Kingdom Hearts
For the Playstation 2

Hmmm... How odd. Could it be that Disney has finally realized they can't make good games ? Do they actually need the help of Squaresoft to make a game? Seems like it... 

Story- If there's anything Square is famous for, it's they're stories. Heh, but every company has it's off day. The story in this game: The main character Sora, and his pals Riku and Kairi want to visit other worlds. Yep yep yep... Awesome. Cept there's a problem... Evil is hanging around, and that's where the Disney characters show up. Now Sora, Donald, and Goofy have to save other worlds, all while looking for their friends. Wow! Square writers at their best !!

Gameplay- What Square has created here is a third-person adventure game. With all the same elements of one, such as jumping onto ledges to get to the next area, killing enemies, and fighting giant bosses. 

At the beginning of the game, you're forced to go through a training level. Great. You learn how to attack (!!!), how to use items, how to jump, basically, all the stuff in the instruction manual.

While the game may look nice, it suffers from REALLY REALLY REALLY bad camera work. You can't exactly rotate the camera 360 degrees, and when you do you'll smash down on the R2 or L2 button. It has a first person camera, activated by the select button. Even it has its drawbacks, such as when Goofy stands right in front of you.

Played Devil May Cry ? Then you're already a master at the combat system in Kingdom Hearts. The fighting is a toned down version of DMC (turn off the auto aim and hold down the R1 to aim, just like DMC !!). The enemies even drop those balls... Be it health, money, or MP. You can attack monsters in the air with your little combos.

You've also got a magic system (could you imagine a Square game without one ?). You've got your cure, fire, ice, lightning... mostly all the ones seen from FF games. Plus... you'll get summon spells, like Simba the Lion King ! Luckily there is a shortcut system so you only need to hold L1+ X, triangle or square.

Items have to be equipped to use them in combat (potions, ethers, elixirs, etc.). 

Money is used to buy Accessories, like armor and other junk.

The menu system you have is very annoying. You have to use the digital pad to select either fight, magic, item, or whatever the 4th option is at the time. It can become VERY ANNOYING when you're in a boss fight and you have to pick from certain spells while ignoring the battle.

In certain levels, you'll be graced with a different party member, such as Aladdin or Jack (from Nightmare Before Christmas). They seem way more powerful than Sora is. You do get experience, and raise in levels. You'll also get Abilities when you reach certain levels, ala FF9 (gotta equip them).

There's a little side-quest you can do throughout the game, find 99 dalmations. Gotta catch 'em all !

Now getting to and from different worlds, you've gotta go through this flying level. You'll pilot a Gummi Ship (ok...), and you'll have to blast your way through these levels, and at the end you'll get to the next level. You can fly the ships you get, or you can use the pieces you find and make your own ship. This can be time consuming (I spent an hour and a half making mistakes and then finally getting it right), but it is worth it in the end.

There's even a coliseum if you want to take part in Phil's (Hercules) tournaments, netting you some prizes. You might even run into some familiar faces...

One last thing... I hope you love fetch-quests, cause that's all this game is. 

Graphics and Sound- Well, if there's anything Square is famous for, it's their graphics. Funny thing is, the Disney characters look better than the Square ones. The dullness of the Square characters is shown when you see the fluid animation on the Disney characters. There are... interesting graphical distortions that can occur (I went through a boss...). 

You'll see a lot of Disney characters, done very well, while the new Square characters (Sora, Riku, and Kairi) look like they've been borrowed from other games and animes (Sora bears an unremarkable resemblance to Tai from Digimon, Riku looks like a young Fou Lu from BOF4, and Kairi looks like... Kari from Digimon). And if you bought the game for the FF characters that appear, I guess you won't be disappointed (Cloud looks cool, but I'm not a fan off FF7).

The music ? Annoying. Each level has two BGM's: Fight and no-fight. Playing over and over again... It becomes very annoying. I just pop in a CD into my CD player to make up for the awful music.

And the voices... Annoying as well. Just like a Disney movie, they hired Hollywood celebrites to supply the voices. You got the kid from AI and the Sixth Sense doing the main character. Now, when will it be realized that... CELEBRITIES DON'T BELONG IN JAPANESE ANIME OR GAMES !!! Now for the Disney characters, yes, it's ok. James Woods is back as Hades, as he should. The rest don't matter, but not all the Disney characters are voiced by the same actors who did them in the first place (the Genie is done by that guy who does Homer Simpson, and the Genie does sound like Homer at times). 

Replay Value- I dunno, play it over to find all the dalmations ? Play it on expert mode ? I wouldn't play it again. Maybe if someone paid me.

Rent or Buy- Rent. But that's just me. If you love Disney characters (now who would admit to that ?) or you just wanna see some Square character re-drawn and voiced by pretty-boy singers, buy it. 

My final score - 2/10

I hate this game. I hate the unoriginal gameplay, I hate the unoriginal characters, I hate the story (if there was one), I hate the repeatitive music, I hate the voices, I hate everything about this game. I rented it, and I'm glad. I also find it EXTREMELY weird that they put in: FF7 characters, FF8 characters, and FF10 characters. What the hell happened to 9 ? Stupid Pop Culture... They needed at least one old school Square character to save the game, and they failed. Only reason I didn't give the game a one is cause the Disney characters preformed much better than the Square ones...