprised by how much I raved about the game. This section is called reality, and the reality is that Kingdom Hearts is a great game, but time has not been kind to it.

I played the PS4 remaster of Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, which includes some new content and gameplay tweaks over the original game, most practically moving the camera control from the L2/R2 triggers to the right analog stick. When I played the original version in 2002, I didn’t notice that the camera control is wonky; it’s almost impossible to play now. Otherwise the game is essentially the same as its PS2 original.

It starts off remarkably strong; the visuals are one thing that hold up so the opening movie still stuns. The tutorial section gets you into the action quickly, so even while you’re subconsciously deciding what your stats and level progression will be, you don’t feel like the game is slowing down to explain it to you. You choose between a sword, staff, or shield as your weapon of choice, and without even knowing it you’ve chosen what kind of game you’re going to play. Back in 2002, I didn’t give much thought to how my weapon choice would affect my playstyle through the rest of the game, but it turns out there actually is a bit of a difference. For example, picking the shield first will give you Guard significantly earlier than the other options, allowing you to keep yourself safe more easily. Eventually how you play the game will more or less even out, but the first half of the game can be impacted quite dramatically based on what you choose. Later you answer personality questions about yourself, which also affect how quickly you gain EXP throughout the game (check out this guide for an explanation of how each thing works). It’s an interesting way to subconsciously give the player a degree of control over their starting stats, but sometimes I wonder how many people out there got an undesirable build simply because they didn’t know the choices actually mattered. It’s similar to how the original Pokemon games essentially had a built-in difficulty based on your starter choice; Bulbasaur has a type advantage against the first two gyms, Squirtle has an advantage against the first gym and is equal to the second, while Charmander is weak to the first two gyms. These kinds of subtle difficulty systems are an interesting play mechanic, but the fact that they’re unknown to the player limits some of their effectiveness.

Playing through the first couple of stages is still a fun time, but just as I remembered, it all grinds to a halt in Wonderland. I picked at the obscurity of this level already, but what I was surprised to find is that most of the levels in Kingdom Hearts follow this kind of pattern. I actually watched my wife play most of the game in parallel to my own playthrough, and I discovered there were numerous times when I played a section from memory rather than looking for the clues the game was giving me. And it turned out there weren’t many clues at all! Often you have to talk to a character multiple times in order to get the directions or trigger the event you need, and if you want to upgrade your Cura spell to Curaga (basically necessary if you want to beat the game) then you have to talk to Aerith 3 times in the Hollow Bastion library - something you have literally no reason to do if you don’t know to do it. This kind of game design just bugs me; I’m all for making things tough to figure out, but there’s nothing challenging about talking to NPCs dozens of times until you get the results you want.

I think you can break the levels in Kingdom Hearts into two categories: either the level is super linear, requiring you to just push forward through different zones (Agrabah, Halloweentown, Traverse Town, Neverland) or the level is a maze with no sense of direction, and few indications of where to go (Wonderland, Deep Jungle, Monstro, Atlantica). This first set of levels end up feeling like a gauntlet of enemies that you just have to power through in order to survive. It’s…fine as a level design. They’re more linear than I would like, and Neverland in particular suffers from incredibly close quarters, but battling is fun enough on its own to keep it fun.

The second set of levels feel like poorly designed puzzles. Some of them explicitly have puzzles that need to be solved for progression (Wonderland) but they don’t tell you what it is you’re trying to solve. Wonderland fails as a level because the puzzle is just “do the series of steps that makes the boss appear” but even the Cheshire Cat’s vague clues don’t do anything to help you. By no means do I expect the game to walk me through every level, but a successful puzzle at least gives you all the pieces you need to solve it.

I want to hone in on 2 levels to better explain what’s going on under the hood here. Agrabah and Hollow Bastion are largely both successful. Agrabah is really two semi-explorable areas back to back, while Hollow Bastion is a massive castle with a number of sub areas. The main goal of Hollow Bastion is to reach the top of the castle, where Maleficent is doing Maleficent things. Except...the game never tells you that you need to get to the top of the castle. Instead you start walking through “Lift Stop” rooms, hitting switches and activating elevators, and maybe you eventually realize what it is you’re trying to do, but you don’t have to in order to proceed. You can easily just solve the room you’re in and progress. The reason why I have a problem with this kind of progression is because it’s so mindless. There’s no overall direction to the level, it’s just a series of rooms you have to explore until you’re done exploring. It’s saved by the fact that a couple of the lifts require multi-room solutions, and the enemies you encounter are new varieties and the most challenging yet.

What makes this more frustrating is that earlier in the level, Hollow Bastion has several solid puzzles. One of the very first things you have to do is figure out how to open the main gate. So you explore around and eventually find your way into the basement, which requires you to move some walls around to find the switch that will open the door. This is simple puzzle execution at its finest. What you’re supposed to do is always clear, it’s the execution that is the challenge.

