Kingdom Hearts

In typical Square Enix fashion, the ending sequence was lengthy, in millions of different parts, and not actually that tough. Some worlds also weren't too great - Halloween Town, most notably, was pretty disappointing. But the vast majority of Kingdom Hearts is stellar, engaging, and addictively fun. After my self-imposed hiatus to work on Chibi-Robo!, KH was nigh-impossible to put down again.

I finished the game at just under 35 gameplay hours, and though I've done all I'm really interested in, there is yet more left in the game in the way of optional sidequests and bosses. Not for nothing, either, as most of these yield rewards in the form of items or magic spells, and new abilities continue to roll in by levelling up.

The ability system is really cool as it evolves throughout the game. To begin with you'll have only a couple abilities - like a combat roll, or 'item magnet' which pulls nearby dropped items toward you. Eventually you'll learn ever-valuable MP regeneration abilities, combat moves, and other miscellany that really kick the combat system up a notch. Abilities require Ability Points to equip, so managing the right set of abilities within your AP limits is, while not necessarily difficult, an added step of setup strategy.

I should also mention that the music, specifically the original music, is superb. I didn't find out about the game's composer, Yoko Shimomura, until recently with her spectacular work in this franchise and in the upcoming Heroes of Mana soundtrack. But apparently she also did the Mario and Luigi series, as well as Super Mario RPG (alongside Kondo and Uematsu), and is now working on SSB Brawl. Awesome! And I would be remiss not to bring up the voice acting - some of it is shabby, but for the most part it is very well done. Haley Joel Osment makes a good main character; James Woods as Hades is fantastic; and they even got Gilbert Gottfried to do the parrot from Aladdin! Even some of the impersonators were pretty good, I really thought that Genie was Robin Williams until I looked it up.

KH has a couple rough spots, but is ultimately an extremely fun and satisfying game. Albeit a bit muddled by the Disney presence, I could even go so far as to call it a modern classic.

Progress: Complete