Track this topic | Email this topic | Print this topic

Kingdom Hearts - a game thought by many to be too silly to play due to many Disney characters playing major parts in the storyline, also sporting cameos by various Final Fantasy characters (unfortunately now and in the future only Nomura designs )

How many of you played it? Which parts? how do you feel about the gameplay, storyline or irritating Sephiroth appearances?

I have grown addicted to the series and can't wait for the release of part three. I love some characters (The King, Riku, Axe, DiZl) while others are outright annoying (Sora, please, GROW UP!). I like the skill-equpping system, the travelling system (Gummi Ship FTW) and the card system in Chain of Memories.

The idea of the Keyblade seemed wacky to me at first, but I love the many forms that it gets. Keys such as The Sleeping Lion, Oathkeeper or Way of The Dawn are simply beautiful to me.

I loved the villains, or rather antagonists in Kingdom Hearts.
Maleficent was evil, ominous and intimidating as remembered her from my childhood years. She was driven by simple megalomania, yes, but was still charming while at it.
Members of Organization XIII were what I saw as the ultimate-party-of-adventurers-who-somehow-wound-up-being-villains. Each of them having their own reasons and all sharing a collective goal.

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

I can't consider them evil, since they just want to be complete, poor buggers

And finally

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

Xehanort. The source of all the trouble. He's the Knight in the Final Mix+ Secret ending, you fight him three times so far:
-"Ansem", his Heartless, the final boss and behind-the-scenes actual villain of KH1.
-"Xemnas", his Nobody (also, an anagram of "Ansem" with an added "x"), leader of Organization XIII, hypocrite, final boss in KH2
-"The remaining Thought", the Knight from the Secret Ending, armed with a huge Keyblade, hidden optional boss in KH2:Final Mix, who states: "Hatred for Xehanort is all I have left"

Well, any thoughts?

Edit

Spelling and grammar

This post has been edited by SilverMaduin on 24th April 2007 17:31

--------------------

"I fell off the mountain of words at around the 10,000ft mark. Tell my family...they owe me money." -Narratorway

"If you retort against this, so help me God I'll shove any part of your anatomy I can find into some other part. Figuratively, of course." - Josh

"We have more, can deliver tuesday." - Del S

Good old CoN

I dislike the series for many reasons, which I've stated ad nauseum on these boards.

There are some things that I liked, though.

The combat system. It could have been more in-depth so it didn't just feel like a button mash frenzy halfway through, but it was pretty interesting when I first tried the game out.

The keyblades. Unique "hero" weapon, and they had lot's of selection and special properties for each one. Much better than the bland "sword". The look of each one was nice as well.

Disney villians as bosses. Some didn't work, some did amazingly well.

The gummi-ship-thingie that you got to drive around.

This post has been edited by Hamedo on 24th April 2007 11:59

--------------------

Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill them.

~Pacifist Badge, 1978

i thought the game was ok
i was fun, a times
i just didnt like how it trashed most FF characters' reputations and histories

--------------------

delete me

Quote (Cow_Of_The_Opera @ 24th April 2007 08:26)

i just didnt like how it trashed most FF characters' reputations and histories

Agreed. Making them "cartoony" was bad enough, but the voice acting and things that they did in-game was retarded.

--------------------

Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill them.

~Pacifist Badge, 1978

My friend told me to buy kingdom hearts, I laughed at him. When I found out it REALLY WAS disney characters with final fantasy characters I almost wanted to cry and I'm very dissapointed in square enix... Kingdom Hearts should never have existed in my opinion and I am still upset to this day that square enix made such a mockery of the characters I have grown to love from final fantasy.

Quote (Hamedo @ 24th April 2007 14:42)

Quote (Cow_Of_The_Opera @ 24th April 2007 08:26)

i just didnt like how it trashed most FF characters' reputations and histories

Agreed. Making them "cartoony" was bad enough, but the voice acting and things that they did in-game was retarded.

Care to elaborate? I mean in what way are FF chars "cartoony" in KH? And what was so bad about what they did?

