Heart of Darkness
Yay! Just finished Kingdom Hearts!SHIT, I love this game. Every molecule in my body wants to give it a 10, but I won't, cos I'm well aware there are some flaws in here that prevent it from attaining true perfection.
Actually there are quite a few.
First of all, the Camera sucks, like it does in so many many 3D games.
I dunno why, for all the graphical prowess videogame companies can squeeze out of consoles nowadays, only a staggering minority seems to be able to pull of some decent camera work. In that respect it seems unfair to criticise Kingdom Hearts for lacking in a department that virtually no game seems to be able to get right.
The camera is adjustable fortunately, set it to manual immediately, don't let the computer do it automatically or you'll get severe motion sickness.
Secondly, and this is a bit worse, Sora, the main character, is not a very good jumper. At least, not until he learns High-jump and Glide later in the game. Negotiating platforms can be a bit of a bother in the early stages of the game, not because Sora's jumps lack height, because they don't, but because the timing seems to be slightly off, resulting in falling off the platform you wanted to jump off and a fair amount of frustration. Later on though, you'll get better jumps, and there isn't that much platfrom hopping in any case.
Thirdly, the worlds you roam around in can be very confusing. You don't get a map of any kind, and most stages are so maze-like, with lots of pathways intertwining and going all over the place that it is easy to loose track of where you're going. Add to this the fact that ofttimes it's not even clear where you need to go in the first place, and again, frustration may ensue.
Fourthly (nope, not there yet) is the stupid Gumi game. To get from one world to the other you need to travel by Gumi ship, and you get a shooting stage à la Starfox, only not nearly as insanely good, and it is totally not in line with the rest of the game. You're playing a frantic action packed RPG, and then they have you play some lame wannabe shooter stages, probably to take your mind off things. The graphics are hideous in these bits, very blocky, no textures, actually, again, a lot like Starfox on SNES, only without the ruling VFX chip and Mode 7.
You do get to create and customize your ships though, which is nice. I never got into this in the original KH, but in Final Mix they give you lots of missions and stuff to make it more interesting, and encourage you to tune your ship. In the original this was totally pointless, which made it extremely frustrating everytime you go out of your way to find a treasure chest, only to be rewarded with some kind of stupid new Gumi Block. That royally SUCKED!
It's not as bad in Final Mix though, I actually mildly enjoyed it once I got into it.
And last but not least is the story. I blame Disney meddling into affairs, cos it's sappy, soppy AND sucky to a degree that is unbelievable for anyone with a realistic sense of the world and for anyone who can keep things in perspective.
The premise is nice enough, you have this species of monster that preys on darkness, and goes looking for dark sides of the soul, and preying on the dark bits in people's hearts. So, cue lots of Disney-like blahdeefuckingblah about friendship and warmheartedness and compassion and HWARF!
I swear, it gets really corny and annoying towards the end, when every conversation goes a little like this:
Sora: My heart is strong!
Ansem: Darkness rules! I am Darkness! Darkness! DARKNESS! (nice one there, Billy Zane)
Sora: HEART! FRIENDS!
Ansem: DARKNESS is the DARKNESS of the DARK DARKNESS of DARK!
Sora: Friends! Heart! Gumi! Sequel?
FUCK. YOU. DISNEY.
I refuse to believe that Square was solely responsible for this tripe. I've talked to some really stupid Japanese people in my life, but none of them have ever said 'Heart' or 'Darkness' this much. This HAS to be some American's influence.
Now, onto the good:
The Localisation is really really good. Having played the Japanese and the English version, I can safely say the English version is far superior (even with all the blah). Maybe it's because I have trouble accepting Disney characters speaking Japanese, but it just makes sense to hear them speaking the language they were born with. You get to hear all their trademark catchphrases and everything, and the voice acting is generally a lot better. A lot of the Disney characters have their original, or at least official, voice actors, which really shows.
On the other hand, without any exception, all the Square characters sound a lot better in Japanese, probably because of the same reason.
Secondly, the combat system RULES. It's just pure all-out ACTION, with a good amount of button-mashing, yes, but never mindlessly. You always need to stay on your toes and perform evasive maneuvers, or you won't pull through. Especially towards the end, Boss Battles can become really really HARD, but there always really really COOL too. You'll be fighting a lot of familiar foes, lots of them even too big to fit onto the screen. The Final Boss is motherfucking HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE, and consists of like 394 THOUSAND phases or something.
And that's what makes me love this game so much. Towards the end it becomes really truly Epic. I've rarely played a game with such a tremendously well worked out build-up and a truly phenomenal climax. This is pure epic action on a fantastically grand scale, and I loved every second of it.
I haven't played an action game this frantic, action-packed and adrenaline-rushing since, there it is again, Starfox 64. And THIS is ultimately why I love this game so much. It has made me feel hyper in a way that hardly any game has managed to pull off. There are so many great battles in here, and so many grandiose clashes that at the end you'll feel really good. This is one of those few games where, whilst you're watching the credits, you'll really feel you came a long way and you accomplished something.
In the beginnin battles might be a little bit samish, but soon you'll learn new skills and you can customize your character with all kinds of new moves and support abilities. Earning a new weapon also feels great, since you have to go through a lot of trouble to get one usually.
For the Final Mix a whole slew of new items, monsters, and extra boss battles have been added, such as the showdown with Sephiroth, the face-off against two of the Titans from Hercules, and this really EXTREMELY hard fight against some mysterious dude in a cloak. And this guy is HARD, make no mistake.
The great thing is though, you get this Memo booklet that keeps track of all the enemies you meet, and all the story elements etc., and once it is completely filled, and every entry has a Mickey Mouse Mark behind it (and there are not enough words to describe how insanely hard this is) you get a really cool extra ending movie.
Now to me, extended/alternate endings are the best reward you can get for exerting yourself, and this game sure delivers.
Not that the ending needed a lot of extra's, mind you. This game has one of the best endings ever, this side of Final Fantasy VIII, clearly made by the same team.
So in other words, the game may get off to a slightly slow start, and you might not be immediately hooked for the first couple of worlds or so, but it gets so epic later on that I really advise you to keep playing till the end, you won't be disappointed.
Despite its many shortcomings I'm going to give this a 9.5, because when it shines, it truly truly shines and this game has managed to excite me in ways that only very few can (hohoho. very funny).
Adversely though, I'd give the original Japanese version a 9.0, since it makes less sense, and has a lot less for you to do.
Bring on the sequel!
Oh, and some samples of course:
Dive into the Heart
Night of Fate
Hollow Bastion
posted by Ingen! @ 9:25 PM
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