If you have no idea
why I'm doing this here instead of on Saturdays, you got some reading
to do suspiciously new face here at the Cybertavern.
As for everyone
else, welcome back to my semi-coherent essays about games and game
design. And as the title implies I am here to talk about Kingdom
Hearts, the surprisingly lucrative and enduring JRPG franchise
brought to us by the biggest name in Japanese RPGs, Square Enix, and
the all-consuming force of progressive family friendly values that is
the Walt Disney Corporation.
As of yesterday, the
entirety of the Kingdom Hearts games are easily accessible on
PlayStation 4, which finally gave me the excuse I needed to roll up
my sleeves and dive into roughly eight different large time sinks to
figure out how the hell this thing has such a fan base and why people
are losing their collective shit over Kingdom Hearts 3 finally coming
out some time in 2017 as announced by Square Enix. Which translates
to some time in 2020 but only after a bunch of delays and stuff
because Square Enix can't keep its PR mouth shut!
So Kingdom Hearts is
a truly odd duck of a game series from an outsider perspective. At
its most basic level it's the story of a hero named Sora who gets
wrapped up in a massive adventure where he has to fight off against
the forces of evil as they slowly attempt to take over the world. And
along the way there's the usual JRPG trappings such as the hero
learning about the power of friendship from the people he meets along
the way, a lot of existential angst over an uncertain future, and
large over-the-top scenes of melodrama.
It's just that the
characters and locations that Sora happens to meet and deal with are
a combination of various characters owned by Disney like Donald Duck
and Mickey Mouse, and various cameos and appearances by certain
heroes and villains from Square Enix's Final Fantasy series.
It starts off simple
enough, but as Honest Game Trailers satirically highlighted, it got
very convoluted very quickly.
It says something
that I have to consult a wikipedia page to figure out where the hell
to start on a series that has about eight games in its respective
timeline. Games with titles like 358/2 Days or Re: Coded, because
apparently numbers are overrated.
But this does beg
the question: what about the longevity of the installment that
started it all? Does Kingdom Hearts 1 still hold up?
Well on a pure
gameplay level by modern standards... not really. The first Kingdom
Hearts came out during the PS2 era in the 2000s, which was a largely
experimental era when it came to action-RPGs. A lot of developers
were experimenting with how to maintain the narrative and character
focus of a traditional RPG while making the combat more engaging and
palatable to a more general audience.
A more general
audience that is turned off by obsessive number crunch and multiple
menus. As much as I love me some complex numbers and neurotic
optimization, some people do that sort of stuff for a living and
they'd rather just get right to the point.
To this end, Square
Enix decided to make the combat of Kingdom Hearts very straight
forward. You run around attack your enemies, and you map your spells
and special attacks to shortcut commands like you're playing a
fighting game. But there's also some menu management when it comes to
using items in order to keep your party members alive.
In practice this is
a bit of a mess. On the one hand it makes fighting through low level
minions quite exciting since it's more like a warm-up for a bigger
fight than another tedious display of just spamming the “Attack”
command again. On the other hand it leads to some stilted and awkward
boss battles since they have to balance the logistics of an
action-platformer, the hitboxes and hit detection of a high-end hack
and slasher, as well as be a test of party management, healing item
management and special attack usage.
And without the
rose-tinted nostalgia glasses on, it's very clear ambition outweighed reality. Frustration from obtuse controls, dodgy AI, tedious fights, the list of annoyances goes on.
So the core
engagement of the game, the combat is a noble failure by juggling too
many balls in the air, what about the other major form of engagement
that an RPG has?
Believe it or not,
mixing together the standard JRPG tropes like the naive youth going
on a big adventure, childhood love interest, and the older rival with
some trademarked Disney whimsy somehow hermetically seals these
ideas; making them seem fresh and original even though you seen it
hundreds of times before.
Yes it can get
incongruous at times. A cutscene can have Donald Duck getting slammed
into a wall by an open door gag, flattening for comedic effect, then
get mortally wounded in a boss fight. But at the same time when you
have one of your major big bads be Maleficent and you have the likes
of Goofy talking about needing to stay positive, it all somehow
manages to remain genuine.
I have only played
about three hours of Kingdom Hearts 1 so consider this post a long
meditation and first impression on the game as a whole. On a
technical level it suffers from the limitations at the time, some of
the voice-acting is nails on a chalkboard, and the combat holds up
about as well as the fashion career of Jinco Jeans, but there's an
implacable charm to the whole thing that has me interested.
Now if I can just
skip those ABSOLUTELY ASANINE RAIL SHOOTER SECTIONS I'D BE GOLDEN!!
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