This post has been edited by SilverMaduin on 24th April 2007 16:13

--------------------

"I fell off the mountain of words at around the 10,000ft mark. Tell my family...they owe me money." -Narratorway

"If you retort against this, so help me God I'll shove any part of your anatomy I can find into some other part. Figuratively, of course." - Josh

"We have more, can deliver tuesday." - Del S

Good old CoN

Quote (Rarthyr @ 24th April 2007 09:36)

My friend told me to buy kingdom hearts, I laughed at him. When I found out it REALLY WAS disney characters with final fantasy characters I almost wanted to cry and I'm very dissapointed in square enix... Kingdom Hearts should never have existed in my opinion and I am still upset to this day that square enix made such a mockery of the characters I have grown to love from final fantasy.

It sounded pretty silly to me when I first heard of it, but I'm in the mood for silly sometimes, so I gave the game a play when I bought it for my brother for Christmas. It has a surprisingly serious storyline. The inclusion of the Disney characters adds familiarity and nostalgia for people who watched the movies, but I don't think they made the game inherently less mature than it would have been if the worlds were completely made-up. Maybe you should give the game a try before deciding that you're disappointed in Square.

--------------------

Veni, vidi, dormivi.

Quote (SilverMaduin @ 24th April 2007 11:09)

Quote (Hamedo @ 24th April 2007 14:42)

Quote (Cow_Of_The_Opera @ 24th April 2007 08:26)

i just didnt like how it trashed most FF characters' reputations and histories

Agreed. Making them "cartoony" was bad enough, but the voice acting and things that they did in-game was retarded.

Care to elaborate? I mean in what way are FF chars "cartoony" in KH? And what was so bad about what they did?

Cartoony in the sense that the game was done with a kindof "chibi" look to the FF characters portrayed therein. You go from serious looking FF villians and heros in their original games to parodys of them in KH. They just look ridiculous, IMO. The art in the game definitely catered more to the Disney side of things than the FF side of things.

Then there was the way that the FF characters talked and acted. Wakka wasn't my favorite FFX character, but KH made me hate him. In FFX he had a decent enough plotline and backstory, but in KH he got treated like a stereotypical island hopping surfer dude.

--------------------

Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill them.

~Pacifist Badge, 1978

I don't really like the series that much. I'll tell you right now that the gameplay is really, really good though. I just don't like the story. And no, it has nothing to do with Disney. I grew up on Disney and I have no right to bash it.

The problem is that the story is too Anime-esque for my taste. And I'm no fan of Anime. Or the characters who got cameos. They picked the wrong ones. I don't care that it was Nomura. They still picked the wrong characters. And the voice acting was possibly the poorest I've ever heard in a game, and they mass market these things more than they do more important games.

Now what they SHOULD have done is made the plot less Anime like and kept that awesome battle system. -CSM

--------------------

The NEW Final Fantasy Wiki!

Join us!

To be honest, I'm a little surprised that KH is getting such a negative reaction on this forum, because usually 90% of what you hear about KH is wild praise and yaoi pairing discussions (*shudder*).

I played the first one and thought it was pretty good. It had somewhat lighthearted character designs that sort of blended in with both the FF cast and the Disney cast; the original plan for KH was to have it start Mickey, Donald, and Goofy, but they ended up dropping that idea and created Sora - look at his clothes and you can tell that he was almost Mickey. The battle system was pretty good and the combat was solid, but the game's platforming elements were weak and the story just... sort of fell flat for me. I guess I had a hard time taking Sora, Riku, and Kairi seriously, or something.

I've played maybe the first six or seven hours of the second game, and I wasn't very impressed. I mean, it's basically a smoother version of the first game, but its plot elements of Heartless and Nobodies are featured even more strongly, and I was never enchanted by the KH storyline concepts at all, so that's probably why I didn't enjoy it as much as everyone seemed to. I'll probably get it eventually and finish it while I run through my massive backlog of PS1 and PS2 games that I mean to play, but I'm not really a fan.

I was given Chain of Memories as a gift around a year or so after it came out, and I definitely didn't like it. It took the most entertaining parts of KH1 (the combat, party dynamic, and item customization system), murdered them, and then gave us card battles. No thanks.

So yeah, I'm pretty meh on the series. I see where CSM is coming from about the series appealing more to anime fans, but I just couldn't take the storyline and main characters seriously. I had no problems with the Disney characters or the Square characters (I mean, I love Square and Disney to death as seperate entities), I just thought that Sora, Riku, and Kairi were pretty lamesauce. Maybe some other time I'll become a born-again KH fan or something, because KH 1 and 2 both play very well , but not right now.