Next, after your first fight with Riku, you’re shown a door closed by a Heartless emblem. Again, it’s clear you have to open this door, and if you inspect the door, you’ll even get a bit of text about finding the emblem pieces. In the meantime, you only have one other door open to you, the library. The library is a puzzle box of its own, with moving doors and books needing re-shelving, so that the player feels they’ve earned something when they finally make their way out. Once you’re out of the library, you still have to solve the smaller puzzles that will give you the emblem pieces needed to open the door. Then once the door is open… nothing - no indication of what to do or where to go next. You just have to keep pushing forward until you hit a cutscene.

This quick succession of quality puzzles ends up making the rest of the level feel empty. If you want to explore for all of the hidden treasures in the castle you’ll find a few more puzzles, but otherwise it’s as simple as “hit the switch that calls the next elevator.” If there were one or two more in depth puzzles in the castle, or if the “exit the room” idea was carried over into something larger, it would feel like a much more cohesive level. As it is, it feels like the design concept was dropped halfway through the level.

Agrabah similarly has two distinct sections, though both of them are pretty linear if you know where you’re going. In the city of Agrabah, you explore a number of open areas, defeating Heartless. It’s essentially a gauntlet style level, but it’s open while not being confusing. You can always orient yourself if you take a wrong turn. The second part of the level is the Cave of Wonders, which itself is broken into two sections. The top area is more or less a straight path to where you need to go, however if you fall or drop into the lower area, the “Dark Chamber,” then you’ll find a succession of twists and turns that will yield treasure to anyone brave enough to sort it all out.

The best thing that the Cave of Wonders does is allows the player to get back to the upper levels with ease, and once you understand the layout of the rooms, you’re rewarded with even faster progression. At first it seems intimidating to find yourself in one of the Dark Rooms, but in time you’ll be able to explore without getting hopelessly lost. And since most of the rooms double back on each other in some way, you never have to travel far to get back onto the main course. The cost of exploration isn’t as high as a level like Halloweentown, which has a section under the bridge outside the final area that takes you all the way back to the first area - with no return shortcut. The only way back is to hike the same trail you used the first time. Sure it’s great to have a shortcut from the end back to the start, but making it a one way trip is a flaw. Agrabah gets around this kind of trap and ends up incentivizing exploration in a good way.

Overall, the levels in Kingdom Hearts turned out to be smaller and much more linear than I remembered, which was definitely a disappointment. I had this idea in my head that the levels were these sprawling exploration fests, and they just aren’t. Add in the fact that each level offers the player so little in the way of direction, and you have a recipe for some pretty broken and inconsistent levels.

The saving grace of the game is of course the battle system, something Square somehow managed to nail on the first try and the effects of which still linger to this day. You definitely don’t get to Final Fantasy XV without Kingdom Hearts. The combat is so fluid and open, you have the ability to experiment with timing and positioning to try and get the best advantage over your enemy. The Tech System makes it so you’re incentivized to block enemy attacks, so you have a built-in way to add pauses to the fast pace of the action. The combos in this game feel amazing, and chaining together a string of increasingly powerful attacks is rewarding and visceral. I love how adding aerial combos can give you a sense that Sora is flying through the air, and then the challenge becomes keeping him there for as long as possible. One thing I was surprised to find is how absurdly OP the “Strike Raid” ability is in this game. You have the ability to chain together Keyblade throws at an enemy, and it works both from a distance and up close. I went into the game thinking I’d use a lot of “Ars Arcanum” - a fast, close range ability with a lot of hits - but it felt way less effective compared to a few well placed “Strike Raids.”

Kingdom Hearts is a much more mechanically sound game than I remembered. Sure, I knew it had a combat system I’ve loved enough to play its sequels, but the fact that it is so solid on the first run is surprising. A lot of games have real time combat, and a lot of games have great combo systems, but few of them feel as fun to pull off, and have the same weight of the sword hit as Kingdom Hearts.

And while we’re on the subject of combat, I should mention that I kicked Dark Riku’s ass on my first try. I’m not sure if I was just more appropriately leveled or if I’ve just improved that much as a gamer (definitely telling myself that) but he wasn’t as difficult as I thought he would be. I didn’t even grind beforehand, I just went in, kept my distance, attacked when I had the opportunity, and he was done in a good amount of time. I only actually died a couple of times in the whole game, and each time I just reloaded instead of choosing “Continue” because there’s a trophy for not using “Continue,” and I will always inconvenience myself for a trophy.

I haven’t even addressed the story yet, which has developed a reputation for being silly. It is silly if you’re an adult, but in all its silliness there really is something charming and epic about it. The story of Sora looking for his friends, finding them, having to fight one of them, and then giving them up again to save all the worlds is big in scale while feeling small and personal. I actually more or less agree with my nostalgia here in thinking that the throughline of the game is strong, even if it detours into some odd places. Yea you turn into a merman and play jumping games with Tigger, but it all works.

I think “it all works” may be my overall impression of the original Kingdom Hearts in today’s world. It has its flaws, but it’s still a remarkable game. The story is silly, the levels are clunky, but it’s just fun to play. I can’t help but smile and enjoy myself every time I pick it up. Somehow, impossibly, it all works.