Kingdom Hearts

If you told me that this cute, dumb, blandly entertaining action RPG would end up being the festering boil on the genre it is today, I never would have believed you. In complete fairness I have only learned stuff about KH2 and so on from watching my sister player the games and various internet sources, but given the increasing concentration on the original cast and continued unimportance of the Disney and Squaresoft casts, I don’t think I want to go near those anyway. Yes, indeed: I played this for the Disney and Square characters, as did many. Remember when they were the draw, and nobody played these just to see how deep Nomura could dig that story hole this time?

Kingdom Hearts played fine but was not thrilling–you swung your blade and hit things, they gave you balls of goodness. Nothing was wrong with the formula, and it had a neat idea here and there like summons and the Gummy ships. The game was not challenging for anyone seasoned in the least, and here in 2012 I’m having trouble recalling anything significant about the gameplay. That said, I don’t hold the bland gameplay against it–all that could be forgiven if Squaresoft had made the merger of fictional universes really cool, or even kept it simple like Super Smash Bros.

The trouble is, one could deconstruct the actual plot down to just the beginning of the game and the end (maybe some stuff in the middle I’m hazy on) without missing any true conflict or character development. All of the references to other series were ultimately references with no bearing on the core plot (filler) only playing in to the quest narrative. The actual important characters (Sora, Riku, Ansem etc) felt uninspired and frankly ridiculous thanks to their character designs. I realize these things don’t matter to everyone, and there are gamers who are content to simply hit things and zone out through dialogue, but for those of us who can appreciate games such as Nier and even the older Seiken Densetsu games, Kingdom Hearts fails to engage. Besides, the game has lots of story scenes with voice acting and attempts to tell a story. Is it so much to ask that everything being said matter in the end?

Overall, Kingdom Hearts had a cute concept, but the game should have been a one-shot and its value has been significantly hampered by its legacy. If it were ONLY a series of dumb, fun action games I could look the other way, but since it has decided to take itself seriously, I have to be serious in criticizing it. This series is trashier than a blockbuster film and by no means worthy of its incredible popularity. Not that there’s anything new about that.

5.5