Edit

sentence structure ahoy!

This post has been edited by laszlow on 25th April 2007 01:41

--------------------

this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

Quote (laszlow @ 24th April 2007 21:40)

usually 90% of what you hear about KH is wild praise and yaoi pairing discussions (*shudder*).

I haven't played any of the games, but given the kind of attention given to it on the internets, as exemplified by your mentioning things like "wild [fankiddish] praise and yaoi pairing discussions", I've ended up with a penalty to actually liking the series.

(Then again, extremely fankiddish anime-style fankids tend to lend some penalty to my liking just about anything they do...)

Quote (laszlow)

I guess I had a hard time taking Sora, Riku, and Kairi seriously, or something.

I have a hard time taking any part of the setting seriously. And one problem with me not being able to take it seriously is that it seems to take itself seriously while I can't, as opposed to plots like that of Earthbound where the plot just doesn't take itself seriously anyway. In other words, it wants to be serious while I can't be.

But then again, maybe when I play the game I'll like it regardless, but for the gameplay. I've heard it's quite good in that respect.

I also have heard a bit of the music from it. I have...um...two tracks on my computer frm KH: "Hollow Bastion" and "Hikari". I like "Hollow Bastion", and I also notice that it was composed by Yoko Shimomura, whose work in Super Mario RPG I very much enjoyed. On the other hand, I'm decidedly not a fan of the musical style of "Hikari"--not a kind of pop that I like, and not a kind of harmonic and melodic language that I like. I don't know who wrote "Hikari" though. (Also, I have no clue what the lyrics mean, but I doubt I'll really care all that much either way.)

In general, I'm not too interested in the games, partly because of the crazy fankiddish reaction of...well, fankids. (Any game series with a significant fankid following gets a penalty to my liking it--and it's been REALLY hard for me to consider FFVII without bias.) Hard for me to be taken seriously if I do something that's also done by all these other people who are ditzes/fankid-types.

I'm also not a fan of a particularly anime-ish setting/plot-type, so my guess is that I probably won't like the plot all that much based on its background.

(I have yet to figure out what I do like, though...I thought I liked fantasy stuff until I saw LotR; I thought I didn't like realistic stuff until I saw Law & Order...)

--------------------

Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Hamedo @ 24th April 2007 10:35)

Cartoony in the sense that the game was done with a kindof "chibi" look to the FF characters portrayed therein.  You go from serious looking FF villians and heros in their original games to parodys of them in KH.  They just look ridiculous, IMO.  The art in the game definitely catered more to the Disney side of things than the FF side of things.

They really didn't though. Case in point: Blah vs. blah

Quote

Then there was the way that the FF characters talked and acted.   Wakka wasn't my favorite FFX character, but KH made me hate him.  In FFX he had a decent enough plotline and backstory, but in KH he got treated like a stereotypical island hopping surfer dude.

Okay I'll give you that one, even though he only had like 2 lines. The worst were him and Seifer, otherwise it wasn't that bad. But seriously, Seifer. God he was just terrible.

I think that I'm pretty opposite of everyone else here in that I think that the story was okay, but the gameplay was terrible. Seriously it was. It was repeated mashing of a button until you needed that one spell that you had to spend so much time digging for. And while you're navigating that menu, you can't attack. So you're defenseless. That and the little commands on the bottom. KHII fixed that with reaction commands, but even then there were multiple flying at you at one time and it was really hard to time it right to use the one you wanted in frantic situations. But even after that, it was still just mash X X X X X X X, Triangle, X X X X X X. Some variation, please.

The story is okay. It's cliche, but whatever. Basically they use the words "dark", "light", and "heart" more than "a", "the", and "and", so it gets kind of nauseatingly stupid.

The best part of the first one was the olympuss cups, but they just ruined those in the second one. Oh well. Apparently they're coming out with a third. I'll probably buy it eventually.

This post has been edited by FallingHeart on 25th April 2007 02:59

--------------------

"We're not tools of the government or anyone else. Fighting... fighting was the only thing I was ever good at, but at least I always fought for what I believed in." - Frank Yeager (a.k.a. Grey Fox)

What Lasz says about the game is pretty much what I think, but I'm more willing to be entertained by fluff, I guess.

