Kingdom Hearts

The video game industry is full of great ideas. Just ask Sean Howard, a man with a few great ideas that can't get a job in the industry to save his life. (seriously, Sean, just go back to making webcomics. You're good at it, and you might even make some money via site donations, if you just stick with it and stop being such an ass)

One great idea that the folks over at Squaresoft had (Yeah, they're SquareEnix now, I know, but they were Squaresoft at the time.) was to mash together the collected worlds of Disney and Final Fantasy, add a few original characters, and do a world-hopping fantasy adventure game called Kingdom Hearts. This was such a good idea that it spawned several sequels, garnered a huge fanbase of people with bad haircuts, and generally made fans of both Disney and Squaresoft's previous efforts wet their collective pants with glee.

I recently decided to replay Kingdom Hearts, and it simply doesn't hold up like I remembered. Sure, it features voice talent like Dan Castellaneta, James Woods, Lance Bass, and Haley Joel Osment, Sure, it's got the trademark Squaresoft Gorgeousness, and sure, it's got Gummi Ships, but it's also got the Final Boss of bad cameras, and a somewhat clunky control scheme.

I recall that playing through the game on normal difficulty was absurdly easy. It was an exercise in mashing X to not die. This time I decided to see what the game was like if I turned it up to 11, and the result is that I die. I die all the time. Half the time, I don't even get to see what killed me, because as I previously mentioned, the camera is in league with my enemies. It often seems to dodge behind walls at critical points in time, and constantly conspires to keep the worst of any group of baddies off the screen while they charge up whatever super-attack is going to result in my immediate and messy death.

It's not all bad, though. The presentation is patently beautiful, the storyline is engaging, and the antics of your constant companions, Donald Duck and Goofy, are just as fun as they always have been. I never get tired of hearing Donald Duck freak out.

One oddity, as far as Squaresoft is concerned, is the background music. It comes in short, short loops, isn't horribly well composed, and becomes grating about three minutes into any new setting. Nobuo Uematsu would have been a good choice for this, as long as they're cutting him paychecks anyways.

It's a best-seller, a classic, and should be played, I suppose, but don't bother turning up the difficulty. Available on Wii and PS2.