I like adventure-style combat systems, and I really did like the Disney environments. My favorite thing about the game as a whole was how well they chose their main Disney baddie. Of course, you can tell I'm a fan.

--------------------

Veni, vidi, dormivi.

I've only KH chain of memories and umm i really don't like it.
It has great graphics and ok storyline but i didn't like the gameplay that much.
(Using cards to open doors)
It's kind of repetitive at times as well.

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

Playing Rikku after finishing Sora's storyline is fun though.

I'm sure if i play the two KH on PS2 i will like them.

This post has been edited by Toxiedogg on 25th April 2007 11:27

--------------------

FF7- 10/10
FF8- urr.. i thought the ending was great.
FF9 9/10

Quote (SilverMaduin @ 24th April 2007 06:13)

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

-"The remaining Thought", the Knight from the Secret Ending, armed with a huge Keyblade, hidden optional boss in KH2:Final Mix, who states: "Hatred for Xehanort is all I have left"

Source? I haven't heard anything of that being Xehanort.

Quote (Yoshimitsu27 @ 25th April 2007 16:20)

Quote (SilverMaduin @ 24th April 2007 06:13)

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

-"The remaining Thought", the Knight from the Secret Ending, armed with a huge Keyblade, hidden optional boss in KH2:Final Mix, who states: "Hatred for Xehanort is all I have left"

Source? I haven't heard anything of that being Xehanort.

Several cut-scenes and the secret ending in Final Mix+ indicate this. I mean, he stares righ into the camera in the latter.
Also I'd like to point out to you

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

that,1- Xehanort was found by Ansem the Wise when he didn't remember a thing from his past (or so he said) and 2- Xemnas, unlike other Organization XIII members can't remember GOOD feelings, only anger, hate, etc. There is speculation, that the Knight is what's left of the Xehanort from the battle with the creepy bald guy - those missing memories.

Edit

Also, Toxiedogg, you mean Riku, not Rikku Rikku's buzzing around Hollow Bastion with Yuna and Paine

This post has been edited by SilverMaduin on 26th April 2007 07:16

--------------------

"I fell off the mountain of words at around the 10,000ft mark. Tell my family...they owe me money." -Narratorway

"If you retort against this, so help me God I'll shove any part of your anatomy I can find into some other part. Figuratively, of course." - Josh

"We have more, can deliver tuesday." - Del S

Good old CoN

I really do enjoy the Kingdom Hearts games, and the only thing I'd reallly complain about them is that they seriously lack replay value. I'm a big stickler for replay value in my games, and different difficulty levels don't seem to add enough to the KH games.

Other than that, I do enjoy the stories and character designs quite a bit, and I'm very, very excited for KHII Final Mix+.

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

Optional superboss extravaganza! Nothing gets me amped up more then crazy superbosses.

--------------------

OSonic Rave
/ \Last Arcanum
[ ]Strike Raid
XRagnarok

I personally like the series. I like the imagination of it i guess. The disney doesn't bother me because I too grew up on Disney. And of course the ff element is sweet. Anything FF is going to make me happy. Not to mention the surprisingly decent storyline - I didn't expect much either when I started, but it definately surprised me. A bad note however, is they are incredibly SLOW in moving along their plot, you could probably clear 2-3 worlds without finding out a new interesting detail about what your facing, it's motives, who knows who from when, anything. And what do you mean annoying Sephiroth appearances? Is there a such thing? I think Sephiroth could appear as my new step-dad and I'd be alright with it.

--------------------

[img]http://img83.exs.cx:81/img83/2/ramzaanddelita2rayni7wx.jpg[/img]

Quote (SilverMaduin @ 26th April 2007 02:14)

Also I'd like to point out to you

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

that,1- Xehanort was found by Ansem the Wise when he didn't remember a thing from his past (or so he said) and 2- Xemnas, unlike other Organization XIII members can't remember GOOD feelings, only anger, hate, etc. There is speculation, that the Knight is what's left of the Xehanort from the battle with the creepy bald guy - those missing memories.

That sounds plausible, but wholly too far-fetched. Until I see more concrete evidence from the creators, I'd be skeptical of that information.